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When Will & Grace creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick reunited the’stars of the NBC comedy in fall 2016, more than 10 years after its finale, a reboot was not on their minds. There was not one word about, Let s figure out a way to do this again! insists Kohan, 53. The pair were so sure that the project a video in support of then-candidate Hillary Clinton would be their last with the gang that they hired a film crew as a way to memorialize the event for our daughters, explains Mutchnick, 51.But NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt had other plans. Less than two weeks later, the creators were back at the NBC commissary discussing a revival. The multicam returns Thursday, Sept. 28, for season nine, with a tenth season already greenlighted.Picking up 11 years later, as the’season premiere title suggests, the new episodes will largely ignore the events of the’series finale, in which Will (Eric McCormack) and Grace (Debra Messing) both married, had kids and went their separate ways. Instead, the two are single and living together, still, with Jack (Sean Hayes) across the hall and Karen (Megan Mullally) just as rich and outrageous as ever.The other big change since the foursome last graced the’small screen? The new president in the White House despite Kohan and Mutchnick s best efforts on Clinton s behalf. There s a lot of tension in the air, so there s a lot of things to write and there are a lot of reasons to make an audience laugh, Mutchnick says. THR3 weeks before the election, Will and Grace s writers produced a video using the cast the’show s former cast to beg liberal viewers to vote for Hillary. The entire 9 minute and 37-second video was created for the’sole purpose of trashing then-candidate President Trump. David Kohan From Bob Greenblatt were so inspired by the number of Trump-hating liberals who viewed their video received, that they’decided to start the’series back up again.The video includes classy lines from Will about then-candidate Trump being a dick . When Grace reminds Will that the election is all going to come down to undecided Pennsylvania s voters anyway, to which Will replies: Right, the unemployed, uneducated, angry white man. And there you have it, the arrogance of the liberal Hollywood writer, who expects Americans to sit down once a week and watch themselves be mocked and berated, as the writers refer to middle-America as UNEDUCATED, UNEMPLOYED, ANGRY WHITE MEN Watch the video that inspired the writers to bring back the angry new Trump-bashing sitcom:

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Colin Powell is NOT voting for Donald Trump, at least according to emails disclosed by a hacker group to BuzzFeed and on DCLeaks.com, who reported that the leaks came from Russia.The emails reveal that Powell thinks Trump is a national disgrace, and that his campaign is built on racism. He also has strong opinions on the birther movement, which Trump thoroughly embraced.In an Aug. 21 email from Powell to Miller, he blasted Trump for embarking on a racist movement that believes President Obama was not born in the US. Yup, the whole birther movement was racist, Powell wrote. That s what the 99% believe. When Trump couldn’t keep that up he’said he also wanted to see if the certificate noted that he was a Muslim. Powell says that Trump has no chance at the African-American vote:The leak shows that Powell criticized Trump’s lack of outreach to black voters, saying there is nothing he can say to convince black Americans to give him their votes, and criticizing the birther movement. He takes us for idiots, Powell wrote, according to CBS. He can never overcome what he tried to do to Obama with his search for the birth certificate the whole birther movement was racist. Source: Huffington PostPowell doesn’t think Trump has a much better chance with women, at least not after he aligned himself with disgraced former Fox News head, Roger Ailes, who left after numerous allegations of sexual harassment. And Ailes as an advisor wont heal women, don’t you think? Powell wrote.The Republican former Secretary of State isn’t a Hillary Clinton fan either.The latest email leak reveals Powell also criticized Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for her handling of her email scandal, saying she could have killed this two years ago by merely telling everyone honestly what she had done and not tie me to it, according to The Intercept.Documents released this month as part of the FBI s investigation into Clinton s emails showed Powell had told Clinton to be very careful if she used a Blackberry for email, warning that if her use of a BlackBerry became public knowledge, those emails could become official record[s] and subject to the law. Powell s only advice seemed to be for the media, which he accused of giving him too much attention. You guys are playing this game, you are his oxygen. A spokesman for Powell admits that the emails are legitimate and that Powell was hacked, although, if Powell s people know who did the hack, they aren’t admitting it. As for Powell s advice to Clinton, well, perhaps he’should have followed it as well.Featured image via Kris Connor/Getty Images.

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The Saudi-owned pan-Arab television channel al-Arabiya al-Hadath said on Saturday an assassination plot was foiled against Lebanese leader Saad al-Hariri in Beirut days ago, citing an unnamed source. Lebanon s Internal Security Forces (ISF), responding to reports that one of its branches had foiled an assassination attempt on Hariri, denied that it was the source of the reports and said it had no information on this . Hariri traveled to Saudi Arabia on Friday and announced his resignation as prime minister on Saturday in a speech condemning Riyadh s regional foes Iran and Hezbollah and saying he feared assassination. Those who planned to assassinate prime minister Hariri deactivated the observation towers while his motorcade was passing by, Arabiya cited the source as saying.

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Residents on the Greek island of Lesbos went on strike on Monday to protest against European policies they say have turned it into a prison for migrants and refugees. Islanders shut businesses, shops, municipal offices, nurseries and pharmacies and dozens rallied on a central square, calling on the government to transfer asylum-seekers to the mainland. Lesbos is not a place of exile, a banner read. Just a few miles from Turkey s coast, Lesbos has borne the brunt of Europe s migrant crisis. In 2015, nearly a million people - most fleeing Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan - landed on its shores before heading north, mainly to Germany. It is now hosting some 8,500 asylum-seekers in facilities designed to hold fewer than 3,000. Lesbos is not an open prison, nor will we allow anyone to view it as such, Mayor Spyros Galinos was quoted as saying by the Athens News Agency. Thousands of asylum-seekers have become stranded on Lesbos and four other islands close to Turkey since the EU agreed a deal with Ankara in March 2016 to shut down the route through Greece. Some have been moved to camps on the mainland, but authorities say the terms of the agreement prevent asylum-seekers from traveling beyond the islands. Rights groups have described conditions in camps across Greece as deplorable and unfit for humans. On Lesbos, violence often breaks out over delays in asylum procedures and poor living standards. The message (today) was that we can t take it any more, Galinos said. Lesbos is in a state of emergency.

