Obama Gun Control Efforts Start Again: New Executive Actions on Gun Background Checks Proposed

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

The Obama administration on Friday proposed two new executive actions to make it easier for states to provide mental health information to the national background check system, wading back into the gun control debate after a months-long hiatus.

Vice President Biden’s office announced the proposals Friday afternoon. Both pertain to the ability of states to provide information about the mentally ill and those seeking mental health treatment to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

One proposal would formally give permission to states to submit “the limited information necessary to help keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands,” without having to worry about the privacy provisions in a law known as HIPAA.

“The proposed rule will not change the fact that seeking help for mental health problems or getting treatment does not make someone legally prohibited from having a firearm,” the statement said. “Furthermore, nothing in the proposed rule would require reporting on general mental health visits or other routine mental health care, or would exempt providers solely performing these treatment services from existing privacy rules.”

The other proposal would clarify that those who are involuntarily committed to a mental institution — both inpatient and outpatient — count under the law as “committed to a mental institution.” According to the administration, this change will help clarify for states what information to provide to the background check system, as well as who is barred from having guns.

Read more from this story HERE.

Two Giant Retailers Offer Free Prescription Drugs for ObamaCare Enrollees

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

Photo Credit: Breitbart

In what you can interpret as either an act of corporate altruism, corporate lobbying, or a mix of both, two giant retailers — Walmart and Walgreens — have agreed to save the Obama Administration from who knows how many horror-story anecdotes by agreeing to fill 30 days of free prescriptions for ObamaCare enrollees. The question is, though, what happens to the data and patient information these retailers collect?

When you have two of the biggest retailers in the country collecting untold amounts of personal health information from who knows how many people seeking free prescriptions, in the wake of revelations surrounding domestic NSA and Justice Department spying (on reporters!), it is not unreasonable to worry about this. We also know that a number of large corporations have apparently cooperated with the federal government’s data grabs.

Read more from this story HERE.

Uncle Sam’s New Year’s Eve Borrowing Binge: $1,088 Per Household in 1 Day

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Photo Credit: KAZVorpal/flickr

Photo Credit: KAZVorpal/flickr

Uncle Sam—AKA the federal government—went on a New Year’s Eve binge, adding a net of $125,202,709,546.99 to its total debt in just the one day of Dec. 31, 2013, according to the U.S. Treasury.

That equals approximately $1,088.60 for each of the 115,013,000 households the Census Bureau currently estimates there are in the United States.

Overall, in the first quarter of fiscal 2014, which ended on Dec. 31, the total debt of the federal government jumped $613,787,258,252.83

That equals $5,336 for each household in the country.

At the close of business on Dec. 30, 2013, the total debt of the federal government was 17,226,768,075,403.16. By the close of business on the next day—New Year’s Eve—the debt had risen to 17,351,970,784,950.15—a one-day jump of $125,202,709,546.99.

Read more about the United States New Year’s Eve borrowing binge HERE.

Midwest, Northeast Braces for ‘Life Threatening’ Arctic Blast

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

As much of the country digs out from a powerful winter storm that buried parts of the Northeast, forecasters are predicting an arctic-air blast over the northern tier of the country that will likely deliver the coldest air of the year.

The National Weather Service said the unusually cold air is expected to arrive by the weekend and will send wind chill temperatures in areas in North Dakota and Minnesota to minus 50 degrees by Saturday night.

Those states are notorious for their cold winters, but states in the Mid-Atlantic and New England can also expect wind chill temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees.

The cold air will be the result of the polar vortex dropping from Central Canada, NOAA reported. To put the drastic temperature in perspective, Ken Simosko, a meteorologist from Bismarck, said it would take all of five minutes to get frostbite in minus 50 degree condition.

“We usually don’t call something ‘life threatening,'” he told FoxNews.com. “But yes, we want people to know that this is very much a life-threatening event.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Global Warming Theory Foiled Again: Antarctic Ice Shelf Melt ‘lowest EVER recorded’

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Pauline Askin

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Pauline Askin

Scientists at the British Antarctic Survey say that the melting of the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf in Antarctica has suddenly slowed right down in the last few years, confirming earlier research which suggested that the shelf’s melt does not result from human-driven global warming.

The Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica and its associated sea ice shelf is closely watched: this is because unlike most of the sea ice around the austral continent, its melt rate has seemed to be accelerating quickly since scientists first began seriously studying it in the 1990s.

Many researchers had suggested that this was due to human-driven global warming, which appeared to be taking place rapidly at that time (though it has since gone on hold for 15 years or so, a circumstance which science is still assimilating).

However back in 2009 the British Antarctic Survey sent its Autosub robot probe under the shelf (famously powered by some 5,000 ordinary alkaline D-cell batteries on each trip beneath the ice, getting through no less than four tonnes of them during the research). The Autosub survey revealed that a previously unknown marine ridge lay below the shelf, over which the icepack had for millennia been forced to grind its way en route to the ocean. However in relatively recent times the ice had finally so ground down the ridge that the sea could flow in between shelf and ridge, freeing the ice to move much faster and warming it too…

Now, the latest BAS research has revealed that rather than accelerating, “oceanic melting of the ice shelf into which the glacier flows decreased by 50 per cent between 2010 and 2012”.

Read more from this story about the Antarctic ice shelf HERE.

It Begins: Colorado Toddler Tests Positive for Marijuana (+video)

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Photo Credit: CBS

Photo Credit: CBS

Police in Longmont are trying to figure out how a toddler got her hands on marijuana that made her sick.

