Muslim Teen Killed After Leaving Virginia Mosque; Suspect Arrested

Darwin Martinez Torres was taken into custody after driving “suspiciously” near a pond where the body was found.

A Virginia man was arrested after a Muslim teenager he allegedly confronted near a mosque in Sterling was later found dead in a pond.

The victim, identified by relatives to The Washington Post as Nabra Hassanen, 17, was walking with friends near the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center about 4 a.m. Sunday after Ramadan prayers when they got into some kind of dispute with a man who drove past in a car.

The friends told authorities that the driver then exited his car brandishing a baseball bat. The teens scattered when the man allegedly attacked Hassanen. Once the friends regrouped at the religious center, mosque officials contacted police.

According to the Fairfax County Police Department, remains that investigators believe are the missing teen’s were discovered on Sunday afternoon in a pond about two miles from the mosque. An autopsy will confirm identity and cause of death. A baseball bat was also recovered. 

As a helicopter, police dogs and rescue teams searched for the teen, an officer spotted Darwin Martinez Torres, 22, “driving suspiciously” in the area. Torres was arrested and charged with murder on Sunday. He’s being held in Fairfax County jail, officials said.

The ADAMS Center urged authorities to conduct a thorough investigation into Hassanen’s death, and determine if it was, in fact, a hate crime. At the time of this writing, investigators haven’t yet made that determination.

“We call on law enforcement to investigate and determine the motive of this crime and prosecute to the full extent of the law,” the center said in a statement. “We are devastated and heartbroken as our community undergoes and processes this traumatic event. It is a time for us to come together to pray and care for our youth.”

Police are also questioning Hassanen’s friends, who likely overheard the dispute. The group was confronted near the mosque outside an IHOP restaurant, the Post reported. The mosque has extra prayers at midnight and 2 a.m., and members frequently eat breakfast before they start their fast at sunrise for Ramadan.

“I can’t think of a worse instance to occur than the loss of a 17-year-old on Father’s Day, as the father of a 17-year-old myself,” Loudoun County Sheriff Michael Chapman told the Post.

Nabra’s mother, Sawsan Gazzar, wept at her home on Sunday night.

“I lost my daughter,” she told the Post, “my first reason for happiness.”

 

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What Would Happen in the Hours and Minutes After the US Bombed Iran?

Here's how it might go down, according to a trio of experts.

Donald Trump predicted back in 2013 that the US would eventually go to war with Iran. At the time, Trump was merely a rich guy and right-wing gadlfy criticizing Secretary of State John Kerry on Fox News, but later, as a presidential candidate then a president, his rhetoric and policies have been strikingly antagonistic.
Trump promised to renegotiate Barack Obama's signature deal with Iran on nuclear weapons during the 2016 campaign, and though he hasn't done that, he has staffed his White House with people hostile toward Iran. That includes Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who has implied that Iran and ISIS are on friendly terms.
Shortly after Trump took office, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen attacked a Saudi ship, killing two people—and in pretty a wild leap leap of logic, the White House described it as an Iranian attack. In April, Trump said Iran wasn't "living up to the spirit" of the nuclear deal. During a May trip to the Middle East, Trump appeared to side more aggressively with Saudi Arabia against Iran than past presidents, then continued that anti-Iran rhetoric in Israel.
Over the weekend, a report claiming that the Saudi coastguard had killed an Iranian fisherman, an announcement by Iran that it had fired multiple ballistic missiles into eastern Syria to target ISIS in retaliation for an attack in Tehran, and the shooting down of a Syrian plane by a US-led coalition only heightened tensions in the region.
This state of affairs has some people very worried. In The Independent, businessman and human rights activist Andrew McCleod warned that Trump is on track to nuke Iran inside of two years. That's probably an exaggeration, but how much of an exaggeration?

Related: What Would Happen in the Minutes and Hours After the US Attacked North Korea?