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It s pretty safe to say if you stand in front of moving traffic, or intentionally blocking passage of a vehicle, there s a good chance someone is going to get hurt. How do these rioters protesters know where these vehicles they’re blocking are going? What about the panicked parent who s trying to get their kid with appendicitis to the hospital, or the cancer patient who can barely drive who s on their way to the clinic for a treatment? Or how about the expectant mother whose anxious husband is desperately trying to navigate around a terrorists who are blocking the road as he tries to get his wife to labor and delivery? And what sort of violence or punishment by law enforcement should these innocent drivers expect if they’disobey these thugs and drive through their human roadblock? Why doesn’t the news talk about the danger these terrorist are putting everyday Americans in?From Todd Starnes, FOX News Black Lives Matter protesters laid siege to a number of cities over the weekend including my hometown: Memphis, Tennessee.They shut down the Interstate 40 bridge over the Mississippi River stranding thousands of motorists for hours in sweltering heat.Blocking a roadway is a crime under Tennessee law.Yet Memphis police officers were told to stand down and allow the agitators to block the Hernando-Desoto Bridge. They used to call that kind of behavior aiding and abetting.Not a single person was arrested.Police say it was a peaceful protest. But photographs taken from the bridge showed a very different situation. In one instance, young men climbed atop a tractor-trailer- raising their fists in defiance.I wonder if the driver of that tractor-trailer thought it was a peaceful demonstration?Television station WMC reported that protesters even blocked a car trying to escort a child to St. Jude Children s Research Hospital. Apparently that child s life did not matter to the protesters.The car was eventually allowed to pass but only after police intervened.We have no idea how many emergency responses were hampered by the gridlock created by the BLM crowd. We have no idea how many people missed family events or missed work because they were trapped on the interstate.In St. Paul, Minnesota, at least 21 police officers were injured during a full-scale riot on Interstate 94, according to the Star-Tribune.Violent thugs hurled rocks, concrete and rebar at officers as they protested the killing of Philando Castile.One of those officers suffered a broken vertebra after someone dropped a concrete block on his head.Could someone explain’to me how fracturing a police officer s spine and preventing a child from getting to the hospital advances the Black Lives Matter agenda?The police-involved shootings in Baton Rouge and Minnesota were terrible tragedies.If investigators determine the officers broke they law they should and must be brought to justice.But both shootings are still under investigation so to be honest no one knows for certain what happened.Yet, the mainstream media, the Obama administration and the professional race agitators have once again rushed to judgment just like they’did in Ferguson, Missouri.They never let a crisis go to waste, do they?It feels like our nation has been sucker-punched. You can see it on people s faces. Sorrow. Frustration. Anger. Helplessness.I understand that frustration but it does not give us a license to disobey the law.Peaceful protesting is one thing. Domestic terrorism is another.Here s a look at what happens when lawbreakers obstruct the roadway. We re uncertain how many of these accidents were intentional or truly accidents. We re certainly not condoning hitting Black Lives Matter terrorists who block the’safe passage of vehicles, but seriously this is what happens when you intentionally put yourself in harms way!

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A computer network used by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign was hacked as part of a broad cyber attack on Democratic political organizations, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The latest attack, which was disclosed to Reuters on Friday, follows two other hacks on the Democratic National Committee, or DNC, and the party’s fundraising committee for candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives. A Clinton campaign spokesman said in a statement late on Friday that an analytics data program maintained by the DNC and used by the campaign and a number of other entities “was accessed as part of the DNC hack.” “Our campaign computer system has been under review by outside cyber security experts. To date, they have found no evidence that our internal systems have been compromised,” said Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill. Later, a campaign official said hackers had access to the analytics program’s server for approximately five days. The analytics data program is one of many systems the campaign accesses to conduct voter analysis, and does not include social security numbers or credit card numbers, the official said. The U.S. Department of Justice national security division is investigating whether cyber attacks on Democratic political organizations threatened U.S. security, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. The involvement of the Justice Department’s national security division is a sign that the Obama administration has concluded that the hacking was sponsored by a state, people with knowledge of the investigation said. While it is unclear exactly what material the hackers may have gained access to, the third such attack on sensitive Democratic targets disclosed in the last six weeks has caused alarm in the party and beyond, just over three months before the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election. Hackers, whom U.S. intelligence officials have concluded were Russian, gained access to the entire network of the fundraising Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, said people familiar with the matter, detailing the extent of the breach to Reuters for the first time. Cyber security experts and U.S. officials said earlier this week they had concluded, based on analysis of malware and other aspects of the DNC hack, that Russia engineered the release of hacked Democratic Party emails to influence the U.S. presidential election. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Friday it was “aware of media reporting on cyber intrusions involving multiple political entities, and is working to determine the accuracy, nature and scope of these matters.” “The FBI takes seriously any allegations of intrusions, and we will continue to hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace,” the agency said in an emailed statement. The hack did not involve the private email system Clinton used while she was secretary of state. Yahoo News reported on Thursday night that the FBI had warned the Clinton campaign last March that it was a target of a cyber attack involving spearphishing and had asked the campaign to turn over sensitive data to help in its investigation, but that campaign lawyers rejected this request as too intrusive. A source familiar with the matter confirmed this account to Reuters. The new disclosure to Reuters that hackers gained access to the full DCCC network means they would have had access to everything on the network from emails to strategy memos and opposition research prepared to support Democratic candidates in campaigns for the House. The hack of the DCCC, which is based in Washington, was reported first by Reuters on Thursday, ahead of Clinton’s speech in Philadelphia accepting the Democratic party’s nomination. Russian officials could not be immediately reached for comment. Several U.S. officials said the Obama administration has avoided publicly attributing the attacks to Russia as that might undermine Secretary of State John Kerry’s effort to win Russian cooperation in the war on Islamic State in Syria. The officials said the administration fears Russian President Vladimir Putin might respond to a public move by escalating cyber attacks on U.S. targets, increasing military harassment of U.S. and allied aircraft and warships in the Baltic and Black Seas, and making more aggressive moves in Eastern Europe. Some officials question the approach, arguing that responding more forcefully to Russia would be more effective than remaining silent. The Obama administration announced in an April 2015 executive order that it could apply economic sanctions in response to cyber attacks. The hack on the DNC, made public in June, led to WikiLeaks publishing more than 19,000 emails last weekend, some of them showing favoritism within the DNC for Clinton over U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned on Sunday as a result, creating a rocky start for the party’s convention in Philadelphia this week. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Wednesday invited Russia to dig up thousands of “missing” emails from Clinton’s time at the State Department, prompting Democrats to accuse him of urging foreigners to spy on Americans. On Thursday, Trump said his remarks were meant as sarcasm. Earlier in the week, Clinton campaign senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan had criticized Trump and called the hacking “a national security issue.” Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller said on Friday the reported breach showed cyber security is “a problem wherever Hillary Clinton goes. Hopefully this time there wasn’t classified or top secret information that puts American lives at risk.” In Washington, the DCCC said early on Friday it had hired cyber security firm CrowdStrike to investigate. “We have taken and are continuing to take steps to enhance the security of our network,” the DCCC said. “We are cooperating with federal law enforcement with respect to their ongoing investigation.” The DCCC had no additional comment late on Friday. Officials at the DNC did not respond to requests for comment. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, told CNN on Friday she had not heard about the hack of the Clinton campaign. But she said: “It wouldn’t surprise me. I think it should be pretty clear that both campaigns should be aware that there’s a problem out there. Everybody should be cautious.”

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Egypt has arrested 22 people in the past three days as part of a crackdown on gays after a rainbow flag was raised at a concert, activists and rights groups said on Monday. At least 33 people have been arrested since Sept. 23, a day after a group of people were seen raising the flag, a rare public show of support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in the conservative Muslim country. The public prosecutor announced an investigation after local media launched a highly critical campaign against those who raised the rainbow flag at a Mashrou Leila concert, a popular Lebanese alternative rock band whose lead singer is openly gay. On Monday police arrested Ahmed Alaa and Sarah Hegazy, the latter being the first woman involved in such an incident in years, in relation to the case, their lawyer said. They were both charged with joining a group formed in contrary to the law and propagating that group s idea . Hegazy faced a further charge of promoting sexual deviancy and debauchery and the Supreme State Security Prosecution ordered them detained for 15 days, lawyer Amr Mohamed told Reuters. Two men had been arrested earlier in relation to the flag incident but one was released. The remaining arrests were unrelated to the incident but have all been over the perceived sexual orientation of the defendants and came after it. At least 10 men were arrested between Sept. 28-30 and six others earlier that week, judicial sources said. All 16 went on trial on Sunday charged with promoting sexual deviancy and debauchery , euphemisms for homosexuality. A verdict is due on Oct. 29. One man has been sentenced to six years in jail over similar charges. Although homosexuality is not specifically outlawed in Egypt, it is a conservative society and discrimination is rife. Gay men are frequently arrested and typically charged with debauchery, immorality or blasphemy. Those arrested are subjected to anal examinations to determine whether they have had gay sex, which rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say amounts to torture. Five such examinations have taken place, Amnesty International said on Monday. Judicial sources do not deny the examinations take place but say they are legally carried out and are not a form of abuse. In a matter of days the Egyptian security forces have rounded up dozens of people and carried out five anal examinations signaling a sharp escalation in the authorities efforts to persecute and intimidate members of the LGBTI community following the rainbow flag incident, said Najia Bounaim, North Africa Campaigns Director at Amnesty. In 2001, 52 men were arrested when police raided a floating disco called the Queen Boat.

