One of the Largest Drug Tunnels Between U.S. And Mexico Found in California

/5 Comments/in , /by

Authorities seized 12 tons of marijuana and arrested 22 people after discovering one of the longest cross-border tunnels between the U.S. and Mexico, officials said Thursday.

The passage connecting warehouses in San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, was about 2,400 feet long and 30 feet deep. It was lit, ventilated and equipped with a rail system – hallmarks of the most sophisticated tunnels found along the border.

Near-simultaneous police stings on Wednesday resulted in six arrests in San Diego and 16 in Mexico. Authorities recovered two tons of marijuana in the U.S. and 10 tons in Mexico. (Read more from “One of the Largest Drug Tunnels Between U.S. And Mexico Found in California” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

City of Sodom Discovered, ‘Consistent With Biblical Story’

/3 Comments/in , /by

By Fox News. The ruins of the biblical city of Sodom reportedly have been discovered by U.S. archeologists in southern Jordan.

God punished the wickedness of the citizens by destroying the city with brimstone and fire, the biblical story explains. Only the righteous inhabitants were allowed to escape the destruction and were spared by God.

The archeological team, directed by Steve Collins of New Mexico’s Trinity Southwest University, has been working for 10 years in the Jordan Valley. It now believes it has uncovered this magnificent historical site.

If confirmed, the discovery could give the archeological community an invaluable understanding of how people lived during between 3500 BC and 1540 BC.

And perhaps most interestingly, the excavations are revealing that life in the city came to an abrupt end during the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1540 BC), seemingly consistent with the biblical story. Preliminary tests reveal there was a stark end of life that lasted for about 700 years. (Read more from “City of Sodom Discovered, ‘Consistent With Biblical Story'” HERE)

___________________________________

Sodom Possibly Destroyed by an Asteroid

By Victoria Woollaston and Sarah Griffiths. The Old Testament story describes how God destroyed the ‘wicked sinners’ of Sodom with fire and brimstone but allowed Lot, the city’s one good man, to flee with his family. . .

[The city that archaeologist Steven Collins discovered includes a] rampart system that would have required millions of bricks and hundreds of workers, showing a demonstration or organization and technology.

Evidence also suggests the ruined city had gates, towers, a main road and squares.

Dr Collins said the city was abandoned at the end of the Bronze Age, perhaps following an earthquake, but other experts have suggested an asteroid may have been to blame. . .

‘It became an uninhabited wasteland for over 700 years but then, after those seven centuries, it started to flourish again – as indicated by the huge iron gate that leads into the city,’ he said. (Read more from this story HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

ISIS Threatens to Kill Jews Across the World in Disturbing New Video

/1 Comment/in , /by

This worrying video shows an ISIS militant threatening to kill Jews across the world.

The terror group posted the clip on YouTube showing a militant dressed in army fatigues wearing a balaclava . . .

He says: “We assure you that soon there will not be a single Jew left on Jerusalem and throughout the country” . . .

The militant backs the attacks in Jerusalem, saying: “soon there will not be one Jew left in Jerusalem.”

It comes after reports that around 30 British-born Islamic State (ISIS) fighters have reportedly returned home to wage war on the UK. (Read more from “ISIS Threatens to Kill Jews Across the World in Disturbing New Video” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

First American Soldier Is Killed in Combat in Iraq Since 2011 Troop Exit

/1 Comment/in , /by

American and Kurdish commandos raided an Islamic State prison in Iraq on Thursday, freeing about 70 captives believed to be facing “mass execution” and leaving one U.S. soldier dead, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

It was the first time a member of the U.S. military had been killed in a combat situation in Iraq since President Obama pulled out all U.S. troops in 2011.

In a pre-dawn operation, soldiers from the Army’s Delta Force, supporting a team of elite Kurdish soldiers, descended on a militant compound in the town of Hawijah, where officials believed that dozens of Kurdish fighters known as peshmerga were being held captive.

