More than 30 people believed dead at Japanese volcano

The bodies of more than 30 people believed to be dead have reportedly been discovered near the summit of an erupting volcano in central Japan. 
A police official from Nagano prefecture told the Associated Press that the victims were not breathing and their hearts had stopped, which is the the customary way for Japanese authorities to describe a body until police doctors can examine it. The official added that the exact location where the bodies were found and the identities of the victims were not immediately known. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.
Nagano prefecture posted on its website that about 30 people had "heart and lung failure."  Keita Ushimaru, an official in nearby Kiso town, said that Nagano crisis management officials had informed local authorities that at least four people with heart and lung failure were being brought down to the town, and that there were others in the same condition. The journey was expected to take about three hours.
Mount Ontake in central Japan erupted shortly before noon local time Saturday, spewing large white plumes of gas and ash high into the sky and blanketing the surrounding area in ash. About 250 people were initially trapped on the slopes, but most made their way down by Saturday night.
Volcanic eruptions without warning are rare in Japan, which monitors seismic activity closely. Typically, any volcanic mountains that show signs of activity are closed to hikers, but that did not appear to have happened this time. The BBC reported that Mount Ontake is a popular place to view autumn foliage. 
Earlier Sunday, military helicopters had plucked seven people from the mountainside Sunday. Japan's Fire and Disaster Management Agency said that 45 people had been reported missing and at least 34 climbers had been injured. The tally was lower than reported by local officials earlier, but the disaster agency warned that the numbers could still change.
Japanese television footage showed a soldier descending from a helicopter to an ash-covered slope, helping latch on a man and then the two of them being pulled up.
Defense Ministry official Toshihiko Muraki said that all seven people rescued Sunday were conscious and could walk, though he did not have specific details of their conditions. 
The Self-Defense Force, as Japan's military is called, has deployed seven helicopters and 250 troops. Police and fire departments are also taking part in the rescue effort.
An estimated 40 people were stranded at mountain lodges overnight, many injured and unable or unwilling to risk descending the 10,062-foot mountain on their own. Rescue workers are also trying to reach the area on foot.
A large plume, a mixture of white and gray, continued to rise from the ash-covered summit of the volcano Sunday morning, visible from the nearby village of Otaki. A convoy of red fire trucks, sirens blaring, and rescue workers on foot headed past barriers into the restricted zone around the mountain.
Shinichi Shimohara, who works at a shrine at the foot of the mountain, said he was on his way up Saturday morning when he heard a loud noise that sounded like strong winds followed by "thunder" as the volcano erupted.
"For a while I heard thunder pounding a number of times," he said. "Soon after, some climbers started descending. They were all covered with ash, completely white. I thought to myself, this must be really serious."
Mount Ontake, about 130 miles west of Tokyo, sits on the border of Nagano and Gifu prefectures, on the main Japanese island of Honshu. The volcano's last major eruption was in 1979.

Krauthammer on how Obama is downplaying radical Islam

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Ted Cruz: 'We need a president who will speak out for people of faith'