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New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Thursday she will seek to renegotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement in Vietnam in two weeks time to allow the government to ban foreign speculators buying New Zealand existing homes. Ardern, who was sworn in on Thursday after negotiating a Labour-led coalition after a tight election result, said she had already started work on the restrictions. Whether it s TPP or any other agreement it s making sure we have the ability to ban foreign buyers from buying existing homes in New Zealand, Ardern told reporters in Wellington. The 11 TPP members had set a goal of reaching broad agreement on the pact in November at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting set to be held in Vietnam s Danang. New Zealand previously touted itself as a champion of free trade and was a key backer of the TPP since the United States withdrew in January, but Labour has expressed concern TPP would stop it from banning foreigners from buying existing homes. Foreign investors can still buy new houses and apartments. The policy is designed to combat a politically sensitive housing crunch that has priced many New Zealanders out of the market, with prices up more than 50 percent nationally in the last decade. In the city of Auckland, prices have almost doubled in that period. New Zealand was the sixth most popular market for Chinese investors, down from fifth last year, said Jane Lu, head of Australia and New Zealand for international property website Juwai.com. She said foreign buyers tended to fast-forward plans to purchase overseas when new restrictions or taxes loomed. While voters have taken to their charismatic 37-year-old leader, traders have been less impressed with the government s planned protectionist policies and coalition government. The currency had fallen to $0.6861 on Wednesday, its lowest level since May, having plummeted more than 6 percent since the Sept. 23 election. The Kiwi last stood at $0.6878. Veteran protectionist politician Winston Peters, the leader of New Zealand First which holds the balance of power, delivered a victory to Labour after the 23 Sept. election failed to result in a majority for Labour or National. Peters last year described a Chinese company taking a majority ownership in a small New Zealand dairy processor as lunacy , while he called dairy giant Fonterra s decision to send cows to China economic treason . His policies have consistently centered around tight controls on immigration and foreign investment. As well as renegotiating the TPP, Ardern said on Thursday that immigration numbers would be cut by up to 30,000 from record levels of over 70,000. Any trade and foreign ownership restrictions could hurt New Zealand s reputation as an open economy and antagonize the likes of China. Trade between the two countries has grown to more than NZ$20 billion ($14.4 billion) a year, and Chinese President Xi Jinping called the relationship unprecedented in its depth.

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Donald Trump’s first trip overseas was an absolute disaster, and it s becoming obvious that Trump has full intention of making his second one just as bad.Trump kicked off his second international tour with a joint press conference with Poland s President, Andrzej Duda, and it seemed as though Trump totally forgot which country he is supposed to be leading. When Trump was questioned about Russia by MSNBC White House Correspondent Hallie Jackson, Trump betrayed America in front of the entire world.Jackson asked Trump, Will you once and for all, yes or no, definitively say that Russia interfered in the 2016 election? Trump responded by trashing U.S. intel and former President Barack Obama: I think it was Russia and I think it could have been a lot of people interfered. I said it very simply. I think it could’very well have been Russia, but I think it well could have been other countries, and I won’t be specific, but I think a lot of people interfere.I think it s been happening for a long time. It s been happening for many years. Now, the thing I have to mention is that Barack Obama when he was president found out about this in terms of if it were Russia. Found out about it in August. Now, the election was in November. That s a lot of time. He did nothing about it. Jackson pressed Trump further, asking the unhinged POTUS why he refused to agree with what U.S. intel is currently saying about Russia: Your intelligence agencies have been far more definitive. They say it was Russia. Why won’t you agree with them and say it was? Trump made U.S. intel look like a joke: Let me start off by saying I heard it was 17 agencies. I said boy, that s a lot. Do we even have that many intelligence agencies? Let s check it. We did some heavy research. It turned out to be three or four, and many of your compatriots had to change their reporting and had to apologize and correct. You can watch Trump throw U.S. intel and Obama under the bus below:This disgusting move has been condemned by many already. Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough called Trump’s comments nothing short of disgusting. As we’ve said before, you’re on foreign soil. This is remarkable. For a sitting president of the United States to be on foreign soil. You can’t really underline this enough, and attack America s intel community, on foreign soil, and attack America s free press on foreign soil For him to attack American institutions two days after the fourth of July on foreign soil, the day before we meet America s chief adversary is nothing short of disgusting. Trump never ceases to surprise us by taking the country to new lows.Featured image via Drew Angerer / Getty Images

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A newly fraying relationship between U.S. President Donald Trump and top White House economic adviser Gary Cohn has raised questions about how long Cohn will stay in his job, say two people with close ties to the White House. Several sources said Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, had long planned to stay in his post for at least a year. But one source said concern had grown among Cohn’s allies over the past 24 hours that he might be pressured to leave. The recent concerns stem from a report in the Wall Street Journal – confirmed by other news media, including Reuters – that Cohn was unlikely to be nominated by Trump as a potential successor to Fed Chair Janet Yellen. Trump had mentioned Cohn in July for the job. Cohn resigned as president of Goldman Sachs to join the new administration. “The calculus has shifted for Gary. He’s gone, essentially, from untouchable to possibly being bounced out,” the source said. “The message is clear that suddenly Cohn’s job in the White House has real downside risk.” Cohn crossed Trump last month when he criticized the president in a Financial Times interview for his response to the violence at a rally organized by white nationalists in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which one woman died. One source close to the White House said Trump wanted to fire Cohn. “Hates him. But that could be ephemeral,” the source said. Cohn, who is Jewish, told the newspaper the administration “must do better” in condemning neo-Nazis and white supremacists. The former investment banker gave the interview after his wife and daughters pushed him to speak out, if not quit, after Trump blamed “both sides” for the violence. Trump said there were “very fine people” among the white supremacist groups, a comment that disgusted Cohn and those close to him, people who know him said. While the interview was intended to signal that Cohn had no plans to leave the White House and planned to push ahead with his signature project, tax reform, sources said the comments upset Trump. Trump has gone hot and cold on other advisers, some of whom have stayed, while others have left. “Relationships change,” said a third source with close ties to the White House. “If Gary sticks around, I fully expect that Gary’s relationship with the president will improve.” People who know Cohn say that when he does leave the White House, he wants it to be on his own terms. A White House official said Cohn was focused on his job, especially tax reform. “Gary is focused on his responsibilities as the director of the National Economic Council, including a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to deliver meaningful tax reform that creates jobs and grows the economy,” the official said. Cohn said in a CNBC interview last week he had a “great relationship” with Trump and the two were working well together.

