President Obama has ordered a complete review of the government's
policy regarding U.S. hostages taken overseas, the White House confirmed
to Fox News late Monday.
National Security Council (NSC) spokesman Alistair Baskey said the
review was ordered over the summer in response to what he called "of the
increasing number of U.S. citizens taken hostage by terrorist groups
overseas and the extraordinary nature of recent hostage cases."
The review, which was first reported by The Daily Beast,
became public one day after the White House confirmed that American aid
worker and former Army Ranger Peter Kassig had been beheaded by ISIS in
Syria. The terror group had posted a video claiming that it had
beheaded Kassig to various social media sites early Sunday. Kassig is
the third American to be beheaded by ISIS since August. The group is
also holding an American woman, a 26-year-old aid worker whose identity
has not been revealed by U.S. officials out of concern for her safety.
The Daily Beast quoted a letter written last week by Undersecretary
of Defense for Policy Christine Wormuth to Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.,
as saying that the review will include "specific emphasis on examining
family engagement, intelligence collection, and diplomatic engagement
policies."
The beheadings have sparked a fresh debate over the U.S. government's
policy of not paying ransom to terror groups. The parents and brother
of journalist James Foley, who was beheaded by ISIS in August, told Fox
News in September that government officials had told them that they
could face prosecution if they attempted to negotiate a ransom. U.S. law
prohibits American citizens from paying money to terror groups.
However, an October article in Foreign Policy
magazine reported that U.S. efforts to free hostages held in Syria had
become bogged down amid general confusion as to the exact policies of
the U.S. government on issues such as ransom payments.
"No one's really in charge," one person involved in negotiations told
the magazine. The article also reported that U.S. officials had
acknowledged that family members of hostages, such as the Foleys, had
not received frequent enough updates on what the government was doing to
free their loved ones. In addition, a lack of actionable intelligence
about ISIS activities in Syria has also been deemed responsible for
undercutting U.S. efforts.
According to Foreign Policy, the debate over ransom payments pits the
White House, NSC, and State Department against the Justice Department
and the FBI. The former entities believe that paying ransoms to terror
groups would encourage more kidnappings of Americans abroad. By
contrast, the latter offices believe that the issue of whether to pay
ransom should be made on a case-by-case basis, and reportedly are
willing to aid families if they believe that paying up represents the
best method to ensure the hostages' freedom.
A U.S. policy on hostage negotiations signed by President Bush in
2002 states that ransoms can be paid if officials believe doing so would
help gain intelligence about terror groups, but can not be paid for the
sole purpose of freeing an American.
Four worshippers at a Jerusalem synagogue were killed and six were
wounded Tuesday when two Palestinians armed with meat cleavers and a gun
stormed the building and began attacking people before they were killed
in a shootout with police.
The attack in the ultra-Orthodox Har Nof neighborhood in the western
part of Jerusalem, was the deadliest in Israel's capital since 2008,
when a Palestinian gunman shot eight people in a religious seminary
school.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel will "respond
harshly" to the attack, which he denounced as a "cruel murder of Jews
who came to pray and were killed by despicable murderers." U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry said he spoke to Netanyahu after the
assault and denounced it as an "act of pure terror and senseless
brutality and violence."
Kerry blamed the attack on Palestinian calls for "days of rage," and
said Palestinian leaders must take serious steps to refrain from such
incitement. He also urged Palestinian leaders to condemn the attack "in
the most powerful terms."
Hours after Kerry spoke, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
condemned the attack, the first time he has done so since a recent spike
in deadly violence against Israelis began. He also called for an end to
Israeli "provocations" surrounding the sacred site.
In a statement, Abbas' office said he "condemns the killing of the
worshippers in a synagogue in west Jerusalem." The statement called for
an end to the "invasion" of the mosque at a contested holy site in the
city and a halt to "incitement" by Israeli ministers.
Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the attackers were cousins
from east Jerusalem, which has been the scene of relentless clashes
between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters in recent months. She
identified the assailants as Ghassan and Oday Abu Jamal from the Jabal
Mukaber neighborhood.
Soon after the attack, clashes broke out outside the Abu Jamals' home
where dozens of police had gathered to carry out arrests in connection
with the attack. Residents hurled stones at police who responded using
riot dispersal weapons.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a militant group,
said the cousins were its members. A PFLP statement did not specify
whether the group instructed the cousins to carry out the attack.