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told an audience of Christian conservatives Friday that it is time for “a president who will speak out for people of faith.”
Speaking to the annual Values Voter Summit, the possible 2016 Republican presidential candidate referenced the situations of imprisoned Christians in Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and Mexico.
“Oh the vacuum of American leadership we see in the world,” Cruz said. “We need a president who will speak out for people of faith, prisoners of conscience.”
He also told a story about how his father became a Christian.
“You know, when I was a young child, my parents were living up in Calgary,” Cruz began. “They were in the oil business. And neither of my parents were people of faith at the time. Neither of them had a relationship with Christ. Both of my parents drank far too much. Both of them had serious problems with alcohol.”
“And when I was three years old, my father decided he didn’t want to be married anymore,” he continued. “And he didn’t want a three year old son. So he got on a plane and left Calgary and flew back to Texas to Houston. And he left us. Now, when he was in Houston, a colleague in the oil and gas business invited my father to come with him to Clay Road Baptist church.”
“And my father accepted that invitation,” Cruz said, “he went to Clay Road Baptist church and he gave his life to Jesus. And he went and bought an airplane ticket. And flew back to Calgary to rejoin my mother and to rejoin his son.”
Cruz said: “So when anyone asks is faith real, is a relationship with Jesus real, I can tell you, if it were not for my father giving his life to Christ, I would have been raised by a single mother without having my dad in the home.”
Cruz reminded the conservative audience that it had been a year since his Obamacare filibuster, an act that helped make him a favorite of the conservative base across the country.
“One year ago this week, I stood on the Senate floor and said I intend to stand until I can stand no longer,” Cruz said to applause.
The senator also joked about the recent fence jumpers who have breached security at the White House.
“You know, we should actually hold the media to account,” Cruz said. “Because I will say, in their reporting on this person who broke into the White House, they really have not used the politically correct term. And we should insist that ABC, NBC, and CBS refer to the visitor, according to the term that is politically correct: an undocumented White House visitor.”

California city council candidate receives death threats over Mexican flag flap

A Southern California city council candidate was fired from her day job and is receiving death threats after she posted a video in which she told a woman that it was “very disrespectful” to have a Mexican flag on her front lawn.
Tressy Capps, a political activist from California’s Inland Empire, filmed a video on her smartphone of her approaching a homeowner about the Mexican flag fluttering in front of her home. She asked the woman to take it down.
“Hi. Is that a Mexican flag in your front yard?” Capps asks the homeowner, who is inside her home. “You know we live in America right? This is the United States. So, why are you flying a Mexican flag in your front yard?”
Capps goes on to say the she finds the Mexican flag “disrespectful.”           
Capps, who is running for a local city council spot in Fontana, Calif., posted the video online – and it quickly went viral.
When her former employer Coldwell Banker got wind of the video, the banking giant promptly let Capps go from her position with the company.
"We do not tolerate discrimination of any kind," David Siroty of Coldwell Banker Real Estate said in a statement. "We hold our affiliated companies to high ethical standards. Each of our franchised companies is independently owned and operated and we fully support the local owner's decision to disassociate this independent agent from the brokerage firm and, by extension, our franchise system."
Capps, in her video, also suggests that the family could face fines and legal problems for flying the Mexican flag, but the Ontario, California City Attorney John Brown disputed that claim.
"The City of Ontario takes great pride in being one of the most ethnically and racially diverse cities in Southern California,” Brown said. “Those expressions of ethnic and racial diversity take many forms throughout our City, and the City has always taken the position that such speech is absolutely protected by the both the United States and California Constitutions."
In an interview with Fox News, Capps said she can’t believe one video she posted is causing such outrage.
“My family is being threatened, I’m being threatened. We may have to move. I don’t know – I’m really scared,” she said.
Capps, who said it was not a campaign stunt, has since said she regrets uploading the video onto YouTube and said it was in bad judgment. 
The homeowner with the Mexican flag on her lawn, Maria Banuelos, told a local Spanish-language news network that she didn’t think that the flag, which she says she has flown for 13 years, was bothering anyone. Her husband, Siefrado, told Fox News that while Capps has since apologized, the family does not believe she is being sincere.
“We don’t feel like she’s saying it from the heart. She’s just saying it from the mouth,” he said.  
In a Facebook post, Capps said she should not live in fear because of speaking her mind.
 “[T]aking a position on an issue does not make me evil, racist or unethical if I disagree with your position,” she said. “My life is being threatened and the business I built for 30 years has suffered over a flag video. My son is being bullied at school now and for that I am devastated.”
Capps said all she was trying to do was “to educate with my video about flag etiquette.” Clearly, she said, “I did a very poor job communicating that.”
“If you want to fly another country’s flag you do it in the proper way. The American flag flies on top; it has a place of prominence and then the other country’s flag is underneath,” she said. “It’s just flag etiquette.”

