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Thursday, December 4, 2025

ICE Arrests (Another) Afghan National Accused Of Supporting ISIS

by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

Federal authorities on Wednesday arrested an Afghan national on suspicion of providing support to the ISIS terrorist group, the third such arrest in a week, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) statement.

Jaan Shah Safi was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Waynesboro, Virginia. Safi is an “illegal alien terrorist who entered the U.S. on Sept. 8, 2021, in Philadelphia” under President Joe Biden’s Operation Allies Welcome program, the statement said.

He had applied for Temporary Protected Status, but his application was terminated once DHS Secretary Kristi Noem ended TPS for Afghans.

The TPS was terminated in May as Afghanistan no longer met the requirements for the designation, and “DHS records indicate that there are recipients who have been under investigation for fraud and threatening our public safety and national security,” Noem said at the time.

The DHS said that Safi was also found to provide weapons to his father, a commander of a militia group back in Afghanistan.

The Epoch Times could not ascertain whether Safi was given any legal representation.

This is the third arrest of a suspected Afghan terrorist in about a week.

The first case was that of Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who was arrested Nov. 26 on suspicion of shooting two National Guard members in Washington. One of the victims, Sarah Beckstrom, died afterward, and the other, Andrew Wolfe, remains in serious condition.

Lakanwal had worked with the CIA during the war in Afghanistan. Authorities charged him with first-degree murder and two counts of assault with intent to kill, among other charges.

Noem said in a media interview that authorities believe Lakanwal became radicalized after he arrived in the United States through connections in his community and state.

A day before the attack and in a separate incident, Mohammad Dawood Alokozay was arrested and charged with making bomb threats.

Alokozay had posted social media videos threatening to blow up a target in Fort Worth, Texas.

The three are among 190,000 Afghan nationals who were resettled in the United States as part of Operation Allies Welcome, later renamed Enduring Welcome.

Regarding Safi, Noem said, “This terrorist was arrested miles from our nation’s capital where our brave National Guard heroes ... were shot just days ago by another unvetted Afghan terrorist brought into our country.”

On Dec. 2, the Trump administration suspended the processing of immigration applications from 19 countries, including Afghanistan and Somalia, citing national security and public safety concerns.

The Epoch Times reached out to Afghan Support Network, a nonprofit that focuses on the welfare of Afghan refugees, for comment and did not receive a response by publication time.

Overhauling Vetting Process

When the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, the Biden administration initiated the Operation Allies Welcome program to resettle thousands of Afghan nationals in the United States, including those who worked alongside U.S. authorities in the war-torn nation over the previous two decades.

“It’s the biggest national security failure in the history of the nation,” border czar Tom Homan said in a media interview on Sunday, noting that the DHS inspector general came out with a report at the time stating multiple failures in the vetting process.

“People need to understand, in these third world nations, they don’t have systems like we do. So a lot of these Afghans, who did get here to get better, they had no identification at all. Not a single travel document, not one piece of identification. And we’re going to count on the people that run Afghanistan, the Taliban, to provide us any information who the bad guys were or who the good guys are? Certainly not.”

Noem said in a Dec. 1 post on X that many Afghan nationals brought into the country were “military-aged men” who were not vetted for security clearance.

Homeland Security is currently overhauling the vetting process for aliens, requiring the country of origin to cross-reference biometric data and criminal history, screening social media accounts, and directing individuals to check in every year, Noem said.

According to the State Department’s travel advisory, Afghanistan’s security situation remains extremely unstable, with the highest critical-level threat to U.S. citizens.

All Afghanistan provinces are dangerous for travel, with targeted or random hostile acts perpetrated by the country’s citizens. “U.S. citizens and other foreign nationals are primary targets of terrorist organizations,“ warned the advisory.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ice-arrests-afghan-national-accused-supporting-isis

How Does Diabetes Affect Coronary Stent Success?

In a nationwide study of about 0.16 million individuals receiving second-generation drug-eluting stents, having type 1 diabetes was linked to a substantially higher risk for stent failure than not having diabetes, whereas type 2 diabetes was associated with a more modestly increased risk.

METHODOLOGY:

Researchers in Sweden conducted a nationwide observational study to determine the risk for stent failure in patients with diabetes who were referred for percutaneous coronary intervention.
They analysed data of 160,523 individuals (median age, 68.4 years; 71.3% men) who received second-generation drug-eluting stents between 2010 and 2020, categorised into three groups: 2406 with type 1 diabetes, 43,377 with type 2 diabetes, and 114,740 without diabetes.
The primary endpoint was defined as stent failure, including in-stent restenosis or stent thrombosis.
The median follow-up duration of this study was 4.4 years.

TAKEAWAY:

Compared with individuals without diabetes, patients with type 1 diabetes had a markedly higher risk for stent failure (adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 2.28; P < .001), whereas those with type 2 diabetes had a more modestly increased risk (adjusted HR, 1.35; P < .001).
Both in-stent restenosis and stent thrombosis contributed to the increased risk for stent failure.
The highest burden of stent failure occurred in the first months after stent implantation.
Compared with patients with type 2 diabetes, those with type 1 diabetes had a 67% increased risk for stent failure (HR, 1.67; P < .001).

