Over 500 residents of Sandpoint, Idaho took to the streets to protest an anti-Christian group attempting to get a Ten Commandments monument removed from a public area.
Most of the residents were upset that the Wisconsin-based anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation, which targets Christians and Christian emblems nationwide, would be trying to come into their town and have something removed that the community doesn’t want to see gone.
“I don’t like this at all,” resident Gladys Johnson told the Bonner County Daily Bee. “There’s no way someone can come into our town and dictate what goes on here.”
The FFRF sent a letter last November to the mayor of Sandpoint taking issue with the monument being on public property. The people who sent the letter do not live or have never been to Sandpoint.
The monument was placed in Farmin Park after being donated to the city by the Fraternal Order of Eagles. The city says they have no current plans to remove it but are working with the Eagles to find an alternative location.
The National Security Agency has a program that is so powerful it can record all the phone calls coming out of a nation and provide them the chance to play them back over the course of a month.
A manager for the NSA compared the program to a “time machine” and said that any individual recorded by the machine can be listened to without that person’s permission or a warrant from a court.
The program is called MYSTIC and started in 2009. The program has a component called RETRO, which stands for “retrospective retrieval”, which allows the user to search and play back phone calls from the previous month.
The program was initially proposed as a one-off operation but according to last year’s intelligence budget, five countries have come under the MYSTIC program and a sixth country was scheduled to be put in place by the end of 2013.
The program was disclosed by the Washington Post who withheld the names of the country confirmed to be under surveillance at the request of the government who claimed national security issues.
A National Guard reservist has been arrested and charged in Federal court with attempting to carry out terror attacks for Al-Qaeda.
Nicholas Teausant, 20, was charged Monday with attempting to provide material to support a foregoing terrorist organization.
Teausant reportedly told an undercover FBI agent that he had been planning a terror attack on a Los Angeles area subway system in January but called it off because the FBI had been tipped to the attack. He then said he was going to attempt to join Al-Qaeda in Syria to fight against the Syrian government.
Teausant was arrested attempting to sneak into Canada so he could board a flight to Syria.
Teausant was listed in court as a student at San Joaquin Delta Community College and a member of the National Guard.
His family told reporters on Monday that “he’s not a terrorist. He’s not evil.”
A former House stenographer who lost her job after she interrupted the floor proceedings to deliver what she called a “message from God” has taken to the internet with her testimony about that day.
Dianne Reidy and her husband appear in a YouTube video explaining what happened in October.
“I remember just getting up to the podium,” Reidy says in the video. “After saying ‘God will not be mocked,’ I don’t have a memory of anything else that was said that evening until I was escorted off the floor.”
Reidy said that she knew in advance that God was going to say something through her during the major vote. She also said it was not the first time that God has used her to deliver a message to someone. She said that she had three previous incidents: at a friend’s funeral; while reuniting with her father and while speaking to a homeless man in Washington, D.C.
She refuted claims by non-Christians that it was a breakdown and not a religious experience.
Air Force officials have banned Gideon volunteers from giving Bibles to new recruits at Maxwell Air Force Base.
Gideon’s volunteer Michael Fredenburg told Fox News they were told by base officials to “get their Bibles out.”
The public affairs officer for Military Entrance Processing Command told Fox News that the Gideon’s claim was not “entirely” true. Gaylan Johnson said that the Gideons have been banned from standing at a table and speaking with anyone who is a recruit. They will still be able to put materials on a table.
The Gideons had been meeting recruits and handing out Bibles for over a decade. Four days a week the Gideons would stand by a table, shaking the hands of those who had just enlisted and offering them a pocket-sized Bible.
Johnson told Fox that the Gideons are no longer allowed to be within the building to speak to anyone. Johnson is claiming that this is a new command-wide policy against any organization that is not a member of the Federal Government.
Activists with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood is holding a fundraiser for a Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives.
Akram Elzend and Sameh Elhennawy are holding a fundraiser for Democratic Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia later this month. The invitations to the event promise “a direct conversation” with the Representative along with a chance for them to express their appreciation.
The fundraiser is catching the eye of watchdog groups because an organization cofounded by Elzend held a pro-Mohammed Morsi rally in New York that featured anti-Semitic displays. Egyptian Americans for Democracy and Human Rights held a rally in front of the Saudi Arabian embassy where they said the Saudis were “dirtier than Jews” and that they were trying to “sell Egypt to the Jews.”
The leader of the group is called a “senior Muslim Brotherhood leader” in Arabic press accounts.
The two men heading the fundraiser are also listed as U.S. based cells of the group and identified on a list of Morsi supporters who issued an Arabic statement calling for Morsi to “cleanse the media and the police.”
A new report is showing that internet routers have significant security flaws that could allow a hacker to take control of your computer without ever putting a virus onto the actual computer.
Security officials have found “backdoors” in routers produced by NetGear and Linksys, two of the biggest selling router manufacturers. The security flaws allow a hacker to take control of the router and guide your web browser to fake websites that could look like Google, Facebook or a host of other sites.
The hackers would then steal personal information that you enter into the spoofed websites.
Many internet service providers give a cable or DSL modem with a built-in router that could be compromised by hackers depending on the manufacturer.
Security officials recommend placing a password on your router with an unusually long string of letters and numbers to make it unlikely a causal hacker will take the time to try and crack the long code.
Many Los Angelinos didn’t need their alarm clocks Monday morning due to an early morning earthquake.
The quake only measured 4.4 on the Richter scale but was so shallow that it caused a jolt significant enough to started the usually jaded southern California residents. The 6:25 a.m. quake was only 5 miles deep and centered around 15 miles west-northwest of L.A.’s downtown civic center.
That put the epicenter within 6 miles of Beverly Hills and 7 miles from University City and Santa Monica.
Police and fire officials say there were no immediate reports of significant damage. Residents of the area took to social media to say they had items fall off shelves in their home and a few had bookcases or curios knocked over by the shaking.
A watchdog group is calling out General Motors for under reporting the number of deaths connected to faulty ignition systems.
The Center for Auto Safety say that over 300 people have died in GM cars where the airbags did not deploy compared to the 12 that GM reported to federal investigators.
“Without rigorous analysis, it is pure speculation to attempt to draw any meaningful conclusions,” the company said in a statement refuting the group’s claim. “In contrast, research is underway at GM and the investigation of the ignition switch recall and the impact of the defective switch is ongoing.”
Still, the company has hired outside investigators to look into the recall.
The Center for Auto Safety is taking the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to task, saying they were negligent in following up on reports of accidents attributed to the GM system.
“The only way NHTSA could not see a defect trend is if it closed its eyes,” said the group in a letter to the NHTSA.
The case of an alleged drunk driver who drove into a crowd of concertgoers at Austin’s South by Southwest Festival has taken a dark turn.
Police now say that 21-year-old Rashad Owens deliberately drove through the crowd of concertgoers after fleeing from police on suspicion of drunken driving.
“For me from his actions, from what I’ve seen this is an individual that showed no regard for human beings. He plowed through in his attempt to get away,” Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo told Fox News.
Owens was scheduled to perform later that night. He has a long criminal record and the car he was driving had been reported stolen.
Owens killed two people who were riding a moped and before swerving around a police officer that tried to stop him and drove through the crowd. He was subdued after trying to flee on foot after driving into a taxi.