(Via New York Times) Two women living in Queens have been charged with planning to build a bomb that they wanted to detonate in the United States.

The women, Noelle Velentzas, 28, and Asia Siddiqui, 31, who until recently were roommates, were named in a complaint unsealed on Thursday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, and were expected to appear in court on Thursday afternoon.

Ms. Velentzas and Ms. Siddiqui, who are American citizens, appeared to be interested in jihad, according to the complaint, which said that they had been communicating with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and had been viewing violent videos made by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. (more…)

It should be noted Al-Shabaab -which is also known as AQNA (al-Qaeda in North Africa)- has previously been conclusively identified as maintaining training bases in Mexico (Report from 2011).  It is the same group responsible for the Kenya Mall attacks and has threatened the Mall of America. 

GARISSA, Kenya — Al-Shabaab gunmen rampaged through a university in northeastern Kenya at dawn Thursday, killing 147 people in the group’s deadliest attack in the East African country. Four militants were slain by security forces to end the siege just after dusk.

The masked attackers armed with AK-47s singled out non-Muslim students at Garissa University College and then gunned them down without mercy, survivors said. Others ran for their lives with bullets whistling through the air.

The gunmen had strapped themselves with explosives, Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery said. When Kenyan officers shot at the four, the attackers exploded “like bombs” and shrapnel from the explosions injured officers, he said. (more…)

Two European media outlets, Bild and Paris Match, have combined their legal and financial resources around their possession of a micro SD (data memory card) recovered from the Flight 9525 crash site.

According to reporters who have watched the content.  The data card contains a short video showing the “chaos within the cabin” moments before the flight crashed. The video appears to have been taken from a cell phone belonging to a passenger who was on board the plane.

Bild/Paris Match are not saying how they came into possession of the fingernail sized data card. However, it is generally assumed someone picked it up from the crash site.

After Bild and Paris Match released a description of the video the initial crash investigative authority denied its authenticity. However, today the French authorities are walking back their doubtful statements and instead requesting the European media turn it over to them.

(Via The Telegraph) French police tell Paris Match and Bild to “hand over” what the two media claim is a “genuine” mobile phone video taken inside the Germanwings plane

[…] French authorities initially firmly denied the existence of the clip, which allegedly relays in a “few seconds” scenes of chaos and passengers screaming “My God” in several languages. But they are now calling on anyone in possession of such a film to “hand it over to investigators”. (more…)

Nothing to see here, move along, move along folks. The driver Ricky Shawantza Hall (27), and passenger Kevin Fleming (20), had spent night in a motel with another guy – then stole his truck, had some cocaine and a gun, took a wrong turn and panicked at the Fort Meade NSA guard shack.

(Via The Hill) New details about the pair of men who crashed outside the gates of the National Security Agency’s headquarters and sparked a shooting on Monday morning indicate that the incident was more a tragic mistake than a threat to national security.

Both men were “dressed as females” when they approached Fort Meade, Md., the FBI’s Baltimore office said on Tuesday, however their attire was “not in an attempt to disguise themselves from authorities.” (more…)

As we have outlined (with considerable criticism) over the past year, the only substantive inquiry into the Benghazi scandal will have to be held in non-public settings. When you dig into the substance, and avoid the political aspects, everything that matters regarding the Benghazi fiasco is covered under U.S. national security protections.

There is little of value available to discuss in public hearings. If you understand the Benghazi Brief you understand why.

The CIA and the State Department were conducting a joint covert operation labeled “Zero Footprint” in Libya. That operation was expanded into Syria after Panetta left the CIA. The congressional intelligence oversight known as the Gang of Eight were fully briefed.

Hence, if House Select Committee Chair Trey Gowdy wants to discuss email use, or communication methods therein, during the tenure of Clinton and Panetta, around Operation Zero Footprint, Gowdy has to make those inquiries in private.

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the House select committee investigating the Benghazi attacks asked Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday to appear for a private interview about her exclusive use of a personal email account when she was secretary of state.

“The committee believes a transcribed interview would best protect Secretary Clinton’s privacy, the security of the information queried, and the public’s interest in ensuring this committee has all information needed to accomplish the task set before it,” the chairman, Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, said in a letter sent Tuesday morning. (more…)

INDIA – A Bangladeshi blogger was hacked to death in Dhaka on Monday, the second such attack on a critic of religious fundamentalism in the mainly Muslim country in less than two months.

Three knife-wielding attackers set upon 27-year-old Washiqur Rahman near his home on Monday morning, weeks after the murder of an American atheist blogger in Dhaka triggered international outrage.

Police said they had arrested two suspects at the scene and retrieved three knives, but a third escaped.  Deputy commissioner Wahidul Islam said Rahman had been “brutally hacked to death”.

“They hacked him in his head and neck with big knives and once he fell on the ground they then hacked his body,” he said. (more…)

(Via New York Post) German murder-suicide pilot Andreas Lubitz was an insecure control freak to the schoolteacher fiancée who broke his heart, even trying to tell her what to wear and who to talk to, according to a report.

The girlfriend, identified for the first time as Kathrin Goldbach, 26, by Britain’s Daily Mail, still lived with Lubitz, 27, in their Dusseldorf apartment, but was looking to move out into a “bachelorette flat” because of his erratic behavior, the newspaper’s Web site reported Saturday.

“He tried to order her what to wear, what men she could speak to, even the length of her skirts,” one friend said.

Lubitz’s mental state was worsened by his breakup with Goldbach, just a day before he crashed his Germanwings Airbus A320 in the French Alps, killing himself and 149 others. (more…)

It is interesting, and not incidental, to see CNNi (CNN International) lead the shift in leftist talking points about Egyptian President Fattah el-Sisi by focusing on their collectivist opinion that el-Sisi is “a hardliner”.

However, actions -what CNN would like to avoid- of Sisi speak louder than the CNN words. Sisi has shown over the past two years his willingness to insure minority protections within Egypt yet he has simultaneously taken a zero tolerance position toward Islamic extremism.

The Muslim Brotherhood, as a political construct, is the extremist bane of all mid-East moderates. The Muslim Brotherhood is essentially the larger construct within ISIS; and yet the Muslim Brotherhood is discussed on leftist news media as if they are not a terrorist entity.

Because of the frequency and scope of this specific media narrative it simply cannot be coincidental; someone is driving this false narrative.

CAIRO (AP) – Arab League member nations formally announced on Sunday an agreement to form a joint military force. While details of how such a force would actually operate remain thin, the agreement is a telling sign of a new determination among Saudi Arabia, Egypt and their allies to intervene aggressively in regional hotspots, whether against Islamic militants or Iran-backed groups.

(more…)

ILLINOIS – A National Guardsman arrested for supporting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, had allegedly planned an attack on a military post in Illinois, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Army National Guard Spc. Hasan Edmonds, 22, was arrested at Chicago Midway International Airport Wednesday night while he was attempting to fly to Cairo to allegedly join ISIS, the department said in a statement.

Members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Chicago also arrested Edmonds’ cousin, Jonas Edmonds, 29, at his home in Aurora, Illinois. (more…)

(Via Al Arabia) Warplanes of the Royal Saudi Air Force bombed the positions of Yemen’s Houthi militia and destroyed most of their air defenses, Al Arabiya News Channel reported early on Thursday.

Arab Gulf states had announced that they have decided to “repel Houthi aggression” in neighboring Yemen, following a request from the country’s President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

In their joint statement Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait said they “decided to repel Houthi militias, al-Qaeda and ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] in the country.” (more…)