Militants from the Islamic State, the extremist group that controls a vast area across Iraq and Syria, were planning an “imminent mass execution” of prisoners, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook told reporters later in the day.

While peshmerga captives were not present at the site, the U.S. and Kurdish forces freed dozens of others, including more than 20 members of the Iraqi security ­forces, Cook said. Five Islamic State militants were captured, officials said, and at least 10 were killed. In a statement, the Kurdish Security Council said more than 20 militants were killed. (Read more from “First American Soldier Is Killed in Combat in Iraq Since 2011 Troop Exit” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Texas Agents Raid Planned Parenthood Offices

/4 Comments/in , /by

Texas sent agents to Planned Parenthood facilities on Thursday seeking documents, the group said, calling it a “politically motivated” move that comes on the heels of the state’s Republican leaders barring it from receiving Medicaid money.

Members of the Texas Office of the Inspector General made unannounced visits at Planned Parenthood health centers in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio, staying in some cases for several hours and giving Planned Parenthood 24 hours to deliver thousands of pages of documents stored at its facilities across the state, the organization said.

The Inspector General Office declined to comment, as did health officials. Inspector General agents were seen on local news reports entering a Planned Parenthood facility in San Antonio.

Texas, the most populous Republican-controlled U.S. state, said it would launch a probe of Planned Parenthood after the release of videos in July by anti-abortion activist group Center for Medical Progress in which a Planned Parenthood official is seen talking about transactions involving fetal tissue.

“We believe this is a fishing expedition,” Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region Chief Executive Officer Ken Lambrecht told a news conference in Austin, calling the request “politically motivated.” (Read more from “Texas Agents Raid Planned Parenthood Offices” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Netanyahu: Palestinians Convinced Hitler to Massacre the Jews

/1 Comment/in , /by

Social media was abuzz on Wednesday following claims made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Adolf Hitler initially had no intention of massacring European Jewry.

In a speech to delegates at the 37th World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem on Tuesday, the premier claimed that Hitler’s original intentions were solely to expel the Jews.

According to Netanyahu, the Fuhrer changed his mind at the insistence of the Palestinian Arab leader at the time, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who argued that the expulsion of the Jews would result in their arrival en masse to Palestine, which at the time was under British Mandatory rule.

Netanyahu made the claim as part of an effort to illustrate the Palestinian propensity to use the holy places in Jerusalem as pretexts for committing acts of violence against Jews.

“My grandfather came to this land in 1920 and he landed in Jaffa, and very shortly after he landed he went to the immigration office in Jaffa,” Netanyahu told delegates on Tuesday. “And a few months later it was burned down by marauders. These attackers, Arab attackers, murdered several Jews, including our celebrated writer [Yosef Haim] Brenner.” (Read more from “Netanyahu: Palestinians Convinced Hitler to Massacre the Jews” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Clinton Pins Benghazi Responsibility on Ambassador

/3 Comments/in , /by

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton brushed aside emails Thursday that showed she privately told family and world leaders that the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi was a terrorist assault, and said Ambassador Christopher Stevens was responsible for his own decisions regarding skimpy security ahead of his death.

Testifying to the House Select Committee on Benghazi, a composed and controlled Mrs. Clinton said she was involved in the big decisions of deploying Stevens to Libya and pressing President Obama to lead the war effort that ousted Moammar Gadhafi. But she deflected responsibility for much of what went wrong, saying the ambassador’s requests for more protection, which were denied, were handled at levels beneath her.

Mrs. Clinton also revealed that she gave orders for her lawyer and aides to go through her emails, but she did not “look over their shoulder” and didn’t know exactly how they decided which emails were work-related business. And she declined to agree to release any emails recovered from her server.

In a hearing that lasted more than eight hours, Mrs. Clinton escaped without the kind of major gaffe that plagued her 2013 appearance before the Senate.

