American Freed After Months Of Detention In North Korea

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Photo Credit: Wong Maye-E / APJeffrey Fowle, one of three Americans held by North Korea, has been released, the White House says.

Fowle, 56, who was detained in June, allegedly for leaving a Bible in his hotel room in North Korea, was home today after negotiators secured his release.

At the time, North Korean state media said he had “acted in violation of the [North Korean] law, contrary to the purpose of tourism during his stay.”

State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said Washington has tried for months to send a high-level envoy to North Korea to seek release of the three men.

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AP-GfK Poll: Most Expect GOP Victory in November

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Photo Credit: AP / Matt RourkeTwo weeks before Election Day, most of the nation’s likely voters now expect the Republican Party to take control of the U.S. Senate, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. And by a growing margin, they say that’s the outcome they’d like to see.

But the survey suggests many will cringe when they cast those ballots. Most likely voters have a negative impression of the Republican Party, and 7 in 10 are dissatisfied by its leaders in Congress.

The Democrats win few accolades themselves. Impressions of the party among likely voters have grown more negative in the past month. In fact, Democrats are more trusted than the GOP on just two of nine top issues, the poll showed.

The economy remains the top issue for likely voters — 91 percent call it “extremely” or “very” important. And the GOP has increased its advantage as the party more trusted to handle the issue to a margin of 39 percent to 31 percent.

With control of the Senate at stake, both parties say they are relying on robust voter-turnout operations — and monster campaign spending — to lift their candidates in the final days. But the poll suggests any appeals they’ve made so far haven’t done much to boost turnout among those already registered. The share who report that they are certain to vote in this year’s contests has risen just slightly since September, and interest in news about the campaign has held steady.

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Study Shows Liberals More Likely Than Conservatives to "Unfriend" Someone Over Politics

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Photo Credit: TownHallA new study by the Pew Research Center has found that people who identify as “liberal” in their political beliefs are more likely than conservatives to have unfriended someone (either in the online or real-life sense) over a disagreement in political leanings.

According to the study, while self-described “consistent liberals” were more likely than conservatives to have friends who have differing political opinions, they were also more likely to block those person’s posts from social media or to unfriend them altogether.

Consistent liberals were the most likely group to block or unfriend someone because they disagreed with their political postings, with 44 percent saying they had “hidden, blocked, defriended, or stopped following someone” on Facebook due to their political postings. Only roughly one-third (31 percent) of consistent conservatives had done the same — although this might be attributable to lower levels of ideological diversity in their online ecosystem.

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U.S. Ebola Crisis Is A Media Myth, Claims Obama

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Photo Credit: Daily CallerBy Neil Munro.

President Barack Obama claimed Oct. 20 that the left-leaning established media invented the Ebola crisis that has deeply damaged his chances of keeping the Democratic majority in the Senate.

“The Ebola crisis… [which] has been the only story here in the United States for the last couple of weeks, is not an outbreak and epidemic here,” Obama complained to his donors at a Chicago fundraiser.

“To give you some sense of perspective, around 20,000 to 30,000 [American] people die of flu every year. So far we’ve got one person dying of Ebola.”

Even though the economy is growing, Obama claimed, “people are still anxious” about the Middle East, Russia’s slow-motion invasion of Ukraine, the Islamic jihadis in Iraq and the media-magnified fear of Ebola.

But “we’ve had one case of a person dying from Ebola that brought it in from outside,” he said.

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Pentagon Orders 30-Member Ebola Response Team

By Luis Martinez.

The Pentagon has ordered that a 30-person military medical team be prepared to be put on standby to quickly assist the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with its Ebola response in the United States if needed.

The move followed a request to the Defense Department made Saturday by the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC.

Rear Admiral John Kirby, the Pentagon Press Secretary, said the move was “an added prudent measure to ensure our nation is ready to respond quickly, effectively, and safely in the event of additional Ebola cases in the United States.”

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered U.S. Northern Command Command “to prepare and train a 30-person expeditionary medical support team that could, if required, provide short-notice assistance to civilian medical professionals in the United States,” Kirby said.

