White House won't oppose new challenge to 2010 healthcare law | Reuters

The Obama administration on Wednesday cleared the way for the U.S. Supreme Court to revive a lawsuit that challenges the 2010 healthcare overhaul on religious grounds, including a claim that it helps fund abortions.
Liberty University, a Christian college in Lynchburg, Virginia, had challenged the individual mandate, which required Americans to obtain insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty, and a mandate requiring big employers to provide coverage for workers.



White House won't oppose new challenge to 2010 healthcare law | Reuters

Russia warns West on Syria | The Australian

RUSSIA has warned that the "bloodbath" in Syria will continue if the West sticks to its demand for President Bashar al-Assad's ouster. 
 
"If the position of our partners remains the departure of this leader who they do not like, the bloodbath will continue," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after talks with his French counterpart Laurent Fabius.

The nearly 20-month conflict in Syria has killed 36,000 people according to activists.

Fabius also said France and Russia failed to bridge their differences over Assad's role in any future transition government.


Russia warns West on Syria | The Australian

In Race for World's Fastest Supercomputer, U.S. Lab Deploys an Energy-Efficient Titan

 The power of Titan, a supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, is akin to each of the world’s 7 billion people being able to carry out 3 million calculations per second.


In a breakthrough that harnesses video-game technology for solving science's most complex mysteries, a U.S. government laboratory today deployed Titan—the fastest, most powerful, and most energy-efficient of a new generation of supercomputers that breach the bounds of "central processing unit" computing.
The Titan system at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee is a leading contender to top the industry's official list of the world's fastest supercomputers, to be announced next month in Salt Lake City. It can handle 20,000 trillion calculations each second—a speed of 20 petaflops, which puts it neck-and-neck with the U.S. government computer in California that has led the closely watched TOP500 list since June.
In Race for World's Fastest Supercomputer, U.S. Lab Deploys an Energy-Efficient Titan

Terrorist pipeline continues to flow from Minn. to Somalia | Minnesota Public Radio News

 

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Four years after federal authorities in the Twin Cities began investigating homegrown recruitment for the terrorist group al-Shabab, at least two additional men slipped away to Somalia as recently as July.

Federal authorities believe the Minneapolis men joined the group and are still in the East African nation.

The FBI's confirmation this week that a terrorist conduit continues to flow from Minnesota to Somalia perplexes members of Minnesota's Somali community, who have watched with dismay as young men have disappeared.

FAMILY STUNNED
Among those missing is 19-year-old Mohamed Osman, who once called a leafy little cul-de-sac in south Minneapolis home.

Inside his family's two-story house, Osman's older cousin, Jamal Salim, recalled when the family realized that Osman, who graduated last year from Southwest High School, was missing.

"One day we're at home, like, 'Where is Mohamed?' " Salim said. "It's been two days, and we're thinking he's out with friends. The parents are going crazy. They think he's got arrested or something."

Salim said Osman's mother didn't realize her son was in Somalia until she received a visit from the FBI. Salim said his aunt was stunned.

Terrorist pipeline continues to flow from Minn. to Somalia | Minnesota Public Radio News

Bulgaria: Thirteen Muslim scholars, imams and teachers on trial for preaching jihad, al-Qaeda links, preaching against democracy - Atlas Shrugs

Bulgaria, whose population of 7.4 million is 80-percent Christian Orthodox, also has the highest percentage of native Muslims in the European Union, at about 13 percent.

They include Turks, Muslim Roma and Pomaks, like the accused, whose Christian ancestors were forced to convert to Islam during the country's Ottoman domination between the 14th and 19th century. The Pomaks are the most devout of the three subgroups, minority experts said.

Most experts also warned that, regardless of its outcome, the trial risks raising tensions between Bulgaria's Christian majority and the Muslim minority, who have lived together quietly since the fall of communism in 1989.

Yes, the trial will raise tensions. Thirteen Muslim leaders preaching hatred of the Infidels and the need to subjugate them under Islamic rule -- that doesn't raise tensions. Only trying them does.


