**Update – Sun Nov 23 12:00h **
Leon County Sheriff’s Department has released the names of the Deputy who was slain as well as the shooter who set the home on fire to ambush Emergency responders.
Deputy Christopher Smith, 47,  was shot multiple times and died during a battle with an armed gunman Saturday morning, Lt. James McQuaig, Public Spokesperson for the Leon County Sheriff’s Office stated at a 12 noon news conference.
McQuaig said Smith was “a loving Christian man who loved his wife and his children most of all.”
The shooter has been identified by 53-year-old Curtis Wade Holley. Law enforcement states Holley was armed with a .40 caliber handgun and had a history of making anti-government statements.  They believe his intent was to harm as many Law Enforcement agents as possible.
Officials said Holley acted alone and no one was found in the burned-down house.
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The concept of bullion gold dinars and silver dirhams has long been part of the ethos of those who struggle to re-establish another “Golden Age of Islam” and a modern age pan-Levant Caliphate.
This belief system is deeply held and always simmering below the surface in Islamic majority nations. An entire rumor industry sprung forth that Gaddafi’s demise was due to his declared intention to issue pan-African bullion gold dinars and silver dirhams and his political statement that Libya would begin rejecting fiat currency (ie: “Petro dollars”) as payment for Libyan export oil sales as part of a long standing desire to – if not outright undermine, – then at least chip away at, – the global economic hegemony of the US.
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h/t Drudge:  graphic from “WeatherBell”.  Shaded areas represent anticipated snow fall.
Record breaking cold temperatures with snow are anticipated across the country next week, sparing only six continental states – New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.

Here are some tips from the “Fun Times Guide”  (!) on how to prepare for winter weather.
Some of the ways we at su casa are getting ready earlier than expected for “snow season” are:
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At 100 or more new reported cases a day
(and, obviously, an unquantified number of unreported cases) coupled with the deliberate “removal” of dead victims from the official tally, it is apparent that the Ebola outbreak continues to rage and is far from contained.
As has been mentioned here and elsewhere in the Realism Blogosphere,  Math Just Is.  As the Daily Mail UK reports, scores of orphaned children left to care for themselves after close contact and sustained exposure to a parent or other caregiver who has died from Ebola are  “ticking timebombs”.
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Yes!  – a  $92 Million, 700 km high tech surveillance grid is being built on the US border.
The catch?  It’s on the northern border with Canada, and is being put into place by the Canadians …. not the US.
The official rationale for the 700 km of high tech border fence is to stop “cigarette smuggling”.  Along the portion of the border to be initially secured within Ontario and Quebec, there are a number of isolated islands in the St. Lawrence River owned and controlled by independent Native American tribes who are often at odds with the federal Canadian government over issues of sovereignty and taxation.
Interestingly, the funding for this security measure was approved in the fiscal year 2014 Canadian budget, but the mainstream press chose to not report on it in any meaningful way until after the US midterms.
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Two “Stop the Violence” organizers allegedly beat one of their colleagues so severely that he vomited blood and was left unconscious in critical condition.
Nikole Ardeno and Emanuel Velez, both 30, accused their former roommate of stealing their property, and allegedly punched and kicked him in the street until he had seizures. Arrested moments later, Ardeno was still wearing the same “Stop the Violence” T-shirt she had on the night before when she coordinated a march protesting two recent shootings, Washington Police Chief Chris Luppino said.

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Citing the experiences gleaned from responding to the SARS outbreak which impacted Singapore economically, the health ministy of Singapore announced the new restrictions which will become effective on Wednesday.
Singapore has negligible direct trade/ethnic ties to the affected west African nations, but did open a “trade and investment” outreach  office in Accra Ghana in an effort to secure a place as a clearing house/launching pad for west African trade with Asia and position itself at the head of the expected bow wave of development.
Citizens of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone will need a visa to enter Singapore as part of measures against the spread of Ebola, the city-state’s health ministry said Monday.
 
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Thirteen years after the 9/11 terrorist attack, the resurrected World Trade Center has again opened for business – marking an emotional milestone for both New Yorkers and the nation.
Some staffers of publishing giant Conde Nast began working at 1 World Trade Center on Monday. The 104-story, $3.9-billion skyscraper dominates the Manhattan skyline. The publishing giant becomes the first commercial tenant in the tallest building in the United States.
It’s the centerpiece of the 16-acre site where the decimated twin towers once stood and where more than 2,700 people died on Sept. 11, 2001, buried under smoking mounds of fiery debris.
“The New York City skyline is whole again, as 1 World Trade Center takes its place in Lower Manhattan,” said Patrick Foye, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns both the building and the World Trade Center site.

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Another suspected (non-insured) Ebola patient is receiving expensive, time consuming medical attention after landing at Newark International Airport on Friday, clearing US Border and Customs Inspection and taking a long bus ride from New Jersey to a relative’s home in North Carolina before spiking a fever and contacting the CDC which triggered the hospital admission:
“….A male patient, age unknown, was transported today to Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and is being tested this evening for Ebola virus infection.
The individual flew into Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday after traveling from Liberia through an unknown destination, then traveled to the Durham area on a commercial bus, according Aldona Wos, MD, secretary of the NC Department of Health and Human Services.
On Saturday, the individual was picked up by a relative and taken to the family’s home in Person County, north of Durham. After spiking a fever this morning, temperature unknown, the individual was transported to Duke Hospital and is currently isolated in a contained unit designated previous during training as the site for treatment of a potential Ebola patient.
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