Here is a news article: What are you doing, Ariel Winter?

 The 19-year-old "Modern Family" star is known for posting scantily clad photos on Instagram and Snapchat and genuinely not giving a crap about what anyone thinks.

 Instagram

 I don't know about you, but I love Ariel Winter for this. Her zero-fucks-given attitude is refreshing, inspiring and empowering.

 However, what's not refreshing, inspiring and empowering is the cringeworthy baby voice Ariel Winder made when she joined the "Conan" show Thursday night.

 Honestly, I'm not sure how to describe this horrifying sound, so just take a listen for yourself.

 Team Coco on YouTube

 See? I wasn't lying.

 In the video above, you can hear Ariel Winter tell Conan her baby voice creeps out her boyfriend and her friends, and, uh, it's not hard to see why.

 Honestly, I don't know if I'll ever be the same after hearing that voice. I think I need to take five shots of whiskey right now and forget this ever happened.

 Think of the worst sound you've ever heard. Got it?

 Well, I'm certain the sounds cats make while dying in an alley isn't as bad as Ariel Winter's baby voice.

 I love you, girl, but I have to keep it real.

 Let's get back to talking about the 19-year-old "Modern Family" star's presence on social media, where she is an absolute queen.

 In an interview with Elite Daily, Ariel Winter spoke about the photos she posts on Instagram and how she couldn't care less what trolls and haters have to say.

 She said,

 If I can't win, I'm going to work on a relationship with myself, which I also think is the most important thing we can teach young women and men today. And for me, now I post a photo and I don't care. If you're going to write something on it, whatever… If somebody doesn't like what I'm doing, you can unfollow me.

 Boy bye!

 Citations: Ariel Winter's Baby Voice Is Very Disturbing, I'll Never Look At Her The Same (Bro Bible) ||||| Tweet with a location

 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Ariel Winter claps back at those who hated on her gold minidress

 CLOSE Ariel Winter is tired of being told what to wear. USA TODAY

 Ariel Winter has got it and she isn't afraid to flaunt it. She also isn't afraid to call out her haters.

 The Modern Family actress attended an event for the ABC series Wednesday night, embracing the cold-shoulder trend in a gilded, embellished minidress. Mesh panels showed off her cleavage as well as the tops of her thighs. She paired the look with fire engine red nail polish and matching gold pumps.

 *Insert fire emojis here.* (Photo: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

 And, yes, compared to her co-stars she was dressed the snazziest. Most of the men opted for casual slacks or jeans and neither of her female counterparts pictured opted for cocktail attire. But we're still at a loss in trying to find what gave people the right to make some of the remarks tweeted in response to a cast photo. Though in all honesty, we didn't search too hard.

 (Left to right) Nolan Gould, Steven Levitan, Ariel Winter, Eric Stonestreet, Julie Bowen, Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Ty Burrell attend the 'Modern Family' ATAS event at Saban Media Center on May 3, 2017 in North Hollywood. (Photo: Jason LaVeris, FilmMagic)

 Some commenters implied she was overdressed. But some tweets were incredibly offensive. "Ariel is def trying too hard to look slutty," one user wrote. "That girl @arielwinter1 oozes insecurity and is 2 minutes away from being like or worse than Lindsay Lohan. Sad," another tweeted.

 Winter chose to clapback on Instagram Thursday evening, telling haters to mind their business.

 "Why TF does anyone care that I didn’t dress casual like everyone else for the panel?" she asked in the shared screenshot, captioned with just an emoji. "Why do I have to be like everyone else? Why can’t people just let other people feel good about themselves and do what they want?"

 😘 A post shared by ARIEL WINTER (@arielwinter) on May 4, 2017 at 5:57pm PDT

 "WEAR WHATEVER YOU WANT PEOPLE!" she exclaimed. "As long as you feel good about yourself that’s what matters. I know I did. Don’t ever let anyone stifle who you are and how you express yourself. Rant over :)"

 Preach!

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 Yes ||||| Ariel Winter has issued a statement defending the dress that she wore to Wednesday night’s Modern Family screening.

 The 19-year-old actress took to social media on Thursday evening to release a fiery response to critics who questioned her wearing a full-on glam dress to the event.

 “Why TF does anyone care that I didn’t dress casual like everyone else for the panel? Why do I have to be like everyone else?” she wrote in an Instagram post.

 “Why can’t people just let other people feel good about themselves and do what they want?” Ariel continued. “WEAR WHATEVER YOU WANT PEOPLE!”

 She concluded the statement: “As long as you feel good about yourself that’s what matters. I know I did. Don’t ever let anyone stifle who you are and how your express yourself. Rant over :)”

 Ariel attended a screening of Modern Family‘s season eight finale at the Wolf Theatre in Pasadena, California, on Wednesday along with the rest of her cast mates.

 But unlike her fellow costars, she decided to opt for a full-on glam outfit. For the occasion, the sitcom star chose a mini dress with a high neckline that balanced out the dress’s deep, plunging, inner-boob baring mesh cutout, cold-shoulder silhouette, and the two additional mesh inserts over both thighs, leaving a square loincloth-esque swath of fabric in-between.

 FROM COINAGE: The Most Expensive TV Shows of All Time

 The gilded dress also featured an ornately beaded pattern all over which she complimented with metallic gold stilettos, waist-length Cher hair and a natural, glowy beauty look.

 While the men on the show, including Ty Burrell, Nolan Gould, Eric Stonestreet, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, all chose a variation of a straightforward khaki and button-down combo, costar Julie Bowen went for a simple green camisole while Sofia Vergara wore a navy calf-length sheath with white lace appliqués down the center and sides of the skirt.

 “Mi Familia Moderna😍😍😍 #academypanel,” Vergara captioned a photo of the group, which she shared to Instagram. |||||
A summary of this is?

– Modern Family star Ariel Winter has words for those who criticized the gold minidress she wore to an event for the show Wednesday night, People reports. Photos from the screening of the season eight finale showed that Winter's outfit stood out among the clothes worn by the other cast members who attended (Julie Bowen, for example, wore black slacks with a simple top, while Ty Burrell showed up in jeans). USA Today describes Winter's outfit like so: "Mesh panels showed off her cleavage as well as the tops of her thighs." But some of the commentary on Winter's outfit went beyond simply calling the teen overdressed, with some going so far as to say she looked "slutty." On Thursday night, Winter responded on Instagram. "Why TF does anyone care that I didn't dress casual like everyone else for the panel? Why do I have to be like everyone else? Why can’t people just let other people feel good about themselves and do what they want?" the 19-year-old wrote. "WEAR WHATEVER YOU WANT PEOPLE! As long as you feel good about yourself that’s what matters. I know I did. Don’t ever let anyone stifle who you are and how you express yourself. Rant over." (Winter says her "baby voice" makes her boyfriend uncomfortable.)


Article:

Pennsylvania's public employee pension system said Wednesday it will revoke Jerry Sandusky's $59,000 annual pension in the wake of his conviction and sentence in the child sexual abuse scandal.

 Former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky is driven from the Centre County Courthouse after being sentenced in Bellefonte, Pa., Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2012. Sandusky was sentenced... (Associated Press)

 Former Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, center, is taken from the Centre County Courthouse by Centre County Sheriff Denny Nau, left, and a deputy, after being sentenced in... (Associated Press)

 The State Employees' Retirement System notified Sandusky by letter that his crimes triggered forfeiture of his pension. The former Penn State assistant football coach was sentenced Tuesday to at least 30 years in prison for molesting 10 boys.

 The retirement system told Sandusky he will no longer receive his $4,908 monthly annuity and informed his wife, Dottie, she is no longer entitled to a survivor's benefit.

 Sandusky's lawyer, Karl Rominger, contended the agency has no legal grounds for revoking the pension and said Sandusky will fight any attempt to do so.

 "It's my inclination to believe that they are just going through the motions to try to throw some red meat to the public, but they know they are going to lose," Rominger said.

 Pennsylvania's pension forfeiture law, originally passed in 1978, primarily applies to public employees convicted of a financial crime related to the office "or when his public employment places him in a position to commit the crime."

 Since 2004, it has also applied to any public school employee convicted of a sex crime against a student.

 In its letter to Sandusky, the retirement system said it had determined that two of the criminal charges of which Sandusky was convicted _ involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and indecent assault _ fell under the forfeiture law.

 It also said Sandusky maintained extensive ties to Penn State after his 1999 retirement, qualifying him as a "de facto" employee subject to forfeiture for crimes committed even when he was no longer on the university's payroll.

 SERS' letter to Sandusky was released to The Associated Press in response to an open-records request.

 Rominger argued in part that since Sandusky wasn't convicted of molesting a Penn State student, the forfeiture law does not apply to him. Sandusky's young victims came to him through The Second Mile, his charity for troubled youth.

 "It did not involve students where he worked, and that's going to be the crux," Rominger said.

 But Philadelphia attorney Alaine Williams, an expert on public employee labor law, said courts have broadly construed the forfeiture law.

 "I think he's got a very serious problem," she said ahead of the retirement system's announcement.

 Sandusky entered the State Employees' Retirement System when he began working as a Penn State football coach in 1969. He collected a $148,000 lump sum payment when he retired from the university in 1999, and began receiving a monthly annuity, according to records provided by SERS. Sandusky received a total of $900,000 in pension payments between 1999 and September 2012.

 The forfeiture statute permits an employee to keep his or her contributions without interest, minus any fees or restitution association with the employee's conviction. Employees subject to forfeiture can appeal to the board of the State Employees' Retirement System, then through the state court system. ||||| Story highlights In letters to judge, Sanduskys portray themselves as virtuous victims

 The letters all but guaranteed a maximum punishment, legal observers say

 "Sentencing is a time to ask for mercy, not to attack others," one expert says

 Adopted Sandusky son disappointed by his parents' smearing of his character, lawyers say

 When all was said and done, Jerry and Dottie Sandusky did not ask the judge for mercy. They did not try to extol Jerry's virtues, list good deeds or express regret. Instead, they depicted the boys he sexually assaulted as ungrateful and called them liars.

