© Boniface Muthoni/CorbisSmoke rises from the Westgate mall on Monday.

Amina Mohamed says Briton who has 'done this many times before' was involved in attack with 'two or three' Americans

A British woman who has allegedly taken part in terrorist activity "many times before" was among the attackers who laid siege to a Kenyan shopping mall, the country's foreign minister has said.

Amina Mohamed said the militant acted alongside "two or three" Americans during the atrocity in Nairobi which has killed at least 62 people, including six Britons.

The announcement will fuel speculation that the British terrorism suspect Samantha Lewthwaite, who was married to the 7/7 bomber Jermaine Lindsay, was involved.

On Friday, the House passed a measure that would keep the government running through mid-December. But it came with what Democrats consider a poison pill: It defunds President Obama's signature health-care law, known as Obamacare. There is no way whatsoever - think pigs flying - that the Senate will agree to the House plan. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said the House bill was "dead," then for emphasis added: "Dead." ¶ That sets up eight days of brinkmanship between the Republican House and the Democratic Senate and White House, leading to midnight Sept. 30, when much of the government will shut down if there's no deal. ¶ Leaders on Capitol Hill expect the face-off to go right up to the deadline, if not beyond. Below is a day-by-day look at how it's all likely to play out - with the caveat that events can change quickly.

Monday: The Senate will convene briefly, with just a few members on hand. Reid is expected to call up the House bill, known as a continuing resolution, and file a motion that sets up initial votes on the measure. Under Senate rules, there will be two votes just to determine whether the chamber gets to a vote on final passage of the bill. These are the "cloture" votes, which require 60 ayes to choke off a filibuster; Reid will file a motion one day, then there must be an intervening day of debate, then the filibuster-busting vote comes. Reid will file the first of these Monday, setting up a vote Wednesday.

The House is not in session.

In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert, discuss the US Federal Reserve Bank as 'the greatest hedge fund' in history and ask whether or not their quantitative easing policy is like trying to pass pork off as a prime cut of beef. In the second half, Max interviews precious metals trader, Andrew Maguire, about JPMorgan whistleblowers and the Federal Reserve Bank taper hoax.

One of the Islamist militants wore a white turban, witnesses said, while others wore black head scarves. Most were in civilian clothes, but a few wore camouflage fatigues. Some carried sophisticated machine guns, and others wielded the AK-47 rifles widely used by African insurgents. Most of the extremists who seized the upscale Nairobi mall were young and barked orders in English.

By Monday evening, Kenyan security forces said they controlled much of the Westgate Premier Shopping Mall, although several militants from al-Shabab, a group allied with al-Qaeda, appeared dug in, determined to fight to the death.

With the standoff apparently drawing to a close after three days, there was a growing focus on the identity of the militants and how they could pull off a sophisticated assault that killed at least 62 people and kept security forces at bay for three days. Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed said Monday that "two or three Americans" and "one Brit" were among the perpetrators of the attack.

Some lawmakers and analysts in the United States are urging President Obama to launch strikes against al-Shabaab with the aim of preventing more terror attacks in Kenya and possibly the United States.

''We're talking about very significant terrorist groups here which are showing a capacity to attack outside of their borders and actually recruit people from here in the United States," Republican Congressman Peter King, a member of the House of Representatives' Intelligence Committee, said on US television on Sunday.

"They're not on the decline," added Senator Tom Coburn, the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee. ''They're on the rise, as you can see from Nairobi."

US counter-terrorism officials warn that Shabaab's sophistication and reach are increasing due to connections the Somalia group has made with al-Qa'ida forces in Yemen and with Boko Haram militants in Nigeria.

A look back...

Here's an idiot Congressman and former FBI agent calling for the state murder of Bradley Manning.

What did Bradley Manning do?

He released video that documented a war crime.

Let's remember what happened here. A helicopter attack ship hovered over a group of unarmed men, including journalists, and gunned them down in cold blood.

