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A teenager in Philadelphia has been arrested and charged for plotting what authorities have called a “catastrophic terrorist attack.” The 17-year-old boy was arrested by SWAT forces on August 11, following an investigation FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. The teen is accused of being in contact with Katibat al Tawhid wal Jihad, an extremist Islamist group affiliated with Al Qaeda. Katibat al Tawhid wal Jihad was officially designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department in 2022. He received instructions from the group on the construction of IEDs and purchased materials used to make explosives as well as...

...But Keller doesn’t buy any of it. “It’s like a fairy tale: ‘Big rock from sky hits the dinosaurs, and boom they go.’ And it has all the aspects of a really nice story,” she said. “It’s just not true.” ...Keller’s resistance has put her at the core of one of the most rancorous and longest-running controversies in science. “It’s like the Thirty Years’ War,” says Kirk Johnson, the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Impacters’ case-closed confidence belies decades of vicious infighting, with the two sides trading accusations of slander, sabotage, threats, discrimination, spurious data, and...

President-elect Donald Trump will tap KT McFarland to be his deputy national security adviser, according to Bloomberg News and the New York Times. McFarland, a former spokeswoman in the Pentagon during the Reagan era, lives in New York and currently serves as a Fox News National Security Analyst. She also served in the Nixon and Ford administrations and was an aide to Dr. Henry Kissinger, according to her Fox News profile. She also ran for the New York United States Senate seat held by Hillary Clinton in 2006, but was defeated by her Republican rival John Spencer. McFarland signaled on...

Angry, frustrated, troubled, disappointed, disgust, disrespect - words not normally associated with holiday season. However, they were words Katie Couric used to describe where she sees the mood of country right now. Couric, the anchor of the "CBS Evening News," in a live Facebook video chat on Dec. 22, took on illustrating her view of the populace - a not very sunny picture (emphasis added). "I think more distant - I hate to say that, but I think, I think the economic situation in this country, I think, when people are struggling, that sometimes they need a place to vent...

I was an auxiliary one cold November night in 1977. My mission was to navigate and ride shotgun in my buddy’s uncle’s dump truck as we drove through the DeSoto National Forest in south Mississippi with 30 G’s (guerrillas) in the back while evading the law enforcement OPFOR (opposing force). This was part of a Special Forces training exercise, similar in many ways to a Robin Sage, but the guys being trained were an Operational Detachment Alpha from 5th SF Group (I may have the Group wrong; it was a long time ago). The Exercise Coordinator had used the DeSoto...

No one to counter Chavez In a region where the leading ideology is Bolivarianism, there is not one leader positioned to offer a better idea for a brighter future. Commentary by Sam Logan for ISN Security Watch (23/02/2007) For over two decades, the prevailing ideology in Latin America was neo-liberalism, a Washington-born idea that claimed the power of open markets would lift the region’s poor from misery. It did not, and corruption ran rampant. While democracy still remains strong, resentful voters ushered in a new generation of neo-populist leaders touting a new idea: a form of socialism, called Bolivarianism, that...

(Cayce) - Inside the walls of Brookland-Cayce High School, you expect students to be treated equally. But a viewer tip led News19 online where a teacher's comments left us asking questions. "These sorts of things are going to upset people, but the truth can be very upsetting," said Brookland-Cayce High School teacher Winston McCuen. That truth, at least according to McCuen, is that black people are inferior to whites. "Intellectually, yes they are," said McCuen. "This has been confirmed over and over, and this is a generalization. Again, there are some blacks who are more intelligent than individual whites. But...

Government Opens “Leaks” Investigation – ( I have a Possible Lead ) I see by the TV the government is finally opening an investigation as to who has been leaking highly confidential information to the Media –(and thereby to any interested party –friend or foe in the entire world.) I ran an informal inquiry of my own when a Communist website began publishing articles about “CIA Torture Planes” – complete with aircraft descriptions, tail numbers,and names of registered owners – described as “CIA front companies”. My reasons for doing so were quite simple: First,anyone traveling on one of these planes...