But she seemed unsure of whether she spoke with Stevens in the months between swearing him in as ambassador and the attack, in which he died of smoke inhalation. (Read more from “Clinton Pins Benghazi Responsibility on Ambassador” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

This Is What Puerto Rico Is Looking to Help Cure Ailing Economy

/0 Comments/in , /by

Fearing her husband would die waiting for a heart transplant in Miami, Carmen Concepcion started looking for a faster way to save his life, and found the answer in her native Puerto Rico . . .

She looked across the states for hospitals with shorter wait times until a friend recommended she consider her homeland. Carmen was hesitant but “gave it a chance.”

In December, Pablo received his heart transplant, becoming the first person to travel from the mainland to the U.S. commonwealth for the procedure, said Dr. Ivan Gonzalez-Cancel, his surgeon and the director of the heart transplant center at the Cardiovascular Center of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. Pablo is now able to bike about a mile and climb four to five flights of steps.

Puerto Rico is trying to build its medical tourism industry, from a current level of about $80 million a year to $300 million by 2017, as part of efforts to heal its chronically sick economy. A component of that is to encourage more patients to travel for organ transplants . . .

Puerto Rico’s potential as a transplant center is partly based on a macabre statistic – the Caribbean island had a murder and non-negligent manslaughter rate of 19.2 per 100,000 people in 2014 compared to 4.5 per 100,000 in the United States, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data. (Read more from “This Is What Puerto Rico Is Looking to Help Cure Ailing Economy” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

‘It Works’: Yuma’s Fence, Manpower Make Border Nearly Impenetrable

/2 Comments/in , /by

When Americans think of a secure border, whether they know it or not, they see Yuma, Ariz., and the 20-foot high steel curtain separating it from Mexico.

Beyond the imposing wall is 75 yards of flat, sandy, no man’s land, monitored by cameras and sensors and agents in SUVs. If an illegal immigrant successfully runs that gauntlet, they face another tightly woven steel fence and a third cyclone fence topped by barbed wire . . .

It wasn’t always this way. In 2005, Yuma was chaos. Pushed out of San Diego by Operation Gatekeeper in the late 1990s, drug and human smugglers targeted San Luis, a sleepy little border town just over the California state line south of Yuma.

That year, illegal immigrants overwhelmed Yuma. Border agents made on average 800 arrests a day, and watched hundreds of suspects run away. Stolen vehicles laden with drugs raced over the border at high speeds unhindered and unmolested. An estimated eight trucks a day sped out of Mexico onto Interstate 8 and disappeared into the American heartland, stuffed with immigrants or drugs . . .

Video of the Yuma chaos made its way to Washington, where then-President George Bush pledged to fix it. In 2006, Congress passed the Secure Fence Act. Three years later every mile of Yuma’s border with Mexico contained a fence or vehicle barrier. (Read more from “‘It Works’: Yuma’s Fence, Manpower Make Border Nearly Impenetrable” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Mystery Deaths Spread Fear of Ebola Relapses

/0 Comments/in , /by

A poster in Sierra Leone’s crumbling coastal capital Freetown proclaims a message from an Ebola survivor called Sulliaman: “I feel 100 percent healthy!” Another beaming survivor Juliana says: “I am one of the safest people to be around!”

Throughout the two-year Ebola epidemic, thousands of West African survivors have been shunned by their communities, prompting governments to sponsor messages stressing their complete recovery in a bid to counter fear and paranoia.

But the case of Scottish nurse Pauline Cafferkey – the first known Ebola survivor to have an apparently life-threatening relapse – has revived concerns about the health of some 17,000 survivors in Sierra Leone, neighboring Guinea and Liberia.

Doctors and health officials in Sierra Leone told Reuters that a handful of mystery deaths among discharged patients may also be types of Ebola relapses, stirring fear that the deadly virus may last far longer than previously thought in the body, causing other potentially lethal complications.

Diagnoses have not been made, partly because of a lack of relevant medical training and insufficient equipment for detecting a virus that can hide in inaccessible corners of the body – such as the spinal fluid or eyeball. In Cafferkey’s case, the virus in her brain caused meningitis. (Read more from “Mystery Deaths in Sierra Leone Spread Fear of Ebola Relapses” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.