'Dragon's Egg': Marines Who Guarded Saddam's Mysterious Bunker Fear Weapons Unleashed

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsThe U.S. Marines who guarded the sprawling complex in northwest Iraq where Saddam Hussein’s 1980s war machine churned out some of the most deadly chemical and biological weapons known to man had a name for one especially mysterious bunker: The Dragon’s Egg.

Although the Americans assigned to the Al Muthanna facility until 2008 were forbidden by superiors from peering inside the bunker, they knew the larger complex’s history. From 1983 to 1990, the brutal dictator’s scientists worked there, developing mustard, sarin, VX and Tabun gases for use on Iranian soldiers and Iraqi Kurds. And although it was under the control of U.S. and Iraqi military forces for most of the last decade, the entire facility – and whatever it held – is now firmly in the grasp of the Islamic State, the terrorist army that has claimed a vast swath of Iraq and Syria and allegedly used chemical weapons against Kurds this summer.

The X-shaped bunker, encased in cement and shrouded in mystery, was one of two that were handled differently from the many other bunkers that made up the facility, according to Lt. Joshua Hartley, who was stationed there in 2008. It was off-limits.

“We were made aware of a particular bunker on the north side [of Al Muthanna] which we were informed was sealed and remotely monitored,” Hartley, who served in the weapons company of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, told FoxNews.com. “We were not to approach, and definitely not to attempt to enter.”

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Nashville Police Chief Drops Major Allegation About Secret Service in Letter to House Oversight Committee

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Photo Credit: https://www.nashville.govNashville Police Chief Steve Anderson is blowing the whistle on alleged misconduct by the U.S. Secret Service during a January 2013 incident involving a man who reportedly made fake death threats against President Barack Obama on Facebook.

The resident refused to let officers enter his home or follow orders to come outside . He was heard shouting at officers, “show me your warrant.”

In a letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Anderson claimed that a Secret Service agent asked a police sergeant to “wave a piece of paper” in order to “dupe” the suspect into thinking officers had a warrant.

Officers with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department did not comply with the request, according to the police chief. Police officers ultimately determined that Secret Service agents had no legal basis to enter the resident’s home and the suspect didn’t actually threaten anyone. Fortunately, the situation was resolved without incident and law enforcement left.

In a past letter to then-Secret Service Director Julia Pierson and Assistant Director A.T. Smith, Anderson explained that the incident could have “escalated into a serious and/or embarrassing situation for both of our agencies” if MNPD officers complied with the Secret Service “directive.”

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Most of California Man's Body Eaten by Black Bear

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Photo Credit: Jason EmpeyA wild black bear ate most of a Northern California man who likely died earlier of a heart attack, officials said Friday.

Humboldt County Deputy Coroner Roy Horton said he believes 65-year-old Marion Williams died outside his trailer in a remote area before the bear came upon him.

Authorities discovered the remains on Monday after friends reported Williams missing for five days.

Officials tried to trap and kill the bear but called off their attempt because it is doubtful the bear is still in the area near the man’s home in Redway, about 75 miles south of Humboldt, California Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesman Andrew Hughan said.

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Utah Lawmaker: State Colleges Can’t Limit Guns

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Photo Credit: Susanne NilssonA day after an embattled feminist media critic canceled a university lecture when she learned handguns would be allowed in the room despite death threats, a state lawmaker said he believes firearms should be even more prominent on Utah campuses.

Rep. Curt Oda says he wants to reinforce Utah law allowing open carrying of guns at the state’s colleges and universities.

Oda says he’s just asking for clarification of the existing concealed-weapons law — at the request of an unidentified institution of higher education. The Clearfield Republican maintains there is nothing that bars open carrying on campuses right now.

On the same day when the FBI and other law enforcement agencies were searching for the anonymous emailer who threatened a mass shooting if gaming critic Anita Sarkeesian spoke at Utah State University, Oda said the video blogger didn’t need to cancel her speech and leave town.

“She’s overreacting,” he said Wednesday.

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Rev. Billy Graham: ‘America is Just as Wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah Ever Were’

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Photo Credit: APReverend Billy Graham, arguably the most well-known and respected evangelical preacher of the last 50 years, said in a recently published commentary that America was “founded by men who believed in prayer” and that prayer can turn “the tide of history,” adding that while “America is just as wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah” and deserves “the judgment of God,” this judgment can be lessened through prayer.

“Even though America is just as wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah ever were, and as deserving of the judgment of God, God would spare us if we were earnestly praying, with hearts that had been cleansed and washed by the blood of Christ,” said Rev. Graham in his commentary for Decision magazine, published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

“The problems of the world will never be settled unless our national leaders go to God in prayer,” he said. “If only they would discover the power and wisdom that there is in reliance upon God, we could soon see the solution to the grave problems that face the world!”