IN PRACTICE:

"Our results show that people with diabetes, especially type 1 diabetes, have a much higher risk of stent complications. Therefore, it is important to carefully consider how we treat these patients," the lead author said in a related press release.

"We need to continue to investigate how we can improve treatment for patients with diabetes who undergo stent implantation. Our results indicate that there is a need to adapt treatment and follow-up for them," another author added.

SOURCE:

The study was led by Irene Santos-Pardo, Unit of Cardiology, Department of Clinical Science and Education, Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. It was published online on November 27, 2025, in Diabetes Care.

LIMITATIONS:

Multiple drug-eluting stent platforms and antiproliferative drugs were used in the cohort, and their effects on the results remained uncertain. In-stent restenosis and stent thrombosis events were identified during clinically indicated angiography rather than systematic screening. Information about the type and duration of post-procedure antiplatelet therapy was limited. The registry used in this study did not systematically capture prediabetes cases, and laboratory measurements were unavailable for patients without a diagnosis of diabetes.

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/how-does-diabetes-affect-coronary-stent-success-2025a1000xlk

Cell-Free DNA Blood Test Shows Strong Performance in Detecting Early-Stage CRC

A novel, blood-based test developed using fragmentomic features of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) detects colorectal cancer (CRC) with a 90.4% sensitivity and shows consistent performance across stages and tumor locations.

METHODOLOGY:

Researchers conducted a prospective case-control study to develop and validate a noninvasive cfDNA-based screening test for CRC.
Adults aged 40-89 years with CRC or advanced adenomas were enrolled at a tertiary center in South Korea between 2021 and 2024.
Blood samples were drawn after colonoscopy, but prior to treatment, in patients with CRC, advanced adenomas, and asymptomatic controls with normal colonoscopy results.
A model was trained on fragmentomic features derived from whole genome sequencing of cfDNA from 1250 participants and validated for its diagnostic performance in the remaining 427 participants, including all with advanced adenomas.
The primary endpoint was the sensitivity of the cfDNA test for detecting CRC. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) was also calculated.

TAKEAWAY:

The cfDNA test detected CRC with 90.4% sensitivity and an AUROC of 0.978.
Sensitivity by CRC stage was 84.2% for stage I, 85.0% for stage II, 94.4% for stage III, and 100.0% for stage IV.
Advanced adenomas were detected with 58.3% sensitivity and an AUROC of 0.862.
Among individuals with normal colonoscopy findings, the test was correctly negative 94.7% of the time.
Diagnostic sensitivities were consistent between left- and right-sided CRC tumors, among participants aged < 60 years and ≥ 60 years, and across left- and right-sided advanced adenomas.

IN PRACTICE:

"This highlights the potential clinical utility of the test in identifying candidates for minimally invasive therapeutic approaches tool for CRC," the authors wrote. "Notably, the high sensitivity observed for early-stage CRC and the favorable sensitivity for [advanced adenoma] suggest that this cfDNA test may offer benefits not only in diagnosis but also in prognosis and ultimately in CRC prevention.”

SOURCE:

This study was led by Seung Wook Hong, MD, Asan Medical Center in Seoul, South Korea. It was published online on November 19, 2025, in the American Journal of Gastroenterology.

LIMITATIONS:

The case-control design introduced spectrum bias by comparing clearly defined CRC and advanced adenomas cases with individuals who had normal colonoscopy results. The CRC prevalence of 17%-18% was higher than that observed in true screening populations, limiting generalizability. The exclusively Korean cohort limited extrapolation to non-Asian populations.

DISCLOSURES:

This study received support from GC Genome, Yongin, South Korea. The authors reported no conflicts of interest.

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/cell-free-dna-blood-test-shows-strong-performance-detecting-2025a1000y1g

Jan. 6 pipe bomb suspect started building devices in 2019, feds say

A suspect arrested Thursday morning and charged with planting pipe bombs outside the Democratic and Republican National Committees on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot started building the deadly devices in 2019, federal investigators say.

Brian Cole Jr., 30, of Woodbridge, Va., was charged with one count of transporting explosives across state lines with intent to kill, injure and cause damage and one count of attempted malicious destruction — with authorities saying more charges were possible.

“You’re not going to walk into our capital city, put down two explosive devices and walk off into the sunset,” FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, who has made the case a priority since taking office in March, told reporters at an afternoon news conference. “Not gonna happen.

“We were gonna track this person to the end of the earth. There was no way he was getting away.”

Federal agents swarmed Cole’s home following the break in the case that has vexed and embarrassed the bureau for nearly five years.

Neighbors living near the suburban cul-de-sac described a young man who shunned most human interaction and doted on a pet Chihuahua.

“He’s very antisocial. Very,” a woman who said she had lived in the neighborhood since 1991 told The Post of Cole. “He keeps to himself.”

“He has a dog that he loves,” she added. “He walks every day, twice a day, to 7-Eleven with his dog and he wears his headphones.”

