NC Renegades

Islamic State militants attacked Kurdish forces in Iraq with mustard gas last year, the first known use of chemical weapons in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a diplomat said, based on tests by the global chemical weapons watchdog.

A source at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed that laboratory tests had come back positive for the sulfur mustard, after around 35 Kurdish troops were sickened on the battlefield last August.

The OPCW will not identify who used the chemical agent. But the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because the findings have not yet been released, said the result confirmed that chemical weapons had been used by Islamic State fighters.

The samples were taken after the soldiers became ill during fighting against Islamic State militants southwest of Erbil, capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

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No, we don’t think Hillary had Scalia killed.  But we certainly expect her to seek political benefit from his death by pushing the importance of her election for the purpose of picking a possible successor (if Obama’s nominees are blocked). Additionally, some of the issues under review by the Court (with Scalia expected to be the deciding vote) could have been damaging to the Left – and those running on the Left – if the decisions had been finalized before election day.

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School officials in Rochester, New York are getting flak from angry parents and teachers for holding an event in solidarity with World Hijab Day. The event, held at the school and during school hours, encouraged the high school girls to wear the Islamic headscarf for the day. Boys were given carnations to wear in solidarity.

Unsuspecting students put on the 150 headscarves that were brought by teachers before the first bell rang. They were encouraged to participate in the “cultural event” by the school’s principal Sheela Webster, who insisted the headscarf had nothing to do with religion, but rather all about the “experiental” and “was actually around learning about the cloth.”

“Our perspective in it was not religious – it was really about experiential,” she said. “We are an experiential school; we engage kids in all kinds of activities and projects all of the time, so the perspective of being able to learn what a hijab is, why some women choose to wear it and why some women don’t choose to wear it, and we provide the opportunity to experience it; it is well within protocol of experiential learning.”

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A 41-year-old Murphy man was among nine more people charged in connection with the armed occupation of a wildlife refuge in Oregon.

Jason Charles Blomgren was listed in a federal indictment stemming from the occupation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon.

He is charged with one felony count of “conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation or threats,” according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon.

Blomgren was arrested near Bunkerville, Nevada, and made an initial appearance before a federal magistrate judge in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas on Thursday, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The judge ordered him detained, and he will be transported by the U.S. Marshals Service to Oregon.

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Since Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead in his resort hotel room at Cibolo Creek Creek Ranch on Saturday, questions have been flying about the immediate declaration of “natural causes” as the means of death.
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“We discovered the judge in bed, a pillow over his head. His bed clothes were unwrinkled,” said Poindexter.

“He was lying very restfully. It looked like he had not quite awakened from a nap,” he said.

“His hands were sort of almost folded on top of the sheets,” Poindexter told the New York Times. “The sheets weren’t rumpled up at all.”

Scalia did not have a pulse and his body was cold, and after consulting with a doctor at a hospital in Alpine, John Poindexter (who owns the 30,000-acre luxury ranch) concluded resuscitation would have been futile. He then contacted federal authorities, at first encountering a series of answering services because he was calling on a weekend.

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Mark Meadows is supporting Ted Cruz in this election. I would post a comment on Mr. Meadows’ review of the debate except comments are disabled on all of Ted Cruz’s videos that I checked.

David DeGerolamo

In response to the growth in food stamp dependence, Maine’s governor, Paul LePage, recently established work requirements on recipients who are without dependents and able-bodied. In Maine, all able-bodied adults without dependents in the food stamp program are now required to take a job, participate in training, or perform community service.

Job openings for lower-skill workers are abundant in Maine, and for those ABAWD recipients who cannot find immediate employment, Maine offers both training and community service slots. But despite vigorous outreach efforts by the government to encourage participation, most childless adult recipients in Maine refused to participate in training or even to perform community service for six hours per week. When ABAWD recipients refused to participate, their food stamp benefits ceased.

In the first three months after Maine’s work policy went into effect, its caseload of able-bodied adults without dependents plummeted by 80 percent, falling from 13,332 recipients in Dec. 2014 to 2,678 in March 2015.

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Don’t tell Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. They want us to believe Socialism is the future. You either have faith in the state or God. Faith in the state ALWAYS leads to chains.

David DeGerolamo

The Syrian conflict has taken a dangerous turn with Saudi Arabia sending troops and fighter jets to Turkey ahead of a reported intervention against Islamic State in Syria.

Saudi officials say they want to fight the Islamic State group on the ground and see Syrian President Bashar al-Assad removed.

But Assad’s forces, backed by Russian air power, are making large gains against rebels in and around the key city of Aleppo, just days after world powers pledged a cessation of hostilities and immediate humanitarian access.

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