Hamas, the militant group that runs the Gaza Strip, praised the
attack as retaliation for what it claimed was the murder of a
Palestinian bus driver who was found hanged in his vehicle late Sunday.
Israeli police, citing autopsy results, have classified the man's death
as a suicide, but that has not been accepted by the man's family.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said two police officers were among
the six wounded, four of whom were reported in serious condition. He
said police were searching the area for other suspects.
Associated Press footage from the scene showed the synagogue
surrounded by police and rescue workers following the attack. Wounded
worshippers were being assisted by paramedics and a bloodied meat
cleaver lay near the scene of the attack. Initially, police had
described the weapons used as knives and axes.
The Times of Israel cited witnesses who said the two men shouted
"Allahu Akbar" during the attack and entered the synagogue without their
faces covered.
"I tried to escape. The man with the knife approached me. There was a
chair and table between us ... my prayer shawl got caught. I left it
there and escaped," a man who identified himself as Yossi, who was
praying at the synagogue at the time of the attack, told Israeli Channel
2 TV. He declined to give his last name.
Another witness, identified only as Zohar described panic at the scene.
"I heard shooting and one of the worshipers came out covered in blood
and shouted 'There’s a massacre,'" he told The Times of Israel.
A photo in Israeli media from inside the synagogue showed what
appeared to be a body on the floor draped in a prayer shawl, with blood
spattered nearby.
Jerusalem has seen a spate of attacks by Palestinians against
Israelis, most of which have involved cars being driven into
pedestrians. At least six people had been killed in Jerusalem, the West
Bank and Tel Aviv prior to Tuesday.
Jerusalem residents have already been fearful of what appeared to be
lone wolf attacks, but Tuesday's early morning attack on a synagogue
harkens back to the gruesome attacks during the Palestinian uprising of
the last decade.
Israel's police chief said Tuesday's attack was likely not organized
by militant groups, similar to other recent incidents, making it more
difficult for security forces to prevent the violence.
"These are individuals that decide to do horrible acts. It's very
hard to know ahead of time about every such incident," Yohanan Danino
told reporters at the scene.
Tensions appeared to have been somewhat defused last week following a
meeting between Netanyahu, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and
Jordan's King Abdullah II in Jordan. The meeting was an attempt to
restore calm after months of violent confrontations, with Israel and the
Palestinians saying they would take steps to reduce tensions that might
lead to an escalation.
The Jerusalem holy site is referred to by Jews as the Temple Mount
because of the Jewish temples that stood there in biblical times. It is
the most sacred place in Judaism; Muslims refer to it as the Noble
Sanctuary, and it is their third holiest site, after Mecca and Medina in
Saudi Arabia.
The site is so holy that Jews have traditionally refrained from going
there, instead praying at the adjacent Western Wall. Israel's chief
rabbis have urged people not to ascend to the area, but in recent years,
a small but growing number of Jews, including ultranationalist
lawmakers, have begun regularly visiting the site.
Arkansas Sen.-elect Tom Cotton hinted on Sunday at exactly what he
and fellow Republicans might do in response to President Obama's vow to
use executive action on immigration reform: selectively block the
president's spending like the GOP did on the Guantanamo Bay prison
issue.
Cotton, a House member recently elected to the Senate, told “Fox News
Sunday” that the GOP-controlled lower chamber could pass a spending
bill that limits the president’s ability to spend on Social Security
cards for illegal immigrants, who may be granted some type of U.S.
residency status through executive action.
Cotton compared the strategy to House Republicans passing a Defense
spending bill in June that included a provision that barred funding for
transferring detainees in the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
established after the 9/11 terror attacks.
Republicans have opposed Obama’s plan to shutter the facility in part by sending detainees to federal prisons on American soil.
Congressional Republicans have been considering several strategies
should Obama proceed before the new year with executive action, as he
has vowed to do several times in the past couple of weeks.
Among the most drastic is to submit a spending bill that Obama would
assuredly veto, which would temporarily shut down parts of the federal
government after Dec. 11.
Cotton and Oklahoma Sen.-elect James Lankford, another GOP House
member, each told Fox News on Sunday that they are not pushing for a
shutdown, which is largely unpopular with Americans.
“I don’t think anybody wants to shut down government,” Cotton said.