Ahmad Majidyar is director of the Middle East Institute's IranObserved Project. In a recent paper, he described the US and Iran as being on a "collision course" in Iraq and Syria. The idea is that once ISIS is defeated, Iran-backed militias and the US military will no longer have a common enemy. The risk, Majidyar told me, is "some sort of possible—not very likely—confrontation by the IRGC-led forces, and US-led forces in Mosul."
But even without the conflict in Syria/Iraq, tensions remain between Iran and the US, tensions that have only been exacerbated by the Trump administration's foreign policy. So the question remains: If the US were to actually bomb Iran itself—as has been advocated by plenty of mainstream Republicans like Arizona Senator John McCain—how and why would that happen? And how exactly would that conflict play out?
I posed these hypotheticals to Majidyar as well as international relations scholar Stephen Zunes, and Omar Lamrani, a senior military analyst at the military intelligence firm Stratfor. Here's a map of the locations we discussed, for reference:

Step 1: Tensions in Syria boil over

While Iran does provoke the US a bit by opposing Saudi Arabia—a close American ally—in Yemen, Syria is the likeliest potential flashpoint to any serious US-Iran conflict. According to Lamrani, Iran's dream is to have a steady flow of commercial traffic clear to the west coast of Lebanon, which it plans to achieve by creating a supply route that goes from Tehran to Baghdad to Syria to Lebanon. In Iran's view, the US is blocking this effort.
With this tension in the air, Trump could jeopardize the nuclear agreement by sanctioning Iran in a way Iran thinks is unfair. "The agreement is on tenuous ground, and if it does collapse, and the Iranians [could] go forward with more ballistic missile testing," Lamrani said, adding that fallout from that testing could potentially trigger a war.
(It's important to note here that no one I spoke to felt that an actual war was in any way likely, barring some black swan event to trigger it.)

Step 2: A terror attack

The main scenario Zunes thinks could result in war is a terror attack perceived as having been sponsored by Iran and carried out against a target such as a US embassy in Europe.
"Iran has cells across the world," Lamrani told me, citing Iran's well-known connections to the terrorist group Hezbollah. He added that Iran would most likely only activate its Hezbollah cells if it were attacked first.
But according to Zunes, a terror attack wouldn't have to be carried out by Iran or one of its proxies. Instead, the whole conflict might be triggered by "an attack by some unknown Salafi group—an al Qaeda, ISIS type," he told me. Frustrated by Iran's belligerent behavior, he says, "Trump could blame [the act of terror] on an Iranian-backed group, and use that as an excuse to attack Iran." This isn't unheard of. There was speculation just after 9/11 that a 1996 attack in Saudi Arabia, pinned on Iran, was actually the work of al Qaeda. (The US still officially blames Iran.)

Step 3: The US starts bombing Iran's nuclear facilities

"The idea was that we just bomb, and bomb, and bomb, and try to destroy as many strategic assets as possible," Zunes told me.
This was a plan proposed by Republican Senator Tom Cotton in 2015. Rather than an invasion, he said on a radio show, "It would be something more along the lines of what President Clinton did in December 1998 during Operation Desert Fox," a series of strikes on Iraqi military targets.
During this phase of our hypothetical conflict, Lamrani told me, US intelligence will have information at hand designed to make sure the attacks constitute "a very very comprehensive plan," relying on air power, not just cruise missiles fired from the sea. "B-2s with those massive ordnance penetrators" would be involved, Lamrani said, referring to the MOAB—the largest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped.

Step 4: Iran mobilizes its navy

Iran is very adept as using its navy to taunt American vessels. In 2016, speedboats buzzed around the Persian Gulf, forcing a US ship to change course. A couple days later, Trump the presidential candidate said he would blow up any Iranian boats that tried that against his navy. Then they tried it again in March and Trump's navy didn't blow them up.
But the US Navy is very good a blowing things up, and doing so in extremely dramatic fashion—something Trump obviously knows. "The Iranians are vulnerable when they're all bunched up in their ports, and not at sea," Lamrani told me. "For them to have any chance at all, they have to be very, very fast."
Before the US could even nail down the specifics of its strategy, he said, the Iranians would "disperse their units, so their minelayers are already at sea, dropping mines, and their forces are already attacking before the US brings in all its forces to completely annihilate the Iranians."

