Author: Sunfire

North Jersey – by Debra Winters

WAYNE – Shootings, an explosion, and innocent people injured at three of Wayne Township’s district schools, but thankfully it was only a drill. The main event took place at Wayne Hills High School.

The Wayne Police Department, working in conjunction with the Board of Education, hosted a multi-agency active shooter exercise on Sunday morning. The mock drill was funded by a $126,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security and it tested the abilities of over a dozen agencies based on the similar type events that have occurred across the nation.   Continue reading “Wayne first responders take part in massive-scale active shooter drill”

nj.com – by Rob Spahr

One week after Six Flags Great Adventure securitydenied a New Jersey veteran admission to the theme park because of the t-shirt he was wearing, Six Flags officially apologized to the veteran.

Mario Alejandro, a 33-year-old father of three from Woodbridge and former coach of the Cardinal McCarrick High School football team, served four years as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps infantry. He was part of the initial invasion into Iraq in 2003 and said he is classified as disabled, due to the hearing loss and post-traumatic stress disorder he sustained from his military service.   Continue reading “Six Flags apologizes to N.J. veteran denied entry over shirt”

Mail.com

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — Deep in a mine shaft in the California desert, the body of a pregnant wife of a U.S. Marine was discovered after a search of nearly two months.

Far off in Alaska, a man alleged to have been her lover was arrested on suspicion of homicide. Authorities on Monday outlined the discovery of 19-year-old Erin Corwin and the arrest of 24-year-old Christopher Brandon Lee, who until recently was also a Marine.

The search for Corwin ended Saturday when her body was spotted with a video camera 140 feet down a mine shaft on federal land near her home in Twentynine Palms, where her husband was stationed, San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon said. He said deputies searched many of the 100 mine shafts in a 300 square mile area before zeroing in on right one.   Continue reading “Marine’s wife found dead in California mine shaft”

Mail.com

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi and Kurdish forces recaptured Iraq’s largest dam from Islamic militants Monday following dozens of U.S. airstrikes, President Barack Obama said, in the first major defeat for the extremists since they swept across the country this summer.

Militants from the Islamic State group had seized the Mosul Dam on Aug. 7, giving them access and control of enormous power and water reserves and threatening to deny those resources to much of Iraq. Iraqi forces suffered a string of humiliating defeats at the hands of the Islamic State as the extremists took over large parts of northern and western Iraq and sent religious minorities fleeing.   Continue reading “Obama: Iraq forces retake Mosul Dam from militants”

Mail.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama returned to Washington just after midnight Monday for a two-day break from a summer vacation, during which airstrikes in Iraq and violent clashes in a St. Louis suburb intruded on his golf and beach plans.

The exact reason for Obama’s return remained unclear, though it appeared aimed in part at countering criticism that Obama was spending two weeks on the Massachusetts resort island of Martha’s Vineyard in the midst of multiple crises. His return to Washington was planned even before the U.S. military began striking targets in Iraq and before the standoff between police and protesters in Ferguson, Missouri.  Continue reading “Obama back in Washington on rare vacation break”

Mail.com

CANTON, N.Y. (AP) — More charges are expected soon against a northern New York couple accused of kidnapping two young Amish sisters and sexually abusing them, a prosecutor said Sunday.

Computer hard drives and other potential evidence are still being collected Sunday from the home of Stephen Howells Jr. and Nicole Vaisey, said Mary Rain, district attorney for St. Lawrence County. The pair was arrested Friday and charged with kidnapping with the intent to physically or sexually abuse the 7-year-old and 12-year-old sisters. Authorities say the couple prowled for easy targets and sexually abused the girls before letting them go after about 24 hours.   Continue reading “More charges planned against Amish-kidnap suspects”

Mail.com

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A heavily tattooed German man whose face is embellished with horn implants and more than 100 piercings said Sunday he was refused entry to Dubai without reason, forcing him to skip a planned appearance at a nightclub.

His look may have been a step too far for the Gulf’s most liberal city, where a carefully cultivated reputation for tolerance and cutting-edge cosmopolitanism occasionally clashes with the region’s conservative Islamic values.  Continue reading “Man with many piercings denied entry to Dubai”

Mail.com

IVANPAH DRY LAKE, Calif. (AP) — Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant’s concentrated sun rays — “streamers,” for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair

Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one “streamer” every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator’s application to build a still-bigger version.   Continue reading “Emerging solar plants scorch birds in mid-air”

Mail.com

ANGLETON, Texas (AP) — David Barajas denies killing a drunk driver in a fit of rage after his two sons were fatally struck in 2012 on a rural road in Southeast Texas.

His defense attorney says Barajas is a good man, a grieving father and not a murderer. At the same time, his defense hasn’t publicly suggested who else might be responsible for Jose Banda’s shooting death.   Continue reading “Trial of Texas father raises legal, moral issues”

RT

Germany’s foreign intelligence agency eavesdropped at least one telephone conversation of US Secretary of State John Kerry and spied on NATO ally Turkey since 2009, Der Spiegel newspaper revealed on Saturday.

Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) picked up the phone call “by accident” in 2013, the weekly newspaper reported in a pre-publication citing unnamed sources. Kerry was discussing the Middle East tensions between Israelis, Palestinians and Arab states in a satellite link, according to Der Spiegel.   Continue reading “Germany tapped John Kerry’s phone, spied on Turkey for years – report”

Mail.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Sunday defended the veto that led a grand jury to indict him on two felony counts of abuse of power, noting that even some Democrats have questioned the move by prosecutors.

“I stood up for the rule of law in the state of Texas, and if I had to do it again I would make exactly the same decision,” Perry, a potential candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, said.    Continue reading “Defiant Perry defends veto that led to indictment”

Mail.com

CANTON, N.Y. (AP) — A prosecutor says additional charges are planned against a northern New York couple accused of kidnapping two young Amish sisters and sexually assaulting them.

St. Lawrence County District Attorney Mary Rain said Sunday that computer hard drives and other evidence were still being collected from the home of Stephen Howells Jr. and Nicole Vaisey. The pair was arrested Friday and charged with kidnapping with the intent to physically or sexually abuse the 7-year-old and 12-year-old sisters.   Continue reading “Prosecutor: Couple sexually abused 2 Amish sisters”

Mail.com

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Liberian officials fear Ebola could soon spread through the capital’s largest slum after residents raided a quarantine center for suspected patients and took items including bloody sheets and mattresses.

The violence in the West Point slum occurred late Saturday and was led by residents angry that patients were brought to the holding center from other parts of Monrovia, Tolbert Nyenswah, assistant health minister, said Sunday.   Continue reading “Liberia: Ebola spread fears rise as clinic looted”

Mail.com

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A stowaway who was recently ordered to spend 117 days in jail for violating probation by returning to Los Angeles International Airport served a fraction of her sentence when she was released Saturday because of overcrowding.

Marilyn Jean Hartman, 62, was released from the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, California, shortly after 6 p.m., according to jail records. She was released because of jail overcrowding and a state program that credits nonviolent misdemeanor offenders such as Hartman for good behavior, time served and other circumstances, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Crystal Hernandez said.   Continue reading “Woman who sneaked on plane gets early jail release”

Mail.com

CAIRO (AP) — The Palestinians appeared divided Sunday as the clock was winding down on the latest Gaza cease-fire, with officials saying Hamas was still opposed to a compromise Egyptian proposal that would ease the closure of the territory, while other factions, including delegates representing President Mahmoud Abbas, were inclined to accept.

Hamas officials said they were holding out in hopes of getting more concessions in the Egyptian-mediated talks. With a temporary truce set to expire late Monday, a range of outcomes remained possible, including a return to fighting that has brought great devastation to Gaza, an unofficial understanding that falls short of a formal negotiated deal or yet another extension in negotiations.   Continue reading “Palestinian divisions emerge in Gaza peace talks”

RT

A scientist with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declined to tell superiors that a worker had mixed a lethal strain of bird flu with a more benign one, even though that mixed strain was shipped out to another laboratory.

According an internal investigation into the matter, the dangerous bird flu cocktail was then administered to chickens as part of a US Department of Agriculture (USDA), in which all of the chickens ended up dying. As a result, USDA officials took another look at the bird flu samples in May and notified the CDC that a deadly strain of the virus was detected inside.   Continue reading “Lethal bird flu cocktail sent out of lab accidentally, went unreported – CDC”

RT

Pop-up advertisements seem to have been irritating users online since the dawn of the World Wide Web. Now the man responsible for creating the code that ushered in an age of internet whack-a-mole is apologizing for the lack of privacy he brought about.

“I wrote the code to launch the window and run an ad in it. I’m sorry. Our intentions were good,” Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT and principal research scientist at MIT’s Media Lab, wrote in an essay for The Atlantic.   Continue reading “Creator of pop-up ads apologizes for inventing ‘internet’s original sin’”

RT

RT

Germany’s foreign intelligence agency intercepted at least one phone call made by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to German media reports. Her phone was tapped “accidentally” while she was on a US government plane.

Daily newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and regional public broadcasters NDR and WDR said they learned of the hacking from documents that were passed to the CIA by one of its moles inside the German intelligence network. It is unclear when Clinton’s phone call was intercepted, as no date was given.   Continue reading “Turnabout’s fair play? Germany intercepts Hillary Clinton phone call”

Mail.com

IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — Islamic extremists in Iraq killed 80 Yazidi men and abducted their wives and children, officials and eyewitnesses said Saturday, insisting the religious community is still at risk after a week of U.S. and Iraqi airstrikes on the militants.

Airstrikes meanwhile targeted insurgents around Iraq’s largest dam, which was captured by the Islamic State extremist group earlier this month, according to nearby residents. It was not immediately clear who carried out the strikes.   Continue reading “Strikes on militants at Iraq dam after ‘massacre’”