Daily Benefactor News – Top Story – Over 100 Released Gitmo Detainees Have Returned To Terrorism – More
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Over 100 Released Gitmo Detainees Have Returned To Terrorism – Fox News
Prior to his release in December, Abdul Hafiz was Prisoner Number 1030 at Guantanamo Bay. Now, less than four months later, he’s back home in Afghanistan and working for the Taliban – just the latest of more than 100 released detainees who have returned to terrorism, according to the Pentagon.
Hafiz, suspected in the March 2003 kidnapping and murder of an International Red Cross worker, was the “Taliban head of all Madrassas… responsible for recruiting and sending young men to fight for the Taliban,” according to U.S. government memos. He was said to have maintained contacts for Mullah Mohammad Omar, the leader of the Taliban of Afghanistan, and to have admitted to participating in jihad against the Soviets.
But despite the list of charges against him, the U.S. government transferred Hafiz to his home country in December. And now, a senior U.S. official tells Fox News, he is back on the battlefield. According to a published report, Hafiz has been appointed by Mullah Omar to oversee ransom demands for kidnapping victims and to coordinate with nongovernment-aid organizations operating in the Taliban’s areas of influence.
That makes Hafiz just the latest addition to an increasingly long list of former Guantanamo detainees suspected to have returned to terror. The Pentagon, in an estimate issued in January, now believes that roughly 20 percent of the 560 detainees who were released from Guantanamo are back on the terror front lines.
The figure, which was echoed in a Feb. 1 letter from President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is a nearly 50 percent increase from the Pentagon’s estimate of 14 percent last April, and nearly double the 11 percent estimate issued in January 2009.
And though the current estimate is higher than ever, it’s still a “low-ball” one, says Lt. Col. Jeff Addicott, a former Green Beret and judge advocate general and director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University. “I’d say the figure is probably closer to 30 to 40 percent,” Addicott told FoxNews.com. “A lot of these folks go underground, they change their name, they hide out a little bit, they pop back up.”
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300 Companies Push To Repeal Obamacare Provision – New York Times
An association representing 300 large corporations urged President Obama and Congress on Monday to repeal a provision of the health care overhaul that prompted AT&T and other companies to announce substantial charges for the current quarter.
The American Benefits Council said the provision – which limits tax deductions for companies with drug coverage for their retired employees – would deal a significant blow to corporate profits and discourage companies from hiring more workers.
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Lawyers for the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who died in Iraq and whose funeral was picketed by anti-gay protesters, say a court has ordered him to pay the protesters’ appeal costs.
On Friday, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered that Albert Snyder of York, Pa., pay costs associated with Fred Phelps’ appeal. Phelps is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, which conducted protests at the funeral of Snyder’s son.
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Dying Hospital Patient Phoned Switchboard Begging For Water After Nurses Said ‘No’ – Daily Mail
A patient desperate for a drink of water had to telephone the switchboard of the hospital he was being treated in to beg to see a doctor. Derek Sauter, 60, used his mobile phone to request medical attention after his pleas for help were ignored.
But when the doctor arrived he was turned away by ward nurse Caroline Lowe, who said Mr Sauter was ‘over-reacting’ and threatened to confiscate his phone. Eight hours later the grandfather-of-three, who was suffering with a chest infection, was dead.
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In a new blow to the climate change lobby, Russia’s top weatherman today announced that the winter now drawing to a close in Siberia may turn out to be the coldest on record.
‘The winter of 2009-10 was one of the most severe in European part of Russia for more than 30 years, and in Siberia it was perhaps the record breaking coldest ever,’ said Dr Alexander Frolov, head of state meteorological service Rosgidromet.
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CNN Poll: Big Shift On Closing Guantanamo Bay Facility – CNN
Support for closing the facility has dropped 12 points over the past 14 months, a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey indicates. Shortly before Obama’s inauguration, 51 percent of Americans said they thought the facility in Cuba should be closed.
Now that number is down to 39 percent, and six in ten believe the United States should continue to operate Guantanamo. The poll, released Sunday, suggests independent voters are contributing to the 12 point overall drop.
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Doctors Sue To Overturn Obamacare – News Blaze
Executive Director Association of American Physicians and Surgeons Tucson, Arizona. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) became the first medical society to sue to overturn the newly enacted health care bill.
AAPS sued Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (AAPS v. Sebelius et al.). “If the PPACA goes unchallenged, then it spells the end of freedom in medicine as we know it,” observed Jane Orient, M.D., the Executive Director of AAPS.
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Toilet Timers Fitted At Government Agency Office – SWNS
Civil servants are furious after bosses fitted timers to stop them spending longer than ten minutes – on the loo. Dozens of workers have been caught short since the cost-cutting measures were introduced at the Government Office for the West Midlands (GOWM).
A hidden sensor switches off the toilet light after ten minutes, forcing people to finish what they are doing and leave – in the dark. Furious staff have slammed the GOWM, which introduced the plans to save millions of pounds.
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Police: Man Makes Bomb Threat To Get Day Off – WKMG
A Florida man is accused of calling in a bomb threat at a hotel so he could get the day off of work, Miami television station WPLG reported. Coral Gables police said they received a 911 call at 4:51 a.m. According to police the caller said, “There is a bomb at the Biltmore Hotel… and death to all Jews,” then hung up the phone.
Officers went to the hotel and determined the bomb threat was not credible. Police traced the call to the executive chef’s office at the hotel. Authorities said they used surveillance videos to determine 62-year-old Thomas Hudnall had been in the area at the time of the call.
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Poodle Adopts Orphaned Squirrels – WTSP
Three orphaned baby squirrels in Hicksboro, North Carolina, have found a new mama: a poodle named Pixie. The Daily Dispatch of Henderson says the squirrels lived in a tree that was cut down. Pixie’s owner, Gail Latta, tried to feed the squirrels with milk for newborn puppies and kittens, but that didn’t work.
Pixie had given birth to a litter of puppies a few months ago, so she jumped right in to clean and feed the squirrels herself. The squirrels are now five weeks old and have been taken to a federal animal rehabilitation specialist, who will eventually release them into the wild.
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Feds: Woman Posed As FBI Agent, ‘Hired’ Neighbors – Yahoo News
Authorities say a Virginia woman pretended to be an FBI agent and conned her neighbors into taking jobs as her assistants. Twenty-nine-year-old Brenna Reilly of Arlington was indicted by a federal grand jury in Alexandria last week on a charge of impersonating an FBI agent.
According to a court affidavit, Reilly told neighbors in her apartment complex that she was the FBI’s director of forensics. Two of those neighbors say they agreed to work as Reilly’s assistant and put personal information such as their social security numbers on phony job applications.
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