 They blamed the young men -- including their own adopted son, Matt, who now claims he, too, was molested -- for their downfall.

 In letters to the judge who would sentence the former coach, the Sanduskys portrayed themselves as virtuous victims of a vast conspiracy. They blamed powerful, image-conscious forces at Penn State University, lying cops, ambitious prosecutors and a scandal-hungry news media.

 Victims angrily confront Sandusky at sentencing

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 The couple's letters were mentioned in court on Tuesday but not read aloud. Judge John Cleland and the Centre County courts made them public, and CNN obtained copies.

 In them, Jerry Sandusky expressed little sympathy for the 10 boys he was convicted of molesting. As he wrote about their families, he tried to shift the blame, pointing out that the boys came from unstable homes.

 "Nobody mentioned the impact of abandonment, neglect, abuse, insecurity and conflicting messages that the biological parents might have had in this," he wrote. He said nothing about the damaged lives and institutions his molestation case left in its wake.

 Read the letters (.PDF)

 Instead, both Sanduskys wrote that the justice system let them down.

 Just as letters to one of the boys he was accused of molesting helped secure his conviction, the letters to the judge all but guaranteed a maximum punishment, legal observers say.

 Cleland, who presided over the trial and sentenced Sandusky on Tuesday to 30 to 60 years in prison, noted that others wrote letters as well. But he indicated that he considered only the Sanduskys' letters in handing down a sentence that, for a 68-year-old man, is likely to be a life prison term.

 Victim to Sandusky: 'Because of you, I trust no one'

 "Sentencing is a time to ask for mercy, not to attack others," said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who teaches legal ethics at Loyola Law School. "In my experience, judges really hate letters that try to shift the blame to others or which belittle the victims or the court."

 B.J. Bernstein, an Atlanta attorney who comments on legal matters for CNN, agreed that Sandusky didn't do himself any favors.

 "The old adage 'if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all' applies to sentencing statements," Bernstein said. "It is awkward when you deny you are culpable and a jury says otherwise. For appellate purposes Sandusky was never going to accept responsibility or admit doing something wrong, but lashing out at everyone so strongly was irrational."

 She added that Sandusky might have thought he was still playing to his Penn State fan base, but it backfired.

 "Between Jerry and Dottie's vicious protestations of innocence," Bernstein said, "all I can think is the victims -- and in particular their son Matt -- should shout back the lyrics from the Eric Clapton song, 'Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself.'"

 Sandusky's son comes forward as victim

 Jerry Sandusky bashed victims and laid out the conspiracy theory in a pre-recorded interview leaked to a campus radio station on the eve of his sentencing. He hinted at it again when he spoke in court on Tuesday, after being warned by his lawyers to avoid criticizing his victims or the justice system.

 His performances on air and in the courtroom were widely derided by prosecutors, legal analysts and commentators as narcissistic, self-absorbed and even more hurtful to the young men he was convicted of molesting.

 Jerry Sandusky's letter expanded on the rambling, 15-minute courtroom soliloquy that touched on everything from the writer Henry David Thoreau to "special inmate friends" to wet kisses from dogs. Like that speech, it was part locker room pep talk and part Sunday school inspirational, with a heaping side order of the Frank Sinatra ballad "My Way."

 He wrote about life in protective custody, and how it led him to think about all the interests that were being protected as the case unfolded: "The system protected the system, the media, the prosecution, the civil attorneys and the accusers. Everybody protected themselves," he wrote.

 "Penn State, with its own system, protected their public image," he continued. "Media protected their jobs and ambitions. Prosecutors protected their jobs and egos. The accusers were protected and provided access to potential financial gain, free attorneys, accolades, psychologists and attention."

 McQueary files lawsuit against Penn State

 He wrote that he was heartbroken.

 "My trust in people, systems and fairness has diminished," he said. "In my heart I know I did not do these disgusting acts. However, I didn't tell the jury. Our son changed our plans when he switched sides."

 Matt Sandusky was 18 when he was adopted by the Sanduskys after spending time with them in foster care. The relationship always has been rocky, but it collapsed near the end of Sandusky's trial in June. As the prosecution's case drew to a close, Matt told investigators that Sandusky had molested him, too.

 Matt Sandusky, now 33, did not testify for either side, but Jerry Sandusky insists that his adopted son's desertion and potentially damaging testimony kept him from testifying in his own defense.

 The Sanduskys spared no one.

 "There were so many people involved in the orchestration of this conviction (media, investigators, prosecutors, "the system," Penn State and the accusers.) It was well done. They won!" Jerry Sandusky wrote, as if a tragic court case about molested children was an epic gridiron contest.

 "When I thought about how it had transpired, I wondered what they had won," he continued. "I thought of the methods, decisions and allegations. I relived the inconsistencies and dishonest testimonies." He pondered what would happen if the tables were turned.

 When the hero falls off the pedestal: The emotion of betrayal

 "What would be the outcome if all the accusers and their families who were investigated?" he wrote. "I knew the answer. All their issues would surface. They would no longer be these poor, innocent people as portrayed."

 Dottie Sandusky also wrote of her disappointment, saying she has lost faith in the police and the legal system. "To think that they can lie and get by with the lies. The press has been unbelievable. People who have not met us are writing untruths."

 Dottie Sandusky's letter is revealing because she has stood silently by her husband in court. She testified at his trial that she never heard or saw anything strange or sexual going on in the basement of their home, where many of the victims say her husband molested them.

 In her letter, she unloaded on her adopted son, Matt.

 "People need to know what kind of person he is," she wrote. "We have forgiven him many times for all he has done to our family, thinking that he was changing his life, but he would always go back to his stealing and lies. He has been diagnose (sic) Bipolar, but he refuses to take his medicine."

 Records from Centre County's probation department and juvenile courts tell part of the story of how Matt H., as he was known, came to the Sanduskys.

 Like the boys who testified against Sandusky at the trial, Matt participated in Sandusky's youth mentoring program, The Second Mile. Jerry Sandusky was in Southern California, preparing for the Rose Bowl, when Matt was arrested in 1995. Sandusky called personally and pulled strings to make sure Matt was placed under his care and not sent to juvenile detention.

 Opinion: For the victims, it's about more than locking him up

 The court documents detail Matt's continuing troubles, including an aspirin overdose in March 1996 that is characterized as a suicide attempt. But he maintained that he wanted to stay in the Sandusky home, writing to the court, "I feel that they have supported me even when I have messed up. They are a loving, caring group of people. They have showed me what a family is really like."

 In another instance, Sandusky called police to his house, claiming a burglar was trying to break in. It was Matt, who said he had come to the house for a power tool.

 Matt Sandusky now is represented by a law firm in State College that is handling the cases of several other Sandusky molestation victims.

 "Matt is extremely disappointed that Dottie and the Sanduskys have decided to smear his character in an attempt to deflect attention from Jerry Sandusky's heinous crimes," his lawyers Justine Andronici and Andrew Shubin said in a written statement to CNN.

 "Matt has shown tremendous courage and strength," the statement continued. "Rather than supporting her son when he made the gut-wrenching decision to come forward and tell the truth about the abuse he suffered at the hands of Jerry Sandusky, Dottie Sandusky has chosen to continue Jerry's strategy of blaming and attacking the victims, thereby perpetuating the abuse."

 Dottie Sandusky wrote that her adopted son "has had many run-ins with the law and stolen money and items from our family. We still love him and want the best for him, but because of his actions we cannot express this to him. ..."

 Karl Rominger, a lawyer for Sandusky, did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the State Attorney General's office said prosecutors "stand by" what they said Tuesday about Sandusky's victim and system bashing.

 The lead prosecutor, Joseph McGettigan, described Sandusky's behavior as "banal, self-delusional, completely untethered from reality. It was entirely-self-focused, as if he himself were the victim."

 Jerry Sandusky trial: All you need to know about allegations, how case unfolded ||||| Seeing is believing

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What is a summary?

– Jerry Sandusky and his wife, Dottie, blamed his victims for his sex abuse conviction in letters written to the judge before his sentencing earlier this week. Instead of expressing regret, the Sanduskys labeled the young men ingrates and liars in the letters, which have now been made public, CNN reports. Sandusky pointed out that the boys came from unstable homes. "Nobody mentioned the impact of abandonment, neglect, abuse, insecurity, and conflicting messages that the biological parents might have had in this," he wrote. The couple, echoing a recording Sandusky made before sentencing, blamed his downfall on a vast conspiracy involving police and the media. In one letter, Dottie describes the couple's adopted son, Matt, who accuses Sandusky of molesting him, as a liar and a thief, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. A spokesman for the state attorney general's office describes Sandusky's behavior as "banal, self-delusional, completely untethered from reality. It was entirely-self-focused, as if he himself were the victim." Sandusky was sentenced to between 30 and 60 years in prison and Pennsylvania's public employee pension system says it is revoking his $59,000 annual pension, the AP reports.


Guidelines for women on how to be the ultimate wives of Isis fighters in Syria and Iraq are now being distributed by the militant group's new media arm.

 The Zora Foundation is the latest Isis media group operating across social networks.

 Isis (also known as Islamic State) regularly release propaganda showing brutal executions and violent atrocities, training regimes for fighters and threats to the West as the US-led coalition air strikes continue.

 But unlike most of Isis' propaganda that addresses men and attempts to recruit them, this specifically targets women supporting Islamist fighters by circulating advice on how to be 'good wives of jihad'.

 The organisation's slogan is "preparing for the honour of jihad", with videos and tweets explaining the ways in which women can contribute to Isis' insurgency. Its social media accounts have already garnered over 2,000 followers after being established just over two weeks ago.

 Zora's material, all of which is in Arabic, has been shared by Isis supporters across social media.

 Charlie Winter, a researcher at counter-extremism think tank the Quilliam Foundation, said the organisation is aimed at those preparing to go out and support the group, while also acting as a facility for the women already out there.