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Try to process this: A woman running for President of The United States (whose entire career has been built on lies and deceit) has a charity that has now been placed on a watch list as a way to warn potential donors about investing in the Clinton Foundation The Clinton Foundation s finances are so messy that the nation s most influential charity watchdog put it on its watch list of problematic nonprofits last month. The Clinton family s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid. The group spent the bulk of its windfall on administration, travel, and salaries and bonuses, with the fattest payouts going to family friends. On its 2013 tax forms, the most recent available, the foundation claimed it spent $30 million on payroll and employee benefits; $8.7 million in rent and office expenses; $9.2 million on conferences, conventions and meetings ; $8 million on fund-raising; and nearly $8.5 million on travel. None of the Clintons are on the payroll, but they’do enjoy first-class flights paid for by the Foundation. In all, the group reported $84.6 million in functional expenses on its 2013 tax return and had more than $64 million left over money the organization has said represents pledges rather than actual cash on hand. Some of the tens of millions in administrative costs finance more than 2,000 employees, including aid workers and health professionals around the world. But that s still far below the 75 percent rate of spending that nonprofit experts say a good charity should spend on its mission. Charity Navigator, which rates nonprofits, recently refused to rate the Clinton Foundation because its atypical business model . . . doesn’t meet our criteria. Charity Navigator put the foundation on its watch list, which warns potential donors about investing in problematic charities. The 23 charities on the list include the Rev. Al Sharpton s troubled National Action Network, which is cited for failing to pay payroll taxes for several years. Other nonprofit experts are asking hard questions about the Clinton Foundation s tax filings in the wake of recent reports that the Clintons traded influence for donations. It seems like the Clinton Foundation operates as a slush fund for the Clintons, said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a government watchdog group once run by leading progressive Democrat and Fordham Law professor Zephyr Teachout. In July 2013, Eric Braverman, a friend of Chelsea Clinton from when they both worked at McKinsey & Co., took over as CEO of the Clinton Foundation. He took home nearly $275,000 in salary, benefits and a housing allowance from the nonprofit for just five months work in 2013, tax filings show. Less than a year later, his salary increased to $395,000, according to a report in Politico. Braverman abruptly left the foundation earlier this year, after a falling-out with the old Clinton guard over reforms he wanted to impose at the charity, Politico reported. Last month, Donna Shalala, a former secretary of health and human services under President Clinton, was hired to replace Braverman. Nine other executives received salaries over $100,000 in 2013, tax filings show. The group also failed to disclose millions of dollars it received in foreign donations from 2010 to 2012 and is hurriedly refiling five years worth of tax returns after reporters raised questions about the discrepancies in its filings last week.Via: NY Post

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President Barack Obama claimed the United States is breaking the back of ISIS in his final national security speech before leaving office and told armed service members the country is depending on them to carry forward what is best in us. Obama directed the bulk of his counter-terror speech to criticisms of his policies leveled by President-elect Donald Trump during his successful campaign but did not mention his successor by name. We are a nation that our best has been defined by hope and not fear, Obama told them in his Tuesday address.The nation s commander in chief recounted the United States defining moments in the Civil War, WWII, when American soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy and climbed the hills of Iwo Jima, and the civil rights era. That s who we are. That is what makes us stronger than any act of terror, he told troops stationed at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. Remember that history. Remember what that flag stands for. DMFunny, Barack Obama couldn’t find it in his heart to speak out against those who openly disrespect our flag like Black Lives Matter acitivists or 49er s Quarterback Colin Kaepernick, or others who disrespect or burn our flag in the name of oppression and hate.

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The Washington Post just came out with an explosive report about the extremist candidate that Alabama is running for the United States Senate, Roy Moore. This is a man who has said that homosexuality should be illegal, got removed from the Alabama Supreme Court twice for defying the United States Supreme Court once over a giant monument of the Ten Commandments he refused to remove from the courthouse, and once for defying the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling that legalized same-sex marriage and has always made incendiary and bigoted statements that are out of the mainstream even for the Republican Party. Now, it has come out that Moore molested a 14-year-old girl when he was in his 30 s.Now, one would think that this would be a bridge too far for anyone especially the types of people who make entire political careers out of trying to legislate what goes on in other people s bedrooms on the basis of their twisted version of morality, but no. At least one Alabama Republican is defending Moore s actions, and he is using the Bible to do it. Alabama State Auditor Jim Ziegler says of what Moore allegedly did:Take the Bible. Zachariah and Elizabeth for instance. Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist. Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus. So, let me get this straight. This guy is saying that what Moore did is A-okay because Jesus. This is insane, even for Republicans. Newsflash, Mr. Ziegler: Roy Moore is no Joseph from the Bible, and that young girl is no Mary. Further, it is absolutely absurd to suggest that a myth from a 2,000 year old holy text is some kind of justification for modern day pedophilia.I swear, these people will do anything to win. Then again, they elected Trump, so all bets are off these days. Here s yet another reason to make sure we take back Congress in 2018, Democrats. Let s bring some decency back to Washington.Featured image via Scott Olson/Getty Images

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Lebanon s interior minister said on Thursday that Uber driver suspected of murdering a British embassy worker last week had served time in prison, and he accused the company of not checking criminal records of its drivers. The body of Rebecca Dykes was found strangled on Saturday next to a highway outside Beirut. Police detained a suspect on Monday and said the crime was not politically motivated. Minister Nohad Machnouk said the driver had three priors on his judicial record involving drugs and had been imprisoned on that basis. This company, when it hires drivers, and lets them work within its organisation, does not check their priors , he said at a news conference. An Uber spokesperson said all drivers the company uses in Lebanon are fully licensed by the government and must have a clear judicial record. The spokesperson said a copy of the driver s judicial record published by local media, showing no judgments against the driver, was accurate. Uber confirmed in an email that he was a licensed taxi driver with a clean background check.

