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Yahoo News Special Report: FBI updates on the Oregon stadoff shooting

BURNS, Ore. (AP) -- The FBI arrested the leaders of an armed group that has occupied a national wildlife refuge in Oregon for more than three weeks during a traffic stop that left one dead. Here is a rundown of what happened and what it means:

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HOW DID THE ARRESTS HAPPEN?

The group's leader, Ammon Bundy, and several others were heading to a community meeting Tuesday night in a small town near the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to discuss their views against federal management of public lands.

Police arrested Bundy, his brother, Ryan, and three others during a traffic stop north of Burns, the FBI and Oregon State Police said in a statement. Officers shot and killed a man wanted by federal authorities, but few other details were released.

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Law enforcement personnel work at the airport, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016, in Burns, Ore. Authorities …

It was not clear what led to the shooting or if he or any of the other ranchers exchanged gunfire with officers.

Separately, three others tied to the standoff were arrested: two in Burns and one in Arizona.

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WHO DIED?

Authorities didn't identify the person, but the daughter of an Arizona rancher told the Oregonian that it was her father. Arianna Finicum Brown told the newspaper that Robert "LaVoy" Finicum, 55, of Cane Beds, Arizona, died.

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This combination of photos provided by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office and the Maricopa Co …

He was a public presence at the refuge, often speaking for the group at news conferences. He told The Associated Press on Jan. 5 that he was not going to go to jail.

"This is where I'm going to breathe my last breath, whether I'm 90, 95 or 55," Finicum said at the refuge.

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WHY DID AUTHORITIES TAKE ACTION NOW?

The FBI didn't say, but authorities had come under increasing pressure from Oregon's governor, local officials, residents and a nearby tribe to act after having taken a hands-off approach.

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This photo provided by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016, shows …

Bundy's group had been free to come and go. They held frequent news conferences at the refuge, traveled to meet with sympathizers and others, and attended community meetings. At one last week, locals shouted at them to leave.

Ammon Bundy had been in contact with an FBI negotiator and local law enforcement.

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HOW DID THIS BEGIN?

The group took over the refuge on Jan. 2 to oppose federal land restrictions and object to the prison sentences of two local ranchers convicted of setting fires.

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FILE - In this Jan. 6, 2016 file photo, Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum carries his rifle after standi …

Dwight Hammond and his son, Steven, reported back to prison this month after serving no more than a year on arson convictions. A judge ruled the terms fell short of minimum sentences that require them to serve about four more years.

The case led Bundy's group to demand an inquiry into whether the government is forcing ranchers off their land, though the Hammonds distanced themselves from the group. It's a clash over public lands that dates back decades in the West.

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WHAT'S HAPPENING AT THE REFUGE NOW?

It was unclear how many people remained at the refuge, but armed activists still are believed to be holed up there. Jason Patrick, a new leader of the occupation, told Oregon Public Broadcasting that five or six group members are continuing the standoff.

The FBI established checkpoints around the preserve out of "an abundance of caution." Only ranchers who live in the area surrounding the preserve will be allowed to pass.

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WHAT CHARGES DO THE ACTIVISTS FACE?

Those arrested face a federal felony charge of conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation or threats, the FBI said.

The 2nd American Revolution Has Officially Begun. . . and I hope it will be peaceful! ~J

I’m going to make a statement here, one that I’ve long wanted to make: I have real problems with the way State of the Nation generally presents info. To me, it is meant to excite and enflame and draw us to their work. I personally don’t think Ammon Bundy would be one bit pleased with the title they have chosen for theis article; his entire effort has been to prevent a revolution!

Their previous post with info from the BBC is also offensive to me: we now know the BBC is disinfo and not on our side. . . don’t know why they’ve chosen to use them for any info at all. I for one, don’t like it. The life of our Nation and the very lives of her people are at stake! I think many of their posts are lacking in integrity and filled with ‘shallow’ information; this is exemplified in their previous posting, and yet it comes across with what is to me an obvious desire to be Number One, when to me they clearly are not. I think there is no room for that kind of thinking now, today, in the life of our country. We need the most honest, in-depth, well researched reporting we have ever had, and I don’t see them giving it to us.

