Barbara Newhouse is the President and CEO of The ALS Association

If you've logged onto social media or even just turned on the TV in the past couple of weeks, chances are you've seen people taking the ice bucket challenge. This viral campaign has jumpstarted unprecedented generosity and raised awareness for ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. As of Friday, August 15, 2014, The ALS Association has received $9.5 million in donations compared to $1.6 million during the same time period last year (July 29 to August 15). These donations have come from existing donors and 184,812 new donors to The Association.

ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Eventually, people with ALS lose the ability to initiate and control muscle movement, which often leads to total paralysis and death within two to five years of diagnosis. There is no cure and only one drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that modestly extends survival. Veterans are twice as likely be diagnosed with the disease.

Antonia Juhasz is a leading oil and energy expert. She is a policy-analyst, author and journalist. Juhasz is the author of three books: Black Tide (2011), The Tyranny of Oil (2008), and The Bush Agenda (2006).

Antonia says U.S. Military engagement in Erbil is certainly about oil, but it's also about politics and the Obama administration is not the Bush administration. "The 2003 invasion put a great deal of Iraq's oil into the hands of western oil companies, but they have been unable to fully take advantage of Kurdistan's because of the dispute over who ultimately controls its oil."

She adds, "Both western oil companies and the Obama administration have interests in a unified Iraq under more favorable leadership for a broad range of reasons. Today's U.S. military engagement is about getting rid of Maliki in order to put in place a government better able to maintain 'stability' in a manner more fitting U.S. interests throughout the country, including oil interests and including Kurdistan. Both western oil companies and the U.S. government prefer a unified Iraq and are willing to threaten the central Iraqi government with an independent Kurdistan to get the central government in line. If it won't get in line, then I imagine they'll decide that an independent Kurdistan will have to do."

Jane Velez-Mitchell is an award winning television journalist and bestselling author. She currently has her own show on HLN, Jane Velez-Mitchell. She is often seen commenting on high-profile cases for CNN, TruTV, E! and other national cable TV shows.

While Jodi Arias will be representing herself at her penalty phase retrial in September, Judge Sherry Stephens has ruled that Defense attorney Kirk Nurmi will have to stay on and advise Jodi Arias as she represents herself.

In May 2013, a jury found Arias guilty of first-degree murder in the brutal 2008 slaying of her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander.

Although jurors were unanimous in their decision to convict Arias, they could not come to an agreement on whether to sentence her to the death penalty or life in prison. A new jury, tasked with making a decision regarding sentencing, will be selected for Arias' retrial, which is scheduled to begin September 8.

Greg James is the founder and publisher of the B2B magazine Marijuana Ventures magazine, the only publication 100 percent dedicated to the legal marijuana business.

Sales of recreational marijuana in Colorado reached a new record in June, with dispensaries selling $24.7 million worth of weed, reports the Associated Press. That marks a 19 percent increase from May.
In the first six months of 2014, recreational marijuana sales in Colorado totaled $115 million, which has translated into $20 million for the taxman, notes Colorado Public Radio. Recreational and medical pot sales totaled a whopping $308 million during the January-June period. While medical sales continue to outpace recreational purchases, the trend could soon shift as more recreational stores open.
There are around 120 recreational pot dispensaries in the state, compared to some 500 medical storefronts.
Meanwhile, stores sold a little less than $3.8 million of weed in Washington in July, the first month of legal pot sales in the state. That would translate into a little more than $1 million in cash for state coffers, according to the Associated Press.

STEVE WEISMAN is a lawyer, a college professor at Bentley University and one of the country's leading experts on scams and identity theft.

He is the founder of Scamicide.com, a website dedicated to informing the public about the dangers of scams and providing the public with the latest information about this important topic.

In Identity Theft Alert , attorney Steve Weisman shows you exactly what to do, and how to do it. Equally important, he also tells you what to stop doing: the common, inadvertent behaviors that could be setting you up as a victim.

Judith McGeary is the WAPF chapter leader for Austin, Texas, and is also an attorney and small farmer. She has a B.S. in Biology from Stanford University and a law degree from the University of Texas. After a clerkship with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, she practiced as an attorney in administrative law, litigation and appeals. She left her legal practice to form the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance (FARFA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to lobbying on behalf of independent agriculture, representing both farmers and consumers. She and her husband live on a sustainable, pasture-based farm outside of Austin, with heritage poultry, sheep, cattle and horses.

