The first female Episcopal bishop in Maryland has been implicated in a hit-and-run accident that killed a father of two.
Baltimore Police say that officers were called to the “5700 block of Roland Avenue” for a reported car accident Saturday December 27, 2014 around 2:37 p.m.
The police found Thomas Palermo, 41, injured but still alive. He died after bring rushed to Sinai Hospital. Palermo was riding his bicycle with other enthusiasts at the time of the accident. Those cyclists followed the vehicle that struck Palermo and fled the scene until they stopped 58-year-old Bishop Heather Cook.
Diocesan Bishop Eugene Sutton e-mailed members of the clergy to say that Cook then went back to the scene to accept her responsibility in the accident.
“Together with the Diocese of Maryland, I express my deep sorrow over the death of the cyclist and offer my condolences to the victim’s family,” said Bishop Sutton.”Please pray for Mr Palermo, his family and Bishop Cook during this most difficult time.”
Cyclists in the region have been outraged that no charges have yet been filed against Cook. Over 1,700 people have joined a Facebook page campaign calling for police to charge Cook with homicide.
A British group that has been monitoring the violence connected to the Syrian civil war says they have proof the terrorists leading ISIS ordered almost 1,900 executions during a six-month period that ended December 27th.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that since the group declared their “caliphate” in Syria the terror group has killed at least 1,175 people in summary executions.
The group admits that the number could be much higher because they have reports of thousands missing including over 1,000 men from a single tribe.
The data includes deaths in the provinces of Deir Ezzor, al- Raqqa, al- Hasakah, Aleppo, Homs and Hama.
U.S. officials say the continued airstrikes against ISIS have weakened the group and has demoralized the group’s forces. The terrorists recently lost a town in the northern part of Iraq to fighters from the Kurds.
Health officials fighting the outbreak of Ebola in Liberia have confirmed that a new wave of the virus has broken out near the Sierra Leone border.
Authorities say that dozens of new cases have been rushing into health centers and marks a huge setback to the nation, which had thought they were bringing the viral outbreak under control.
Assistant Health minister Tolbert Nyenswah said that the new cases could be connected to people traveling across the Sierra Leone border and returning home. Sierra Leone has passed Liberia for the total number of Ebola cases.
Liberia has reported close to 3,400 deaths from Ebola and over 8,000 cases. The World Health Organization says that Sierra Leone has now passed Liberia with 9,000 cases of the deadly virus.
Liberian officials did not say if they would take steps to block border crossings.
The Pakistan government has announced plans to execute 500 convicted terrorists in response to the Taliban’s killing of 133 children and 15 teachers at an Army Public School in Peshawar.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had announced last week the government was lifting a moratorium on the death penalty in terrorism related cases. Reports say that at least six terrorists have already been hung.
“Interior ministry has finalized the cases of 500 convicts who have exhausted all the appeals, their mercy petitions have been turned down by the president and their executions will take place in coming weeks,” an unnamed source told AFP news agency.
Pakistan officials said the attack on the school was their own country’s 9/11.
The United Nations has spoken out against Pakistan ending the moratorium on the death penalty for convicted terrorists.
The terrorists were unrepentant, releasing a video saying they will continue to kill children if any of the terrorists children are killed by military action against them.
An 18-year-old black teenager who pulled a gun on police officers was shot and killed in the St. Louis area. Protesters descended on the scene immediately after the shooting and proceeded to clash with police.
St. Louis County PD said that a police officer conducting a routine check on a Mobil gas station at 11:15 p.m. saw two men outside the store and approached them. Antonio Martin pulled a gun on the officer and was shot by the officer.
The protesters that stormed the scene attacked police officers, threw some kind of explosive device at the police and also tried to burn down a QuikTrip store. Four people were arrested in the assault on the officers.
Police say Martin had a criminal record that included three assaults, armed robbery, armed criminal action and multiple weapons violations.
The family of Antonio Martin is claiming that he wasn’t with another man but with his girlfriend and that he didn’t have a gun despite the evidence that shows otherwise. A 9 mm handgun with the serial number filed off was found next to the body of Martin. A video of the incident showed Martin pointing the gun at the officer.
“When he was around me, he knew to do right,” Margret Chandler, Martin’s grandmother, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Why would he pull out a gun against the police? That’s the thing I don’t get. It just doesn’t add up.”
The Pentagon has announced that three major ISIS leaders have been killed in the last few weeks and that the airstrikes are having a “significant impact” on the terrorist organization.