Lankford said: “We’re not pursing some government shutdown.”
The president is expected, by as early as next week, to announce
executive action on U.S. immigration law that would protect roughly 5
million illegal immigrants from deportation, change federal
law-enforcement programs and expand business visas for non-citizens.
Among the other strategies Republicans are pushing are a temporary
spending bill into next year when they control the Senate, suing the
president to overturn his action, passing a stand-alone bill to try to
stop him and House Republicans writing their own immigration bill to
show they are serious about acting and pre-empt Obama.
The Democrat-controlled Senate last year passed bipartisan, comprehensive immigration-reform legislation.
The Defense spending bill also imposed a one-year moratorium on
moving detainees to a foreign country, a sharp response to Obama’s
decision to trade five Taliban leaders who had been held at Guantanamo
Bay for more than a decade for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a captive for
five years in Afghanistan.
Republicans said Obama broke the law by failing to notify Congress at
least 30 days before the swap and increased the terrorism risk to the
United States with the exchange.
“President Obama’s recent exchange of five high-level terrorists
without notifying Congress illustrates his blatant disregard for its
role as a co-equal branch of government,” Cotton said at the time.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Sunday that the U.S. military is
speeding up its training and advising of Iraqi forces who are fighting
the Islamic State militants after a recommendation from the commander of
U.S. Central Command.
Hagel's announcement came the same day the White House confirmed a
third American, aid worker and former Army Ranger Peter Kassig, had been
beheaded by members of the militant group.
The Pentagon chief spoke to reporters after observing Army training
in California's Mojave Desert on Sunday. He said U.S. special operations
troops in Iraq's western Anbar province are getting an early start on
the train-and-advise effort.
Hagel said the effort began a few days ago but did not provide any other details.
According to plans laid out last week, the U.S. expects to train nine
Iraqi security forces brigades and three Kurdish Peshmerga brigades.
Hagel said the speed-up was recommended by Gen. Lloyd Austin, the
commander of U.S. Central Command.
Hagel's spokesman, Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby, said later that Austin
believes getting an early start on training Iraqi forces in Anbar may
prompt other countries with a stake in the fight against Islamic State
to commit trainers to Iraq.
Approaching the problem of ill-trained and poorly motivated Iraqi
soldiers as a coalition rather than as a unilateral U.S. undertaking is a
key pillar of U.S. strategy. Partnership is seen as a way of
undermining the ideological appeal of Islamic State.
Kirby said a number of countries have made verbal commitments to
provide trainers, but he said he could not identify them because they
have yet to publicly announce their intended contributions.
On Thursday, Hagel told Congress that the U.S. and coalition forces
are making progress in the fight against the militant group, also known
as ISIS of ISIL, but the American people must prepare for a long and
difficult struggle.
"ISIL's advance in parts of Iraq has stalled, and in some cases been
reversed, by Iraqi, Kurdish, and tribal forces supported by U.S. and
coalition airstrikes," Hagel said in testimony to the House Armed
Services Committee. "But ISIL continues to represent a serious threat to
American interests, our allies, and the Middle East ... and wields
influence over a broad swath of territory in western and northern Iraq
and eastern Syria."
The testimony of Hagel and Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came just days after President Barack Obama
asked Congress for a new $5.6 billion plan to expand the U.S. mission in
Iraq and send up to 1,500 more American troops to the war-torn nation.
Kassig is the fifth Western hostage killed by ISIS in less than three
months, and the third American. Previous Western beheading victims were
American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as Britons
David Haines, a former Royal Air Force engineer, and Alan Henning, a
taxi driver from northwest England. The group is also holding British
photojournalist John Cantlie, who has appeared in several other videos
released by the group functioning as a de facto spokesman.
The group has declared a self-styled Islamic caliphate in areas under
its control, which it governs according to its violent interpretation
of Shariah law, including massacring rebellious tribes and selling women
and children of religious minorities into slavery.
The group's militants have also beheaded and shot dead hundreds of
captives, mostly Syrian and Iraqi soldiers, during its sweep across the
two countries, and has celebrated its mass killings in extremely graphic
videos.
The Islamic State group has its roots in Al Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate
but was expelled from the global terror network over its brutal tactics
and refusal to obey orders to confine its activities to Iraq. It became
even more extreme amid the bloody civil war in neighboring Syria and
grew strong enough to launch a lightning offensive across Iraq.