Bulgaria: Thirteen Muslim scholars, imams and teachers on trial for preaching jihad, al-Qaeda links, preaching against democracy - Atlas Shrugs

Christians persecuted throughout the world - Telegraph

 

Imagine the unspeakable fury that would erupt across the Islamic world if a Christian-led government in Khartoum had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese Muslims over the past 30 years. Or if Christian gunmen were firebombing mosques in Iraq during Friday prayers. Or if Muslim girls in Indonesia had been abducted and beheaded on their way to school, because of their faith.

Such horrors are barely thinkable, of course. But they have all occurred in reverse, with Christians falling victim to Islamist aggression. Only two days ago, a suicide bomber crashed a jeep laden with explosives into a packed Catholic church in Kaduna, northern Nigeria, killing at least eight people and injuring more than 100. The tragedy bore the imprint of numerous similar attacks by Boko Haram (which roughly translates as “Western education is sinful”), an exceptionally bloodthirsty militant group.

Other notable trouble spots include Egypt, where 600,000 Copts – more than the entire population of Manchester – have emigrated since the 1980s in the face of harassment or outright oppression.

Christians persecuted throughout the world - Telegraph

Israeli grandma’s shocking WWII secrets revealed in ‘The Flat’

As Arnon Goldfinger’s new documentary, “The Flat,” opens, the filmmaker and his family are cleaning out the Tel Aviv apartment of his German-born grandmother, where she lived for decades until her death at 98. What for most families would be an emotional but uneventful process takes a sharp turn for the Goldfingers, however, as they find photographs and newspaper articles that reveal a disturbing, previously unknown chapter in the family’s past.

Goldfinger’s grandparents, who never quite blended into Israeli society, retained close ties not only to the country of their birth, but also to a German couple whose unsettling identity is revealed early in the film. The discovery sparks a five-year journey that Goldfinger records with his camera, slowly uncovering the story for himself, his mother and the world.

Israeli grandma’s shocking WWII secrets revealed in ‘The Flat’ | The Times of Israel

Non-lethal microwave-blasting missile knocks out electronics (Wired UK)

 
Boeing has successfully tested a non-lethal, microwave-blasting missile that knocks out electronics, instigating a collective shudder from technology apocalypse theorists the world over.

Somewhere over the Western Utah desert on 16 October, Boeing's Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced Missile (CHAMP) knocked out all seven of its targets within an hour, including a two-story building. The system works a little like the electromagnetic pulse in The Matrix, which knocks out the sentinels -- the real-world high-power compact microwave pulse system in CHAMP was developed by Raytheon Ktech.

Non-lethal microwave-blasting missile knocks out electronics (Wired UK)

'Three parent embryos' created from human eggs - Telegraph

Embryos containing DNA from three parents have been created from human eggs for the first time in a breakthrough for a therapy which could eradicate a host of rare genetic disorders.

Eggs containing DNA from two women were fertilised and grown into healthy embryos in a lab experiment by researchers from Oregon Health & Science University in the US.

The technique is designed for women who have mutations in tiny structures known as mitochondria, which can result in a range of devastating conditions including muscular dystrophy.

It involves taking chromosomes from the mother's egg, which carry 99.8 per cent of her DNA, and placing them in a donor egg which has healthy mitochondria but has had its own chromosomes removed.

The eggs were fertilised by sperm and almost half developed into healthy embryos. The resulting children would have inherited 99.8 per cent of their DNA from their parents, but also a tiny fraction from the donor.

'Three parent embryos' created from human eggs - Telegraph

Lawmaker urges feds to monitor Hezbollah in Mexico | Fox News

 

 Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) says the mounting evidence of a Hezbollah presence in Mexico is being ignored by the Department of Homeland Security.
"I don't have a lot of faith in the Department of Homeland Security," said Myrick. "They should be looking at these groups in Mexico much more closely."

Lawmaker urges feds to monitor Hezbollah in Mexico | Fox News