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Beware of this agenda that s Agenda 21 for those who aren’t familiar with the term sustainable development. Your every move will be micromanaged for the common good . I am really disappointed in the Pope s position on this and many other things. He s so far left on so many issues but the fact that he’s buying into the global warming scam is very disturbing. The UN plans to launch a brand new plan for managing the entire globe at the Sustainable Development Summit that it will be hosting from September 25th to September 27th. Some of the biggest names on the planet, including Pope Francis, will be speaking at this summit. This new sustainable agenda focuses on climate change of course, but it also specifically addresses topics such as economics, agriculture, education and gender equality. For those wishing to expand the’scope of global governance , sustainable development is the perfect umbrella because just about all human activity affects the environment in some way. The phrase for the good of the planet can be used as an excuse to micromanage virtually every aspect of our lives.So for those that are concerned about the growing power of the United Nations, this summit in September is something to keep an eye on. Never before have I seen such an effort to promote a UN summit on the environment, and this new sustainable development agenda is literally a framework for managing the entire globe.If you are not familiar with this new sustainable development agenda, the following is what the official United Nations website says about it The United Nations is now in the process of defining Sustainable Development Goals as part a new sustainable development agenda that must finish the job and leave no one behind. This agenda, to be launched at the Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015, is currently being discussed at the UN General Assembly, where Member States and civil society are making contributions to the agenda.The process of arriving at the post 2015 development agenda is Member State-led with broad participation from Major Groups and other civil society stakeholders. There have been numerous inputs to the agenda, notably a set of Sustainable Development Goals proposed by an open working group of the General Assembly, the report of an intergovernmental committee of experts on sustainable development financing, General Assembly dialogues on technology facilitation and many others. Posted below are the 17 sustainable development goals that are being proposed so far. Some of them seem quite reasonable. After all, who wouldn’t want to end poverty . But as you go down this list, you soon come to realize that just about everything is involved in some way. In other words, this truly is a template for radically expanded global governance . Once again, this was taken directly from the official UN website 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture3. Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation, and foster innovation10. Reduce inequality within and among countries11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts (taking note of agreements made by the UNFCCC forum)14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification and halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable developmentAs you can see, this list goes far beyond saving the environment or fighting climate change .It truly covers just about every realm of human activity.Another thing that makes this new sustainable development agenda different is the unprecedented support that it is getting from the Vatican and from Pope Francis himself.In fact, Pope Francis is actually going to travel to the UN and give an address to kick off the Sustainable Development Summit on September 25th His Holiness Pope Francis will visit the UN on 25 September 2015, and give an address to the UN General Assembly immediately ahead of the official opening of the UN Summit for the adoption of the post-2015 development agenda. This Pope has been very open about his belief that climate change is one of the greatest dangers currently facing our world. Just a couple of weeks ago, he actually brought UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to the Vatican’to speak about climate change and sustainable development. Here is a summary of what happened On 28 April, the Secretary-General met with His Holiness Pope Francis at the Vatican and later addressed senior religious leaders, along with the Presidents of Italy and Ecuador, Nobel laureates and leading scientists on climate change and sustainable development.Amidst an unusually heavy rainstorm in Rome, participants at the historic meeting gathered within the ancient Vatican compound to discuss what the Secretary-General has called the defining challenge of our time. The mere fact that a meeting took place between the religious and scientific communities on climate change was itself newsworthy. That it took place at the Vatican, was hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and featured the Secretary-General as the keynote speaker was all the more striking. In addition, Pope Francis is scheduled to release a major encyclical this summer which will be primarily focused on the environment and climate change. The following comes from the New York Times The much-anticipated environmental encyclical that Pope Francis plans to issue this summer is already being translated into the world s major languages from the Latin final draft, so there s no more tweaking to be done, several people close to the process have told me in recent weeks. I think that we can get a good idea of the kind of language that we will see in this encyclical from another Vatican document which was recently released. It is entitled Climate Change and The Common Good , and it was produced by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. The following is a brief excerpt Unsustainable consumption coupled with a record human population and the uses of inappropriate technologies are causally linked with the destruction of the world s sustainability and resilience. Widening inequalities of wealth and income, the world-wide disruption of the physical climate system and the loss of millions of species that sustain life are the grossest manifestations of unsustainability. The continued extraction of coal, oil and gas following the business-as-usual mode will soon create grave existential risks for the poorest three billion, and for generations yet unborn. Climate change resulting largely from unsustainable consumption by about 15% of the world s population has become a dominant moral and ethical issue for society. There is still time to mitigate unmanageable climate changes and repair ecosystem damages, provided we’reorient our attitude toward nature and, thereby, toward ourselves. Climate change is a global problem whose solution will depend on our stepping beyond national affiliations and coming together for the common good. Such transformational changes in attitudes would help foster the necessary institutional reforms and technological innovations for providing the energy sources that have negligible effect on global climate, atmospheric pollution and eco-systems, thus protecting generations yet to be born. Religious institutions can and should take the lead in bringing about that change in attitude towards Creation.Read more: Zero Hedge

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They knew! Can you believe these people? FOX News reported earlier that the release of this report was delayed twice today. Now we know why they’released it late. These people are sickening! Please never forget these American heroes left to die by this woman. The U.S. State Department told a watchdog group in 2013 that it didn’t have any information about former secretary Hillary Clinton s emails, even though dozens of senior officials knew she was using a private server for all her electronic communications.A report released Thursday by the agency s inspector general a powerful and impartial internal investigator described a cavalier culture about transparency inside Clinton s agency, saying that 177 requests for documents about Clinton are still pending nearly three years after she left office. The Freedom of Information Act requires federal agencies to respond to requests for information within 20 business days. The botched FOIA request, filed in December 2012 just before Clinton left office, specifically asked whether or not Clinton used an email account other than one hosted at state.gov. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal group, was reacting to news that former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson had used an alias Richard Windsor to send and receive emails in a way that couldn’t be tied to her when FOIA requests came in. In May 2013 the State Department responded to CREW s request, saying it had no records related to what the group asked for. By then, Clinton had spent four years emailing department employees from her private home-brew account, but had never turned the messages over to the State Department. That CREW request was filed in December 2012, just before Mrs. Clinton left office, and specifically asked whether Mrs. Clinton used anon-State.gov email account for government business. At the time the request was received, dozens of senior officials throughout the Department, including members of Secretary Clinton s immediate staff, exchanged emails with the Secretary using the personal accounts she used to conduct official business, the Office of Inspector General concluded. OIG found evidence that the Secretary s then-Chief of Staff was informed of the request at the time it was received and subsequently tasked staff to follow up. However, OIG found no evidence to indicate that any of these senior officials reviewed the’search results or approved the response to CREW. The employees responsible for searching the State Department s records, the report says, never searched any email records, even though the request clearly encompassed emails. State has received an unprecedented crush of requests for Clinton-related documents 240 in all, a number bigger than those related to secretaries Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and John Kerry combined. But the inspector general found that the agency cut the number of people processing those FOIA requests as they poured in. Clinton s emails sat on her private server for years until the State Department asked her in 2014 to turn them over. She deleted more than half of the messages, calling them personal in nature, before complying. In the meantime, however, her emails were out of reach when federal employees searched for records that might satisfy FOIA requests.Read more: Daily Mail

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Sometimes, it sucks to take the high road. When they go low, we go high has, sadly, led to loss and now, in defeat, Hillary Clinton is being way too nice even still.No, seriously. Go check her Twitter right now. In case you can’t, here are some screenshots that might make you feel a little sick: It s generic, tin-can conceding politician stuff, but she’s still wrong, and shouldn’t be saying those things. See, here s the deal. Republicans are going to use this election say they have a mandate from the American people to basically do whatever the hell they want.But they’don’t. They spent eight years blocking President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party from doing almost anything they wouldn’t even hold a vote on President Obama s SCOTUS nominee. Add that to the fact that Donald Trump likely lost the popular vote, and that Republicans lost seats in the House of Representatives (despite outrageously gerrymandered districts that very literally make democratic votes count less) and a seat in the Senate, and the reality here is that Republicans barely managed to win an election that was heavily rigged in their favor.Unfortunately for progressive causes and the millions of people that will be adversely affected by Whitelash 2016, it s unlikely that Democratic senators will be willing to take things as far as their colleagues across the aisle. It s hard to see Democrats stomping their feet and shutting down the government, for example. The Tea Party, by contrast, will do literally anything to accomplish their goals, and call this principled. In American politics, it looks like the willingness to stick by ideology no matter what is more of a winner than being reasonable or pragmatic.The truth is that we don’t owe Republicans a damn thing. At this point, all we can hope is that the Democrats in the Senate keep a strong spine, stay principled, and refuse to let Republicans accomplish as many parts of the most conservative platform in history as possible. They have no mandate. The people did not vote for this. And it s up to what few blue leaders we have left to do everything they can’to control the damage.Featured image by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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Brazil s lower house of Congress on Tuesday gave initial approval to a bill to reduce the huge array of political parties that have made it hard to govern the country and contributed to corruption. The chamber voted 384-16 for the establishment of a minimum national vote threshold that parties must reach to get public funding and free radio and television time for their election campaigns. The requirement would be 1.5 percent of votes in 2018, rising to 3 percent in 2030. The constitutional amendment must be approved twice in each chamber of Congress by Oct. 7 to apply in next year s general elections. The proliferation of parties has forced Brazilian governments to forge unwieldy coalitions to stay in power by distributing jobs, influence and pork barrel spending, which critics say has provided fertile ground for graft. Small parties facing extinction opposed the vote threshold, which they said would favor larger established parties and hinder renewal of Brazil s scandal-plagued political class. The amendment also seeks to do away with the loose, ad hoc coalitions that parties often form on an election-by-election basis, regardless of ideology or platform. Brazil currently has 35 political parties, 28 of which are represented in Congress. One of them, the Brazilian Women s Party, has only one federal lawmaker, who is a man. Brazil s public funding model has encouraged the founding of new parties, several of them with no clear platforms. There are currently 67 requests to register new parties, according to Brazil s top electoral court. A sweeping three-year-old probe of endemic corruption in Brazil has uncovered a web of political bribes and kickbacks implicating dozens of politicians, including President Michel Temer and a quarter of his cabinet. Next week lawmakers will vote on a separate amendment creating a new fund of taxpayer money to finance campaigns. That amendment would also replace a system of party lists to elect congressmen with races in which individual candidates with the most votes would win office.