I’m publishing this post now because today I will publish anything that will bring the Feds to a standstill and save the lives of these good men. As Ammon essentially has now said: they have this won in the courts — and surely they do! Hopefully, when/if it goes to the courts, it will continue to acquaint us all with the American Constitution — and how it’s been thrown out the window, so that we are sure not to understand its power, about which I realize I for one know far too little. . . Hugs, ~Jean

http://themillenniumreport.com/2016/01/the-first-martyr-of-the-movement-in-2016-the-feds-arrest-burns-protest-leadership/

Bundy and Hammond Ranch Standoffs: Lexington and Concord 2.0

Mormon Arizona rancher LaVoy Finicum was killed on the night of January 26 as the militia standoff near Burns, Oregon, appeared to come to an end. Famously, Finicum, 55, had told the media on January 6 that he would choose death over surrender in the case. His death was confirmed by Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore. She wrote on Twitter:

Finicum was killed during a traffic stop, reports CNN. He died one day before his 56th birthday.

Oregon Public Radio reports that Finicum and some of his comrades were pulled over between the towns of Burns and John Day at around 4:30 p.m. local time.

Since January 2, activists have been occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. Those armed protesters, led in-part by Ammon Bundy, were protesting the sentence of Dwight and Steve Hammond. They were found guilty of committing arson on federal land.

Here’s what you need to know:

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1. Cliven Bundy Said Finicum Was Sacrificed ‘For a Good Purpose’

His full name was Robert LaVoy Finicum. He was a neighbor of Cliven Bundy’s ranch,where the infamous 2014 ranch standoff occurred. They were neighbors despite Finicum living in Arizona and Bundy living in Nevada. On January 5, 2016, Finicum told NBC Newsthat he may want to go home to Arizona soon saying, “I need to get home. I got cows that are scattered and lost.”

When he heard about the arrests and death, Cliven Bundy told Los Angeles Times reporter Matt Pearce, “Isn’t this a wonderful country we live in?” He added, “We believe those federal people shouldn’t even be there in that state, and be in that county and have anything to do with This issue. … I have some sons and other people there trying to protect our rights and liberties and freedoms, and now we’ve got one killed, and all I can say is, he’s sacrificed for a good purpose.”

Bundy later confirmed Finicum’s death to CBS Las Vegas reporter Patranya Bhoolsuwan.In a statement on his Facebook page, Bundy wrote:

The resolve for principled liberty must go on. It appears that America was fired upon by our government. One of liberty’s finest patriots is fallen. He will not go silent into eternity. Our appeal is to heaven.

LaVoy & Jeanette Finicum Photos: Pictures of Cowboy Couple

LaVoy Finicum was the foster parent to troubled boys at his ranch in Arizona. He did so along with his loving wife, Jeanette.

Click here to read more

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2. During the Standoff in Oregon, He Had Become Known as ‘Tarp Man’

During his involvement in the Malheur standoff, the 11 foster children that were in the care of Finicum have been taken away. Finicum complained that those children were he and his wife’s major source of labor and money on their ranch, reported Time Magazine. AnMSNBC report on the standoff dubbed Finicum “Tarp Man” as he could be seen covered in a blue tarp with a rocking chair during the incident.

When asked by NBC News why he chose to sit out in such a visible position, he said that he wanted officers to be able to find him. Finicum said, “I do not want the FBI federal agents to have to go running around in the dark, kicking in doors looking for me, OK? I want them to know exactly where I’m at.” He added, chillingly, “I’m telling them right now — don’t point guns at me.”

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3. He Posted a Video of His Family Singing ‘Amazing Grace’ Just Hours Before His Death

On his Twitter page, Finicum goes by the moniker “@OneCowboysStand.” His bio on the page reads, “Rancher, Loves Freedom and willing to fight and die defending it.” His last post on the site was a video of a group of children singing “Amazing Grace.” His Twitter pseudonym is taken from his book title, One Cowboy’s Last Stand for Freedom. In aninterview with NBC News, Finicum said that he would rather be killed than arrested saying, “I have no intention of spending any of my days in a concrete box. There are things more important than your life and freedom is one of them. I’m prepared to defend freedom.”

According to Mormon tradition, cremation is not encourage and a proper funeral burial is preferred.