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Photo Credit: TownHallUnreal: Medical Society of NY Tells Doctors to ‘Follow Twitter’ to Stay Informed on Ebola

By Cortney O’Brien.

In its weekly update for New York State physicians, the Medical Society of the State of New York wanted to ensure that the doctors within their network were well informed on the threat of Ebola. So, MSSNY President Andrew Kleinman, M.D., told them to make sure they were following the society on Twitter.

MSSNY is here to help you. As we communicate regularly with key New York State officials, and closely monitor the worldwide and U.S. efforts regarding efforts to contain the outbreak, please follow us on Twitter and Facebook for the latest scientific and other important information. Continuous updates are being posted to our Twitter and Facebook feeds when important new information arises, which is many times per day.

If you are not on Twitter or Facebook already, you need to follow us! (If you need help setting up an account, please contact [email protected]). And please “re-tweet” and “re-post” these important updates to those physicians and other care providers who follow you.

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Photo Credit: John Moore / Getty ImagesEbola Doctors at Breaking Point: ‘This Constant Feeling That the Boat’s Sinking’

By Makiko Kitamura and Naomi Kresge.

At 3:30 a.m. in the world’s biggest Ebola treatment center, Daniel Lucey found the outbreak reduced to its essentials: patients lying on mattresses on the floor and vomiting in the dark, visible only by the wavering flashlight beam of a single volunteer doctor.

“I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel,” said Lucey, a physician and professor from Georgetown University who is halfway through a five-week tour in Liberia with Medecins Sans Frontieres, the medical charity known in English as Doctors Without Borders. “The epidemic is still getting worse,” he said by phone between shifts.

That’s an increasingly urgent challenge for MSF and the global health community. As fear spreads in the U.S. over transmission of the virus to two nurses in a modern Dallas hospital, the main fight against the outbreak is still being waged by volunteers like Lucey half a world away.

MSF has been the first — and often only — line of defense against Ebola in West Africa. The group raised the alarm on March 31, months ahead of the World Health Organization. Now, after treating almost a third of the roughly 9,000 confirmed Ebola cases in Africa — and faced with a WHO warning of perhaps 10,000 new infections a week by December — MSF is reaching its limits.

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Police Say Driver Who Hit Two Canadian Soldiers Before Being Shot Was 'Radicalized'

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Christinne MuschiA Quebec man who struck two Canadian military members with his car before being fatally shot by police Monday had been “radicalized,” authorities said.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said that Martin Rouleau, 25, of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, was known to provincial and federal law enforcement agencies, according to CBC News. Police declined to provide further details, citing the ongoing investigation.

A statement from the office of Prime Minister Stephen Harper late Monday said that authorities “have confirmed that there are indications that this is clearly an individual who has been radicalized … Canadians should remain vigilant.” Harper was briefed about the incident by the head of Canada’s national police force, the head of the military and his national security adviser.

One neighbor told reporters that Rouleau stopped wearing jeans and started wearing a tunic and that he changed over the last year and was alone a lot. Another neighbor said Rouleau converted to Islam a little over a year ago.

Rouleau was shot after striking two members of the military in a parking lot mall near Montreal. He died a few hours later.

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Kerry, Campaigning Against ISIS Ideology, Meets With Muslim Leader Who Enforces Shari'a Punishments

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Photo Credit: Brunei government / InfofotoSecretary of State John Kerry met with several Southeast Asian leaders on Monday to promote the anti-ISIS campaign including the need to delegitimize its ideology. The people he met with include a Muslim ruler who less than six months ago introduced the death penalty for apostasy, stoning for adultery and limb amputation for theft.

The controversial shari’a-based penal code was enacted by the Sultan of Brunei on May 1. Invoking the same shari’a obligations, the jihadist group calling itself the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) enforces similar punishments in areas under its control.

President Obama, Kerry and other administration officials repeatedly contend that there is nothing “Islamic” about ISIS or the atrocities it is committing in Syria and Iraq.