US launching complex operation to train, arm Syrian rebels amid airstrikes

Bailey : Will this end up being another screw up like ATF's Fast and Furious? http://www.latimes.com/nation/atf-fast-furious-sg-storygallery.html

WASHINGTON –  Newly launched airstrikes in Syria are only one piece of the puzzle in the war against the Islamic State, as the U.S. military prepares to launch a complex operation to train and arm Syrian rebels. 
Just how that operation, formally approved by Congress last week, will play out is largely an open question. But based on past operations including those the U.S. already is running, analysts say allies in the region would likely help in getting military aid to rebels -- whom the U.S. hopes will one day fight as a cohesive unit to rout the Islamic State in their Syria headquarters, aided by airstrikes. 
On Friday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the U.S. is now "setting up the vetting system" to determine which opposition fighters will get U.S. training. Hagel, while unable to say who the head of that opposition is, said that process would include "regional partners" as well as the State Department and intelligence agencies. 
Lt. Gen. William Mayville, head of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said earlier this week that the mission is in the "beginnings of implementation" and described it as "a multi-year program." 
This is not the United States' first foray into the region. 
In the year leading up to Monday’s airstrikes, the CIA had set up camps in Jordan with the purpose of turning Syrian rebels into competent foot soldiers. 
"It is my understanding most of the lethal aid that has been provided by the U.S. has been through the clandestine channel – the CIA," Jeffrey White, a defense fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told FoxNews.com. 
While the Pentagon said it could not comment further for this story, White speculated that there likely is a "third party being used to actually deliver" weapons to the Syrian fighters. 
He said the U.S. probably is getting help from Syria’s regional neighbors Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. It remains unclear what role they might play in the new train-and-equip mission. Reuters reports that Saudi Arabia is among the countries that has offered to host a training facility. 
To date, the U.S. mostly has been sending humanitarian aid into Syria. For that, there is a clear route. 
A July vote from the 15-member U.N. Security Council opened up four routes from Iraq, Turkey and Jordan into Syria. The resolution, though, also approved a monitoring arm that would make sure only humanitarian supplies – like food and medical equipment – would be allowed in the country, effectively closing the path for governments to use those routes for military supplies. 
Earlier this month, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the U.S. government is providing an additional $500 million in humanitarian assistance to Syria. The funds bring the total U.S. humanitarian figure to more than $2.9 billion. According to the latest numbers from the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, there are currently 10.8 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in Syria. Of those, 5.5 million are children. USAID is a federal government agency responsible for administering civilian foreign aid.
With the U.S. maintaining no ground forces in Syria, the route for military supplies may be more complicated. 
Still, Syrian opposition fighters have found a way to arm themselves over the course of the three-year civil war. "There’s no question that the rebels are getting weapons," White said, adding it’s nearly impossible to know the exact kind of weapons being fast-tracked to Syria in the wake of the U.S.-led airstrikes.
Sources tell FoxNews.com that U.S.-made weapons were used by rebels during a "test run" earlier this year. In April, a video uploaded by Harakat Hazm, a Syrian splinter with an estimated 7,000 members, showed its fighters using U.S.-made Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided antitank missiles, commonly called TOW missiles.
The use of BGM-71 TOWs, which are capable of cutting through heavy armor, marked the first time U.S.-made anti-tank missiles had appeared in rebel hands. The TOWs were introduced during a time when Syrian forces, using Russian-supplied weapons and ammunition, were quickly gaining ground on the rebels.
In the past, the United States had sold TOW missiles to Turkey. In December, the Pentagon approved the sale of 15,000 TOWs to Saudi Arabia. Though it's unclear how exactly the missiles got to the rebels, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are both U.S. allies and have helped rebel fighters in the past. 
TOWs are used in 40 armies globally and are the “preferred heavy assault anti-armor weapon system for NATO, coalition, United Nations and peacekeeping operations worldwide,” according to Raytheon, the company that makes TOWs. Current versions of the missiles can penetrate more than 30 inches of armor. The missiles can be fired using a tripod or from vehicles and helicopters. 
Going forward, military experts say rocket-propelled grenades and other communication equipment are also on the list of items the United States wants to send to Syrian opposition.  
But arming rebels is only part of the multi-layered solution, they tell FoxNews.com.
Training local fighters may be the toughest battle yet – and several military experts FoxNews.com spoke to say there is no easy path to a post-Assad Syria.
“After three years of inaction, anything the United States does will be in a difficult environment,” Foreign Policy Initiative Executive Director Christopher Griffin told FoxNews.com. “We need to train the trainers. We don’t want to subcontract this to others.”
Just how long will the training take?
By the Pentagon’s own schedule, it could take up to five months to identify trustworthy rebels and then up to a year to train them into an organized militia. Defense officials say they can train 3,000 rebels per year once the program become operational. 
Amid concerns that the ambitious operation could simply take too long -- with ISIS continuing to threaten the entire region -- White claimed that training smaller groups could be done in weeks.
“To produce a basic soldier, it would probably take weeks or a few months depending on how good we want them to be,” White told FoxNews.com. 
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate hearing that about two-thirds of ISIS’s personnel – which the CIA has estimated to be between 20,000-31,500 – are in Syria.