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French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said during a visit to Berlin on Friday that Britain had still not clearly defined its positions on Brexit and that this was making negotiations with the EU-27 more difficult. Answering questions from an audience in Berlin after a speech on the French government s reform drive, Philippe rejected a suggestion that other European countries were being tough on Britain and said it bore blame for difficulties in the talks. Our aim is not to be tough with the British. What is true is that these are difficult negotiations, Philippe said. And they are difficult, they have been made difficult, because the initial positions of British diplomats still need to be clearly defined to a certain extent, he added, before heading to the chancellery for a meeting with Germany s Angela Merkel. Nearly three months into talks on the terms of Britain s departure from the European Union, the two sides have made little progress on the issues that Brussels wants resolved before talks on a future trading relationship begin. These include expatriate citizens rights, the Irish border and the bill that London should pay its EU partners to settle existing financial commitments. Philippe said he regretted Britain s decision to leave the EU and, coming from Normandy, felt like he was among cousins when he traveled to the United Kingdom. But he said it was important for the EU-27 and its lead negotiator, Frenchman Michel Barnier, to ensure that the interests of citizens on the continent were protected. For that, the bloc had to stick to its sequencing plan. It is our responsibility to ensure that the exit is done in an orderly manner, Philippe said.

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U.S. lawmakers are near an agreement that would pave the way for the Senate to vote on legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia and Iran, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on Wednesday. Republican Senator Bob Corker told reporters he expected an agreement would be announced as soon as Wednesday evening. However, he did not say whether the Senate version of the bill would strip out language imposing sanctions on North Korea, as he had suggested earlier in the day. The sanctions bill passed the House of Representatives nearly unanimously on Tuesday, in a rebuke to Republican President Donald Trump, whose administration had lobbied against some aspects of the measure.

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Never mind that Iran continues to violate Obama s lopsided deal Senior Obama administration officials are expressing concern that congressional attempts to tighten laws preventing terrorists from entering the United States could violate the Iran nuclear agreement and prompt Tehran to walk away from the agreement.Congress is considering measures that would tighten the Visa Waiver Program to make it harder for potential terrorists to legally enter the United States by increasing restrictions on individuals who have travelled to countries with prominent terrorist organizations from bypassing security checks upon entering the United States.Iranian officials have in recent days repeatedly issued threatening statements to the Obama administration, saying that such moves would violate the nuclear agreement, and the Obama administration last week conveyed the Iranian anger to American lawmakers.Stephen Mull, the State Department official in charge of implementing the Iran deal, warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee late last week that these congressional efforts could have a very negative impact on the deal. Under the revised law, which came in the week of a deadly terrorist attack in California, individuals who have travelled to Iran a lead sponsor of global terrorism would no longer be eligible to participate in the Visa Waiver Program, which permits individuals from 38 partner nations to more easily enter the United States.Congress remains concerned that gaps in the program could prevent federal law enforcement officials from detecting terror-tied individuals before they are granted entrance to U.S. soil.However, a portion of the Iran nuclear deal mandates that the United States not take any action that could harm Iran s economic relationships with other countries. Iranian officials maintain’that the new restrictions violate this passage of the deal.Ali Larijani, the’speaker of Iran s parliament, said last week that these tightened measures are aimed at harassment and that they blatantly violate the nuclear agreement, according to comments carried by the Iranian state-controlled press.Larijani warned that this action will detonate the deal before it has even been implemented. If the Americans pursue the plan, they will destroy an achievement with their own hands since it is against the [nuclear deal] and it will trouble them, he warned.Rep. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) echoed these concerns last week when he questioned Mull during a Senate hearing.Visa waiver reform efforts include a naming of Iran such that individuals who have travelled to Iran will no loner be eligible for the visa waiver program, Murphy said. There has been a suggestion because there is an element of the agreement that obligates us to not to take steps that would stop economic relations between other nations and Iran that we could perhaps be in jeopardy of breaching the agreement. Mull agreed with this assessment. I have heard from very senior, and Secretary [of State John] Kerry has as well, from very senior officials of differing European allies of ours that it could have a very negative impact on the deal, he’said.Sources working with Congress on the Iran deal criticized the Obama administration for attempting to stymie increased action on terrorism due to its desire to preserve the nuclear deal. According to the Obama administration s latest interpretation, the nuclear deal allows Iran to test ballistic missiles in violation of international law, but does not allow Congress to prevent terrorists from coming into the United States, Omri Ceren, the managing director of press and strategy at The Israel Project, a D.C.-based organization that works with journalists on Middle East issues, told the Washington Free Beacon.Seyed Araqchi, Iran s deputy foreign minister, also warned that Iran is prepared to take action against the United States for implementing visa restrictions.Iran s latest threat to break the deal comes amid numerous Iranian provocations, including multiple tests of advanced ballistic missiles, acts prohibited under United Nations Security Council resolutions.The Obama administration repeatedly said that, while it does not agree with those launches, they’do not violate the nuclear deal.Via: WFB

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Cambodia s Supreme Court on Thursday began its final session to decide whether to dissolve the main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), thus ensuring victory for Prime Minister Hun Sen s ruling party in next year s general election. A verdict is expected later in the day, amid an increasingly tense political situation and a campaign by the ruling Cambodian People s Party (CPP) to crush the opposition ahead of the vote. If the court rules for dissolution, 118 members of the opposition party will also be banned from politics. More than half its members of parliament have already fled Cambodia, fearing a crackdown by Hun Sen. Such a ruling would leave no credible political opposition in Cambodia for the first time since 1993, one senior diplomat based in the Cambodian capital told Reuters. In that year a U.N.-run election produced a shaky coalition between Prince Norodom Ranariddh and Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge guerrilla installed as prime minister in the mid-1980s by the Vietnamese. The processes in the early nineties left Cambodia with a lively civil society and the freest press in Southeast Asia and there is a possibility of a lot of that going, said the diplomat, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to comment. Dozens of police guarded the court, its exterior painted yellow with gold accents, along with some officers from Hun Sen s personal bodyguard unit, although there has been no indication of any planned protest. Traffic flow was normal. On Wednesday, Cambodia s opposition said it did not think it could escape dissolution. The judge who heads the Supreme Court, Dith Munty, is a member of the permanent committee of the ruling party and a longtime Hun Sen loyalist. The 2018 election had been shaping as possibly the biggest challenge to Hun Sen s leadership, after his opponents unified behind the CNRP. Hun Sen has stepped up measures against the opposition. In September, CNRP leader Kem Sokha was arrested in Phnom Penh and charged with treason.