Syria's war began as an uprising against President Bashar Assad.
Activists say that conflict has killed more than 200,000 people.
Several states whose health exchange websites failed their first test
during last year's inaugural ObamaCare open enrollment period have
adopted different approaches for the second round, which began Saturday.
Some, like Oregon and Nevada, folded and decided to go with the
federal exchange. Others, like Maryland and Massachusetts, fired their
technology contractors and are hoping for better results this time.
It hasn't been cheap.
The original cost of Massachusetts' website was estimated at $174
million. That has jumped to $254 million. When launched, the website,
designed by the same contractor that worked on the troubled
Healthcare.gov, was incompatible with some browsers and was riddled with
error messages and navigational problems. The problems were so bad,
federal officials gave the state three extra months to meet the
requirements of the Affordable Care Act. Gov. Deval Patrick issued a
public apology and health care officials were forced to adopt a series
of manual workarounds, creating a backlog of more than 50,000 paper
applications.
Patrick told the Associated Press that there won't be a repeat of the
disastrous roll-out this time around, saying the state has "been
testing and retesting" the revamped website.
Minnesota's state-run exchange, MNsure, wasn't ready for prime time
when it launched in 2013. Some of the technical glitches that frustrated
consumers remained unresolved by the time the open enrollment period
closed. MNsure officials are promising a better experience this time --
with more call center workers and a website that's 75 percent faster.
But they also acknowledge the system won't be perfect.
California's exchange also was ill-prepared to handle the high volume
of calls, triggering long wait times at help centers and forcing the
state to extend open enrollment for two weeks beyond the original March
31 deadline.
"It swamped us," said Covered California Executive Director Peter
Lee, promising increased website capacity and extra call center staff.
Maryland's website crashed on the day it opened last year. The state
decided there were too many bugs to completely fix Maryland's original
system for the new enrollment period, and the board overseeing the
exchange fired its prime information technology contractor and is
transitioning to a new system with technology used by Connecticut.
The problems at Washington state's health care exchange occurred
after people signed up for insurance. At least 24,000 people who
obtained private insurance couldn't use that coverage when they went to
the doctor because of problems crediting payments and sending those
dollars on to insurance companies. It took about nine months to fix
those problems.
In Vermont, officials announced in August they were scaling back
their relationship with the prime contractor on the state's exchange,
CGI, reducing the company's role from developing and hosting the Vermont
Health Connect site to just hosting it.
Development of the site was switched to another contractor, Optum,
the same health care technology firm retained by Massachusetts to revamp
its website after it also cut ties with CGI.
Other states fared better.
Colorado's exchange experienced minimal disruptions and the state was able to sign up about 148,000 people.
Kentucky also had a successful rollout, signing up more than 421,000
people for health insurance during the first round of open enrollment.
Obama even pointed to Kentucky as an example of the success of his
health care law during his State of the Union address this year.
The states were so successful that when Massachusetts was casting
around for solutions to its website troubles, it looked to Kentucky and
Colorado for what it called "a proven, off-the-shelf solution."
Connecticut was also able to claim bragging rights: After the launch
of its marketplace, Access Health CT, officials there predicted the
state's uninsured rate would drop to from 7.9 percent to 6.5 percent.
Instead it fell to 4 percent.
"We had an office pool going on about what this percentage was going
to look like," said Access Health CT CEO Kevin Counihan. "No one
expected we'd be down to 4 percent."
In Massachusetts, the experience of finding insurance through the website is beginning to turn around for some.
Christopher Doty lost his insurance when he lost his job in marketing
last month. The 32-year-old Boston resident, who has asthma and needs
medicine on a regular basis, said he was quickly able to sign up for
insurance through MassHealth, the state's Medicaid program.
"Losing my job and knowing I needed some kind of health insurance at
first was super-stressful," Doty said. "I basically had coverage within a
couple of days."
On Sunday, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell told
NBC's "Meet the Press" that 100,000 people had submitted new
applications this weekend via the federal website serving 37 states.
That's a big difference from last year, when only a handful of customers
managed to enroll on the first day.
Burwell also said that a half-million people who already have
coverage through the program were able to log into their accounts this
time.
There were reports Saturday that returning customers had problems,
but some of that may have been confusion trying to remember user names
and passwords.
