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Meanwhile Turkey's Erdogan shifts stance, expressing willingness to join coalition and commit ground troops September 27, 2014 8:56AM ET Updated 3:27PM ET Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have continued to advance into the Kurdish-dominated town of Ain al-Arab in Syria, despite the U.S.-led air campaign against the Al-Qaeda-linked group. The U.S. Central Command said the airstrikes destroyed an ISIL building and two armed vehicles near the border town of Kobane, which the insurgents have been besieging for the past 10 days. It said an airfield, garrison and training camp near the ISIL stronghold of...

The leaders of a new, Christian movement think they’ve solved a centuries-old mystery: why men are absent from church. But their answer isn’t politically correct. They believe Christianity has become feminized. There are generally more women than men in every type of church, in every part of the world, according to church growth experts like Patrick Johnstone, author of Operation World. A traditional explanation is that women are more spiritual than men. But the leaders of this new movement suggest that the church’s music, messages and ministries cater to women. One of the leaders is David Murrow, author of a...

Climate change captured the nation’s attention over the past week as an estimated 400,000 people marched through the streets of New York City to raise a collective voice of alarm about the effects of a warming planet. Just days before the march, the issue got a spotlight in Flagstaff thanks to a visit from Katharine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian and climate scientist who is becoming one of the rising stars in the climate change conversation. Her message about the harmony between faith and climate change earned her a spot on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in...

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The gunman parked his black Honda directly south of the White House, in the dark of a November night, in a closed lane of Constitution Avenue. He pointed his semiautomatic rifle out of the passenger window, aimed directly at the home of the president of the United States, and pulled the trigger. A bullet smashed a window on the second floor, just steps from the first family’s formal living room. Another lodged in a window frame, and more pinged off the roof, sending bits of wood and concrete to the ground. At least seven bullets struck the upstairs residence of...

A radical Tunisian sheik who has called for the murder of U.S. troops abroad and was banned from the United States for supporting the terror group Hamas is scheduled to headline an event on Tuesday at Yale University focusing ... Sheikh Rachid al-Ghannouchi, the head of Tunisia’s controversial Islamist Ennahda Movement. ... Al-Ghannouchi’s upcoming appearance at the Ivy League school could become controversial given the sheik’s longtime support for radical terror groups and his past calls for Muslims to wage “unceasing war against the Americans.” ... he praised Palestinian terrorism as “wonderful” and said that he admires rockets fired at...

      JUST FOR TODAY As I go through some "troubles" in my own life, I've worked out this "formula" to help me be a useful and happy person. See if it doesn't work for you! JUST FOR TODAY: I will try to live through this day only, and not tackle my whole life problem at once. JUST FOR TODAY: I will be happy. I will assume to be true what Abraham Lincoln said: "Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be". JUST FOR TODAY: I will try to strengthen my mind. I...

ARLINGTON, Va. — Five days into the U.S. and coalition air strikes against targets of the Islamic Levant (ISIL) inside Syria, and six weeks since the United States began flying air strikes against I Department of Defense (DoD) has yet to assign a code name to the operations. During a briefing to reporters Sept. 25 at the Pentagon, RADM John Kirby, spokesman for the DoD, said he knew “of no plans at this point” to assign the operation a code name. DoD and NATO routinely assign code names to combat operations, such as Operation Iraqi Freedom for the Iraq War...

-SNIP_Of the five Senate contests in purple states — Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Colorado — this is currently the closest: The Real Clear Politics average of polls shows a tie (Ernst ahead by 0.2 percentage points as of Friday). Which should make Republicans anxious as they try to take control of the Senate and as they contemplate the 2016 presidential landscape. Although Iowa has voted Democratic in six of the last seven presidential elections, the Ernst-Braley contest should not be this close. Only 38 percent of Iowans approve of Barack Obama’s performance. Braley, a past president of an...