Step 5: The oil trade pretty much stops

If Iran can't knock out a US cruiser with its navy, what can its navy do?
It can interrupt international business. If you think of the Persian Gulf as the hallway that takes you to the vital ports belonging to Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, then the door to that hallway is the 21-mile-wide Strait of Hormuz, where part of the Arabian Peninsula juts off and almost pokes into Iran. Imagine Iran closing that door.
"That's a massive shock to the global economy," Lamrani said. He doesn't think Iran would try anything so drastic given that it would cut off not just the oil trade, but food to countries like Qatar and Bahrain, bringing down the wrath of the entire Arab world.
But if you're a container ship captain, Lamrani said, a war in the area is enough to keep you out of there unless you know it's safe. So one way or another, until the US shows up with ships to clear the strait, "Technically, the threat, and the position of their anti-ship missiles, is going to be a de facto block," he told me.

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Iran warns missile attack on IS in Syria can be repeated

TEHRAN, Iran

After firing missiles targeting the Islamic State group in eastern Syria, Iran's Revolutionary Guard on Monday issued a stark warning to IS militants, saying that any future attack against Iran will result in more powerful launches.
The Guard said it launched the strikes on Sunday in retaliation for attacks in Tehran earlier this month that were claimed by the Islamic State group. Iran has been involved in Syria's long-running civil war, in which it has backed embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Iranian state television quoted Gen. Ramazan Sharif on Monday as saying that "if they (IS) carry out a specific action to violate our security, definitely there will be more launches, with intensified strength."
He spoke as part of a TV package about the missile launches, showing them shoot off into the night from the western province of Kermanshah. The Guard said it fired six missiles in total from Kermanshah and also from Iran's Kurdistan province into Syria's Deir el-Zour province, where IS has been trying to fortify its positions in the face of a U.S.-led coalition onslaught.
But the missiles sent a message to more than just the extremists in Iraq and Syria, Sharif told state television in a telephone interview.
"The Saudis and Americans are especially receivers of this message." Said Sharif. "Obviously and clearly, some reactionary countries of the region, especially Saudi Arabia, had announced that they are trying to bring insecurity into Iran."
Activists in Syria said they had no immediate information on damage or casualties from the strikes.
Deir el-Zour is home to both Islamic State militants and civilians. The extremists increasingly have fled to Deir el-Zour as the Islamic State group's de facto capital of Raqqa has come under punishing U.S.-led airstrikes.
Five Islamic State-linked attackers stormed Iran's parliament and a shrine to revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on June 7, killing at least 18 people and wounding more than 50.
That attack marked the first to hit Iran, shocking its residents who believed the chaos engulfing the rest of the Middle East would not find them in the Shiite-majority nation.
Iran has described the attackers as being "long affiliated with the Wahhabi," an ultraconservative form of Sunni Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. However, it stopped short of directly blaming the kingdom for the attack, though many in the country expressed suspicion Iran's regional rival had a hand in the attack.
The attack also came as emboldened Sunni Arab states — backed by U.S. President Donald Trump — are hardening their stance against Iran.
The Guard, which is also involved in the fight against the Islamic State group in neighboring Iraq, controls Iran's missile program. It has test-fired a number of missiles since Iran struck the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, including the U.S.
Since Trump took office, his administration has described putting Iran "on notice" over the missile tests and put new economic sanctions on those allegedly involved with the program. Israel also remains concerned about Iran's missile launches.

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U.S. Fighter Jet Shoots Down Syrian Warplane

A handout provided by an official Iranian news site shows a missile launched by the Revolutionary Guards Corps from western Iran, toward Islamic State bases in Syria. Credit Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

WASHINGTON — An American fighter jet shot down a Syrian warplane on Sunday after it dropped bombs near local ground forces supported by the United States, the first time the American military has downed a Syrian aircraft since the start of the civil war in 2011, officials said.