Patrick said one way to avoid future problems is heightened vigilance.
"Outsourcing and privatizing -- this is not the solution." Patrick
said. "The solution is to make sure that there's very close oversight
even when we use an outside vendor."
The Democrat-controlled Senate is expected to take a long-awaited
vote Tuesday on approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline -- in an
unexpected and politically-charged turn of events for legislation that
has languished in the upper chamber for roughly six years.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will allow the vote in part to give
Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu an opportunity to vote “yea”
and perhaps help her win her runoff election next month with Republican
challenger Rep. Bill Cassidy.
However, Landrieu’s political future and the fate of the bill remain highly uncertain.
Most political analysts think Landrieu’s effort to win a fourth term
by trying to show voters in oil-rich Louisiana how much she supports
Keystone is a lost cause, with reports of Washington Democrats pulling
out and polls showing Cassidy ahead by double digits.
South Dakota GOP Sen. John Thune said on “Fox News Sunday” the vote
will be a “cynical attempt to save a Senate seat in Louisiana,"
considering Reid has blocked the vote for years.
President Obama appears to be giving every indication that he will
veto the bill, repeatedly saying the only way the $8 billion pipeline
can be approved is after the completion of a long-stalled State
Department review. There is also the pending outcome of a legal
challenge to the pipeline's route through Nebraska.
And during his recent trip to Australia for an economic summit Obama
said: “I have to constantly push back against this idea that somehow the
Keystone pipeline is either this massive jobs bill for the United
States or is somehow lowering gas prices.”
Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse told “Fox News
Sunday” that he hopes Obama will veto the bill, considering the oil is
“the filthiest fuel on the planet.”
Whitehouse said he thinks the new Senate Republican majority “has
long despised and denigrated this president and if they can roll him I
think they would like to.”
He also argued that Senate Republicans twice passed on voting on a Democrat-sponsored Keystone bill.
The analysts think the 100-member Senate is now one vote shy of the
60 needed for passing Keystone. (They have the 59 votes as 14 Democrats
and all 45 Republicans.)
The GOP-controlled House on Friday passed legislation, sponsored by
Cassidy, to move forward with Keystone, which would carry crude oil from
Canada and several U.S. states to Midwest and Gulf Coast refineries.
However, neither chamber appears to have the two-thirds majority to override a presidential veto.
Completion of the pipeline, supporters say, will create hundreds of
new jobs and help the U.S. become less dependent on foreign oil.
Critics, like Whitehouse, say the oil from Canada is extremely dirty
and unearthing it would result in the release of high amounts of
greenhouse gases. They also say the jobs are temporary.
Environmentalists have framed the issue as a significant test of Obama's commitment to addressing climate change.
The State Department said in a Jan. 31 report that the 1,179-mile
project would not significantly boost carbon emissions because the oil
was likely to find its way to market by other means. It added that
transporting it by rail or truck would cause greater environmental
problems than if the pipeline were built.
The debate in Congress is centered on the pipeline's proposed
northern leg, which would run from Alberta, Canada, through Montana and
South Dakota to Nebraska, where it would connect with existing pipelines
to carry more than 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day.
The Gulf Coast segment of the project began carrying oil earlier this
year from the northern Oklahoma town of Cushing. A study commissioned
by the Consumer Energy Alliance shows the Gulf Coast project, which
began in 2012 and became operational in January, pumped $2.1 billion
into Oklahoma's economy, including more than $1 billion in wages and $72
million in total taxes.
The bill passing the House marked the ninth time the lower chamber
has voted in favor of speeding up the pipeline's construction.
Landrieu pushed the Senate to hold its upcoming vote on the measure.
In a recent call with reporters from Louisiana, where she was
campaigning, Landrieu called herself the "sparkplug" to get the Keystone
bill through Congress.
The House bill is identical to one introduced by Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., and Landrieu in May.
Landrieu has said she doesn’t know Obama's plans but that he “most
certainly understands my position" and that at least 15 other Senate
Democrats “really want to build the Keystone pipeline."
If the bill fails to pass the Senate next week, Hoeven said he would
reintroduce it next year when Republicans will control the chamber.
That would make it one of many showdowns expected with Obama over
energy and environmental policy after Republicans take full control of
Congress in January.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, recently said it was time for
Obama to listen to the American people, especially after Republican
gains in last week's midterm elections, and sign the bill.
