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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's choice to be the No. 2 official at the Homeland Security Department is under investigation for his role in helping a company run by a brother of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, The Associated Press has learned. Alejandro Mayorkas, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is being investigated for his role in helping the company secure an international investor visa for a Chinese executive, according to congressional officials briefed on the investigation. The officials spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release details of the...

The influential Muslim cleric lives quietly on a gated 26-acre compound in the Pocono Mountains, where he prays, works, meets admirers and watches from afar as terrorism accusations that have landed him on Turkey’s most-wanted list unfold in court. Rarely seen in public, Fethullah Gulen has long been one of Turkey’s most important scholars, with multitudes of followers in his native country and around the world. More recently, Turkey’s increasingly autocratic president, Recip Erdogan, has accused Gulen of plotting to overthrow the officially secular government from his Pennsylvania idyll some 5,000 miles away. Gulen’s supporters call the charge baseless and,...

In an astonishing and reckless attack on the US the Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that the country considers itself at war with any nation that stands by the US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen. He said: "Any country that protects Fethullah Gulen will be an enemy to Turkey." Moderate cleric Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania, has been a constant scapegoat for Erdogan who has accused him of trying to establish a “parallel state” to rival his own fiefdom. The statement by Mr Yildirim will be seen as a thinly veiled threat to America to give up Gulen, who lives...

Aside from defrauding American taxpayers, the Gülen organization has an even more ominous objective in the United States. The organization is one of the country’s largest recipients of H1-B “specialty occupation” visas, which it uses to import Turkish teachers into its charter schools, supposedly because local U.S. talent is not available to fill math and science teaching positions in its charter schools. The Gülen organization illegally threatens to revoke these visas unless the Turkish teachers agree to kick back part of their salary to the organization. More importantly, the Turkish teachers in Gülen organization charter schools are evaluated not on...

Turkey | An aging but popular exile in the United States, Fethullah Gulen is considered by many behind moves to Islamicize his native land After weeks of demonstrations in 76 cities, police forces in Turkey made one final sweep through Istanbul’s Taksim Square, arresting the remaining protesters and wiping out their tent city. That appeared to be the end of nationwide protests that injured 4,000 and left at least four dead—until a local performing artist arrived on the night of June 17 and peacefully planted himself in the square. With his hands in his pockets, the “standing man” stared solemnly...

Erdogan was initially on the roster of speakers on the funeral — a list that includes a number of famous names, such as former president Bill Clinton and comedian Billy Crystal. However, on Monday, Ali family spokesman Bob Gunnell had said that two unnamed speakers had been added to the program, meaning that foreign guests Erdogan and King Abdullah II of Jordan would no longer be able to make an address. Gunnell told reporters that the two world leaders had been “gracious and understood.” But there were a number of suggestions that perhaps Erdogan had been removed from the list...

New York Times reporter Alan Feuer, seen last May giving respectable coverage to a convention of "Bush-caused-9-11" conspiracy nuts, went to enormous (and erroneous) pains Monday to soft-pedal the Muslim beliefs of the Fort Dix terrorist plotters in "Two Mosques Are Shaken by Ties to a Terror Plot." "It is unclear what role, if any, religion played in the attack Mr. Shnewer and the five other men are charged with planning. (The sixth suspect, Agron Abdullahu, had no apparent connection with Al-Aqsa or the South Jersey Islamic Center.) The authorities have described the suspects as Islamic extremists, but the lengthy...

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The 18-year-old sister of a suspect in a deadly police ambush said she thinks her brother, Eric Frein, has fled the Pocono Mountain woods, according to a story in The Morning Call. Tiffany Frein told the Call she believes the intensive manhunt has failed to capture her brother because he is no longer in the deep woods where officers are looking for him.

A newly-released email and lobbying documents filed with Congress reveals new ties between Clintonworld and members of a network operated by a mysterious Islamic cleric from Turkey. Connections between Clinton and acolytes of the imam, Fethullah Gulen, could muddle the complex relationship between the U.S. and Turkey, a key NATO ally, if the former secretary of state wins the White House. TurkeyÂ’s president, Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan, has mounted an aggressive crackdown against Gulen and his followers, known as Gulenists. ErdoÄŸan, who was once allied with Gulen, has even personally asked President Obama to extradite the 74-year-old guru, who has lived...

A white man alleges in a lawsuit that a Coolbaugh Township community’s black public safety chief discriminated against him and other white public safety officers while showing favoritism to black and Latino officers. Bryan Rush is suing A Pocono Country Place Public Safety Chief Kurt Cummings and its black human resources director, Cassandra Webster, who Rush claims did nothing to address reverse-discrimination complaints and approved Rush’s termination after Cummings falsely accused him of smoking in a patrol vehicle. Cummings occasionally made “discriminatory comments about protecting his minorities and other insensitive comments about favoring employees based on race,” Rush’s lawsuit states....