The recent solicitation by USDA for submachine guns raised concern among farmers and local food consumers. Why would an agency tasked with regulating agriculture in our country need such weapons?

Answer: It shouldn't. Help stop this by urging your Congressman to support the Regulatory Agency Demilitarization Act, HR 4934.

Regis Giles is the creator and owner of Girls Just Wanna Have Guns.com and is a leading voice for Second Amendment rights, self-defense and conservation. Unafraid to speak her mind, Regis takes no prisoners. Her media appearances include: ELLE Magazine, Variety, The Daily Mail, ABC, CNN, CBS Miami, & Fox News.

Regis says women need guns to protect themselves, especially after what recently happened in Ferguson, Missouri.

Rioters looted and burned stores, vandalized vehicles and taunted riot police who tried to block access to parts of a predominantly black suburb of St. Louis after a candlelight vigil to an unarmed man who was fatally shot by an officer turned ugly.

Several businesses were looted, including a check-cashing store, a boutique and a small grocery store. People took items from a sporting goods store and a cellphone retailer, and carted rims away from a tire store. Some climbed atop police cars as the officers with riot shields and batons stood stoic nearby, trying to restrict access to the most seriously affected areas.

Eric Schiffer, is Chairman and CEO of Patriarch Equity, DigitalMarketing.com, & ReputationManagementConsultants.com. All of Eric's companies are armed and equipped with large digital security divisions.

A gang of Russian hackers has amassed over 1 billion username and password combinations and more than 500 million email addresses, a security firm reported late Tuesday, calling it the largest-ever haul of stolen Internet credentials.

The massive trove - stolen from hundreds of thousands of websites - was discovered by the Milwaukee firm Hold Security, according to a post on its website. According to the post, it took more than seven months of research to identify the gang, whom the firm dubbed CyberVor, or cyber-thief in Russian.

Intrusions against large retail or other chains designed to steal payment card information or other personal data en masse have multiplied in recent months. Most famously, retail giant Target was hit over the holidays last year, and 40 million payment card numbers were stolen. Many of the hacker gangs behind these attacks are based in Russia and Eastern Europe, which have grown into global centers of cybercrime while Russian officials have largely turned a blind eye.

The U.S. has ramped up extraditions and prosecutions of Russian cyber criminals, but that has not stemmed the tide. Last month, the Justice Department brought charges against the son of a Russian parliamentarian arrested in the Maldives, Roman Seleznev, who it accused of being one of the world's most prolific cyber thieves of credit card information.

VA: Delay, Deny, and Hope That I Die

The VA earned that tongue-in-cheek motto back in 2011 when news reports revealed a backlog of one million veterans waiting for care. The latest scandal involves more than 120 veterans who have died, are dying or have suffered serious injuries waiting for care at VA facilities.

Gretchen Martens says the news doesn't surprise her. Affectionately known as The Veteran Lady, Gretchen is widely respected for her knowledge of today's military transition issues, and she says the scandal should scare every mayor and city manager.

Gretchen Martens has been featured on CBS news and numerous other media outlets. She's the founder and CEO of Homeward Deployed, an organization that works to bridge the gap between the military and Main Street. Her books include "Untying the Yellow Ribbon: Transforming How Veterans and Communities Thrive."

Coleen Rowley is a retired FBI agent and former Mpls Legal Counsel who wrote memo about FBI's pre 9-11 failures & testified to Senate Judiciary Committee in 2002. Coleen was named one of Time magazine's "Persons of the Year" in 2002 and she is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

Coleen is also one of a group of retired intelligence officials is calling on the Obama administration to release more information on the investigation of a downed passenger plane over the Ukraine.

In their memorandum they state, "As veteran intelligence analysts accustomed to waiting, except in emergency circumstances, for conclusive information before rushing to judgment, we believe that the charges against Russia should be rooted in solid, far more convincing evidence...We are also troubled by the amateurish manner in which fuzzy and flimsy evidence has been served up -- some of it via 'social media.' As intelligence professionals we are embarrassed by the unprofessional use of partial intelligence information. As Americans, we find ourselves hoping that, if you indeed have more conclusive evidence, you will find a way to make it public without further delay."