"The president doesn't have any more elections to win, and he has no other excuse for standing in the way," Boehner said.
SEATTLE – Washington's health care
exchange shut down after the first few hours of open enrollment Saturday
as state officials and software engineers tried to resolve a problem
with tax credit calculations.
Officials at the exchange said Washington Healthplanfinder, which
opened at 8 a.m., appeared to be working fine at first. When the
exchange's quality control system reported the problem, they decided to
shut the whole system down at about 10:30 a.m. to fix it.
The tax credits were off by just a few dollars in some cases,
exchange CEO Richard Onizuka said. He said the system would remain down
until it can give consumers who want to buy health insurance accurate
information.
On Saturday afternoon, officials estimated the site wouldn't reopen
until Sunday morning, but the actual timing will depend on how soon a
software fix can be tested for potential side-effects.
Exchange officials could not say how many people had signed up for
insurance before the problem was discovered, but spokesman Michael
Marchand said about 2,000 people were using the exchange each hour
during the two hours it was open on Saturday morning.
Officials decided to shut down the exchange -- which was working well
otherwise -- instead of fixing the problem later because they learned
after the previous open enrollment period that even small issues are
difficult to fix after registrations are complete, Marchand said.
"It's really bittersweet," Marchand said. "The site worked so much better than last year."
It was also disappointing because the quality control group did such a
good job catching the problem just by looking at numbers on a
spreadsheet, he added.
"It's a feat that would make auditors jealous," Marchand said.
Katie O'Brien, 21, who stopped by a signup event for the Washington
exchange on her way to work at Southcenter Mall in Tukwila, Washington,
said she was happy to pick up some information since she has a health
condition that requires medication and she recently lost her insurance
when she quit working at Starbucks.
O'Brien said she didn't have time to sign up on Saturday, because she
was almost late for work at Hot Topic, so she wasn't concerned that the
exchange website was down.
O'Brien, who makes less than $400 a month, said she was happy to learn that she may be eligible for nearly free insurance.
"I'm actually pretty uneducated about it," she said of insurance available through the exchange.
Open enrollment for health care insurance continues through Feb. 15,
and officials are hoping as many as 85,000 people sign up in Washington
state this season. They also hope all of the about 145,000 people who
bought insurance during the first open enrollment period, which began
Oct. 1, 2013, will renew for another year.
Those who run the exchange had been hoping their computer system
would handle traffic better than it did last year, when it shutting down
and rejected applications for reasons like a hyphen in a last name.
About a thousand people who bought insurance the first time around are
still having problems getting their payments credited and that money
transferred to their insurance companies.
Gregory Boxly, 62, who has been paying more than $500 a month for
insurance since he retired, said the Healthplanfinder event at
Southcenter Mall reminded him he needed to do more research to find out
if he could get cheaper insurance through the exchange.
He said he was concerned that insurance through the exchange may not
pay for dental or vision care, but he'll check out the choices when the
website is working again. He wasn't concerned about waiting to log on.
"I worked in IT," he said with a smile, adding that computer problems are inevitable.
People who do not buy insurance will have to pay a fine when they
file their income taxes. Those fines start at $95 or 1 percent of 2014
household income, but the minimum fine in 2015 will be $325 per
uninsured person or 2 percent of household income.
Consumers will find more choices this time around, with more
insurance plans and more companies on the state's exchange. Rates have
gone up slightly overall but some people will find cheaper insurance.
The Islamic State terror group has claimed to have beheaded American
hostage Peter Kassig, an aid worker and former Army Ranger, in a graphic
new video.
In the nearly 16-minute video uploaded to social networks on Sunday, a
black-clad militant with his face concealed stands before a severed
head that he claims is that of the U.S. aid worker.
The authenticity of the footage has not been verified. National
Security Council spokesperson Bernadette Meehan said in a statement that
intelligence officials were "working as quickly as possible to
determine its authenticity.
"If confirmed, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent
American aid worker and we express our deepest condolences to his family
and friends," Meehan said. The video was posted shortly after President
Obama departed for Washington from the G-20 summit in Australia.
Ed and Paula Kassig, Ed's parents, released a statement early Sunday
saying they were aware of the reports of their son's death and were
awaiting confirmation of their authenticity. They also asked that media
outlets not post any images or video distributed by Islamic State,
better known as ISIS.