General Martin Dempsey granted an interview to the Wall Street Journal where he said the highest ranked terroristed taken out in the airstrikes is Haji Mutazz, deputy to ISIS commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“We believe that the loss of these key leaders degrades ISIL’s ability to command and control current operations against Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), including Kurdish and other local forces in Iraq,” Kirby told the Journal.
“While we do not discuss the intelligence and targeting details of our operations, it is important to note that leadership, command and control nodes, facilities, and equipment are always part of our targeting calculus.”
General Dempsey said that the U.S. is not attacking the group as if it was a nation despite their attempts to claim they are a new country.
“It is in the context of how to fight a network,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman added. “It is not a country. They have claimed it, but they are not. They are a network, so they have finances, they have logistics and they have leaders.”
Government officials in Sierra Leone announced the country’s leading doctor died from Ebola Thursday just hours after the arrival of experimental drugs to treat him.
Dr. Victor Willoughby contracted the virus after working on a patient that came in complaining of pain in his organs. The patient, a senior banker in the nation, was later confirmed to have had Ebola after his death.
Sierra Leone Chief Medical Officer Brima Kargbo said that the experimental drug ZMapp was flown into the country in a frozen form but had not thawed when Dr. Willoughby’s health declined to the point of death.
His death makes the 11th doctor in Sierra Leone to die from Ebola during the massive outbreak out of 12 infected. In addition to the doctors, 109 of 142 health care workers infected with the virus have died.
“We’ve lost personal friends and colleagues we’ve worked with. It’s extremely depressing and frustrating. You can talk to someone today and tomorrow they are Ebola-infected,” Dr M’Baimba Baryoh said. “The tension, the depression, it’s a lot of pressure. You start having nightmares because of Ebola.”
The epidemic’s official death toll continues to rise toward a gruesome new mark, closing in on 7,000 total deaths. Officials admit that the death toll is likely much higher than the official count as many families in rural areas have buried victims without seeking government assistance.
The Pakistani Supreme Court has ordered the arrest of two Muslim clerics that they say incited a mob to kill two Christians last month after they made false accusations of the couple desecrating the Koran.
In addition to the clerics, five police officials who failed to take action to protect the couple have also been arrested for their lack of action.
“Why they did not make an attempt to secure the couple as they could disperse the mob through aerial firing?” Chief Justice Nasirul Mulk asked. “It is because of the police’s negligence that the tragic incident occurred.”
In the incident last month, 28-year-old Shama Bibi and her husband Shahzah Masih, 32, were burnt in a kiln by a Muslim mob. The mob had been informed at a mosque that the couple has been found guilty of blasphemy against Islam.
It turned out that the Bibi had burned items that her late father-in-law used to perform black magic and his family was so upset they told the clerics she had burned a Koran to get the Muslims to kill her.
The police report that over 100 people have been arrested on at least one charge connected to the unlawful killing of the couple.
Iraq’s Ministry of Human Rights says that Islamic terrorist group ISIS killed over 150 women who refused to either marry a terrorist or allow themselves to be used as sex slaves.
“At least 150 females, including pregnant women, were executed in Fallujah by a militant named Abu Anas Al-Libi after they refused to accept jihad marriage,” said the Ministry. “Many families were also forced to migrate from the province’s northern town of Al-Wafa after hundreds of residents received death threats.”
The women were dumped into a mass grave and their children left in the desert.
The MHR says that ISIS has been found to be running brothels despite the fact this goes against their conservative brand of Islam would reject allowing that kind of behavior to take place. ISIS has claimed that because they use Yazidi and Christian women in the brothels it’s not a violation of their faith.
A video released to Iraqi officials showed a Yazidi woman in a brothel begging Western forces to bomb the brothel to end her suffering.
In a rare break among Islamic terrorist groups and countries that support them, the Pakistani Taliban has been roundly denounced for their attack on a school that left 132 children dead.
The Pakistani Taliban has been attempting to justify their attack by saying that the assault was revenge against the army for an offensive against the terrorist organization. The terrorists said their families had suffered losses, so it was right to kill the children of army members.
The spokesman for the Afghanistan branch of the Taliban condemned the attack as being against the basics of Islam.
“The intentional killing of innocent people, children and women is against the basics of Islam and this criteria has to be considered by every Islamic party and government,” Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement, according to Reuters.
The Iranian government also released a statement strongly condemning the terrorist action.
“This is a totally un-Islamic and inhumane act. Terrorism, extremism and endangering the lives of innocent people, in any form and with any objective, is condemned,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham told reporters.
Pakistan’s prime minister Nawaz Sharif says the government had tried to negotiate with the terror group but the talks broke down, leading to a military offensive against the group.