How did this video put "soldiers in the field" at risk? The killers in this case were obviously long gone and, as far as I know, they were never identified.

Radios for federal firefighters and police officers failed during Monday's mass shooting at Washington's Navy Yard, according to union representatives for first responders.

Union officials said police and firefighters resorted to using their cellphones and radios from D.C.'s emergency responders to communicate with each other during the attack.

Anthony Meely, chairman of the Fraternal Order of Police Naval District Washington (NDW) Labor Committee, said police officers who were first on the scene at the Navy Yard had trouble communicating with others in the force via their radios.

Initially, officers found that their radios were working. But as they ventured deeper into the building where the shooting took place, their equipment stopped functioning.

After the first shootout with the gunman, one officer found his radio's battery was dead, while another officer could not receive a signal from his radio and was unable to call for help. That forced them to use an officer's cellphone to call others outside the building, according to Meely.

"They had to use their cellphone to just call out and tell them what's going on," Meely said

County Down woman Samantha Lewthwaite has been on the run since 2011

Police in Britain and Kenya are investigating links between an Irish woman branded the "White Widow" and the shopping mall siege in Nairobi that has claimed 69 lives so far.

County Down born terrorist Samantha Lewthwaite is suspected of involvement in the attack.

Kenyan soldiers stated a white woman with a veil was calling out orders to gunmen in Arabic during the dreadful massacre at Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi.

Al Qaeda linked terror group, Al Shabaab, claimed responsibility and wrote on Twitter that Samantha Lewthwaite, the "White Widow" of London 7/7 bomber Jermaine Lindsay, was "in their ranks" and a "brave lady".

The 29-year-old from Banbridge is on the run from the Kenyan authorities after she was previously linked to a terrorist cell that planned to attack a hotel or shopping mall in 2011.

The Pentagon warned its workforce on Monday that it is preparing for a possible government shutdown if Congress fails to break a political impasse.

If US government agencies are forced to shutter, American troops around the world would stay on the job and some civilian employees would be ordered on unpaid leave, Pentagon spokesman George Little told reporters.

But paychecks for military service members might be delayed while Congress would have to take action to ensure retroactive pay for civilians required to come to work, he added.

"Military personnel would be paid but maybe not on time," he said.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel planned to send out a memo to department workers Monday saying the Office of Management and Budget had asked the Pentagon "to review and update our plans in order to prepare for an orderly government shutdown," according to Little.

The following article appeared in New Dawn, No. 68 (Sept-Oct 2001).

In preparing America for nuclear attack during the Cold War years following World War II, thousands of US citizens became the innocent victims of over 4,000 secret and classified radiation experiments conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and other government agencies, such as the Department of Defense, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the Public Health Service (now the CDC), the National Institutes of Health, the Veterans Administration (VA), the CIA, and NASA.

Millions of people were exposed to radioactive fallout from the continental testing of more than 200 atmospheric and underground nuclear weapons, and from the hundreds of secret releases of radiation into the environment. Over 200,000 "atomic vets" who worked closely with nuclear detonations at the Nevada test site during the 1950s and 1960s were especially vulnerable to radiation fallout.

Also affected were the thousands of so-called "downwinders", who lived in nearby small towns in Nevada, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. These downwinders (along with the animal populations) suffered the worst cumulative radioactive effects of fallout, along with a contaminated environment teeming with radioactive food and farm products. The plight of these poor country people exposed to government-induced radiation sickness has been recorded in Carole Gallagher's remarkable photo-essay American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War (The Free Press, 1993).

In reviewing declassified AEC records (now the Department of Energy) from the 1950s, Gallagher was shocked to discover one document that described the people downwind of the Nevada Test Site as "a low use segment of the population." Her shock at such callous bigotry caused her to eventually move West to research, investigate and document those who lived closest to the Test Site, as well as workers at the site, and soldiers repeatedly exposed to nuclear bombs during the military tests.