One in Three Jobs Will Be Taken by Software or Robots by 2025

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Photo Credit: ThinkstockGartner sees things like robots and drones replacing a third of all workers by 2025, and whether you want to believe it or not, is entirely your business.

This is Gartner being provocative, as it is typically is, at the start of its major U.S. conference, the Symposium/ITxpo.

Take drones, for instance.

“One day, a drone may be your eyes and ears,” said Peter Sondergaard, Gartner’s research director. In five years, drones will be a standard part of operations in many industries, used in agriculture, geographical surveys and oil and gas pipeline inspections.

“Drones are just one of many kinds of emerging technologies that extend well beyond the traditional information technology world — these are smart machines,” said Sondergaard.

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Feds Won't Impose Travel Ban to Ebola-Ravaged Areas Because it "Could Impede Efforts by Aid Workers"

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Photo Credit: AP / Tanya BindraTop government health officials say they are opposed to placing a ban on travelers from Ebola-infected countries, warning that shutting down borders could impede efforts by aid workers to stop the spread of the deadly virus.

The idea of a ban gained currency this past week after the nation’s first case was diagnosed in Dallas. Proponents have argued that it would help ensure public safety.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, said Sunday that a travel embargo on West African countries that are struggling with Ebola would make it much harder for them to control the virus.

“You isolate them, you can cause unrest in the country,” Fauci told “Fox News Sunday.” ”It’s conceivable that governments could fall if you just isolate them completely.”

British Airways and some other airlines have suspended flights from those countries, and overall traffic to and from the affected areas has dropped.

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Growing Number of Jails Across Country Releasing Illegals…

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Photo Credit: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles TimesMore jails refuse to hold inmates for federal immigration authorities

Emboldened by recent court rulings, more and more counties and cities across the country are refusing to jail inmates extra days to give federal authorities time to deport them.

In most jails until recently, inmates booked on criminal charges and suspected of being in the country illegally were often held for an additional 48 hours at the behest of federal immigration officials.

These “holds” created a pipeline for the deportation of thousands of people from the United States in the last decade. Now, that enforcement tool is crumbling.

Although some localities started limiting the number of immigration holds a few years ago, the trend of completely ignoring the requests gathered steam this spring after a series of federal court rulings determined that the immigration holds are not mandatory and that local agencies should not be compelled to follow them.

“I think there’s momentum,” said Kate Desormeau, an American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney who has helped litigate immigration hold cases. “The more localities recognize that they don’t have to do this — and that it doesn’t make sense for them to do this — makes it easier for other localities sitting on the sidelines to say they’re going to stop treating ICE detainers like warrants.”

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Watchdog Claims Union's Legal Fight Reveals ObamaCare Fraud

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By Perry Chiaramonte.

A Texas union’s dirty laundry — aired out in court when workers charged they were cheated out of overtime pay – also shows the labor organization ripped off taxpayers under a $1.3 million contract to sign people up for ObamaCare, a watchdog group is claiming.

Non-profit group Southern United Neighborhoods got a $1.3 million federal grant in 2013 to serve as a “navigator,” enrolling people in Affordable Care Act coverage. The group subcontracted with United Labor Unions Local 100, which, according to Cause of Action, paid members less than it billed the government and, in some cases, paid them to recruit union members. The watchdog group discovered the alleged discrepancy in court papers filed by union workers suing the labor organization for unpaid overtime.

“Southern United Neighborhoods and ULU Local 100, both rebranded ACORN entities, present a risk of violating the law – this time by potentially misusing over $1.3 million of taxpayer dollars for union activities instead of enrolling individuals in the Affordable Care Act,” Daniel Epstein, executive director for Cause of Action said to FoxNews.com.

Epstein and his group sent a letter to the federal Health and Human Services Inspector General this week asking that SUN and the union be investigated for fraud.

“Given the amount of federal dollars at issue, the Inspector General should investigate SUN and conduct an audit into the potential misuse of ACA navigator funds,” read the letter.