Authorities are treating Thursday's beheading at an Oklahoma food distribution center as an incident of workplace violence but that is prompting raised eyebrows among some terrorism experts.Video

When a Democratic mayor and former brewpub owner named John W. Hickenlooper was elected governor four years ago, he did it with support from voters like Mark Turner. Mr. Turner is a gun dealer... “Just call me an American,” he says. He liked Mr. Hickenlooper’s wonky centrism and positive campaigning style. But now, as Mr. Hickenlooper slogs through an increasingly tough re-election battle, he is spending lots of time answering criticism from voters like Mr. Turner that he has steered a swing state too far to the left. Mr. Turner especially detested a state law passed over unanimous Republican opposition...

Suhaib Webb, an Imam with ties to former Al Qaeda mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki, had also previously been the leader of the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City, which had been attended by Alton Nolen -- the man who on Thursday beheaded a former coworker after recently converting to Islam, Breitbart News has learned. Webb now serves as Imam of the sister organization of the mosque attended by Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Imam Suhaib Webb has a history of ties to radicalism. FBI surveillance documents found that he was a known confidant of Al Qaeda mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki....

Conservative MP Mark Reckless has announced that he is joining UKIP. The Rochester and Strood MP told the UKIP conference, in Doncaster, that he has resigned as an MP, triggering a by-election in the constituency. Delegates started to spontaneously chant "UKIP, UKIP" when Mr Reckless announced his decision to defect, which he said was not easy. The move comes just weeks after Clacton MP Douglas Carswell defected from the Conservatives to join UKIP.

Even though Republicans may take back the Senate by running against amnesty, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush pushed amnesty legislation while stumping for North Carolina Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis on Wednesday. Bush, according to the New York Times, reportedly said that comprehensive immigration reform "will restore and sustain economic growth for this country." And even though a recent Gallup poll found that illegal immigration is now the top concern among Republicans, Bush said that if immigration reform is "framed in that way, I don’t think there’s a big debate in the Republican Party about the need to do this."

A fired Oklahoma factory worker inflicted a brutal, ISIS-style punishment on colleagues he tried to convert to Islam — cutting one woman’s head off with a 10-inch fillet knife, law-enforcement sources said Friday. The FBI is investigating the murder at Vaughan Foods in Moore, Okla., which comes amid a spree of videotaped beheadings by the terror group.

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President Barack Obama favorably quoted and praised on Wednesday in his speech before the United Nations a controversial Muslim cleric whose organization has reportedly endorsed the terror group Hamas and supported a fatwa condoning the murder of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Obama in his remarks offered praise to controversial cleric (Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah) and referred to him as a moderate Muslim leader who can help combat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL or ISIS) radical ideology.

SYDNEY, Australia — In Kings Cross, this city’s bawdy, alcohol-infused red-light district, Mohammad Ali Baryalei once patrolled the sidewalk outside the Love Machine club, his basso voice luring customers in, his muscle keeping the unwanted out. For a time, the police said, his was a world of prostitutes, drugs, gangs and gambling. But a few years ago, Mr. Baryalei, the son of Afghan refugees who settled in the suburbs of Australia’s most multicultural city, embraced radical Islam and traveled to Syria, where he resurfaced as a lieutenant of the extremist Islamic State. This month, the authorities here said, he was...

A sheriff in New Mexico was convicted by a federal jury Friday of weapons charges and violating a man’s civil rights after a car pursuit. Rio Arriba County Sheriff Thomas Rodella, 56, was found guilty of violating the civil rights of a driver, identified as Michael Tafoya by the Associated Press, and brandishing a firearm during a violent crime in an assault on Tafoya. Federal prosecutors said Rodella and his son chased the man in their car and once they cornered him on a dead-end street, the sheriff got out with his gun, got into the man’s car and pistol-whipped...

Islamic State fighters tightened their siege of a town on Syria's border with Turkey on Friday despite U.S.-led air strikes aimed at defeating the militants in both Syria and Iraq, in a coalition which has now drawn widespread European support. Britain, Washington's closest ally in the wars of the last decade, joined an alliance after weeks of weighing its options. Britain's parliament voted 542 to 43 to back Prime Minister David Cameron's decision to take part in air strikes in Iraq. Belgium's parliament also voted 114 to 2 to take part and Denmark said it would send planes. Six Belgian...