Graham is 95 and reportedly often bedridden at his home in Montreat, N.C.

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The Obama Administration Proposed $72 Million In CDC Cuts Back In 2012

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Photo Credit: TownHall“Republican cuts kill;” that’s an ad run by the Agenda Project Action Fund. Of all the things in the world, liberals have decided to politicize a deadly, incurable infectious disease to attack Republicans. Guy and Katie have written about the absurdity of this claim; even the Washington Post gave it four pinocchios:

This ad is simply a more extreme version of a new Democratic talking point — that GOP budget cuts have harmed the nation’s ability to handle the Ebola outbreak. It mixes statistics — the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “cut” $585 million (the ad offers no date range) — with disturbing images of the outbreak and various Republican leaders saying variations of the word “cut.”

On many levels, this line of attack is absurd.

Obama’s Republican predecessor oversaw big increases in public-health sector spending, and both Democrats and Republicans in recent years have broadly supported efforts to rein in federal spending. Sequestration resulted from a bipartisan agreement. In some years, Congress has allocated more money for NIH and CDC than the Obama administration requested. Meanwhile, contrary to the suggestion of the DCCC ad, there never was a specific vote on funding to prevent Ebola.

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WHOA! Rick Perry Has Tough Words for Radical Islam

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Texas Governor Rick Perry is already a conservative superstar and is a likely 2016 Presidential candidate. But at a private meeting with the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean in London, Perry explained his foreign policy positions and just how serious the radical Islam threat is.

In addition, he described how dangerous the creeping “Islamification” of Britain is. He called for moral clarity in this ongoing global battle against terrorism.

Speaking on the dangers of radical Islam, Governor Perry chose not to follow the form of U.S. President Barack Obama or UK Prime Minister David Cameron by insisting that Islamic terrorists are “not Muslim,” a convenient dodge recently described as a “reassuring assertion, and one that almost everyone, including the vast majority of Muslims, would desperately like to believe”, but ultimately “wishful thinking.”

Instead, Perry asserted the moralistic strength of Western culture, and that of ISIS a “falsehood”: “Their twisted version of Islam amounts to a creed of human cruelty – pure sadism, and nothing more.”

He pulled no punches when describing in graphic detail the ISIS advance: “The enslavement, the beheadings, the crucifixions, the mass executions, the forced conversions. And all of this, of course, by men who tell themselves they are doing God’s work on this earth.” Criticising those who assert “quite plainly, that the Middle East is ultimately no concern of ours” Perry opposed moral relativism in the face of the barbarity of the Islamic State: “we have every right to judge, and every reason to act.”

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Africa: Border Closures Saved Us

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Photo Credit: AP / The Canadian Press, Abdeljalil BounharBY TOM ODULA AND LYNSEY CHUTEL.

Health officials battling the Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 4,500 people in West Africa have managed to limit its spread on the continent to five countries – and two of them appear to have snuffed out the disease.

The developments constitute a modest success in an otherwise bleak situation.

Officials credit tighter border controls, good patient-tracking and other medical practices, and just plain luck with keeping Ebola confined mostly to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea since the outbreak was first identified nearly seven months ago.

Senegal did so well in finding and isolating a man with Ebola who had slipped across the border from Guinea in August that the World Health Organization on Friday will declare the end of the disease in Senegal if no new cases surface.

Nigeria is another success story. It had 20 cases and eight deaths after the virus was brought by a Liberian-American who flew from Liberia to Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital of 21 million people, in July. Nearly 900 people were potentially exposed to the virus by the traveler, who died, and the disease could have wreaked havoc in Africa’s most populous nation.

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Rep: CDC worried travel ban over Ebola would hurt African economies

By Fox News.

A Republican lawmaker claims the real reason the Obama administration is opposing a travel ban for Ebola-stricken African countries is that U.S. officials are concerned about hurting their economies — a dollars-and-cents reason, the lawmaker says, doesn’t make much sense.

Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., whose House subcommittee held a high-profile hearing Thursday on the Ebola virus, told Fox News that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden is the one who gave him that explanation.

“He explained to me … the concern was that these are fledgling democracies and if we put a travel ban that that may affect their economy and harm them,” Murphy said.

Murphy reiterated the concerns at Thursday’s hearing, charging that public health policies may be “based upon a stated concern with cutting commercial ties with fledgling democracies rather than protecting public health in the United States.”