 He told The Independent: "It’s kind of a guideline on how to be a good supporter of jihad and have the best role in supporting 'your mujahidin' as a woman.

 "I haven't seen anything like this before. There will probably be forums doing similar things online, but this is the first time I've come across an actual media organisation giving guidance to women on their role."

 Zora's most recent post was a recipe shared on the al-Zora Media Twitter account. Mr Winter said the recipe was prefaced with the introduction: "To the victorious supporters [of jihad] and the beloved muhajiraat [for example, women who go to Syria], may Allah bless their efforts and reward them accordingly, we dedicate this first recipe to the heroes on the front line."

 Shape Created with Sketch. Timeline: The emergence of Isis Show all 40 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Timeline: The emergence of Isis 1/40 2000 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (pictured here) forms an al-Qaeda splinter group in Iraq, al-Qa’eda in Iraq. Its brutality from the beginning alienates Iraqis and many al-Qaeda leaders. 2/40 2006 Al-Zarqawi is killed in a U.S. strike. Al-Zarqawi’s successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, announces the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Reuters 3/40 2009 Still al-Qaeda-linked ISI claims responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 155 in Baghdad, as well as attacks in August and October killing 240, as President Obama announces troop withdrawal from Iraq in March. Getty Images 4/40 2010 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi becomes head of ISI, at lowest ebb of Islamist militancy in Iraq, which sees last U.S. combat brigade depart. 5/40 2012 In Syria, protests (pictured here starting in Daree) have morphed into what president Assad labelled a “real war” with emergence of a coalition of forces opposed to Assad’s regime. Syria group Jabhat al-Nusra are among rebel groups who refuse to join, denouncing it as a “conspiracy”. Bombings targeting Shia areas, killing more than 500 people, spark fears of new sectarian conflict. Sunni Muslims stage protests across country against what they see as increasingly marginalisation by Shia-led government. AP 6/40 2013 Al-Baghdadi renames ISI as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Isis, as the group absorbs Syrian al-Nusra, gaining a foothold in Syria. In response, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri (Bin Laden’s successor) concerned about Isis’ expansion orders that Isis be dissolved and ISI operations should be confined to Iraq. This order is rejected by al-Baghdadi. AFP 7/40 2014 - January Isis fighters capture the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, giving them base to launch slew of attacks further south. AP 8/40 2014 - June Isis declares itself the Caliphate, calling itself Islamic State (IS). The group captures Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city; Tal Afar, just 93 miles from Syrian border; and the central Iraqi city of Tikrit. These advances sent shockwaves around the world. 9/40 2014 - June Around the same time Isis releases a video calling for western Muslims to join the Caliphate and fight, prompting new evaluations of extremists groups social media understanding. 10/40 2014 - June Isis take Baiji oil fields in Iraq - giving them access to huge amounts of possible revenue. EPA 11/40 2014 - August James Foley is executed by the group as concerns grow for second American prisoner, fellow reporter Steven Sotloff. AP 12/40 2014 - August Obama authorises U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, helping to stall Isis’ along with action by Kurdish forces following the deaths of hundreds of Yazidi people on Mount Sinjar. 13/40 2014 - September Isis release video showing Steven Sotloff’s murder prompting Western speculation his executioner is same man who killed Mr Foley. EPA 14/40 2014 - September Obama tells us that America “will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country” EPA 15/40 2014 - September Isis release a video appearing to show David Haines, who was captured by militants in Syria in 2013, wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in the desert while he reads a pre-prepared script. It later shows what appears to be the aid worker's body. Rex 16/40 2014 - September Peshmerga fighters scrabble to hold positions in the Diyala province (a gateway to Baghdad) as Isis fighters continue to advance on Iraqi capital. AFP 17/40 2014 - October Aid worker Alan Henning is killed. Self-imposed media blackout refuses to show images of him in final moments, instead focuses upon humanitarian care. AP 18/40 2014 - October Isis raise their flag in Kobani, which had been strongly defended by Kurdish troops. The victory goes against hopeful western analysis Isis had overextended itself, while alienating much of the Muslim population through the murder of Henning. Victory causes fresh waves of Kurdish refugees arriving in Turkey. 19/40 2014 - November American hostage, who embarced values of Islam, Peter Kassig and 14 Syrian soldiers are shown meeting the same fate as other captives. But intelligence agencies will be poring over the apparently significant discrepancies between this and previous films. Seramedig.org.uk 20/40 2015 - February Isis has released a video revealing the murder by burning to death of a Jordanian pilot held by the group since the end of December 2014. Reuters 21/40 2015 - February Isis militants have released videos which appear to show the beheading of Japanese hostages Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto. 22/40 2015 - February American aid worker, Kayla Mueller was the last American hostage known to be held by Isis. She died, according to her captors, in an airstrike by the Jordanian air force on the city of Raqqa in Syria, though US authorities disputed this. AP 23/40 2015 - February Isis militants have posted a gruesome video online in which they force 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian hostages to kneel on a beach in Libya before beheading them. Egypt vowed to avenge the beheading and launched air strikes on Isis positions. AP 24/40 2015 - February The British Isis militant suspected of appearing in videos showing the beheading of Western hostages has been named in reports as Mohammed Emwazi from London. Rex Features 25/40 2015 - March Isis triple suicide attack has killed more than 100 worshippers and hundreds of others were injured after the group members targeted two mosques in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. AP 26/40 2015 - April Iraqi forces have claimed victory over Isis in battle for Tikrit and raised the flag in the city. EPA/STR 27/40 2015 - April Isis has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan that killed at least 35 people queuing to collect their wages and injured 100 more. EPA 28/40 2015 - April Isis’ media arm released a 29-minute video purporting to show militants executing Ethiopian Christians captives. The footage bore the extremist group’s al-Furqan media logo and showed the destruction of churches and desecration of religious symbols. A masked fighter made a statement threatening Christians who did not convert to Islam or pay a special tax. 29/40 2015 - May Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis has been "incapacitated" by a spinal injuries sustained in a US air strike in Iraq. He is being treated in a hideout by two doctors from Isis’ stronghold of Mosul who are said to be "strong ideological supporters of the group". 30/40 2015 - May Isis has also claimed responsibility for killing 300 of Yazidi captives, including women, children and elderly people in Iraq AP 31/40 2015 - May Isis attack on Prophet Mohamed cartoon contest in Texas was its first action on US soil. Two gunmen were shot and killed after launching the attack at the exhibition. Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi have been named as the attackers at the Curtis Culwell Centre arena in Garland. 32/40 2015 - May Isis’s deputy leader, Abu Alaa Afri, a former physics teacher who was thought to have taken charge of the deadly terrorist group, has been killed in a US-led coalition airstrike. 33/40 2015 - May US special forces have killed a senior Isis leader named as Abu Sayyaf in an operation aiming to capture him and his wife in Syria. Getty Images 34/40 2015 - May Iran-backed militias are sent to Ramadi by the Iraqi government to fight Isis militants who completed their capture of the city. Government soldiers and civilians were reportedly massacred by extremists as they took control and the army fled. Charred bodies were left littering the city streets as troops clung on to trucks speeding away from the city. Ramadi is the latest government stronghold to fall to the so-called Islamic State, despite air strikes by a US-led international coalition aiming to stop its advance in Iraq and Syria. AFP 35/40 2015 - May Isis rounded up civilians trapped in Palmyra and forced them to watch 20 people being executed in the historic city’s ancient amphitheatre. The Unesco World Heritage site was overrun by militants, threatening the future of 2,000 year-old monuments and ruins. Thousands of Palmyra’s residents fled but many are still living within the city walls, while the UN human rights office in Geneva said it had received reports of Syrian government forces preventing people from leaving until they retreated from the city. Getty 36/40 2015 - May A group of Isis-affiliated fighters have captured a key airport in central Libya. The militants took control of the al-Qardabiya airbase in Sirte after a local militia tasked with defending the facility withdrew from their positions. Affiliates of Isis, already control large parts of Sirte, the birthplace of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and a former stronghold of his supporters. 37/40 2015 - June The US Air Force has destroyed an Isis stronghold after an extremist let slip their location on social media. According the Air Force Times, General Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, said that Airmen at Hulburt Field, Florida, used images shared by jihadists to track the location of their headquarters before destroying it in an airstrike. Reuters 38/40 2015 - June Kurdish forces captured a key military base in a significant victory in Raqqa as well as town of Tell Abyad. YPG fighters, backed by US-led airstrikes and other rebels, consolidated their gains, when they seized the key town on the Syria-Turkey border. They are now just 30 miles to the north of Raqqa and have cut off a major supply route deep inside Isis-held territory. Ahmet Silk/Getty 39/40 2015 - June Isis has released gruesome footage claiming to show the murder of more than a dozen men by drowning, decapitation and using a rocket-propelled grenade as it seeks to boost morale among its fanatical supporters. 40/40 2015 - June Isis has begun carrying out its threat to destroy structures in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, blowing up at least two monuments at the Unesco-protected site as Syrian government troops made advances on the Islamist’s positions. AFP 1/40 2000 Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (pictured here) forms an al-Qaeda splinter group in Iraq, al-Qa’eda in Iraq. Its brutality from the beginning alienates Iraqis and many al-Qaeda leaders. 2/40 2006 Al-Zarqawi is killed in a U.S. strike. Al-Zarqawi’s successor, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, announces the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI). Reuters 3/40 2009 Still al-Qaeda-linked ISI claims responsibility for suicide bombings that killed 155 in Baghdad, as well as attacks in August and October killing 240, as President Obama announces troop withdrawal from Iraq in March. Getty Images 4/40 2010 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi becomes head of ISI, at lowest ebb of Islamist militancy in Iraq, which sees last U.S. combat brigade depart. 5/40 2012 In Syria, protests (pictured here starting in Daree) have morphed into what president Assad labelled a “real war” with emergence of a coalition of forces opposed to Assad’s regime. Syria group Jabhat al-Nusra are among rebel groups who refuse to join, denouncing it as a “conspiracy”. Bombings targeting Shia areas, killing more than 500 people, spark fears of new sectarian conflict. Sunni Muslims stage protests across country against what they see as increasingly marginalisation by Shia-led government. AP 6/40 2013 Al-Baghdadi renames ISI as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Isis, as the group absorbs Syrian al-Nusra, gaining a foothold in Syria. In response, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri (Bin Laden’s successor) concerned about Isis’ expansion orders that Isis be dissolved and ISI operations should be confined to Iraq. This order is rejected by al-Baghdadi. AFP 7/40 2014 - January Isis fighters capture the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, giving them base to launch slew of attacks further south. AP 8/40 2014 - June Isis declares itself the Caliphate, calling itself Islamic State (IS). The group captures Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city; Tal Afar, just 93 miles from Syrian border; and the central Iraqi city of Tikrit. These advances sent shockwaves around the world. 9/40 2014 - June Around the same time Isis releases a video calling for western Muslims to join the Caliphate and fight, prompting new evaluations of extremists groups social media understanding. 10/40 2014 - June Isis take Baiji oil fields in Iraq - giving them access to huge amounts of possible revenue. EPA 11/40 2014 - August James Foley is executed by the group as concerns grow for second American prisoner, fellow reporter Steven Sotloff. AP 12/40 2014 - August Obama authorises U.S. airstrikes in Iraq, helping to stall Isis’ along with action by Kurdish forces following the deaths of hundreds of Yazidi people on Mount Sinjar. 13/40 2014 - September Isis release video showing Steven Sotloff’s murder prompting Western speculation his executioner is same man who killed Mr Foley. EPA 14/40 2014 - September Obama tells us that America “will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country” EPA 15/40 2014 - September Isis release a video appearing to show David Haines, who was captured by militants in Syria in 2013, wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in the desert while he reads a pre-prepared script. It later shows what appears to be the aid worker's body. Rex 16/40 2014 - September Peshmerga fighters scrabble to hold positions in the Diyala province (a gateway to Baghdad) as Isis fighters continue to advance on Iraqi capital. AFP 17/40 2014 - October Aid worker Alan Henning is killed. Self-imposed media blackout refuses to show images of him in final moments, instead focuses upon humanitarian care. AP 18/40 2014 - October Isis raise their flag in Kobani, which had been strongly defended by Kurdish troops. The victory goes against hopeful western analysis Isis had overextended itself, while alienating much of the Muslim population through the murder of Henning. Victory causes fresh waves of Kurdish refugees arriving in Turkey. 19/40 2014 - November American hostage, who embarced values of Islam, Peter Kassig and 14 Syrian soldiers are shown meeting the same fate as other captives. But intelligence agencies will be poring over the apparently significant discrepancies between this and previous films. Seramedig.org.uk 20/40 2015 - February Isis has released a video revealing the murder by burning to death of a Jordanian pilot held by the group since the end of December 2014. Reuters 21/40 2015 - February Isis militants have released videos which appear to show the beheading of Japanese hostages Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto. 22/40 2015 - February American aid worker, Kayla Mueller was the last American hostage known to be held by Isis. She died, according to her captors, in an airstrike by the Jordanian air force on the city of Raqqa in Syria, though US authorities disputed this. AP 23/40 2015 - February Isis militants have posted a gruesome video online in which they force 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian hostages to kneel on a beach in Libya before beheading them. Egypt vowed to avenge the beheading and launched air strikes on Isis positions. AP 24/40 2015 - February The British Isis militant suspected of appearing in videos showing the beheading of Western hostages has been named in reports as Mohammed Emwazi from London. Rex Features 25/40 2015 - March Isis triple suicide attack has killed more than 100 worshippers and hundreds of others were injured after the group members targeted two mosques in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. AP 26/40 2015 - April Iraqi forces have claimed victory over Isis in battle for Tikrit and raised the flag in the city. EPA/STR 27/40 2015 - April Isis has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan that killed at least 35 people queuing to collect their wages and injured 100 more. EPA 28/40 2015 - April Isis’ media arm released a 29-minute video purporting to show militants executing Ethiopian Christians captives. The footage bore the extremist group’s al-Furqan media logo and showed the destruction of churches and desecration of religious symbols. A masked fighter made a statement threatening Christians who did not convert to Islam or pay a special tax. 29/40 2015 - May Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Isis has been "incapacitated" by a spinal injuries sustained in a US air strike in Iraq. He is being treated in a hideout by two doctors from Isis’ stronghold of Mosul who are said to be "strong ideological supporters of the group". 30/40 2015 - May Isis has also claimed responsibility for killing 300 of Yazidi captives, including women, children and elderly people in Iraq AP 31/40 2015 - May Isis attack on Prophet Mohamed cartoon contest in Texas was its first action on US soil. Two gunmen were shot and killed after launching the attack at the exhibition. Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi have been named as the attackers at the Curtis Culwell Centre arena in Garland. 32/40 2015 - May Isis’s deputy leader, Abu Alaa Afri, a former physics teacher who was thought to have taken charge of the deadly terrorist group, has been killed in a US-led coalition airstrike. 33/40 2015 - May US special forces have killed a senior Isis leader named as Abu Sayyaf in an operation aiming to capture him and his wife in Syria. Getty Images 34/40 2015 - May Iran-backed militias are sent to Ramadi by the Iraqi government to fight Isis militants who completed their capture of the city. Government soldiers and civilians were reportedly massacred by extremists as they took control and the army fled. Charred bodies were left littering the city streets as troops clung on to trucks speeding away from the city. Ramadi is the latest government stronghold to fall to the so-called Islamic State, despite air strikes by a US-led international coalition aiming to stop its advance in Iraq and Syria. AFP 35/40 2015 - May Isis rounded up civilians trapped in Palmyra and forced them to watch 20 people being executed in the historic city’s ancient amphitheatre. The Unesco World Heritage site was overrun by militants, threatening the future of 2,000 year-old monuments and ruins. Thousands of Palmyra’s residents fled but many are still living within the city walls, while the UN human rights office in Geneva said it had received reports of Syrian government forces preventing people from leaving until they retreated from the city. Getty 36/40 2015 - May A group of Isis-affiliated fighters have captured a key airport in central Libya. The militants took control of the al-Qardabiya airbase in Sirte after a local militia tasked with defending the facility withdrew from their positions. Affiliates of Isis, already control large parts of Sirte, the birthplace of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and a former stronghold of his supporters. 37/40 2015 - June The US Air Force has destroyed an Isis stronghold after an extremist let slip their location on social media. According the Air Force Times, General Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command, said that Airmen at Hulburt Field, Florida, used images shared by jihadists to track the location of their headquarters before destroying it in an airstrike. Reuters 38/40 2015 - June Kurdish forces captured a key military base in a significant victory in Raqqa as well as town of Tell Abyad. YPG fighters, backed by US-led airstrikes and other rebels, consolidated their gains, when they seized the key town on the Syria-Turkey border. They are now just 30 miles to the north of Raqqa and have cut off a major supply route deep inside Isis-held territory. Ahmet Silk/Getty 39/40 2015 - June Isis has released gruesome footage claiming to show the murder of more than a dozen men by drowning, decapitation and using a rocket-propelled grenade as it seeks to boost morale among its fanatical supporters. 40/40 2015 - June Isis has begun carrying out its threat to destroy structures in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, blowing up at least two monuments at the Unesco-protected site as Syrian government troops made advances on the Islamist’s positions. AFP