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France s Winter Olympics team will not travel to the 2018 Games in South Korea if its security cannot be guaranteed, France s sports minister said on Thursday, the first major doubts by a participating nation about growing North Korean tensions. The games organizer said on Friday that it is closely monitoring the current geopolitical situation with the South Korean government, adding that safety is the top priority. Tensions in the region have escalated since North Korea conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test on Sept. 3, prompting global condemnation. North Korea s leader Kim Jong Un said on Friday the North will consider the highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history against the United States in response to U.S. President Donald Trump s threat to destroy the North. France s Sports Minister Laura Flessel told RTL radio that if the crisis deepened and our security cannot be assured, the French Olympics team will stay at home. But she added: We re not there yet. Participants in the Games - the first Winter Olympics hosted by an Asian nation outside Japan - had not previously raised safety concerns publicly. The games are scheduled for Feb 9-25 next year in Pyeongchang, just 80 km (50 miles) from the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, the world s most heavily armed border. The two countries remain technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended with a truce and not a peace treaty. Safety and security is one of the most important aspects of Games preparations, Sung Baik-you, a spokesman for the organizing committee, said in a statement to Reuters on Friday. South Korea s President Moon Jae-in said on Wednesday the country is pushing to ensure security at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. In a meeting with International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach, Moon said South Korea is well aware of the concerns. The Japanese Olympic Committee said on Friday it is not considering the cancellation of its plans. We will continue to prepare in the same way as with other international competitions that we take part in, a spokeswoman for the committee said. The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) said it was working with all the relevant authorities to ensure its athletes would be safe. Each host city presents a unique challenge from a security perspective, and, as is always the case, we are working with the organizers, the U.S. State Department and the relevant law enforcement agencies to ensure that our athletes, and our entire delegation, are safe, USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky said. The Chinese Olympic Committee said it had no immediate comment. The Canadian Olympic Committee (COC), which has representatives in South Korea, said the safety of its team was always its main priority. The safety of our entire Canadian Olympic Team is always our main priority, no matter where the Games are held, the COC said in a statement emailed to Reuters. The Government of Canada does not currently have travel advisories in place for South Korea and recommends that Canadians exercise normal security precautions, which is the lowest of four risk levels. Australia, one of Asia s largest participants at recent Winter Games, is monitoring the situation. The safety of our team is of the highest priority but we are comfortable with the priority that the (International Olympic Committee) and the Org Comm are placing on security and safety of the Games and its participants, the Australian Olympic Committee said in a statement emailed to Reuters. We are relying on advice from DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) and working with the Korean Ambassador and if their advice changes, we will advise our team accordingly but for the moment there is no suggestion that the Games will not go ahead or their safety is compromised. The chief of the International Ski Federation, Gian-Franco Kasper, dismissed any fears among athletes, saying the Pyeongchang Olympics would be the safest in the world . He conceded, however, that ticket sales among overseas visitors could be affected. The IOC has said it is not contemplating any Plan B for the Games. IOC President Thomas Bach said last week that considering any scenario other than holding the Olympics in South Korea could hamper diplomatic efforts.

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India has frozen requests to commercially release a locally developed genetically modified mustard, an environment ministry document released on Tuesday showed, amid stiff opposition to lab-altered food from domestic activists and politicians. The mustard variety would have been the first transgenic food crop to be allowed for commercial cultivation. But the environment ministry's Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) has deferred approval despite a panel the ministry supervises giving the genetically modified (GM) mustard technical clearance last year. (bit.ly/2cnUOkZ) "Subsequent to receipt of various representations from different stakeholders, matters related to environmental release of transgenic mustard are kept pending for further review," the GEAC said in minutes of a meeting released on the environment ministry's website marked "confidential and restricted circulation". (bit.ly/2yJrRLU) Cotton is the only GM crop currently allowed to be sold in the world s second most populous country where arable land is shrinking. U.S. company Monsanto Co dominates the cotton seed market in India, and often faces resistance from local companies over its position. The environment ministry told parliament on July 31 that GM mustard had been recommended by GEAC to it for "consideration for environmental release and cultivation". (bit.ly/2gCNc54) An environment ministry spokesman directed Reuters to GEAC head Amita Prasad, whose office said she was not available. Another GEAC official named on the ministry s website, Madhumita Biswas, did not respond to requests for comment. The decision on the mustard represents a setback for Deepak Pental and his colleagues at the Delhi University, who worked on developing and testing the variety for years. Pental, who earlier acknowledged that getting a go-ahead for GM food would be difficult, declined to comment on Tuesday. GM food has been opposed by activists and politicians in India due to fears that it could compromise food safety and biodiversity. Some experts have also questioned claims that GM crops are more productive than normal varieties. Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh - Hindi for "national volunteer organization" and the ideological parent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling party - also opposes GM food and instead wants to promote local varieties. (reut.rs/2y1iytL) Even the previous government, led by the current opposition Congress party, in 2010 placed a moratorium on GM eggplant, also after an experts panel had given its clearance - effectively bringing the regulatory system to a deadlock before Modi revived it. (reut.rs/2gxTMGr) (reut.rs/2yFBgXi)

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Unlike the United States, Germany has both a President and a Chancellor. The President is nothing more than a figurehead, of course; it is Chancellor Angela Merkel actually runs the nation. At any rate, Germany s current President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, has come out on television to tell everyone just how he feels about Donald Trump.Speaking to a German television host, President Steinmeier says that he is irritated by Trump. Of course, since Germany is a staunch ally of the United States, he was careful in his wording and quick to recognize the relationship between the two nations, especially during the crucial rebuilding of Europe in the post World War II era. Steinmerier says: Our economic development would not have happened without the Marshall Plan. In this respect, I advise us not to throw everything overboard, even though I admit that I am irritated about a lot of things. He went on to essentially say he knows that most Americans are just as horrified by Trump as he is: Not all of America has forgotten the transatlantic relationship, and therefore I believe that within American politics, there will be corrections made to what we are now seeing. Of course, this is how you’rebuke someone without even mentioning their name. Further, these remarks should come as no surprise, since Trump and German Chanecellor Angela Merkel have long had a frosty relationship. Like decent people everywhere, she was appalled by Trump’s campaign trail behavior, and things have only gotten worse since Trump took office. When Merkel visited the White House, Trump actually gave her a bill for NATO, apparently in an attempt to keep his promise that he d make our allies pay up before offering our protection. He also had the audacity to joke about Merkel being wiretapped. And then of course, there was the fact that Trump was way out of his league at the G 20, the G 7 and NATO Summits.All in all, the world cannot wait to be rid of Trump. It s okay neither can we.Featured image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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As people head out to celebrate America s independence, some people have more to celebrate than others. A LOT more.Even as the economy recovers from the financial collapse engineered by the rich, those same people managed to reap almost all the rewards, leaving the rest of us to scramble for the’scraps. And while the rich whine about how persecuted they are, a new study shows that income inequality in America is at an all time high with no signs of slowing down.How bad is it? Very:While the past two years have been good for the majority of Americans income growth, they still haven’t fully recovered from the recession. For the bottom 99 percent, incomes fell 11.6 percent during the height of the recession from 2007 to 2009. Afterward, they grew just 7.6 percent between 2009 and 2015 not enough to make up for the downturn. Incomes for the 99 percent have only recovered about 60 percent of what they lost.But the rich are doing great. The incomes of the 1 percent grew 37 percent between 2009 and 2015. They captured more than half of all the income growth in the country over that period, leaving just 48 percent to spread out among the bottom 99 percent of families.The Washington Post writes about a study of income inequality throughout the entirety of America s existence and the two researchers found that today s inequality is the worst it s ever been and steadily getting worse. Even when the country was first founded and most people lived on farms, the rich were not far separated from the poor. In fact, even the Gilded Age which saw obscene amounts of wealth concentrated in the hands of the few was not as obscene as it is now. Here s the chart they used:(Excerpted from Unequal Gains: American Growth and Inequality since 1700. Courtesy of Princeton University Press)If you ll notice, the’sharp upturn of income inequality started in the 1970s when unions started to dwindle and corporations started to increase worker productivity while refusing to share the profits from it. You ll also notice that the’sharpest climb came after the 2008 financial crisis.This hoarding of wealth is what has lead to the 1% attempting to completely co-opt our system of government by buying politicians outright. The bad news is that this is going to get much worse before it gets better. The good news is that the rich always lose these fights in the end. The British lost when they tried to bleed the colonies dry. The’southern slave holders lost when they tried to maintain’their control over their property. The Robber Barons lost when they tried to turn America into their own personal playground. And the current crop of greedy, soulless 1%ers will lose this time as well.Soon-to-be Hillary Clinton may not go after the rich with both barrels blazing, but she, like Obama before her, will lay the foundation for the 99% to take our country back. By quietly rebuilding the government institutions and courts the GOP crippled, we’re going to have the tools we need to wrest control away from the corporations and stop the decline of the middle class and the’suffering of the poor.So light those fireworks, America! We re almost ready to declare our independence from the 1%!Featured image via Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images