LaVoy & Jeanette Finicum Photos: Pictures of Cowboy Couple

LaVoy Finicum was the foster parent to troubled boys at his ranch in Arizona. He did so along with his loving wife, Jeanette.

Click here to read more

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4. He Was a Man Who Loved ‘Nothing More in Life Than God, Family & Freedom’

On his official website, Finicum wrote:

As he has watched the ever increasing encroachment of government into the lives of the American people he has felt to make a stand for freedom. He has drawn a line in the sand and that line is the Constitution in its original intent.

The Constitution of the United States of America is a charter to protect the freedom of man by putting strict limits on government. We are living in a day when that supreme law of the land has been shredded by the very government that took an oath to uphold it. By their actions the Federal Government has become lawless and stalks the liberties of this land under the guise of social justice.

Shown below are LaVoy and Jeanette’s 11 children. This is why freedom is so important!

He also describes himself as a rancher who “loves nothing more in life than God, family, and freedom.”

Meanwhile on his wife, Jeanette’s LinkedIn page, she lists foster care provider as her full time job.

One of the couple’s daughters, Arianna Finicum Brown, 26, told the Oregonian that she wasn’t worried for her father’s safety during the standoff. She said, “I talked to him, and he said they were telling people to go if they weren’t there for the right reasons, they didn’t want anyone there who could make everything go bad. He had no plans to be violent. My dad was a really good guy.”

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5. Ammon Bundy Has Been Arrested in Oregon

KATU reports that Ammon Bundy and other members of the militia, including Ryan Payne, were arrested by the FBI and Oregon State Police on the night of January 26 during the traffic stop where Finicum was killed.

It’s unclear who shot first but one person was taken to a nearby hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Michele Fiore said that person wasRyan Bundy, another son of Cliven, who was shot in the arm.

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http://heavy.com/news/2016/01/lavoy-finicum-dead-dies-rip-funeral-youtube-school-family-ammon-bundy-arrested-malheur-standoff-wife-jeanette/

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http://stateofthenation2012.com/?p=29802

"The level of concern is high, as is the level of uncertainty," WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan told her organization's executive board members. "We need to get some answers, quickly."

The mosquito-borne disease is now in "23 countries and territories in the region," according to Chan. While it's been around in some form for decades, alarms have been raised only recently about Zika's suspected connection with "birth malformations and neurological symptoms."

"Arrival of the virus in some places has been associated with a steep increase in the birth of babies with abnormally small heads and in cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome," Chan explained.

After being first detected in 1947 in a monkey in Uganda, Zika was most often found along the equator from Africa into Asia. Nine years ago, new cases popped up in islands in the Pacific Ocean.

______ 14 photos: Zika viurus outbreak

Last year, it made its way to the Americas -- with already devastating results.

The number of cases there has grown exponentially, prompting significant public health measures aimed at curbing it and protecting those most endangered by it, particularly women who could become pregnant or who already are.

Chan called an emergency committee meeting to convene February 1 in Geneva, Switzerland, to talk about what health officials worldwide should do about the Zika virus.

U.S.-based researchers Daniel Lucey and Lawrence Gostin had called for just such a meeting in an article published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, criticizing the World Health Organization for not stepping up sooner.

"The very process of convening the committee would catalyze international attention, funding, and research," Lucey and Gostin wrote. "While Brazil, PAHO, and the CDC have acted rapidly, WHO headquarters has thus far not been proactive, given potentially serious ramifications."

As stocks continue to crash, you can blame the Federal Reserve, because the Fed is more responsible for creating the current financial bubble that we are living in than anyone else. When the Federal Reserve pushed interest rates all the way to the floor and injected lots of hot money into the financial markets during their quantitative easing programs, this pushed stock prices to wildly artificial levels. The only way that it would have been possible to keep stock prices at those wildly artificial levels would have been to keep interest rates ultra-low and to keep recklessly creating lots of new money. But now the Federal Reserve has ended quantitative easing and has embarked on a program of very slowly raising interest rates. This is going to have very severe consequences for the markets, but Janet Yellen doesn’t seem to care.

There is a reason why the financial world hangs on every single word that is issued by the Fed. That is because the massively inflated stock prices that we see today were a creation of the Fed and are completely dependent on the Fed for their continued existence.