 The text explains the recipe is "a quick, light recipe that should be taken with coffee and will replenish the mujahidin”.

 It adds: “Or it can be taken with water and is especially good in between battles. They contain many calories, and will prolong the strength and power of the mujahid". Zora also posted a YouTube video detailing the ways in which women, who Isis believe should never undertake combat roles, can contribute to jihad through "feminine manual labour" such as cooking and nursing fighters.

 The video uses crude animations and brightly coloured backgrounds with images of a sowing machine, a first aid box, a fridge a gas cooker and a microwave appearing throughout. Mr Winter explained: "The video talks about nursing and administering first aid, the cooking and preparation of food, the books of God, sharia science and the preparation of women for there contribution to jihad - essentially getting others to go out there.

 "After sharia science, it talks about courses in making slide shows and editing them – effectively making propaganda - before the video finishes."

 The accounts appear to be primarily targeting Arab women as opposed to Western women because of the language used in all. Mr Winter said: "The phenomenon of women going over to Syria or Iraq is not new and it is not a purely Western phenomenon. There are more women going from countries like Saudi Arabia." ||||| People watch as smokes rises from the town of Kobani, also known as Ain al-Arab, at the Turkish border near the southeastern village of Mursitpinar, Sanliurfa province, on Oct. 26, 2014.

 People watch as smokes rises from the town of Kobani, also known as Ain al-Arab, at the... Read More

 People watch as smokes rises from the town of Kobani, also known as Ain al-Arab, at the Turkish border near the southeastern village of Mursitpinar, Sanliurfa province, on Oct. 26, 2014. Close

 Turkish traders of everything from Red Bull energy drinks to cement are profiting from Islamist conquests in Syria, while the militants are boosting their coffers with fees from the cross-border business.

 Turkey shipped $1.3 billion in goods to Syria through September, the highest nine-month total on record, according to trade statistics published in Ankara last week. The increase came after President Bashar al-Assad’s government in Damascus lost control of most border crossings with Turkey, leaving them to rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army and Islamic Front, as well as Islamic State extremists.

 “Whoever controls either side of any international border claims license to exact tolls and fees,” said Francis Ricciardone, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and now a director at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East in Washington. “Where there is no law, criminal gangs will extort all that the market will bear.”

 Turkey’s Continental Divide

 The exchange of goods reflects how entrenched the Syrian conflict has become and how elusive any peace agreement remains. The fighting, which started in March 2011 and flared into a civil war, has left more than 190,000 people dead and displaced millions, according to the United Nations in August.