The confrontation represents a further escalation between forces supporting President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and the United States, which has been directing the military campaign in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State.

The American F/A-18 shot down the Syrian government warplane south of the town of Tabqah, on the same day that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps launched several midrange missiles from inside Iran at targets in Syria, hoping to punish Islamic State forces responsible for last week’s terrorist attacks in Tehran.

The Guards Corp said it “targeted the headquarters and meeting place and suicide car assembly line” of “ISIS terrorists” in the province of Deir al-Zour, where Islamic State forces surround an estimated 200,000 people in a government-held section of the provincial capital of the same name.

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American officials said there appeared to be no direct connection between the two events, but they underscored the complexity of a region in which Syria, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Israel and the United States with its allies have carried out air or missiles strikes, albeit in pursuit of different and often competing objectives.

For the United States, the main focus has been battling the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. This month, Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters, supported by American advisers and air power, began the battle for Raqqa, the militants’ self-declared capital.

Even before that battle is over, however, tensions have risen over control of eastern Syria as Iranian-backed militias, including the Lebanese group Hezbollah, have moved to extend their reach toward areas where the American-based fighters are also operating.

Not only are forces loyal to Mr. Assad interested in controlling the oil-rich Deir al-Zour Province and relieving the pressure on a Syrian military garrison that has been surrounded there, but the Iranian-backed Shiite fighters are also believed to be trying to link up with Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and establish a supply corridor that runs from Syria to Iraq and, eventually, to Iran.

The confrontation in Syria on Sunday began around 4:30 p.m. local time, when American-backed ground Syrian fighters, who are officially called the Syrian Democratic Forces, came under attack by what the Pentagon described only as “pro-Syrian regime forces” and were forced from their positions in the town of Ja’Din, south of Tabqah. Several of the American-supported fighters were wounded.

The United States had airlifted hundred of Syrian fighters and their American military advisers near Tabqah in March in a generally successful push to cut off the western approaches to Raqqa.

To scare away the adversary forces, American warplanes buzzed the pro-Assad troops in what the Pentagon called a “show of force.” That appeared to put an end to the fighting, and the Americans sought to defuse the situation by calling their Russian counterparts from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

But the Syrians were not finished. At 6:43 p.m., a Syrian SU-22 warplane dropped several bombs near the American-backed fighters. Attempts to warn the Syrian plane away from the area using an emergency radio frequency failed, said Col. John J. Thomas, the spokesman for the United States Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East.

An F/A-18 “Super Hornet,” which was patrolling the area after launching from the George H. W. Bush aircraft carrier, quickly shot down the Syrian plane. American advisers were not in the immediate vicinity of the bombing by the Syrian SU-22.

A statement by the American-led task force that is fighting the Islamic State stressed that it was taken under rules of engagement permitting the “collective self-defense” of its Syrian partners.

This month, an American F-15E shot down an Iranian-made drone after it attacked American fighters in southeastern Syria.

The United States has set up a garrison at al-Tanf in southeastern Syria, where Syrian fighters and American, British and Norwegian advisers have been based.

The United States has warned pro-Assad forces to stay out of a “deconfliction” zone it has declared around the garrison. The town of Ja’Din is little more than a mile north of this deconfliction area, but the United States has made it clear that the Syrian fighters it supports and the American and other allied advisers that accompany them are not limited to that buffer area.

After Sunday’s episode, the American-led task force said it was not seeking a confrontation with Mr. Assad or the Russian and Iranian forces or Shiite militias that are fighting to support the Syrian leader — but added that it would defend the Syrian fighters it has assembled to pursue the Islamic State.

“The coalition’s mission is to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria,” the official statement said. “The coalition does not seek to fight Syrian regime, Russian, or pro-regime forces partnered with them, but will not hesitate to defend coalition or partner forces from any threat.”