Kerry’s meeting with Brunei’s Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah was one of several bilaterals held in Jakarta on the sidelines of the inauguration of Indonesia’s new leader, President Joko Widodo.

The sultan’s office said in a brief statement afterwards that the two had “discussed bilateral issues and cooperation between Brunei and the United States, and exchanged views on regional and international matters of mutual concern.”

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The Earth's Magnetic Field Could Flip Within Our Lifetime

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Photo Credit: GizmodoEarth’s magnetic field is constantly shifting, and roughly every 200,000 to 300,000 years it flips north and south completely. We’re currently overdue for a switcheroo—and scientists now say it could happen in a time as short as 100 years, potentially altering life in unexpected ways.

It was long thought that these reversals took as many as 7,000 years to completely switch, according to a 2004 study funded by the National Science Foundation. But over the past few years, other scientists have suggested that the shifts have occurred at speeds previously unimagined. And a brand-new study published in the Geophysical Journal International by a team of scientists from Europe and the U.S. sheds even more light on these speedy changes—suggesting that the last 180-degree flip only took about 100 years.

How did they discern changes in the magnetic field that date back hundreds of thousands of years? By testing layers of ash deposited by volcanic eruptions over the course of 10,000 years, found in a lakebed near Rome. According to a release from Berkeley, the magnetic field directions are “frozen” into these layers of ash, which could be reliably dated to find out when the reversals occurred and how long they took to complete. “We don’t know whether the next reversal will occur as suddenly as this one did, but we also don’t know that it won’t,” said Berkely’s Paul Renne, one of the study’s authors.

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'Miss Hitler 2014': Shocking Beauty Contest Aims to Find the Best Looking Nazi

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Photo Credit: mirror.co.ukWho is the most beautiful anti-Semitic them all? A pro-Hitler Russian and Ukrainian online group is trying to find out.

The Nazi-themed beauty pageant for Russian women who hate Jews has been dubbed ‘ Miss Hitler 2014 ‘.

Women who are proud of their beliefs are being asked to post sexy pictures of themselves on the “Adolf Hitler” page on Vkontakte – Russia’s Facebook.

They have been asked to post a Nazi-themed selfie and write under their photo why they ‘love and revere the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler’ – a regime that killed more than six million people.

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Politico Poll: 64% Believe America is 'Out of Control'

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Photo Credit: Breitbart A devastating new Politico poll reveals voters believe America has spun off its axis and is “out of control.”

“An overwhelming majority of voters in the most competitive 2014 elections say it feels as if events in the United States are ‘out of control’ and expressed mounting alarm about terrorism, anxiety about Ebola and harsh skepticism of both political parties only three weeks before the Nov. 4 midterms,” reports Politico.

The poll, which surveyed states and districts in the most competitive congressional races, found that 64% of Americans believe “things in the U.S. feel like they are out of control right now.”

Specifically, the poll found that 84% of voters believe the Islamic State (ISIS) represents a “serious” threat to America. Just 12% said ISIS terrorists do not pose a serious threat.

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Officials Warn 500 Million Financial Records Hacked

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Photo Credit: David Goldman, APFederal officials warned companies Monday that hackers have stolen more than 500 million financial records over the past 12 months, essentially breaking into banks without ever entering a building.

“We’re in a day when a person can commit about 15,000 bank robberies sitting in their basement,” said Robert Anderson, executive assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Cyber Response and Services Branch.

The U.S. financial sector is one of the most targeted in the world, FBI and Secret Service officials told business leaders at a cybersecurity event organized by the Financial Services Roundtable. The event came in the wake of mass hacking attacks against Target, Home Depot, JPMorgan Chase and other financial institutions.

“You’re going to be hacked,” Joseph Demarest, assistant director of the FBI’s cyberdivision, told the business leaders. “Have a plan.”

Nearly 439 million records were stolen in the past six months, said Supervisory Special Agent Jason Truppi of the FBI. Nearly 519 million records were stolen in the past 12 months, he said.

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