 Photographer: Kemal Karagoz/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images More than $260 million this year crossed via Cilvegozu and Oncupinar, the Turkish figures show. They are towns adjacent to Bab al-Salamah and Bab al-Hawa in northern Syria, which are controlled by the Islamic Front, a coalition of militants fighting both the Assad regime and Islamic State. Close More than $260 million this year crossed via Cilvegozu and Oncupinar, the Turkish... Read More Close Open Photographer: Kemal Karagoz/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images More than $260 million this year crossed via Cilvegozu and Oncupinar, the Turkish figures show. They are towns adjacent to Bab al-Salamah and Bab al-Hawa in northern Syria, which are controlled by the Islamic Front, a coalition of militants fighting both the Assad regime and Islamic State.

 While Turkey imposed financial sanctions on Assad three years ago, the trade is legal and shows up in Turkish customs data. Transporters enter a no-man’s land where state control is absent and they pay whoever controls the crossing.

 Energy Drinks

 “Every day we have four or five trucks carrying Red Bulls to Syria,” Mustafa Yilmaz, owner of Turkish trucking company Cem-Ay Transport, said in a telephone interview on Oct. 28.

 More than $260 million this year crossed via Cilvegozu and Oncupinar, the Turkish figures show. They are towns adjacent to Bab al-Salamah and Bab al-Hawa in northern Syria, which are controlled by the Islamic Front, a coalition of militants fighting both the Assad regime and Islamic State. Another $320 million in goods crossed into Syria from nearby Gaziantep, according to the figures.

 Buyers on the Syrian side don’t identify themselves to the transporters, Yilmaz said. Goods are then transferred onto Syrian trucks in a 3-kilometer-wide (2 miles) zone at the Cilvegozu crossing, he said.

 Turkish Customs Ministry press officer Yakup Bulut said on Nov. 3 nobody was available to comment. The Economy Ministry didn’t respond to written questions this week.

 Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg While the U.S. has pushed Turkey to join the fight against Islamists across the border, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says his nation will participate only if the U.S.-led coalition also makes plans to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Close While the U.S. has pushed Turkey to join the fight against Islamists across the border,... Read More Close Open Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg While the U.S. has pushed Turkey to join the fight against Islamists across the border, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says his nation will participate only if the U.S.-led coalition also makes plans to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

 Displaced People

 The Aleppo Chamber of Industry rejected the idea of an increase in trade. Fares Shihabi, head of the organization, said imports from Turkey plunged about 90 percent because of the war.

 “There are no functioning routes,” he said by telephone from Damascus. “Let’s assume there’s regular trade, there’s no war, they’re not supporting the terrorists and everything is normal. The size of the market has shrunk because 3 to 4 million people are outside the country.”

 Aleppo is less than 30 miles as the crow flies from the Cilvegozu border crossing. Shihabi’s views contrast with Ali Altinel, a partner at Syrian Trade Office, a business consultancy in Aleppo. Demand for Turkish goods is so high that trucks can wait five days at the frontier, he said.

 “The Syrian state takes 40 percent in taxes, but in other areas there’s no such thing,” Altinel said by phone from the Turkish port city of Mersin on Oct. 28. “Islamic State also takes its extortion fees, everyone does. As long as people are getting paid, there’s no danger.”

 Turkish Policy

 While the U.S. has pushed Turkey to join the fight against Islamists across the border, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says his nation will participate only if the U.S.-led coalition also makes plans to topple Assad.

 Turkey allowed Kurdish fighters from northern Iraq to travel to the Syrian city of Kobani to help defend it against Islamic State. Erdogan is also advocating training and arming fighters from the Free Syrian Army, which cooperates with Islamist fighters to control some of the border points with Turkey, according to Charles Lister, a specialist in Middle East insurgents at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar.

 “Groups are widely known to take transit fees from incoming trucks and this has come to represent a key internal revenue stream,” he said by e-mail this week. “This is unfortunately reinforcing the war economy that rebel groups have become so dependent upon.”

 Deliberate Effort

 The surge in exports may represent a “success story” in that the U.S. and other suppliers of humanitarian relief to Syria are “deliberately procuring as much as possible from the Turkish economy,” according to Ricciardone, the former ambassador. That’s part of a concerted effort to offset some of the costs of the war, he said.

 Turkish exports to Syria were $1.3 billion in 2011, the year Syria’s civil war began, then fell to $391 million a year later, according to official data. Erdogan said Nov. 3 that Turkey has spent $4.5 billion hosting more than a million refugees in the country.

 The latest records from Turkey’s statistics agency now show everything from vegetable oils to motorcycles being shipped into Syria. The largest amount was listed in a miscellaneous category titled “personal household goods, provisions.”

 Some of that recent increase may also reflect Syrian industrialists switching factories to Turkey since 2011 and then exporting products back home.

 No Choice

 “Many Syrian businessmen moved their production lock, stock and barrel to Turkey because it is safer,” Henri Barkey, a Turkey expert at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, said by e-mail on Nov. 3. “The war is damaging so much of the infrastructure and the agricultural sector that the Syrians have no other choice but to increase their imports from Turkey.”

 In choosing to continue doing business with armed groups at the border, Turkey is accepting the reality that it may not have an official government counterpart to deal with in Syria for some time, according to Nihat Ali Ozcan, an analyst at the Ankara-based Economic Policy Research Foundation.

 “Turkey will probably have to live with non-state actors on its southern border maybe for a decade, if not more,” Ozcan said in a phone interview on Nov. 3. “Merchants are forced to deal with several different groups, like in the Middle Ages, as their goods pass through their territory.”

 To contact the reporters on this story: Fercan Yalinkilic in Istanbul at fyalinkilic@bloomberg.net; Benjamin Harvey in Istanbul at bharvey11@bloomberg.net; Ercan Ersoy in Istanbul at eersoy@bloomberg.net

 To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine at asalha@bloomberg.net Rodney Jefferson |||||

Write a summary.

– Red Bull gives you wings, and if you're an Islamic militant, apparently, extra stamina to keep fighting. Turkish traders are shipping the energy drink and other items into Syria across borders that are controlled by rebels belonging to ISIS, the Free Syrian Army, and the Islamic Front, and business is apparently booming: According to trade stats out of Ankara, Turkey sent $1.3 billion in goods to Syria through September, its highest total for a nine-month period ever recorded, Bloomberg reports. Those who wield power over the border—and right now that's militants in at least three border towns—are the ones who reap the profits, pocketing tolls and fees from transporters. While Turkish customs and economy officials either wouldn't comment or didn't respond to Bloomberg, the owner of a Turkish trucking company said that "every day we have four or five trucks carrying Red Bulls to Syria." He adds that those picking up the goods on the Syrian side don't ID themselves, and the imports are then loaded onto Syrian trucks and driven away. Meanwhile, caffeinated militants may also be fortified by the "good wives of jihadi": The Independent recently documented a new ISIS media arm that posts and tweets out nursing, morale, and cooking advice for militants' wives, including recipes to "replenish the mujahidin." (Here's how you can get your portion of a $13 million Red Bull payout.)


Two bald eagles sat in a tree along the Neponset River shoreline in Milton.

 For his entire life, Tom Palmer has been jealous of people lucky enough to spot a bald eagle soaring through the sky or clutching the limb of a tree high above the ground.

 But the Milton resident no longer envies a soul.

 On Wednesday, Palmer, who works for the Neponset River Watershed Association, not only witnessed one of the noble birds in his neighborhood’s backyard, he also captured photos of it.

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 “I had never seen one in my life before,” the 60-year-old bird enthusiast said in an interview. “It’s exciting. These are American icons.”

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 Palmer’s sighting marked the second time in less than 10 days that someone locally had witnessed the giant birds of prey, with their impressive seven-foot wingspans, frolicking in their natural habitat.

 Two bald eagles, their white heads visible from a distance, were seen on Jan. 21 on the frozen Charles River, not far from the Longfellow Bridge. Photographs of the birds were shared to the community message board, Reddit.

 Residents in Arlington have also reported seeing the birds, at Spy Pond.

 Palmer’s sighting came this week on the banks of the Neponset River in Milton, just below Governor Hutchinson’s Field, a hilltop nature reserve owned by the Trustees of Reservations.

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 “It was high atop the trees,” Palmer said. “I think more and more people are seeing them. They are too big to escape notice.”

 Jeremy Bick, stewardship manager for the Trustees’ Boston region, said employees of the nonprofit have seen their share of bald eagles, from time to time, near Hutchinson’s Field during the past two years.

 “When we see them out there, we get excited about it,” he said. “It’s different from just seeing the red-tailed hawks, or the osprey. The bald eagle is much cooler.”

 He said other sightings have been reported in Jamaica Plain, around the pond.

 The species was reintroduced in Massachusetts at the Quabbin Reservoir in 1982. The first nest in the wild with eaglets was reported in 1989. As numbers grew, the winged predators’ status here was changed from “endangered” to “threatened” in 2012.

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 State officials say there were around 46 eagle territories — two eagles that are probably mated, or are going to mate — in 2014, the latest data available. But they are confident that that number has grown.

 Marion Larson, chief of information and education at the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, said eagle sightings increase in the winter, because birds are coming down to Massachusetts from northern New England and Canada, where rivers and lakes may be frozen, for better access to food.

 The birds primarily stick to shoreline habitats .

 “It’s great to see eagles in Boston and in Cambridge,” Larson said.

 Steve Annear can be reached at steve.annear@globe.com . Follow him on Twitter @steveannear . Globe correspondent Mina Corpuz contributed to this report. ||||| An adult bald eagle perches in a tree in King William County, Va. Cars and trucks pose a hazard to the birds when they scavenge by the side of the road. (Timothy C. Wright for the Washington Post)

 I was driving on I-95 recently when I spotted something guaranteed to swell the heart of any patriotic American. No, it wasn’t a sign for an outlet mall. It was a bald eagle. Once rare and threatened with extinction, the national symbol can now be seen from the comfort of your car.