Iran offered official statements about its military actions, too, and a video of the launch of one of the missiles was posted by the semiofficial Fars News Agency.

The Guards Corps said the strike, sending missiles flying over neighboring Iraq into Syria, had been carried out in retaliation for the terrorist attacks this month on the Iranian Parliament building and the shrine of the founder of the Islamic Republic. Eighteen people died in those attacks and dozens were wounded. The Islamic State claimed responsibility.

The Iranians made no effort to offer warnings about or “deconflict” their missile strike with the United States, American officials said. The Iranian missile attack was seen by analysts as a sign of an escalating role for Iran in the Syrian conflict and an indication of Tehran’s growing power in the region.

The missile strike over a considerable distance may have also been designed to send a message to Iran’s enemies in the region, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, as well as the United States, which maintains multiple military bases in the Middle East.

Michael R. Gordon reported from Washington, and Thomas Erdbrink from Tehran.

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Facts about Affiliate Marketing that You Need to Know Now!

Affiliate marketing is a strategy that requires creativity and technicalities. You can’t master all its aspects and complexities in snap of your fingers as it really takes periods of time and determination. Familiarizing what it is and how to do it isn’t that hard, how to gain profitable earning out of it is the real issue.

Many would ask how affiliate marketing works. Basically, there’s an affiliate marketer whose main job is to market products and services from a third party. Commissions will be rewarded then to the affiliate marketer for every directives he is going to generate. This is an excellent way of doing business for some traders as there would be no need for them to attend to various issues relevant to marketing and promotion and could just let them pay attention to other aspects of the business such as order taking, goods delivery and so on. This concept of affiliate marketing is also beneficial to marketers as it excludes the duty of attending to different business stuffs such as payment terms, return conditions, inventories and so on. He is just focusing how to direct potential sales to his clients.

In affiliate marketing, there are really a lot of things that you need to observe and assess for it to become a successful marketing tool. Due to various complexities and challenges, some have chosen to entrust their affiliate marketing aspect to an outsourcing body. Well, outsourcing a business function could really be of great significance to your business but you should be prepared for possible consequence which may arise if such has not been delivered well. To ensure if it is just to a business function such as affiliate marketing to be outsourced, some preferred to join outsourcing business tours to know more about different outsourcing technicalities.

On the other hand, there are still many retailers who desire to have an official affiliate marketer whose first job to become a successful marketer is to join various affiliate networks where they could have bunch of chances to meet numerous merchants they could work with. They’ll be under a certain organization which will supervise the commission management in which they receive service fee from the merchants in return.

As an affiliate marketer, you should then be meticulous in assessing which is which – which among the products is going to generate income and which is going to flop. The affiliate marketers also need to use one or more websites where they could promote their choses products. The concept of SEO then will be integrated as this is the ultimate strategy to reach a wide range of potential customers. But this strategy is undeniably costly, at least at first. You spend big amount for promotional web spaces. This is somehow tricky, retailers are just going to pay for every clicks the affiliate marketer has initiated. So no click no pay. But what if there are just clicks but nothing has been converted into sales? Well, you lose money.

It’s a fact that every business strategy requires one’s attention and enthusiasm to learn for it to function seamlessly. You should be craving for more knowledge as days pass by for you to be not let behind. Don’t hesitate so read a tons of books, glance of everyday blog and listen to experts’ advices. With these, you find ways how to gain profitable earning and lessen your marketing spending – a truly great affiliate marketer.

On the other hand, some still pursue their dream of becoming an affiliate marketer as they believe that it is something which could provide an abundant living. Yes, there are challenges along the way and time and effort is really required. In addition, those who have focus and wanting for more are those who will be successful in this field. Once you’ve widen your knowledge regarding various aspects of affiliate marketing and mastered how you could generate more leads while spending less, money will flow seamlessly.

