By Jamie Dettmer and Shane Harris. The U.S. government obtained intelligence on the possible location of American captives held by ISIS in Syria last year, but Obama administration officials waited nearly a month to launch a rescue mission because of concerns that the intelligence wasn’t conclusive and some of it had come from a foreign service, U.S. and British officials told The Daily Beast.

British officials, as well as private security contractors, said they were frustrated by Washington’s hesitance to give the go-ahead for a rescue attempt, which eventually was carried out on July 4, 2014, by which time the hostages had been moved. The following month, ISIS began beheading its American and British prisoners in a series of grisly Internet videos.

Toward the end of May, the British government had identified two or three locations in and around the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the so-called Islamic State, where the militants had moved hostages during the previous weeks and months. But the British were not absolutely sure in which location the Westerners were held. The captives included American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well aid worker Kayla Mueller. The information—based on debriefings of European captives who had been released, satellite and drone surveillance, and electronic eavesdropping—was not definitive in May.

Then, in early June, London had a “positive identification and that information was shared with Washington,” said a British source. The delay of nearly a month before the rescue bid was mounted remains a source of bewilderment for British officials. (Read more about the stalled ISIS rescue HERE)

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ISIS Threatens Military Spouses on Twitter

By Michelle Hoffman. A group claiming to be affiliated with the ISIS militant group hacked the Military Spouses of Strength Twitter account Tuesday morning and sent threats to a group of military spouses on Twitter and Facebook.

The group called themselves the Gasper CyberCaliphate Sadz and claimed to be aligned with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) pursuing a “Cyber Jihad.” Members of the group took over the Twitter account for Military Spouses of Strength, replaced the profile photo, and sent the threatening messages to the spouses using their full names.

The same cyber terrorism group, which said it’s associated with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), hacked U.S. Central Command’s You Tube and Twitter accounts in January. Newsweek officials have also said the group hacked its Twitter feed on Tuesday.

The cyber terrorism group listed the military spouse’s full name on Twitter followed by the message: “You think you’re safe but the IS is already here, CyberCaliphate got into your PC and smartphone.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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9/11 Victim’s Sister: We’re On Our Own After Obama’s Cold Remark

By Michael Dorstewitz. The sister of a 9/11 victim told participants of Washington, D.C.’s “Defeat Jihad Summit” that one thing became clear to her after having watched the Vox interview of president Obama published last week: We’re “on our own” in the fight against Islamic terrorism.

(Read more from this story HERE)

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ISIS Disfigures Face of 15 Women With Acid

Photo Credit: Christian PostBy Samuel Smith. The Islamic State policing unit in Mosul severely disfigured the faces of 15 Iraqi women by pouring acid on them as a form of punishment after the women were caught without their faces being veiled appropriately, by ISIS standards, last weekend.

ISIS’ all-female policing unit, the Al Khansa brigade, which polices the streets of the group’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa and Iraqi stronghold of Mosul, reportedly carried out the punishments after the women were detained on Sunday in the Mosul neighborhood of Salamiya, a kurdish official told BasNews.

The official from the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Mosul, Saed Mamuzini, told the news site that the women were subject to the cruel, face-deforming punishment simply because they were caught in public without wearing a Niqab, the cloth like veil that fully covers the face except for slit for the eyes. (Read more from this story HERE)

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ISIS Beheads 21 Christians on Beach Front

By Walid Shoebat. As a sequel to burning alive of the Jordanian POW pilot Moath All-Kasasseba, ISIS decided to behead 21 Christians on a beach front in Tripoli Libya as their magazine Dabiq said that its branch in Tripoli had captured randomly from an apartment complex after checking their identification cards which said “Coptic Christian” and then executed the 21 Christian Copts after being kidnapped late last year.

The undated photos showed the captive Coptic Christian workers wearing orange jumpsuits usually donned by Islamic State prisoners before they are executed by the jihadists.

ISIS as an excuse for the beheadings and the bombing of Our Lady of Deliverance Church in Baghdad which claimed the lives of dozens of Christians in Iraq at the time, saying that all this was “in revenge for the Camellia Shehata and Wafa Constantine and the other sisters tortured inside the Coptic church in Egypt”. The story was in reference to the two women, which erupted in much controversy in Egypt about unconfirmed reports the two had converted to Islam, and the intervention of the church at the time. (Read more from this story HERE)

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