One can't help but laugh at this DUmmie, who gets so close to the truth about his party, but unfortunately spread4s myths about the South in the process... ........................................................ Sapphocrat (1000+ posts) Wed Nov-16-05 07:29 PM Original message Need feedback on different approach to winning back the South In a recent thread on how to reach Southern voters (which didn't get locked! gasp!), there was an almost off-the-cuff remark (sorry, poster, I can't remember who wrote it) that finally struck a nerve with me -- in a good way. I'll never claim I understand Southerners (or even Midwesterners) -- I'm...

MOSCOW (AP) The world's first solar sail spacecraft crashed back to Earth when its booster rocket failed less than two minutes after Tuesday's takeoff, Russian space officials said Wednesday. The Cosmos 1 vehicle, a joint U.S.-Russian project, was intended to show that a so-called solar sail can make a controlled flight. Solar sails, designed to be propelled by pressure from sunlight, are seen as a potential means for achieving interstellar flight, allowing such spacecraft to gradually build up great velocity and cover large distances. But the Volna booster rocket failed 83 seconds after its launch from a Russian nuclear submarine...

Canyon County Commissioner and anti-immigration pundit Robert Vasquez announced on June 10 his intention to run for Butch Otter's soon-to-be-vacant U.S. Congressional seat, joining a small handful of Republicans who have expressed interest in the position. The difference between Vasquez and these others is that he only speaks about a single issue: illegal aliens. Most recently, he strong-armed Canyon County into hiring a lawyer to pursue litigation of any businesses found to employ immigrants, although Vasquez prefers different terminology. As he told the Idaho Press-Tribune earlier this year, "That would be like saying Hitler's army marching into Poland was merely...

This Week's Palestinian Authority Sermon: We (Muslims) Will Rule America; Israel is a Cancer; Jews are a Virus Resembling AIDS; Muslims Will Finish Them Off The following are excerpts from this week's official Friday sermon on Palestinian Authority (PA) TV. [1] The preacher is Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris, a paid employee of the PA. To view the sermon visit http://memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=669. "Allah has tormented us with 'the people most hostile to the believers' – the Jews. 'Thou shalt find that the people most hostile to the believers to be the Jews and the polytheists.' Allah warned His beloved Prophet Muhammad about the...

"The residents of Moscow are called Mosquitoes."

Sex rarely makes the news in Brazil's conservative Northeast until a small town declared an official Orgasm Day on Monday. Espertantina Mayor Felipe Santolia endorsed the May 9 holiday, which he said was intended to improve relationships between married couples. "We're celebrating orgasm in all its senses. There's even a panel discussion on premature ejaculation. But from what I've seen, women have more trouble achieving orgasm than men, especially in marriage," Santolia said by telephone from Esperantina, 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) north of Rio de Janeiro. Santolia said the remote town of 38,000 people has been unofficially celebrating orgasm day...

Baffled by the expansion of the universe? You're not alone. Even astronomers frequently get it wrong. The expansion of the universe may be the most important fact we have ever discovered about our origins. You would not be reading this article if the universe had not expanded. Human beings would not exist. Cold molecular things such as life-forms and terrestrial planets could not have come into existence unless the universe, starting from a hot big bang, had expanded and cooled. The formation of all the structures in the universe, from galaxies and stars to planets and Scientific American articles, has...

Link post: the image and the thread (to discuss it) are below: Geology Picture of the Week, January 2-8, 2005: Evidence of Ancient Cretaceous Catastrophe

Auckland - The dinosaurs were probably heading for extinction even before an asteroid strike wiped them out 65 million years ago, New Zealand scientists said on Monday. Palaeontologist Chris Hollis and a team of scientists from the government-owned Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS) have uncovered evidence of significant global climate change even before the meteor strike. "An unknown number of species may have been in sharp decline when the asteroid struck and the impact winter probably finished them off quite quickly," Hollis said in a statement. He added: "There's no scientific agreement on what caused this climatic instability, but it's...

For obvious reasons, the duynamics of a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India are on many people's minds. What would happen? What would it mean? This answer brings together a lot of new materials, including a picture of likely radioactive fallout patterns, technical basics for atomic weapon terms, a report from Jane's re: each country's nuclear arsenals, and more. All available here at Winds of Change, naturally!