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Photo Credit: Daily CallerMedicaid Scam In Michigan Takes $29 Million From Taxpayers

By Jonah Bennett.

Health care providers defrauded Medicaid to the tune of $29 million dollars by coordinating with a day care center for mentally ill adults to steal patient information, the Washington Examiner reports.

Abdul Malik Al-Jumail and his daughter Jamella Al-Jumail created a series of fake health companies, and then collaborated closely with Felicar Williams, 51, who ran the day care center. Felicar would steal patient information, the Jumails would file false claims, and then provide kickbacks to Felicar. Many complex procedures for mental health were billed that were simply never provided.

Sometimes the Jumails would even fabricate entire medical records if necessary to gain reimbursement, showing how patients desperately needed treatment, and how their companies provided care. All three individuals involved are now in prison. The actual sentencing, however, hasn’t yet been scheduled. Two others, Mohammed Sadiq and Philandis Thomas, are charged in the indictment and scheduled for trial later this month. Another individual remains on the loose.

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Pinkeye Was Only Symptom in Child Killed by Enterovirus

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Photo Credit: MPD01605A New Jersey preschooler killed last month by a respiratory virus that is spreading across the U.S. showed symptoms only of pinkeye before he died in his sleep, health officials said.

Four-year-old Eli Waller, of Hamilton Township, was kept home from school by his mother on Wednesday, Sept. 23, because he was developing a little bit of pinkeye, said Jeff Plunkett, the health officer for the township. He was otherwise fine and had been in school on Sept. 21 and 22.

Waller, a triplet with two sisters, never woke up.

“Between the time his mom put him to bed Wednesday night and when she went to wake him up on Thursday morning, he passed,” Plunkett said in a telephone interview yesterday. “He had no other symptoms whatsoever.”

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MSNBC Points Finger at NRA For 'Making the Ebola Crisis Worse'

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MSNBC anchor Krystal Ball and NBC correspondent Anne Thompson shamelessly politicized the Ebola crisis in a Thursday op-ed on MSNBC.com. Ball and Thompson bewailed how due to “Senate dysfunction and NRA opposition, we don’t have a surgeon general right now….during a time when, we not only have Ebola arriving on our shores, but are also dealing with the mysterious Enterovirus, which is infecting and contributing to the deaths of children in the U.S.”

The two on-air personalities led their piece, “How the NRA is making the Ebola crisis worse,” by noting that “poll by Harvard found that 39% of U.S. adults are concerned about a large outbreak here, and more than a quarter fear someone in their immediate family could get sick with Ebola.” They continued with a lament: “If only there was someone around who could educate the American public about the actual level of risk. Someone who was trusted as a public health expert and whose job it was to help us understand what we really need to worry about and what precautions we should take.”

Ball (the winner of the MRC’s “#obamacarefail” Dishonor Award) and Thompson underlined that these roles are among the “primary responsibilities of the United States surgeon general,” and that “there’s just one problem: Thanks to Senate dysfunction and NRA opposition, we don’t have a surgeon general right now. In fact, we haven’t had a surgeon general for more than a year now — even though the president nominated the eminently qualified Dr. Vivek Murthy back in November 2013.”

After devoting several paragraphs touting the role of the surgeon general, the two NBC News employees outlined their case for why the National Rifle Association is to blame for the situation:

…Murthy’s nomination has been held up by Republicans and a few red state Democrats due to this surprisingly controversial stance: He believes that guns can impact your health. Well, to be fair, this conservative coalition is not troubled by his stance, so much as they are fearful of the NRA, which decided to try to scuttle Murthy’s confirmation. The NRA wrote a strongly worded letter, Rand Paul put a hold on the nomination, and Red State Democrats begged Harry Reid to not force them to vote. It’s funny that the strongly worded letters of ordinary citizens don’t seem to have quite the same effect.

