US recruits tech leaders to help disrupt IS group

US recruits tech leaders to help disrupt IS group

PALO ALTO, Calif.

With extremists finding fertile ground for recruitment online, the White House is dispatching top national security officials to Silicon Valley to seek the tech industry’s help in disrupting the Islamic State group and other terrorists.

At a high-level session today, industry leaders and government officials will discuss ways to use technology to stop terrorists from radicalizing people online and spurring them to violence, according to a meeting agenda obtained by The Associated Press.

But it’s unclear what will come of the meeting: While tech industry leaders say they want to be good citizens, they don’t want to undercut free speech or be viewed as government agents. And tech leaders have clashed with the Obama administration before over encryption of online data and messages.

Survey: Progress on health insurance stalled in 2015

WASHINGTON

Going into President Barack Obama’s last year in office, progress has stalled on reducing the number of uninsured Americans under his signature health care law, according to a major survey out Thursday.

The share of U.S. adults without health insurance was 11.9 percent in the past three months of 2015, essentially unchanged from the start of the year, according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. The ongoing survey, based on daily interviews with 500 people, has been used by media, social scientists and administration officials to track the law’s impact.

Release of the latest installment comes after the Republican-led Congress voted to send legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act to Obama’s desk.

Salt miners rescued after frigid night in stuck elevator

LANSING, N.Y.

Seventeen miners spent a frigid night in a broken-down elevator in America’s deepest salt mine, huddling with heat packs and blankets before being rescued early Thursday, a mishap that highlighted the sometimes-risky work of churning out the road salt that keeps traffic moving on ice and snow.

The workers were descending to start their shifts about 10 p.m. Wednesday when the roughly 5-by-6-foot car abruptly stopped about 90 stories below ground in the Cayuga salt mine while heading to a floor nearly deep enough to fit two Empire State Buildings stacked atop one another.

Terrorism-related arrests made in 2 states, feds say

SACRAMENTO, Calif.

Authorities said Thursday that two people have been arrested on terrorism-related charges in California and Texas, including a refugee from Iraq who is charged with lying to federal investigators about his travels to Syria.

A criminal complaint unsealed Thursday accuses Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, 23, of traveling to Syria to fight alongside terrorist organizations and lying to investigators about it.

The complaint said Al-Jayab, a Palestinian born in Iraq who came to the United States as an Iraqi refugee in October 2012, communicated on social media about his intent to return to Syria to fight for terrorist organizations, discussing his previous experience fighting against the regime in Syria. When he was interviewed by citizenship officials, he lied about his travels and ties, the complaint alleges.

Associated Press