“He seemed very quiet. He would never make eye contact. Almost like he just didn’t see you,” added a second neighbor, a man who noted that Cole would “wear shorts all winter long, and red Crocs.”

“I’m pretty shocked,” said this neighbor, who lived in the area for seven years. “This is a very uncommonly friendly and neighborly place to live.”

According to a probable cause affidavit, bank account data showed the seemingly docile Cole was manufacturing his would-be instruments of death beginning in the fall of 2019 with the purchase of electrical wire, battery connectors and explosive caps from local retailers. He also bought steel wool, end caps and galvanized pipe throughout 2020.

Cole’s arrest comes one month before the fifth anniversary of the melee that briefly delayed congressional confirmation of Joe Biden’s election victory.

Surveillance footage showed a person carrying a backpack and wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, mask, gloves, glasses, and a pair of Nike Air Max Speed Turf sneakers who planted what investigators called “viable explosive devices” at the headquarters of the two major parties on the night of Jan. 5, 2021.

The second neighbor said he doubted that Cole was the person recorded planting the bombs, claiming Cole has “uncommonly short legs” and a simple “gait analysis could rule him out or confirm” him as the culprit.

Law enforcement officials, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, stressed that there was “no new tip” or “no new witness” that led to Cole’s arrest, with the AG crediting “good, diligent police work and prosecutorial work, working as a team along with the ATF, Capitol Police, the [DC] Metropolitan Police Department and of course, the FBI.”

FBI Director Kash Patel told reporters that investigators sifted through “three million lines of information … you can think about the amount of cell phone data that has to be ingested and triangulated and dumped and received.”

“When you develop evidence, you get a search warrant,” he added. “When you get a search warrant, you get an address. When you get an address, you hit the house, and that’s what we did.”

According to the probable cause affidavit filed Thursday afternoon, investigators used cell tower data to place Cole in the vicinity of Capitol Hill around the time the devices were planted.

The bombs were discovered the following afternoon — approximately 17 hours later and at around the same time Congress convened to count the 2020 electoral votes, a session which was suspended for several hours after supporters of President Trump broke into the Capitol and stormed the House and Senate chambers.

Then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) both came “within feet” of the devices as they traveled to and from the DNC headquarters on South Capitol Street on Jan. 6.

In Pelosi’s case, her motorcade drove past one of the bombs after it was discovered by law enforcement, according to a congressional report that blamed law enforcement for failing to adequately secure the perimeter.

That report, released in January of this year by Reps. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), assessed that “little meaningful progress” had been made in the pipe bomb investigation and charged that the feds had “refused to provide substantive updates to Congress.”

Despite “a promising array of data and … numerous persons of interest,” the lawmakers’ report said, “[b]y the end of February 2021, the FBI began diverting resources away from the pipe bomb investigation.”

The same day the report was issued, investigators released additional information about the suspect — including video of the person planting one of the bombs and an estimate that the perp stood 5 feet 7 inches tall.

The absence of a break in the case — or even clarification on whether the suspect was a man or woman — led to fervent speculation, mainly among conservatives and even some Republican lawmakers, that the failed bombing was the work of a far-left terrorist whose actions would cause embarrassment to a Biden administration whose Justice Department was pursuing charges against hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters.

Steven D’Antuono, the former head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, fueled additional speculation when he told House Judiciary Committee lawmakers in a June 2023 transcribed interview that he was not sure the devices were ever meant to explode.

“I saw the same kitchen timer as you,” D’Antuono told Massie, who had asked whether the bombs were viable at the time they were discovered on Jan. 6. “I agree. I don’t know when they were supposed to go off. Maybe they weren’t supposed to go off. We can’t — we don’t know. We honestly don’t know.”

“Should it have exploded in the hour?” D’Antuono asked. “Or should it have been waiting there to — for somebody to find? Those are the theories that we have … There’s a lot of unanswered questions. There really are.”

Before joining the FBI, Bongino suggested last year on his popular podcast that the act was an “inside job” and involved a “massive cover-up.”

“Today’s arrest happened because the Trump administration has made this case a priority,” Bondi said. “The total lack of movement on this case in our nation’s capital undermined the public trust of our enforcement agenices. This cold case languished for four years until Director Patel and Deputy Director Bongino came to the FBI.”

“This is what happens,” Bongino added, “when you have a president who tells you to go get the bad guys.”

https://nypost.com/2025/12/04/us-news/fbi-makes-arrest-in-jan-6-pipe-bomb-investigation-after-nearly-5-years/

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Thursday, December 4, 2025

ICE Arrests (Another) Afghan National Accused Of Supporting ISIS

Overhauling Vetting Process

How Does Diabetes Affect Coronary Stent Success?

METHODOLOGY:

TAKEAWAY:

IN PRACTICE:

SOURCE:

LIMITATIONS:

Cell-Free DNA Blood Test Shows Strong Performance in Detecting Early-Stage CRC

METHODOLOGY:

TAKEAWAY:

IN PRACTICE:

SOURCE:

LIMITATIONS:

DISCLOSURES:

Jan. 6 pipe bomb suspect started building devices in 2019, feds say