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January 08, 2014 | | SCAM They said they were too traumatized to serve and protect, but that was all a lie. In a scam dating back to the 1980s, 80 retired police officers and firefighters have been arrested for fraudulently seeking Social Security disability benefits—and some of them even used 9/11 as a pretext. At the time when they were supposedly too psychologically devastated to function, defendants can be seen playing softball, or teaching martial arts, or selling cannolis at a street festival. The Daily Beast's Michael Daly goes inside the NYPD's investigation into their own. SPEED READ Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates served two presidents in opposing parties while overseeing two wars. In his new memoir, Duty, Gates describes his first impression of Obama, his admiration of President Bush—and a threat from David Petraeus. The Daily Beast's William O'Connor speed reads Duty. HARMONY An affiliate of al Qaeda in Syria, the Nusra Front, proposed a cease-fire and the establishment of an Islamic court to resolve disputes and end infighting between rebel groups seeking to topple the Assad regime. Recent battles between rebel forces and al Qaeda affiliates have led to over 270 people killed in four days according to estimates. Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the head of the Nusra Front, released a statement online Tuesday, saying, "The whole battlefield, including the foreign and local fighters, will pay the price of losing a great jihad because the regime will rebound when it was so close to vanishing." SORRY, CANADA After setting record-low temperatures in dozens of major U.S. cities, the painfully cold "polar vortex" is leaving the States and moving north to Canada. Sub-zero temperatures slowed life to a crawl in places like Minneapolis, which spent 62 straight hours below zero, and Chicago, which spent 37 straight hours below. The "polar vortex" is a cyclone of high winds from the North Pole, brought south by changes in the jet stream. TRAGIC Venezuelan authorities arrested five people on Wednesday in connection with the murder of the former Miss Venezuela and her husband. Monica Spear, 29, and Thomas Henry Berry, 39, were shot to death while trying to fend off carjackers. Their 5-year-old daughter Maya was wounded. According to police, the family was traveling on a poor stretch of road when their car hit a "sharp object that had been placed on the highway." Tow trucks arrived almost immediately and had already lifted the damaged car onto one of the trucks when the attack occurred. The family locked themselves into the car, at which point assailants fired at least six shots into the vehicle. | | 
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