KNOWN WOLF: Man charged in Edmonton attacks was ordered deported from U.S. in 2011.

The Somali refugee accused of stabbing an Edmonton police constable on the weekend and running down four pedestrians was ordered to be deported from the United States in 2011 by a U.S. immigration judge, CBC News has learned.

In July 2011, U.S. Customs and Border Protection transferred Abdulahi Hasan Sharif into the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, Calif., according to Jennifer D. Elzea, acting press secretary for the ICE office of public affairs.

Two months later, on Sept. 22, 2011, an immigration judge ordered Sharif removed to Somalia. Sharif waived his right to appeal that decision.

But Sharif was released on Nov. 23, 2011, on an ICE order of supervision, “due to a lack of likelihood of his removal in the reasonably foreseeable future,” Elzea said in a statement to CBC News.

And then they lost track of him.

THE CUBA CONUNDRUM: Who is Attacking our Diplomats and Spies in Cuba?

JEFF DUNETZ: If Only Thomas Friedman Had A Brain.

FAKE NEWS: Newsweek retracts its earlier story that Marilou Danley had two Social Security numbers and was married to two men.

What the retraction fails to mention is how a mistake this big got through.

AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM NYT’S FRANK BRUNI: Democrats, Please Get Ready to Lose.

WALTER WILLIAMS: Blacks versus Police.

According to “The Washington Post,” 737 people have been shot and killed by police this year in the United States. Of that number, there were 329 whites, 165 blacks, 112 Hispanics, 24 members of other races and 107 people whose race was unknown. In Illinois, home to one of our most dangerous cities — Chicago — 18 people have been shot and killed by police this year. In the city itself, police have shot and killed ten people and shot and wounded ten others. Somebody should ask the kneeling black NFL players why they are protesting this kind of killing in the Windy City and ignoring other sources of black death.

Here are the Chicago numbers for the ignored deaths. So far in 2017, there have been 533 murders and 2,880 shootings. On average, a person is shot every two hours and 17 minutes and murdered every 12 1/2 hours. In 2016, when Colin Kaepernick started taking a knee, Chicago witnessed 806 murders and 4,379 shootings. It turns out that most of the murder victims are black. Adding to the tragedy is the fact that Chicago has a 12.7 percent murder clearance rate. That means that when a black person is murdered, his perpetrator is found and charged with his murder less than 13 percent of the time.

Similar statistics regarding police killing blacks versus blacks killing blacks apply to many of our predominantly black urban centers, such as Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, St. Louis and Oakland. Many Americans, including me, see the black NFL player protest of police brutality as pathetic, useless showboating. Seeing as these players have made no open protest against the thousands of blacks being murdered and maimed by blacks, they must view it as trivial in comparison with the police killings. Most of the police killings fit into the category of justified homicide.

But that’s different because shut up.

IT KEEPS GETTING WEIRDER: Paddock’s Girlfriend Used Two Social Security Numbers and Was Married to Two Men at the Same Time.

TRAGIC: Woman Who Thought She Was a Man on Transgender Treatment: ‘It’s Not a Cure at All.’

DRAIN THE SWAMP: Fannie Mae charged taxpayers $250,000 for a chandelier.

YA THINK? The White House and Equifax Agree: Social Security Numbers Should Go.

The administration has called on federal departments and agencies to look into the vulnerabilities of employing the identifier tied to retirement benefits, as well as how to replace the existing system, according to Rob Joyce, special assistant to the president and White House cybersecurity coordinator.

“I feel very strongly that the Social Security number has outlived its usefulness,” Joyce said Tuesday at a cyber conference in Washington organized by the Washington Post. “Every time we use the Social Security number, you put it at risk.”

Joyce’s comments came as former Equifax CEO Richard Smith testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the first of four hearings this week on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers from both parties expressed outrage over the size of the breach as well as the company’s response and grilled Smith on the timeline of the incident, including when top executives learned about it.

Smith said the rising number of hacks involving Social Security numbers have eroded its security value.

Equifax needs to go, too, but they just signed a multimillion-dollar “fraud-prevention” contract with the IRS.