FBI probing suspect's recent conversion to Islam in Oklahoma beheading

FBI officials are investigating a beheading at an Oklahoma food distribution center after co-workers said the suspect tried to convert them to Islam after his recent conversion.
The alleged suspect, Alton Nolen, 30, was recently fired from Vaughan Foods in Moore prior to Thursday’s attack. Moore Police Department Sgt. Jeremy Lewis told KFOR that Nolen drove to the front of the business and struck a vehicle before walking inside. He then attacked Colleen Hufford, 54, stabbing her several times before severing her head. He also stabbed another woman, 43-year-old Traci Johnson, at the plant.
Lewis said Mark Vaughan, the company’s chief operating officer and a reserve county deputy, shot Nolen as he was stabbing Johnson, who remains hospitalized in stable condition Friday.
“He’s a hero in this situation,” Lewis told the station. “It could have gotten a lot worse.”
Nolen was apparently attacking employees at random, authorities said. The motive for the attack is unclear, but FBI officials confirmed to Fox News that they were assisting the Moore Police Department in investigating Nolen's background and whether his recent conversion to Islam was somehow linked to the crime.
The police department issued a statement saying, "After conducting interviews with Nolen's co-workers, information was obtained that he recently started trying to convert several employees to the Muslim religion. Due to the manner of death and the initial statements of co-workers and other initial information, the Moore Police Department requested the assistance of the FBI in conducting a background investigation on Nolan."
Nolen, according to state corrections records, was convicted in January 2011 of multiple felony drug offenses, assault and battery on a police officer and escape from detention. He was released from prison in March 2013.
Saad Mohammad, a spokesman for the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City, told NewsOK.com that leaders of the society’s mosque are taking security precautions to protect Muslims who gather there from any potential retaliatory violence.

Mohammad said anti-Muslim sentiments local residents may have could be heightened due to the beheadings and violence overseas by Islamic State militants.

“They have this ISIS thing on their minds and now this guy has brought it to America,” Mohammad told the website.

Lewis said he does not yet know what charges will be filed against Nolen, adding that police are waiting until he's conscious to arrest him. Authorities said he had no prior connection to either woman.
Moore Police Department officials have released 911 calls from the incident, OKCFox.com reports. During the recording, a caller tells an operator that a person is attacking someone in the building. Several gunshots can be heard in the background at the end of the call. 
A Vaughan spokeswoman said the company was "shocked and deeply saddened" by the attack.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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