 And so near! When I first saw the eagle, he was soaring majestically a few hundred feet above the traffic that was moving north near Quantico, Va. Then he came closer. And closer.

 John Kelly writes "John Kelly's Washington," a daily look at Washington's less-famous side. Born in Washington, John started at The Post in 1989 as deputy editor in the Weekend section. View Archive

 Then I saw why. On the shoulder of the road was the carcass of a dead deer. The eagle was swooping down to check it out.

 As nice as it was to see a bald eagle up close, I was afraid it would get hit by a car.

 Apparently, that’s not uncommon. Last year, the nation’s oldest banded bald eagle — a bird known as 03142 — died on a road in western New York while chowing down on a roadkill rabbit. The eagle was 38 years old and must have survived all sorts of close encounters.

 [Oldest banded bald eagle dies after apparently being hit by a car]

 “Eagles are beautiful, hugely charismatic birds,” said Dave McRuer, director of veterinary services at the Wildlife Center of Virginia, where many injured birds are treated. “Their primary diet in Virginia is living off of dead things, whether it’s a dead fish on the beach or a dead deer by the side of the road.”

 The side of the road is not a safe place to be. Getting hit by a vehicle, Dave said, is “a very common occurrence.” In the past five years, 25 of the 187 eagles admitted to the Wildlife Center, in Waynesboro, for rehabilitation — about 15 percent — had been hit by a vehicle. Data from 40 rehabilitation centers along the Eastern Seaboard tells a similar story: Of 679 eagles admitted, 99 had been involved in collisions. A bald eagle found near Fredericksburg, Va., was admitted Tuesday night. Its injuries are consistent with a vehicle strike.

 More eagles than ever are coming in to the Wildlife Center. Ten years ago, the staff was admitting about 20 eagles annually. Now it’s about 40 a year, Dave said.

 In a way, that’s good news — not that more bald eagles are getting hurt but that there are more bald eagles around to get hurt. That’s because there are more bald eagles. The species has rebounded since it was threatened with extinction in the 1970s because of DDT contamination, illegal shooting and habitat loss. Thanks to a range of protective measures, the bald eagle was removed from the endangered species list in 2007.

 Not that everything is hunky-dory. Dave said 80 percent of the eagles the Wildlife Center treats have measurable levels of lead in their systems, which is bad for you whether you are a Michigan schoolchild or a Virginia raptor.

 “The consequence is that lead affects the eagle’s nervous system,” Dave said. “It can make them more susceptible to being hit. They can’t maneuver their way away. It’s like they’re flying drunk.”

 Flying drunk in an open field is one thing. Flying drunk next to an interstate is another.

 Dave said bald eagles ingest lead from legally shot deer that have been field dressed by hunters, the guts cut out and left in a pile.

 The hunters “think they’re doing a good thing for wildlife,” giving animals something to eat, Dave said. “Unfortunately, the shot leaves tiny fragments of lead. A piece the size of a grain of rice is enough to kill an eagle.”

 The Wildlife Center recommends that hunters switch from lead to copper shot or dig a hole and bury the guts so eagles can’t scavenge them.

 We’ve just emerged from an especially eagle-y time of year in these parts. December and January bring the highest number of eagles to Virginia, as birds from the Northeast and eastern Canada migrate here to take advantage of the large biomass of fish in the water.

 “We also get eagles migrating north from Florida to spend the winter on the Chesapeake,” Dave said. “A lot of eagles around means a lot of competition. We could be seeing more eagles scavenging along highways as other eagles are taking prime territory on rivers.”

 Gut-pile-leaving hunters aren’t the only humans who think, erroneously, that they’re doing animals a favor. Dave likes to tell the story of the lowly apple core. Some people think that because an apple core is biodegradable, tossing one out the window of a car isn’t littering.

 “But that attracts mice and rodents,” Dave said, and when rodents start feeding along highways, they get hit by cars. When animals get hit by cars, raptors come in to feed on the carcasses.

 And that gets us back to where this column started.

 Twitter: @johnkelly

 For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly. ||||| FILE - In this Oct. 20, 2014 file photo, a bald eagle perches over Onota Lake in Pittsfield, Mass. In 2015 the number of bald eagles in Massachusetts reached a record high in since the majestic birds... (Associated Press)

 BOSTON (AP) — People spotting bald eagles in the skies over the Boston area aren't hallucinating — there really are more of the majestic birds of prey setting up shop in the urban eastern areas of the state, experts say.

 There were 51 confirmed territorial breeding bald eagle pairs in Massachusetts last year, the most since they were reintroduced to the state in 1982, said Andrew Vitz, the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife ornithologist. That includes pairs close to Boston in the towns of Milton, Waltham, Lynnfield and Framingham, all confirmed in the past year or two.

 "One of the areas of most rapid expansion has been eastern Massachusetts, which has been a great surprise," Vitz said.

 The exact number of eagles in the state is probably higher, because there may be some breeding pairs scientists don't even know about, and the winter population is bolstered by eagles that make their way south looking for open water when lakes and ponds to the north ice over, Vitz said.

 Social media has been buzzing with sightings of the birds, distinct because of their 7-foot wingspan and snow-white heads.

 They have been spotted near the Charles River and Jamaica Pond in Boston, Spy Pond in Arlington and even the Chestnut Hill Reservoir near Boston College, where the athletic teams are known as the Eagles.

 Not every sighting has been confirmed, and it's unclear whether it's the same eagle or several, but there is no doubt there are more of them around, Vitz said.

 Tom Palmer was awed when he spotted a bald eagle in late January near the Neponset River on the border of Milton and Boston. When he was growing up, bald eagles, the national symbol since 1782, were so rare that they had an almost mythical quality.

 "It was the first time I had ever seen an actual bald eagle, and it was right in my neighborhood," said the Milton resident who manages Willett Pond in Walpole for the Neponset River Watershed Association. "I couldn't believe it."

 Bald eagles have made a huge comeback nationwide. There were less than 500 breeding pairs in the lower 48 states in 1963. By 2007, when bald eagles were taken off the endangered species list, there were about 10,000, according to federal figures.

 Boston isn't the only urban area bald eagles are calling home, said Kevin McGowan, an ornithologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

 "It is a fairly widespread phenomenon," he said.

 They are moving to the city for a couple of reasons, the experts said.

 To breed, bald eagles need two things — tall trees in which to nest, and a nearby body of water in which to hunt for their favorite food: fish. Seeing eagles in the greater Boston area is proof that the region's once notoriously polluted waterways are getting healthier.

 "One of the reasons eagles disappeared from Massachusetts 100 years ago was water quality," Vitz said.

 Eagles are also getting more used to humans, and humans are not shooting the birds as much, said McGowan, the Cornell scientist.

 "You never get tired of seeing eagles," he said. |||||

Write a summary.

– A symbol of America is once again flying high above one of the nation's most historic cities. “I had never seen one in my life before,” Tom Palmer tells the Boston Globe. “It’s exciting. These are American icons.” Late last month, the 60-year-old Massachusetts resident spotted his first bald eagle. And he's not alone. Reports of bald eagle sightings are pouring in from around the Boston area. "They are too big to escape notice," Palmer says. The AP reports there were 51 confirmed breeding pairs of bald eagles in the state last year. That's the most since the birds were reintroduced to Massachusetts in 1982. And it's part of a trend seen nationwide. There were 10,000 or so pairs of bald eagles in the continental US when they were taken off the endangered list in 2007. That's 20 times as many as in 1963. One ornithologist says the resurgence is partly due to bald eagles getting more used to humans and humans getting more used to not shooting bald eagles. Another says it's a sign that the waters around Boston are getting healthier, providing good fishing for breeding eagles. "Once rare and threatened with extinction, the national symbol can now be seen from the comfort of your car," the Washington Post states. But that can also be its own problem. Bald eagles are increasingly being hit by cars while eating roadkill. Last year, a 38-year-old bald eagle—the country's oldest—suffered that fate. The problem is compounded by eagles getting lead poisoning by eating the remains of deer shot by hunters. "It's like they're flying drunk," one veterinary director tells the Post. (Some eagles may also be making themselves sick by eating euthanized animals.)


– Turkey is in the midst of what Vocativ calls its murder trial of the century. Kenan Oner is accused of murdering his parents, chopping them up, and burying them in their yard, all so he could get his inheritance early, police believe. Still missing is his wife, who hasn't been seen since 2005; police believe he killed her, too, hiding her remains in his apartment walls. He had recently discovered she was having an affair. And all this was after his murder conviction in the 1990s for killing a friend in France, also allegedly for money; he was sentenced to life but got out on parole after seven years. Oner, 56, was arrested in April, years after his parents disappeared in 2008 while he was living with them. When police arrived at his apartment, he was sitting in the dark, they say. His question to them: "Did you dig the garden?" Despite long suspecting Oner, police couldn't find evidence to lead to charges—until they discovered the buried remains. They got help from Oner's own careful notes: For decades, he's recorded his actions by the hour, including a note around the time of his parents' disappearance that he had dug up their garden—and he also drew a map of the garden with an "X" marking one spot. Last year, Oner's son blamed his father for all three murders, per Turkish News Tuhaf. In Turkey, such calculated murders are rare, adding to the press fascination with the story, Vocativ notes. "I have not seen a similar criminal profile before," says an official. (Click to read about a Turkish killer who went on a TV dating show looking for love.)

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 The grisly details read like something out of the movie, Seven.

 For six years, the police in Bursa province in western Turkey had been looking for the bodies of Kenan Oner’s parents. In April, they finally found them, chopped up and buried in a garden behind their house. Investigators had long suspected that Oner—a 56-year-old former bank manager—had killed his mother and father to claim his inheritance. So the police went to Oner’s apartment and burst through the door.

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 Enlarge Kenan Oner's alleged crimes have roiled the country. Turkey Police

 When they found him in the living room, the lights were off. He was sitting alone, the police say, doing nothing, as if he’d been waiting for them to arrive. “Did you dig the garden?” Oner asked. And then they cuffed him.