Two year old Evelyn tested positive for pot and ended up in the hospital but her mother doesn’t know how the child came into contact with the now-legal drug.

Evelyn’s mother, Aida Hernandez, believes the child ate part of a cookie she found on the ground in the grass outside of their apartment.

“It was brown, like a chocolate chip cookie,” said Hernandez.

Read more from this story HERE.

Egyptian Puppet Allegedly Sending Coded Instructions to Islamist Terrorists (+video)

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Photo Credit: New York Times

Photo Credit: New York Times

Egypt’s crackdown on support for the Muslim Brotherhood turned surreal this week as prosecutors agreed to investigate the allegation that a puppet that babbles nonsensically in an advertisement for a multinational phone company was in fact sending coded instructions to Islamist terrorists.

Prosecutors said in a statement that officials from Vodafone Egypt, the local branch of a phone company based in Britain, were summoned to respond to a complaint about the ad filed by a counterrevolutionary video-blogger and singer who calls himself Ahmed Spider. In an appearance on Egyptian television on Tuesday, the little-known blogger spent nearly an hour dissecting what he called the secret codes embedded in the ad, in which a puppet widow named Abla Fahita tries to reactivate the phone line used by her late husband.

The ad shows the Muppet-like Abla Fahita babbling to a friend on the phone while her daughter, Karkoura, looks for her dead father’s SIM card. The company explained in a statement that the ad, first broadcast and posted on YouTube last week, was part of a marketing campaign “aiming at explaining how to reactivate a Vodafone SIM card.” The blogger’s reading, the company said, was “irrational” and based on “mere imagination.”

Read more from this story HERE.

China: North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un Fed His Uncle to a Pack of 120 Hungry Dogs

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Photo Credit: Martyn Williams/Rodong

Photo Credit: Martyn Williams/Rodong

By Michael Kelley.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un fed his once-powerful uncle to 120 hungry dogs, according to a detailed report in a newspaper with close ties to China’s ruling Communist Party and reported by the Straits Times.

The report is impossible to verify, but can’t be completely discounted.

China lost an important link to North Korea’s leadership with the purge of Jang Song Thaek, and may have published the account in Wen Wei Po to express its displeasure.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Kim Jong Un ‘fed uncle to pack of 120 ravenous dogs’

By Sean Piccoli and Post Wire Report.

The uncle of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was ripped to pieces by a pack of starving dogs in a slow, barbaric execution that Kim himself watched, an official Chinese newspaper reported.

Jang Song Thaek, the 67-year-old family member once considered Kim’s right-hand man, died horribly with five other condemned officials in a capital punishment ritual called “quan jue”— execution by dogs, according to the Hong Kong newspaper Wen Wei Po, a mouthpiece for China’s government.

The ghastly account of Jeng’s execution could not be independently verified, but its publication in an official Chinese daily signaled Beijing’s growing disgust with Kim, according to a Singapore daily, the Straits Times, which suggested the Chinese might have leaked the gory tale to further embarrass and marginalize Pyongyang’s reigning madman.

Read more from this story HERE.

Residents Leap from Windows to Escape Minneapolis Apartment Fire

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Photo Credit: McKenna Ewen / Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Photo Credit: McKenna Ewen / Minneapolis Star-Tribune

By Matt Pearce.

Fourteen people were hurt, at least three critically, when an explosion and fire rocked a three-story apartment building in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning, forcing residents to jump from windows and flee into subzero temperatures.

The explosion in the largely Somali American neighborhood was first reported at 8:16 a.m. By the time firefighters arrived, smoke and 20-foot flames were pouring out of the second and third stories of the building, officials said.

“People are jumping out of the windows now,” one fire official radioed. Another added, “We’ve got injured civilians out in the street.”

Minneapolis Fire Department officials said in a statement that they were “unable to determine [whether] everyone made it out of the building and is accounted for.”

The cause of the fire was under investigation.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Everyone accounted for after Minneapolis fire, officials say

By Allie Shah and Matt McKinney.

There was a loud boom, and suddenly the walls of Abdi Qobey’s apartment flew apart as he sat watching television on New Year’s Day.

He ran through what used to be his front door to find the hall filled with flames. He could hear someone shouting for help.

Wearing just a jacket, jeans and a pair of shoes, Qobey went to the blown-out window of his second-story apartment.

“I did not hesitate,” he recalled Friday. “Outside is life. I jumped.”

From his hospital bed at Hennepin County Medical Center, Qobey, 59, described what happened at 8:16 a.m. Wednesday as an explosion and fire destroyed a Somali grocery and 10-unit apartment building in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.

Read more from this story HERE.

Getting Down to Business: New York’s Newly-Minted Mayor Offers Up a Strip Tease (+video)

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Photo Credit: nowthisnews.com

Photo Credit: nowthisnews.com

Mayor Bill de Blasio sure knows how to make reporters pay attention to his winter snowstorm briefings.

At the very end of a detailed press update this morning at a sanitation garage in Queens, the newly-minted mayor was asked how many layers he was wearing by CBS radio reporter Rich Lamb.

Dressed in a mayor’s office wind breaker, button-down shirt and dad jeans, Mr. de Blasio jokingly pretended to strip, dramatically unzipping his jacket to show off his shirt.

“Do you want me to go farther, Rich?” he offered suggestively with a smile. “I have an undershirt also.”

Read more from this story HERE.