MD Man Received Thousands from ISIS:  A Maryland man was arrested Friday and charged with several terror-related offenses concerning his receipt of almost $9,000 in wire transfers in recent months from Islamic State terror group contacts in Egypt and Syria.  Kevin Johnson of USA Today reports that 30-year-old Mohamed Elshinawy is alleged to have received a total of $8,700 dispersed in small amounts between March and June of this year with instructions to use the funds for "operational purposes."  Elshinawy was initially questioned by FBI agents in mid-July, in which he provided false information about the source of the money.  He eventually admitted that the Egyptian contact that provided the money was an ISIL operator, but claimed that he was using the terror group to obtain money for his own personal use.  Court records that show Elshinawy pledged his allegiance to ISIL in February.  No terrorist plot has been connected to Elshinawy, though some of the wire transfers occurred around the July 4 holiday when the U.S. was on heightened alert following threats of terror strikes.  He faces charges of providing material support to ISIL, obstruction, making false statements to investigators and falsifying or concealing material facts in the investigation.  

Stay of Execution Denied:  The Alabama Supreme Court on Monday unanimously denied a death row inmate's request to halt his execution next month.  Kent Faulk of AL reports that attorneys for convicted murderer Christopher Eugene Brooks argued that he and five other inmates are waiting for a final evidentiary hearing regarding whether the state's new three-drug lethal injection protocol violates the Eighth Amendment.  The Alabama Attorney General's Office argued that Brooks did not intervene in the other inmates' lawsuits - which were filed a year ago - until November "in an apparent effort to delay his execution."  In 1993, Brooks was convicted of the murder of 23-year-old Jo Deann Campbell, who he met in New York in 1991.  About a year later, after Brooks spent the night at Campbell's Alabama apartment with his friend Robert Leeper, Campbell was discovered stuffed under her bed and had been badly beaten and raped.  Brooks was linked to the crime through DNA recovered in the apartment and on the victim's body.  Leeper was charged but not convicted due to a lack of DNA evidence linking him to the crime.  He was sentenced to five years for credit card fraud relating to Campbell's stolen credit card that he used to make purchases after her death.  Brooks' execution is scheduled for Jan. 21 and will be the first in the state in 2.5 years and the first using the new drug combination.

Two Kids Found Dead in CA Storage Unit:  After questioning and arresting two individuals on charges related to abusing one child, California investigators were led to a storage unit in Redding where two other young children were discovered dead.  The Redding Record Searchlight reports that 39-year-old Tami Joy Huntsman and 17-year-old Gonzalo Curiel, who had recently moved from Salinas and were currently residing in a town southeast of Redding, were arrested Friday on child abuse charges of a nine-year-old girl, who was emaciated and showed signs of torture.  After questioning by Plumas County authorities, Curiel revealed the location of the Redding storage unit, where the bodies of a three-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy were found Sunday night.  The nine-year-old is currently in Protective Child Custody and receiving treatment.  Two older children, 12-year-old male and female twins, were placed in foster care after being found at the home of the suspects' friend.  In addition to the charges relating to the surviving child, Huntsman and Curiel face charges of mayhem, torture and murder in the deaths of the two youngest victims.