Right now, stock prices are still 30 to 40 percent above what the economic fundamentals say that they should be based on historical averages. And if we are now plunging into a very deep recession as I contend, stock prices should probably fall by a total of more than 50 percent from where they are now.

The only way that stock prices could have ever gotten this disconnected from economic reality is with the help of the Federal Reserve. And since the U.S. dollar is the primary reserve currency of the entire planet, the actions of the Fed over the past few years have created stock market bubbles all over the globe.

But the only way to keep the party going is to keep the hot money flowing. Unfortunately for investors, Janet Yellen and her friends at the Fed have chosen to go the other direction. Not only has quantitative easing ended, but the Fed has also decided to slowly raise interest rates. The Fed left rates unchanged on Wednesday, but we were told that we are probably still on schedule for another rate hike in March.

So how did the markets respond to the Fed?

Well, after attempting to go green for much of the day, the Dow started plunging very rapidly and ended up down 222 points.

The markets understand the reality of what they are now facing. They know that stock prices are artificially high and that if the Fed keeps tightening that it is inevitable that they will fall back to earth.

In a true free market system, stock prices would be far, far lower than they are right now. Everyone knows this – including Jim Cramer. Just check out what he told CNBC viewers earlier today…

Jim Cramer was tempted to resurface his “they know nothing” rant after hearing the Fed speak on Wednesday. He was hoping that a few boxes on his market bottom checklist might be checked off, but it seems that the bear market has not yet run its course.

“The Fed’s wishy-washy statement on interest rates today left stocks sinking back into oblivion after a nice rally yesterday,” the “Mad Money” host said.

Without artificial help from the Fed, stocks will most definitely continue to sink into oblivion.

That is because these current stock prices are not based on anything real.

And so as this new financial crisis continues to unfold, the magnitude of the crash is going to be much worse than it otherwise would have been.

It has often been said that the higher you go the farther you have to fall. Because the Federal Reserve has pumped up stock prices to ridiculously high levels, that just means that the pain on the way down is going to be that much worse.

It is also important to remember that stocks tend to fall much more rapidly than they rise. And when we see a giant crash in the financial markets, that creates a tremendous amount of fear and panic. The last time there was great fear and panic for an extended period of time was during the crisis of 2008 and 2009, and this created a tremendous credit crunch.

During a credit crunch, financial institutions because very hesitant to lend to one another or to anyone else. And since our economy is extremely dependent on the flow of credit, economic activity slows down dramatically.

As this current financial crisis escalates, you are going to notice certain things begin to happen. If you own a business or you work at a business, you may start to notice that fewer people are coming in, and those people that do come in are going have less money to spend.

As economic activity slows, employers will be forced to lay off workers, and many businesses will shut down completely. And since 63 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, many will suddenly find themselves unable to meet their monthly expenses. Foreclosures will skyrocket, and large numbers of people will go from living a comfortable middle class lifestyle to being essentially out on the street very, very rapidly.

At this point, many experts believe that the economic outlook for the coming months is quite grim. For example, just consider what Marc Faber is saying…

It won’t come as a surprise to market watchers that “Dr. Doom” Marc Faber isn’t getting any more cheerful.

But the noted bear at least found a sense of humor on Wednesday into which he could channel his bleakness.

The publisher of the “Gloom, Boom & Doom Report” told attendees at the annual “Inside ETFs” conference that the medium-term economic outlook has become “so depressing” that he may as well fill a newly installed pool with beer instead of water.

If the Federal Reserve had left interest rates at more reasonable levels and had never done any quantitative easing, we would have been forced to address our fundamental economic problems more honestly and stock prices would be far, far lower today.

But now that the Fed has created this giant artificial financial bubble, the coming crash is going to be much worse than it otherwise would have been. And the tremendous amount of panic that this crash will cause will paralyze much of the economy and will ultimately lead to a far deeper economic downturn than we witnessed last time around.

Once the Fed started wildly injecting money into the system, they had no other choice but to keep on doing it.

By removing the artificial support that they had been giving to the financial markets, they are making a huge mistake, and they are setting the stage for an economic tragedy that will affect the lives of every man, woman and child in America.


(The Economic Collapse)