"We prefer our son is written about and remembered for his important
work and the love he shared with friends and family," the statement
read, "not in the manner the hostage takers would use to manipulate
Americans and further their cause."
The video also showed what appeared to be the mass beheading of more
than a dozen captured Syrian soldiers, but did not show the beheading of
the person identified as Kassig. Showing the execution of the soldiers
is a departure from previous videos, which did not depict the act of
beheading. The soldiers' executioners are not wearing masks in the video
and warn they will carry out similar actions outside the region.
The new video is longer than its predecessors and shows multiple
hostages executions as opposed to concentrating on a single hostage's
death. It also attempts to tie ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to
Usama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of Al Qaeda in
Iraq, from which Islamic State claims descent.
Sky News reported that the man featured in the video spoke in English
with a British accent. The Associated Press reported that his voice had
been distorted to make him harder to identify. It was not immediately
clear whether he was the same militant who has appeared in other
beheading videos and has been referred to as "Jihadi John" in accounts
given by former hostages of their captivity.
The video identifies the militant's location as Dabiq, a small town
in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo, near the Turkish border. The
urban setting is another departure from previous beheading videos, which
were filmed in the remote desert of northeastern Syria.
Kassig would be the fifth Western hostage killed by ISIS, in less
than three months, and the third American. Previous Western beheading
victims were American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as
well as Britons David Haines, a former Royal Air Force engineer, and
Alan Henning, a taxi driver from northwest England. The group is also
holding British photojournalist John Cantlie, who has appeared in
several other videos released by the group functioning as a de facto
spokesman.
It is not clear when the video was filmed. Last month, a Twitter
account linked to ISIS posted a message warning that Kassig had only
days to live. Sources in the intelligence community told Fox News that
the message was being tracked.
ISIS has beheaded and shot dead hundreds of captives -- mainly Syrian
and Iraqi soldiers -- during its sweep across the two countries, and
has celebrated mass killings in a series of slickly produced but
extremely graphic videos. The group has declared an Islamic caliphate in
the areas under its control in Syria and Iraq, which it governs
according to a harsh version of Shariah law. The U.S. began launching
air strikes in Iraq and Syria earlier this year in a bid to halt the
group's rapid advance and eventually degrade and destroy it.
A video released last month appeared to show Kassig, of Indianapolis,
kneeling as a masked militant says he will be killed next, after
Henning's purported beheading. Kassig had been held in Syria since
October 2013.
Kassig formed the aid organization Special Emergency Response and
Assistance, or SERA, in Turkey to provide aid and assistance to Syrian
refugees. He began delivering food and medical supplies to Syrian
refugee camps in 2012 and is also a trained medical assistant who
provided trauma care to injured Syrian civilians and helped train 150
civilians in providing medical aid.
After he appeared in the video, Kassig's parents released a public
plea for their son's release, which included claims that Kassig had
converted to Islam while in captivity and taken the name Abdul Rahman.
The release of the video comes approximately a week after Syrian
friends of Kassig called for his release, also saying that he had
converted to Islam and was trying to help those afflicted by the
country's three-year-old civil war.
One of the friends, Amjad al-Moghrabi, told reporters in the northern
Lebanon city of Tripoli: "We are demanding the Islamic State to release
him, if they know Islam. He is a Muslim and has not participated in
what his country is doing", a reference to the airstrikes
Dr. Ahmad Obeid, a friend of Kassig said "our demand is to release
him and to return to his family because as a person he helped us and we
should ask for mercy for him."
"He is unfortunately detained so we are calling for his freedom
because he supported our cause and we cannot leave him and let them hurt
him," Obeid said.
Rep. Darrell Issa wants Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to
turn over by Monday evening a readable copy of a report detailing Secret
Service missteps during a Sept. 19 White House security breach.
Among
the problems revealed in the report is that a White House security
tactical unit had never before entered the White House and were not
trained to navigate the interior of the mansion.
The Ohio
Republican congressman, who chairs the House Oversight and Government
Reform Committee, set a Monday deadline for Johnson to turn over the
report, which details how a mentally unstable man was able to scale a
White House fence and enter far inside the mansion.
Lawmakers have
been able to view the report, but parts have been blacked out and they
were not allowed to keep a copy for further review.