THAT DIDN’T TAKE LONG: Catalonia to move to declare independence from Spain on Monday.

Pro-independence parties which control the regional parliament have asked for a debate and vote on Monday on declaring independence, the source said. A declaration should follow this vote, although it is unclear when.

Catalan President Carles Puigdemont earlier told the BBC that his government would ask the region’s parliament to declare independence after tallying votes from last weekend’s referendum, which Madrid says was illegal.

“This will probably finish once we get all the votes in from abroad at the end of the week and therefore we shall probably act over the weekend or early next week,” he said in remarks published on Wednesday.

Well, the vote almost certainly was illegal — but once a people decide to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, it becomes difficult-to-impossivle to restore those bands.

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: Men Who Ejaculate More at Reduced Risk for Prostate Cancer, Studies Suggest.

DANIEL PAYNE: Dear Jimmy Kimmel: Stay Out Of The Gun Debate If You Can’t Be Honest.

Mr. Kimmel, you clearly do not like the NRA, for whatever reason. You’re certainly entitled to your political opinion But that does not allow you to make things up to further your own political ends. For instance, you claim that “In June of last year, the NRA fought to make sure people on the no-fly list can buy guns.” This is a lie, plain and simple.

What the NRA was fighting against last summer was not a provision barring people on the no-fly list from buying guns; it was a provision barring innocent Americans who had been placed on the terror watch list from buying guns. And they were right to stand against such a measure! The terror watch list is an overly broad, slapdash document that has regularly encompassed innocent American men and women who are guilty of no terrorist activity whatsoever.

Maybe you’re okay with innocent Americans losing their constitutional rights because they’ve been placed on an accountable secret government list for no reason. Most people aren’t, however; even the American Civil Liberties Union agreed with the NRA on this. You owe it to your audience to tell the truth about the matter.

Mr. Kimmel, you also level an incredible charge at President Trump, claiming that “in February, he…signed a bill that made it easier for people with severe mental illness to buy guns legally.” This is a gross and intellectually shameless distortion of what that bill actually accomplished.

Read the whole thing.

CYBERSECURITY: Yahoo Triples Estimate of Breached Accounts to 3 Billion.

The figure, which Verizon said was based on new information, is three times the 1 billion accounts Yahoo said were affected when it first disclosed the breach in December 2016. The new disclosure, four months after Verizon completed its acquisition of Yahoo, shows that executives are still coming to grips with the extent of the security problem in what was already the largest hacking incident in history by number of user accounts.

A spokesman for Oath, the Verizon unit that now includes Yahoo, said the company determined within the past week that the break-in was much worse than thought, after it received new information from outside the company. He declined to elaborate on that information. Compromised customer information included usernames, passwords, and in some cases telephone numbers and dates of birth, the spokesman said.

Several other major cyberattacks recently have focused attention on the vulnerability of big companies that possess enormous amounts of vital personal information about their customers.

An awful lot of people gave an awful lot of their personal information to companies who clearly have no idea what they’re doing.

For a few bucks a month, you can own your own domain at a small hosting company, which is a much smaller target than any of these data behemoths. Clearly, free email is actually worth far less than you pay for it.

TRUMP: ‘We’ll Be Talking About the Gun Laws.’

NANCY PELOSI: “We didn’t win the elections, but we’ve won every fight.”

She thinks the Democrats have an “excellent” chance of re-taking the House of Representatives.

When asked what would be different if Democrats were in power, she responds by saying that unlike Republicans, Democrats are bipartisan. Anyone who remembers the passage of Obamacare, might disagree with that.

She then goes on to say how wonderful Democrats were to work with George W. Bush, while insulting him at the same time.

Counting on the other side to surrender preemptively isn’t usually a smart strategy, but it seems to be working well enough this year for Capitol Hill Democrats.

BILL GERTZ: China’s Secret Military Plan: Invade Taiwan by 2020.

China has drawn up secret military plans to take over the island of Taiwan by 2020, an action that would likely lead to a larger U.S.-China conventional or nuclear war, according to newly-disclosed internal Chinese military documents.