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Why to Choose Magento Ecommerce Website Development Services

Magento is the shopping cart which makes online shopping extremely easy for the users and is indeed the smartest and the most robust ecommerce platform to make the life of an individual easy. An ecommerce website is a viable option for the online businesses looking to facilitate transactions and sales online. Transactions can be carried out easily and conveniently when you design an ecommerce website. Not only your prospective buyers can gain information on your products and services but also they can proceed towards making purchases. If you wish for innovative, functional, creative shopping cart, you may consider Magento ecommerce website development services.

Magento is a platform which offers creative shopping cart system to simplify the process of sales. Your ecommerce shopping site will also appear attractive with this option. Not all the ecommerce platform is considered secure but this one is reliable and secure among the competitors.

Why is Magento thought to be the best?

You may confidently consider this particular platform for your ecommerce website development because of following reasons:

· It is the best open source platform for the ecommerce website. If you are looking forward to ecommerce website development services, you must go for Magento website development.

· Since the source code here is chosen to be 'public', anyone can look up the code and read it. Thus, we may say that it offers transparency.

· It is flexible and highly scalable

· It is acknowledged worldwide and is thought to be the finest shopping cart system

· The feature rich platform is used extensively across the globe.

Ecommerce website for an optimized presence online

The use of an ecommerce website has greatly improved or enhanced in the recent times. For instance, credit cards can facilitate easy payment and seamless transaction online. The popularity of the ecommerce site is increasing owing to the advancement, innovativeness in the realm. A lot many ecommerce website development companies deliver well designed, attractive, innovative and appealing websites at reduced costs. They are much easier to navigate to bring you more sales. Service providers and professionals ensure that websites function in an error-free manner with the help of support based and advanced application software. The application functions all the time without any need for human intervention. It is important to choose the best service provider for designing an ecommerce website.

Tips on choosing the service provider

If you are looking to avail the best service providers, you may follow the below stated tips:

· Creativity, capability and the level of specialization: You should look for a company which is professional and bears experience and expertise in delivering the service. Check out the portfolio or the past work accomplished and get to know about the capability of the company. Visit the blogs, collect references and talk to the past clients.

· The kind of services offered by the firm: You must go for a service provider who can offer you an array of services to optimize your website and web content. It must utilize pay per click, search engine optimization to boost traffic to your site.

I am Nalini Tomar, Specialist in web Design and development. I seek information about the latest technologies available in the market and provide necessary updates about the same. If you want to get more information about Ecommerce Website Development you can follow me and read the articles on related topics.

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3 Most Common Issues When Using Paypal

PayPal has become more and more popular these days. Whether you use it for online shopping, to send or receive money or for business reasons, you know it is not perfect. There are always some things that we would like to change about PayPal and below are some of the common issues that we have when using it.

1) One card= One account

According to PayPal's policies, a debit or a credit card can only be linked to a PayPal account a time. If you want to use your card with a new PayPal account and you already have it linked to another PayPal account, then you should remove it from the first account in order to be able to link it to the new one. For those who have more than one bank account, this might be a bit frustrating, as more credit or debit cards mean more accounts on PayPal and it can be quite annoying to keep track of all of them.

2) You can only add credit or debit cards

For security reasons, according to PayPal's policies, you can't link the following types of cards to your account: gift card, prepaid card, or one-time-use card. It might be a bit annoying as using them with your PayPal might save you a lot of time and effort. However, for your good, PayPal has a quite strict policy regarding security. And, you know what they say: it is better to be safe than sorry. This is why you should agree with PayPal on this matter.

3) Billing address = card statement address

An other one of the most common issues that customers face when using PayPal is the fact that the billing address that you enter when creating the account must be an exact match of the one in your card statement. You must double check your debit or credit card statement to see whether these two addresses match. It is for your own safety so it should be in your best interest to do so.

Above are only three of the most common issues that users face when using PayPal. However, these are unfortunately not the only ones. If you are reading this article and have problems with your PayPal account that you can't find in here, then it is best for you to contact customer support on their website. They might be able to help you solve your issue.

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