 Oner has refused to comment on the charges. But now, as he sits in jail, awaiting trial, investigators are searching for the body of his wife, who disappeared in 2005. They think he killed her then buried her remains inside the walls of the apartment. (Oner hasn’t commented on these charges either).

 The national press is already covering the case like a soap opera, and many observers think it will prove to be Turkey’s trial of the century, with non-stop coverage and incessant media speculation. Turkey is no stranger to murder stories. But rarely has a case captured such attention of this nation of 76 million, where crimes of passion are common, but cold, calculated killing seems rare.

 Oner’s alleged crimes have shocked the country, not only because of what he allegedly did with the bodies, but because of the precision and planning that went along with it. “Our suspect is a disciplined, organized and educated person who planned the murders meticulously,” a senior police official says, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he isn’t authorized to talk to the press. “I have not seen a similar criminal profile before.”

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 Enlarge Years after Oner's parents went missing, police found their remains buried in their garden. Turkey Police

 It was Oner’s meticulousness that ultimately led to his capture. Over the past 30 years, he has saved thousands of documents including hourly notes of his movements. Among his files: A hand-drawn map of his parents’ garden with an “x” marked on it. According to the police, the notes he took around the dates of his parents’ disappearance read: “What am I going to do with these now?” and “I dug my dad’s garden, I am very tired.”

 The police say Oner is not a psychopath or a serial killer. His main motivation was allegedly money, as police say he was embroiled in bitter dispute with his parents and siblings over his inheritance.

 This isn’t the first time Oner has been accused of murder. In 1980, when the Turkish military took over the country, Oner was a philosophy major and a member of a radical communist group. Fearing arrest, he fled to France, where years later, he killed a Turkish friend for his money. Oner took the dead man’s passport, cash and his car and fled to Turkey, where he no longer feared arrest. Before long, he found a job at a bank, met his wife, Canan, married her and had a child.

 But the French police were persistent. In mid 1990s, Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest. The Turkish police picked him up him and put him on trial. In 1998, a court sentenced him to life in prison. Some seven years later, however, Oner received parole and was back out on the street.

 When he returned to normal life, Oner discovered that his wife was having an affair. He filed for divorce, but months later, in 2005, his wife disappeared. Oner says she ran away to Europe with her lover.

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 Enlarge Oner and his wife. Police now believe he killed her and buried her remains in his apartment. He says she went to Europe with her lover. Turkey Police

 In the meantime, Oner was desperate for money, police say. He had trouble finding a job because of his criminal record, so in 2008, he left Istanbul and moved in with his parents in Iznik, a small town in Western Turkey. A month later, his father, Ahmet Refik, and mother, Emine Oner, went missing.

 The couple lived modestly, but they had saved more than $2 million and owned dozens of shops and apartments. Oner’s parents reportedly refused to give him his share of the inheritance before they died. After their parents went missing, Oner’s brother and sister went to the police and blamed the convicted killer for their disappearance.

 For years, the police searched for the elderly couple, but to no avail. “We were suspicious of him [Oner] all along,” the senior police officer says. “But we could not find the bodies so there was no real evidence to accuse him.”

 As careful and fastidious as he was, Oner appears to have made a fatal mistake. After his parents’ disappearance, he forged his mother’s signature to access $150,000 from her bank account. His brother and sister filed a complaint, which set off a chain of events that led to the resumption of the murder case last year.

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 Enlarge For 6 years, police couldn't find Emine Oner, left, and Ahmet Refik. Turkey Police

 Earlier this year, a Turkish court convicted Oner to three years in prison on charges of forgery. In April, when the authorities went to take him to serve his sentence, they also obtained a search warrant to search his apartment. They confiscated his notes, hoping to find new clues into his parents’ disappearance. When they found the map of of the garden, they went back to Iznik to dig it up.

 That’s when they found the chopped up bones, which belonged to his parents, according to the senior police officer who says he has seen the forensic results.

 The death penalty is illegal in Turkey, but if found guilty, Oner may spend the rest of his life behind bars. In the meantime, his murder trial is likely to be a media frenzy of epic proportions. The press is already foaming at the mouth at the prospect of a the trial, and running sensational headlines such as “Man chopped his parents into 300 pieces.”

 As the gruesome details emerge, the story—like the movie Seven—is likely to get even more stomach-churning.

 Elcin Poyrazlar is Vocativ’s Istanbul bureau chief. Her debut novel, The Death of a Journalist, was published earlier this month by Ithaki Yayinlari. ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. |||||


Article:

This is odd, right? After all, we all know Islam is a religion of peace. How did Aboud Rogo and the other people at the Masjid Musa come to misunderstand the religion they were dedicated to living out properly? Surely the learned imam Pope Francis is on his way to Kenya now in order to […] ||||| One of the foundational principles of the Bush Doctrine was/is the oft-repeated dictum, "You are either with us or against us." Little did President Bush know that the American Muslim community was .... against us. George Bush believed that the moderates in the Muslim world would denounce/destroy the devout ("radical"), a war within Islam that never took place. Imagine Bush's dismay when he discovered that no one was behind him, like John Belushi in Animal House when he goes running out the front door shouting, "Who's with me?!?," only to discover that he is utterly alone.

 The faked hate narrative that Muslim groups and leaders use is now the default talking point any time that jihad or patriotism, for that matter, is being discussed. If Muslims spent as much time instituting programs in mosques and Islamic centers against jihad recruitment and the jihadic doctrine as they do fighting the myth of islamophobia, the world would be a vastly safer place.

 Muslim groups allege that Muslims have become targets of "violent threats" because of American Sniper. Nobody believes it. They are demanding that "American Sniper" director Clint Eastwood and actor Bradley Cooper denounce the alleged hateful language directed at Muslims because of the film. This it is what they do -- victim jihad. When one part of the Muslim world kills, the other half cries victim. Whack and whine. It is a distraction to get people to stop talking jihad and instead address their demands.

 Apparently, Muslim groups are claiming that a couple of tweets offended their sensibilities. They want action! More like submission. It's called free speech, brutes.

 Why don't Muslim groups demand that leaders of the Muslim world, imams, Al Azhar university, et al denounce the hateful, racist, anti-semitic, misogynist, anti-kuffar language in the Qur'an that is responsible for all of these Muslim wars across the world?

 The idea that the film "glorifies war and sanitizes Kyle" is laughable. The only war talk or war movie that the left enjoys is a war in which the US loses or stands down. The left demands that we hang our heads in shame if we triumph. Which is why "American Sniper" is such an invigorating breath of fresh air.

 As for "sanitizing Kyle," let's get real. It is the enemedia and the elites that sanitize jihad and Islam. And they do it every day in every news story. Hollywood doesn't just sanitize jihad and Islam, they avoid them all costs. It is the gravest threat to freedom, and Hollywood pretends that it doesn't exist.

 As my penpal Daniel F. points out, "Now it’s American Muslims who are complaining about 'violent threats,' allegedly incited by the hit movie American Sniper. And this time the media is trumpeting this story. Two rules of history converge here:

 1) When Muslims in an a non-Muslim country reach a certain critical mass, they seek to dominate the surrounding community – and then move on from there. cf. Britain, Germany, Sweden and France, inter alia.

 2) Free speech is unknown in the Muslim world, actually it’s anathema. So it starts with trying to shut us up and stopping us from casting Islam in a negative light. And does it work? For one thing, you can be certain the entertainment industry is now poring over their scripts and deleting 'offending' sections. Other 'projects' will simply bite the dust. Of course, Obama didn’t need cajoling. As soon as he took office he banned certain phrases from the government’s lexicon that might reflect poorly on the Muslim religion. Makes you wonder what that man is all about, doesn’t it?"

 For the record, I saw the film back in December when it was first given a very limited release -- just two theaters in NYC. I loved it. I tweeted that it was the best film in decades. It's hardly a rah-rah cheerleading film. It is a film about a deeply good and decent man, a true American patriot.

 The record breaking box-office numbers show how out of touch the elites are with the American people.

 "Group says 'American Sniper' film spurs threats against Muslims," By Mark Guarino, Reuters, January 24, 2015

 CHICAGO- An Arab-American civil rights organization has asked "American Sniper" director Clint Eastwood and actor Bradley Cooper to denounce hateful language directed at U.S. Arabs and Muslims after the release of the film about a Navy marksman. |||||
What is a summary?

– An American right-wing extremist is cited some 64 times in the crazed manifesto written by Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik in a bid to justify his terror attack. Robert Spencer, co-founder of the Jihad Watch and Stop Islamization of America (recently hacked) blogs denied any responsibility for the attack, calling his writings a "defense of human rights." If "somebody gets from that that they should kill, well then he's nuts," he told NBC News. But some observers believe heated hate speech can trigger such actions. “When you push the demonization of populations, you often end up with violence,” warned the research director for the Southern Poverty Law Center. The manifesto also frequently cites the blog Atlas Shrugs by Muslim-basher Pamela Gellar, who insisted that if anyone incited Breivik to violence "it was Islamic supremacists." One expert called the Norwegian tragedy a "wake up call" for US security. A 2009 Department of Homeland Security report warned of a growing threat from home-grown right-wing extremists and hate groups. “We could have a similar attack here, and that’s my greatest fear,” said former federal terror analyst Daryl Johnson. It wouldn't be fair to blame the American bloggers who influenced Breivik, a former CIA analyst tells the New York Times. Still, he adds: "This rhetoric is not cost-free."