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Photo Credit: Ahmed Jallanzo / EPA / NewscomUS Embassies in Ebola-Stricken Countries Are Still Processing Visas for Non-US Citizens

By Rob Bluey.

Despite the outbreak of Ebola, it is still possible to get a visa from the three West African countries at the heart of the outbreak, and a key congressman is demanding to know why.

Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, sent a sternly worded letter to Secretary of State John Kerry about the Obama administration’s handling of the Ebola epidemic in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Royce said he was “deeply concerned” U.S. embassies in those countries were continuing to process visas for non-U.S. nationals despite the outbreak of the deadly disease.

An estimated 100 people per day are applying for U.S. visas at the three embassies, according to Royce. “Of course,” he added, “once these individuals are issued a visa by the embassy, they are free to travel to the United States.”

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Photo Credit: Pablo Blazquez Dominguez / GettyEbola Travel Bans Enacted by Nearly 30 Countries, but Not US

By Nick Sanchez.

Nearly every African nation has instituted travel bans on West African countries with significant Ebola outbreaks.

Though the Obama administration has insisted travel bans are not necessary, even countries outside of Africa are beginning to start such travel bans, with Colombia and the Caribbean island of St. Lucia on Wednesday adding their names to a growing list of nearly 30 countries that block travelers from virus-stricken Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.

African nations including Kenya, Zambia, and South Africa make up the bulk of the countries that have instituted some kind of ban, and now that countries on the other side of the Atlantic have begun imposing restrictions, calls for the U.S. to follow suit have intensified.

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Ebola Escalation Could Trigger Major Food Crisis

By EDITH M. LEDERER.

The global famine warning system is predicting a major food crisis if the Ebola outbreak continues to grow exponentially over the coming months, and the United Nations still hasn’t reached over 750,000 people in need of food in West Africa as prices spiral and farms are abandoned.

On the eve of World Food Day on Thursday, U.N agencies and non-governmental organizations are scrambling to scale up efforts to avert widespread hunger.

“The world is mobilizing and we need to reach the smallest villages in the most remote locations,” Denise Brown, the U.N. World Food Program’s regional director for West Africa, said in a statement Wednesday. “Indications are that things will get worse before they improve. How much worse depends on us all.”

WFP has said it needs to reach 1.3 million people in need in hardest-hit Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

So far, the U.N. agency has provided food to 534,000 people, and it expects to reach between 600,000 and 700,000 this month, Bettina Luescher, WFP’s chief spokesperson in North America, told AP. “And we are working hard to reach and scale up to 1.3 million eventually.”

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CDC Denies Enterovirus Link to Illegal-Alien Kids

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Photo Credit: WNDThe CDC denies a causal link between the surge of illegal-alien children from Latin America and the enterovirus D-68 outbreak in the United States, but government data show the virus was rare in the U.S. before this year.

“There is no evidence that unaccompanied children brought EV-D68 into the United States; we are not aware of any of these children testing positive for the virus,” the CDC emailed WND in response to a request for comment.

The CDC argued EV-D68 is not new to the U.S., having been identified in California in 1962.

“In previous years, it has not been as commonly identified as other enteroviruses,” CDC said. “This year’s increase in confirmed cases is not due to a recent introduction in the United States.”

However, evidence buried in peer-reviewed medical journals provides support for the argument enterovirus D-68, or EV-D68, in the United States was a relatively rare disease. The EV-D68 epidemic occurred only after the surge this year of unaccompanied alien children illegally crossing the border from Latin America, a region where the virus is more prevalent among young children.

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Citizen Journalist Kidnapped and Murdered Near Texas Border by Mexican Cartel

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Photo Credit: BreitbartA citizen journalist in the border city of Reynosa, Mexico has fallen victim to the hands of the Gulf Cartel in the most brazen attempt to date to silence information about the worsening security situation on the Mexican side of the shared border with Texas.

Social media postings on Thursday morning mourned the passing of Maria Del Rosario Fuentes Rubio, a Reynosa doctor better known by her Twitter handle @Miut3.

Law enforcement sources in Tamaulipas, Mexico confirmed her kidnapping Wednesday afternoon and found her body overnight. Due to the early stages of her investigation authorities didn’t release details of the murder. Officials who spoke with Breitbart Texas said they are not only looking at social media but also at her work as a doctor and acquaintances before determining the motive for the murder.

On Thursday early morning the twitter handle @miut3 posted a farewell message identifying Fuentes by name, posting her picture and telling the community to remain quiet about Reynosa and not make her mistakes “you won’t get anything out of it” as well as warning other citizen journalists that criminals were on to them. The profile image of @Miut3 was changed from the Catwoman photo she always used to a photograph of Fuentes’ bloodied body.

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