Muhammad Fethullah Gulen is a Turkish Islamist, writer and preacher with a secret plan for bringing Shariah law to America. Arguably Turkey's most influential spiritual leader of the past 50 years, Gulen left that country in the late 1990s and now directs his cult-like Islamic movement from a guarded compound in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Part of his empire consists of a thriving network of more than 140 charter schools in 26 states that sell themselves to parents as a secular and more academically rigorous alternative to public schools. As the second largest chain of charter schools in the...

Members of a secretive Turkish Islamic movement that is at the center of a congressional ethics committee investigation have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and to her family’s charity, a Daily Caller investigation has found.The largest donation from a leader of the Gulen movement, which is operated from Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains by a moderate Muslim cleric named Fethullah Gulen, came from Recep Ozkan. A former president of the Gulen-linked Turkish Cultural Center, Ozkan gave between $500,001 and $1,000,000 to the Clinton Foundation in recent months, the charity’s website shows. He also served as a national...

Gov. Tom Wolf is expected to call today for the Republican-controlled General Assembly to send him a budget that boosts state education funding and provides relief for school district property taxes while raising the rates of the sales and personal income taxes. His plan for doing so includes a proposal to raise the personal income tax rate in July 2015 from 3.07 percent to 3.7 percent, while increasing the eligibility for a poverty exemption, according to a briefing document prepared by the administration. He will propose increasing the state sales tax in July 2016 from 6 to 6.6 percent while...

Pennsylvania property tax relief should be targeted to taxpayers in the few school districts—most particularly in Monroe County—with the highest tax burdens, without completely eliminating school property taxes statewide, says a new report. High property taxes are a problem in only 30 of Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts, according to the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center report released last week. Monroe County’s four school districts rank among the top five districts statewide for percentage of taxable household income going to pay property taxes. […] The average total property tax bill in Monroe County is between $3,000 and $4,000. Households in the...

Fugitive gunman Eric Frein has again evaded the massive police dragnet that has now been hunting him for 16 days as he ran into woods after being spotted in the Pocono Mountains. Frein, 31, wanted for murdering one state trooper and critically injuring another, managed to flee, although MailOnline understands they have a jacket that he left behind. Frein, who is on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List, was seen just outside the perimeter of the five-square-mile search area that up to 1,000 cops are manning at any one time. The sighting led to a huge shift southwards as heavily...

“Welcome to the Poconos. Welcome to the home of gangs,” read a slide at a presentation sponsored by the Pocono Mountains chapter of the Community Association Institute. Interspersed in the slideshow of inner city tribes of Bloods, Crips and Latin Kings were photos of gang members in quaint gated communities and the parking lots of suburban malls. “You never get rid of crime. You displace crime,” said retired Allentown cop Edward Bachert Jr., who worked the gang detail for more than 15 years. “Gangs are like cancer.” … Locally, gangs came to the forefront around 2006 when media attention focused...

A severe statewide cutback in road and bridge repair funds announced Thursday means the loss of more than $115 million for Monroe and Pike infrastructure fixes over the next 12 years. The state Transportation Commission approved an update to its transportation program that slashes money for improvements for highways, bridges, transit, aviation and rail freight by 24 percent. The cutbacks will cost 749 jobs repairing Monroe infrastructure, and 2,713 in Pike. For Pike, it means losing $90 million in road projects; in Monroe, $25 million.

"That's him."  Five men in a blue sedan watched a short, fat fellow in a summer-weight suit walk out of his apartment building at 250 E. 178th St. in the Bronx.  The time was 7:55 a.m. on July 25, 1939. The man, bound for the E. Tremont Ave. subway station, was right on schedule.  Jacob (Kuppy) Migden, a fledgling Brooklyn hoodlum who had spent a week tailing the prey, confirmed that he was the right man.  The sedan's driver, Seymour (Blue Jaw) Magoon, dropped the big car in gear. He prowled past the quarry, did a U-turn, then approached from...

There's a Cultural Revolution going on in Smithfield Township, complete with book burnings, Marxist film festivals and a day off for Stalin's birthday. This according to a spoof of Smithfield's Web site that has been circulating like underground literature throughout the township. The author of www.smithfieldtownship.info is keeping a low profile while hurling suggestions that the township is being run by a communist regime otherwise known as the Environmental Advisory Council. "Welcome to Smithfield Township, 'We Know What's Best for Your Property,'" reads the site's headline in a font and background color that mimics the township's official site http://smithfieldtownship.com.