– Astronaut Peggy Whitson returned to Earth late Saturday, wrapping up a record-breaking flight that catapulted her to first place for US space endurance. Whitson's 665 days off the planet—288 days on this mission alone—exceeds that of any other American and any other woman worldwide. She checked out of the International Space Station just hours earlier, along with another American and a Russian, reports the AP. Their Soyuz capsule landed in Kazakhstan shortly after sunrise Sunday. The journey back to Earth took three hours and 24 minutes, notes Space.com. Besides duration, Whitson set multiple other records while in orbit: world's oldest spacewoman, at age 57, and most experienced female spacewalker, with 10. She also became the first woman to command the space station twice following her launch last November. Returning cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin logged even more time in space: 673 days over five missions. NASA astronaut Jack Fischer returned after 136 days aloft. The station's newest commander, Randy Bresnik, called Whitson an "American space ninja." Yurchikhin is now No. 7 on the world's all-time endurance list, followed by Whitson at No. 8. Whitson, a biochemist, set a breakneck pace on all three of her space station expeditions, continually asking for more—and still more—scientific research to do. Scientists on the ground said it often was hard to keep up with her. She even experimented on food, trying to add pizazz to standard freeze-dried meals. Except for the past week, Whitson said her mission hurried by. She's hungry for pizza and eager to reunite with her husband, Clarence Sams, a biochemist who works at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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Three space travelers safely returned to Earth from the International Space Station today (Sept. 2) as their Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft touched down on the steppes of Kazakhstan, ending a record-shattering mission for one American crewmember.

 NASA's record-breaking astronaut Peggy Whitson returned home on the Soyuz from an extended 288-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS). During her stay, she set a new record for the most cumulative time in space by an American with 665 days accrued. Her crewmates, NASA astronaut Jack Fischer and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin both spent 136 days aboard the orbiting laboratory. Landing occurred at 9:21 p.m. EDT (0121 Sept. 3 GMT), though it was Sunday morning local time at the touchdown site.

 Expedition 51/52 crewmembers Fischer and Yurchikhin arrived at the ISS in April with an empty seat in their Soyuz. Whitson, who arrived in November with Expedition 50/51, filled that empty seat for the return flight after NASA and Russia's space agency Roscosmos agreed to extend her stay through Expedition 52. [In Photos: Record-Breaking Astronaut Peggy Whitson Returns to Earth]

 With all three seats filled, the Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft undocked from the space station's Poisk module at 5:58 p.m. EDT (1758 GMT), kicking off the crew's 3-hour and 24-minute journey back to Earth. About three hours later, the Soyuz barreled into Earth's atmosphere traveling at a speed of over 500 mph (800 km/h).

 Friction with the atmosphere caused temperatures outside the spacecraft to reach a scorching 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,400 degrees Celsius). A heat shield outside the Soyuz helped keep the crew relatively cool during the plunge. A series of parachutes were deployed to slow the spacecraft down about 15 minutes before touchdown, followed by a last-second burn of six soft-landing engines that helped cushion the last few feet of the fall. [Infographic: Russia's Soyuz Space Capsule Explained]

 They successfully touched down on target in a remote area near the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. The Soyuz spacecraft tipped over onto its side, which is common for Soyuz crew landings, NASA TV commentator Rob Navias said during a webcast of the landing.

 NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson (left), Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin (center) and NASA astronaut Jack Fischer (right) pose for a photo after landing in Kazakhstan on Sept. 3, 2017 local time (late Sept. 2, EDT). Whitson spent 288 days on the space station during her flight, with Fischer and Yurchikhin spending 136 days on their mission. Credit: NASA TV

 Recovery teams watched the landing from helicopters nearby before descending to the landing site to help the space travelers out of their capsule. After the crew gets checked out in a medical tent on-site, the helicopters will carry them back to Kazakhstan's Karaganda airport for a traditional welcoming ceremony before they board planes and head home.

 While Yurchikhin will go to Russia's cosmonaut center in Moscow, Whitson and Fischer will head to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. After the devastating floods brought by Hurricane Harvey led NASA to close the center, the agency had to come up with a contingency plan for getting the astronauts home.

 "Because of the after-effects of Hurricane Harvey, the NASA Gulfstream jet was unable to leave Houston in time to make it to the staging city of Karaganda in order to perform what is called a 'direct return' of the crew back to Houston," Navias said Saturday morning as the crewmembers said farewell to their colleagues in space. [Space Station Photos: Expedition 52 Crew in Orbit]

 A Russian Soyuz space capsule carrying NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson, Jack Fischer and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin lands on the Kazakhstan steppe on Sept. 3, 2017 local time (late Sept. 2 EDT). The trio ended a months-long mission to the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TV

 "The European Space Agency stepped up to the plate and offered the use of its plane that has been to Karaganda before," Navias said. "They will be poised in Karaganda to await the arrival of Whitson and Fischer." The astronauts will then fly back to the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, Germany, where the NASA Gulfstream jet will pick them up and take them back to Houston.

 Their return is still scheduled for Sunday night, "just about the same time they would have returned to Houston had the NASA Gulfstream jet done this all by itself," Navias said, adding that none of the science experiments or research samples the crew brought back with them had been impacted.

 "Our home is fine, but so many friends and co-workers have been impacted [by the storm]," Whitson said in an interview with NASA. "For example, in order to keep mission control running, the team (three shifts of a skeleton support crew) were sleeping on cots in the backup mission control rooms. Their sacrifices for the station and keeping things running up here are amazing."

 After the astronauts return to Houston, they will spend the next 45 days doing physical rehabilitation and undergoing a series of medical tests both for health reasons and scientific research. "There are many investigations on the human body that we've been doing up here in orbit, so we'll have to continue those studies as well during that first 45 days," Whitson said during an in-flight interview with Space.com.

 "In addition to that, we're doing a lot of debriefs talking to the ground teams about procedures that worked really well, procedures that we need to try to improve, tools or hardware that we had issues with — just ideas for how to operationally improve the efficiencies up here so that we can get even more done," she said. "So that first 45 days is actually going to be very busy."

 The Expedition 52 crew poses for a portrait at the International Space Station. Pictured clockwise from top right: Paolo Nespoli, Jack Fischer, Peggy Whitson, Sergey Ryazanskiy, Randy Bresnik and Fyodor Yurchikhin. Credit: ESA/NASA

 Back at the space station, NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky will be the only three crewmembers on board until Sept. 12, when the Expedition 52/53 crewmembers arrive. NASA astronauts Joe Acaba and Mark Vande Hei and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin will then dock at the ISS in their Soyuz MS-05 spacecraft and will spend the next six months in space. On Friday (Sept. 1) Yurchikhin handed over command of the ISS to Bresnik.

 Yurchikhin has now spent a total of 673 days in space over the course of five flights and is now is now in seventh place on the all-time spaceflight endurance list. He has spent just eight more days in space than Whitson, whose 665 days in space puts her at number eight on that list. She also became NASA's all-time spaceflight duration record holder during this mission when she passed NASA astronaut Jeff Williams' record of 534 days. Whitson's 288-day aboard the station was also the longest single spaceflight by a woman of any nationality. Fischer, a rookie astronaut returning from his first trip to space, has now accrued 136 days in orbit.

 Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. ||||| The Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft lands with Expedition 52 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of Roscosmos and Flight Engineers Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer of NASA near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, Sunday,... (Associated Press)

 CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Astronaut Peggy Whitson returned to Earth late Saturday, wrapping up a record-breaking flight that catapulted her to first place for U.S. space endurance.

 Whitson's 665 days off the planet — 288 days on this mission alone — exceeds that of any other American and any other woman worldwide.

 She checked out of the International Space Station just hours earlier, along with another American and a Russian. Their Soyuz capsule landed in Kazakhstan shortly after sunrise Sunday — Saturday night back in the U.S.

 Whitson was the last one carried from the Soyuz. She immediately received a pair of sunglasses to put on, as she rested in a chair on the barren, wind-swept Kazak steppes. Medical personnel took her pulse, standard practice. She then received a bouquet of flowers with the greeting, "Welcome back, Peggy."

 Besides duration, Whitson set multiple other records while in orbit: world's oldest spacewoman, at age 57, and most experienced female spacewalker, with 10. She also became the first woman to command the space station twice following her launch last November.

 Returning cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin logged even more time in space: 673 days over five missions. NASA astronaut Jack Fischer returned after 136 days aloft. The men flew up in April.

 All three briefly held hands for a photo op, before being carried one by one in their chairs to the medical tent.

 It was an emotional farewell to the space station for Whitson, Yurchikhin and Fischer. Before retreating into their Soyuz, they embraced the three colleagues they were leaving behind at the 250-mile-high complex. Yurchikhin patted the inside of the station before floating into his Soyuz for the final time.

 The station's newest commander, Randy Bresnik, noted the outpost was losing 1,474 days of spaceflight experience with the departure of Whitson, Yurchikhin and Fischer. Four years and two weeks, he pointed out.

 "We are in your debt for the supreme dedication that you guys have to the human mission of exploration," Bresnik told them on the eve of their departure. He offered up special praise for Whitson — "American space ninja" — and wished them all Godspeed.

 Yurchikhin is now No. 7 on the world's all-time endurance list, followed by Whitson at No. 8. The top spot belongs to Russian Gennady Padalka, with 879 days in space over five flights.

 Whitson, a biochemist, set a breakneck pace on all three of her space station expeditions, continually asking for more — and still more — scientific research to do. Scientists on the ground said it often was hard to keep up with her. She even experimented on food up there, trying to add some pizazz to the standard freeze-dried meals. Tortillas transformed into apple pies on her watch.

 Whitson was supposed to fly back in June after a half-year in space. But when an extra seat opened up on this Soyuz, she jumped at the chance to stay in orbit an extra three months. Only one other American — yearlong spaceman Scott Kelly — has spent longer in space on a single mission.

 Except for the past week, Whitson said her mission hurried by. She's hungry for pizza and can't wait to use a regular flush toilet again. She's also eager to reunite with her husband, Clarence Sams, a biochemist who also works at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

 Because of the effects of Hurricane Harvey, NASA could not get its plane from Houston to Kazakhstan in time for the crew's landing. Instead, the European Space Agency offered to transport Whitson and Fischer to Cologne, Germany, where they will meet up with the NASA plane for the final leg of their journey. They should be back in Houston on Sunday night.

 Three men remain at the space station: Bresnik, a Russian and an Italian. They will be joined by two Americans and a Russian following liftoff from Kazakhstan on Sept. 12.

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 NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html |||||