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Voter Opposition to Obama at 16-Year High, Worse than Bush, Clinton

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Angry and frustrated voters are planning to use the midterm elections in one month to tell President Obama they oppose his agenda, the highest “no vote” percentage in the last 16 years measured by Gallup.

The polling outfit found that 32 percent of voters want to send a message of opposition with their vote, compared to just 20 percent who are sending a signal of support.

That is 13 points higher than in 1998 when former President Clinton was headed to impeachment for lying about his sex affair with a former White House intern and even a smidge higher — 2 points — than in 2008, when Americans were tired of President Bush’s military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Parents of Ex-Army Ranger Held by ISIS Release Letter Written by Son

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsThe parents of a former Army Ranger threatened with beheading by the Islamic State militant group released a letter written by their son earlier this year in which he said he was afraid to die, but was at peace with his conversion to Islam.

Ed and Paula Kassig said in a statement Sunday that they had been told by a former hostage that their son Peter had voluntarily converted to Islam sometime between October and December of last year when he shared a cell with a Syrian Muslim. They said that their son “took Islam’s practices seriously, including praying the five daily prayers and taking on the name Abdul-Rahman.”

The Kassings also released a letter written by their 26-year-old son in which he thanked them for their strength and commitment and appeared to try to prepare them for his death.

“I am obviously pretty scared to die but the hardest part is not knowing, wondering, hoping, and wondering if I should even hope at all,” Kassig said in the letter, according to his parents. “I am very sad that all this has happened and for what all of you back home are going through. If I do die, I figure that at least you and I can seek refuge and comfort in knowing that I went out as a result of trying to alleviate suffering and helping those in need.”

Kassig was taken captive by the Islamic State group Oct. 1, 2013, in Syria, where he was providing aid for refugees fleeing that country’s civil war.

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Biden Continues to Apologize; First Turkey, Now UAE

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Photo Credit: Olivier Douliery / Abaca Press / MCTVice President Joe Biden apologized to the United Arab Emirates Sunday for charging that the oil-rich ally had been supporting al Qaida and other jihadi groups in Syria’s internal war, his second apology in as many days to a key participant in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State extremists.

The White House said Biden telephoned Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi to say that his recent remarks “regarding the early stages” of the conflict in Syria “were not meant to imply that the Emirates had facilitated or supported” the Islamic State, al Qaida or other extremist groups in Syria.

But his apology, one day after expressing similar regrets to Turkey, left open whether the Emirates had supported the rise of al Qaida during the early stages of the war in Syria.

Biden was answering questions at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government Thursday when he veered off the official talking points to declare, “Our allies in the region were our largest problem” in preventing the spread of al Qaida in Syria.

“The Saudis, the Emiratis; what were they doing?” he said. “They were so determined to take down (Syrian President Bashar) Assad and have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, they poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being supplied were (Jabhat) al Nusra and al Qaida, and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.”

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CDC Warning: Immigrant Children Could Be Spreading This New Mystery Virus In Public Schools

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Photo Credit: Western Center for JournalismThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a warning yesterday about a mysterious polio-like virus that’s causing acute neurological illness and paralysis in children. The virus seems to be related to the nationwide epidemic of EV-D68 that we reported on during the first weeks of the outbreak.

The CDC is investigating nine cases of muscle weakness or paralysis in Colorado children to see if enterovirus 68 (EV-D68) might be the virus responsible for the neurological symptoms.

On Friday, The CDC issued a Health Advisory to doctors about the polio-like cases in Colorado, and said EV-D68 was detected in four of the eight sick children who were tested for the virus.

The CDC says the mysterious illness is characterized by “focal limb weakness and abnormalities of the spinal cord gray matter on MRI.” The cases, which are just now being made public, occurred between August 9 – September 17 among children aged 1-18 years old (with a median age of 10 years-old).

The nine children who have been confirmed to have this neurological illness all had fever and respiratory illness about two weeks before developing varying degrees of limb weakness. Health officials don’t think it’s polio because eight of the nine children are up to date on their polio vaccinations.

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