The secret war plan drawn up by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the Chinese Communist Party’s armed forces, calls for massive missile attacks on the island, along with a naval and air blockade that is followed by amphibious beach landing assaults using up to 400,000 troops.

The plans and operations are outlined in a new book published this week, The Chinese Invasion Threat by Ian Easton, a China affairs analyst with the Project 2049 Institute, a think tank.

The danger of a Taiwan conflict has grown in recent years even as current tensions between Washington and Beijing are mainly the result of U.S. opposition to Chinese militarization in the South China Sea and China’s covert support of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

“Of all the powder kegs out there, the potential for a war over Taiwan is by far the largest and most explosive,” the 290-page book states, adding that the growing likelihood of a war over Taiwan will dominate worries within the Pentagon for years to come.

It’s difficult to imagine how China would get more out of forcibly annexing Taiwan than they’d lose in a major shooting war — but then the decision to go to war is rarely made so rationally.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Las Vegas Massacre Day Three and Much, Much More.

ALEXA, I’D LIKE FRIES WITH THAT: Shake Shack Replaces Humans With Robots.. “Fast-food chain was once hailed by President Obama for paying high entry-level wages.”

A forthcoming Shake Shack location in New York City—where the Obamas are looking to live in retirement—plans to open with a workforce of robots rather than human employees, according to the New York Post. A restaurant set to open in the East Village will be staffed with robot ordering kiosks, which do not accept cash. Diners will place orders on apps and receive alerts via text message with a few “hospitality champs” on site to address potential tech glitches in the new machinery.

“The Astor Place Shack will be a playground where we can test and learn the ever-shifting needs of our guests,” Shake Shack CEO Randy Garutti told the New York Post. “[It] represents our dedication to innovation and to providing the best for our guests and for our teams.”

The restaurant plans to ramp up wages for those employees lucky enough to find work at the mechanized restaurant. Garutti said starting wages will be $15 an hour—more than double the federal minimum and the rate endorsed by political giant Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the 2016 Democratic Party Platform. Labor watchdogs said the higher wages do not make up for the lost opportunities for entry-level workers.

You don’t say.

DRAINING THE SWAMP — YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG: IRS awards multimillion-dollar fraud-prevention contract to Equifax.

A contract award for Equifax’s data services was posted to the Federal Business Opportunities database Sept. 30 — the final day of the fiscal year. The credit agency will “verify taxpayer identity” and “assist in ongoing identity verification and validations” at the IRS, according to the award.

The notice describes the contract as a “sole source order,” meaning Equifax is the only company deemed capable of providing the service. It says the order was issued to prevent a lapse in identity checks while officials resolve a dispute over a separate contract.

The IRS and Equifax did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Why would they? Clearly one is above the law and the other is above complaint.

IT’S A COOKBOOK! Orwell’s ‘1984’ Is the Future Your Liberal Friends Want.

SPENGLER: The bells of Barcelona toll for Europe.

I tried to find the perfect excerpt, but you really need to read the whole thing.

THIS KEEPS GET WEIRDER: Shooter Wired $100,000 To Philippines The Week Before Massacre.

Paddock’s girlfriend, 62-year-old Marilou Danley, was in the Philippines, her native country, Sunday when Paddock began firing from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas. It remains unclear whether the money was intended for Danley, her family members, or for some unknown purpose.

The pair lived together in Mesquite, Nev., and investigators believe that they began seeing each other in the spring of 2017.

Authorities maintain that Danley, who is scheduled to return to the U.S. for questioning Wednesday, did not participate in planning the attack.

“We have had conversations with her and we believed her, at this time, not to be involved. But obviously that investigation will continue,” Las Vegas Sheriff Joe Lombardo said. “She was not with [Paddock] when he checked in. We have discovered he was utilizing some of her identification.”

Stay tuned…

DOUBLING DOWN: ISIS release new video, bragging that Las Vegas shooting is REVENGE for US attacks against their ‘caliphate.’

STEPHEN KRUISER: Beware of people carrying fully loaded Bibles.