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https://twitter.com/TEN_GOP/status/793890171058085888Here is a screen shot of the letter in a tweet from FOX News with a copy of the entire letter (harder to view):#BREAKING: @FloridaGOP & @BlaiseIngoglia alleging "violations" by Broward Co. Election Office w/ ballot-by-mail counting. Letter attached: pic.twitter.com/Muu483fIfl Heather Lacy (@Heather_Lacy1) November 2, 2016

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Thanks to Obama s promise to shut down the coal industry, West Virginia comes in at #50. It s also interesting to note where Washington DC ranks in the nations best economies and why.Business Insider ranked the economies of these states, and DC s, on seven measures: unemployment rates, gross domestic product per capita, average weekly wages, and recent growth rates for non-farm payroll jobs, GDP, house prices, and wages.While they’didn’t factor them into the ranking, they also looked at the Fortune 1000 companies that have their headquarters in each state and which industries were disproportionately important in each state. This helped us get a little more insight into what makes each state economy tick.For more details on methodology and sources, click here.51. MississippiMississippi came in last in our ranking of state economies. Chicken, soybean, cotton, and rice farming are among the’state s most disproportionately large employers.Mississippi had the lowest 2014 GDP per capita of any of the’states, at just $35,019, and the lowest Q4 2014 weekly wage, at $747. The rate at which both of those measures was changing were also weak: Mississippi had the’second-lowest GDP growth rate, with state GDP shrinking by 1.2%. The average weekly wage grew just 2.3% between Q4 2013 and Q4 2014.50. West VirginiaWest Virginia was one of just two states in which fewer people were working in June 2015 than in June 2015, with a drop of 1.2% in nonfarm payrolls over the year. The Appalachian state was also one of only three states where housing prices dropped between Q1 2014 and Q1 2015, and had the biggest drop in the’state housing price index, falling 3.90%. One bright spot was that GDP grew by 5.1% in 2014, higher than the national rate of 2.2%.49. AlabamaAlabama s 2014 per capita GDP of $41,127 was far lower than the US per capita GDP of $54,307. GDP growth was also slower than in other states, increasing just 0.7% in 2014. Alabama s housing market remains lackluster, with housing prices rising just 1.8% between Q1 2014 and Q1 2015.48. New MexicoNew Mexico has a large mining sector: About 18,000 New Mexicans are employed in support activities for mining. The’state, home to research institutions like the University of New Mexico and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, also has a disproportionately large number of people employed in science, with about 22,000 private sector physics, engineering, and biological-research employees.New Mexico s June unemployment rate of 6.4% was a bit higher than the national rate of 5.3%, and its housing market was sluggish, with home prices rising just 1.46% between Q1 2014 and Q1 2015. One bright spot is wage growth, with the weekly average wage in the’state jumping 4.4% between Q4 2013 and Q4 2014.47. MissouriMissouri is home to 26 Fortune 1000 companies, including Emerson Electric, agricultural giant Monsanto, O Reilly Automotive, and Energizer.Missouri had a low rate of employment growth, with nonfarm payrolls growing just 0.8% between June 2014 and June 2015. The’state was slightly below average on all our other metrics, like its 5.8% June 2015 unemployment rate, higher than the national rate of 5.3%.46. MaineShipbuilding and maintenance jobs are disproportionately common in Maine, home to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, one of the four main shipyards used by the US Navy. The federal government employs about 4,700 workers in these industries.Maine saw low GDP growth in 2014 of only 0.2%. Maine s housing market was also slow, seeing only a 1.07% increase in housing prices. Maine s average weekly wage of $826 was also a bit lower than the national average of $1,035.45. ArkansasWhile home to corporate giants like Walmart, which sits at the very top of the Fortune 500 list, and food-processing conglomerate Tyson Foods, Arkansas economy overall is weaker than that of most states.Arkansas per capita GDP was $40,924, well below the US GDP per capita of $54,307. Similarly, the’state s average weekly wage of $807 was quite a bit lower than the US average wage of $1,035 per week. However, the’state s wage situation is improving: Wages rose by 4.5% from Q4 2013 to Q4 2014, the fifth highest wage-growth rate among the’states.44. New Jersey The Garden State is home to the headquarters of several large corporations, including Johnson & Johnson, Prudential Financial, Merck, and Honeywell International. Although Atlantic City has seen better times, about 23,000 New Jerseyans are employed at casino hotels, about three times the national rate of employment in this industry.New Jersey had some rather extreme scores on our measures. While New Jersey s GDP per capita of $61,433 and average weekly wage of $1,211 were among the highest in the country, the growth rates for these two measures were far weaker: GDP grew just 0.4% in 2014, and wages rose just 2.0% between Q4 2013 and Q4 2014, much lower than the 3.5% change nationwide.43. KansasKansas economy has huge agriculture and aerospace sectors. Among the most disproportionately common jobs in Kansas are livestock wholesalers, cattle ranchers, turkey producers, and airplane manufacturers.Kansas over the year wage growth of 2.6% was somewhat weaker than the national rate of 3.5% between Q4 2013 and Q4 2014. Job growth was also below average, with nonfarm payrolls growing by only 0.8% between June 2014 and June 2015. Despite the’slow change in employment, Kansas June 2015 unemployment rate of 4.5% was quite a bit lower than the national 5.3% rate.42. VirginiaWith its proximity to the nation s capital and several key military installations, it s not surprising that government and military activities play a disproportionately large role in Virginia s economy. About 38,000 Virginians are employed in the’shipbuilding industry, and 64,000 are employed by the federal government in national-security positions.This heavy government and defense presence also shows up in Virginia s Fortune 1000 companies: Among the big companies headquartered in Virginia are the government-backed Freddie Mac, and defense contractors General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman.Virginia s job growth was mediocre and its GDP growth was weaker than most states. Nonfarm payroll jobs increased by 1.3% between June 2014 and June 2015, and the’state s GDP was flat in 2014, growing 0.0%. A more positive measure for Virginia was the’state s average weekly wage of $1,057, just above the national average of $1,035.41. IllinoisSeveral iconic companies call Illinois home, like airplane builder Boeing, pharmacy giant Walgreens, insurance companies State Farm and Allstate, and the troubled burger sellers of McDonald s.While Illinois weekly average wage of $1,089 is better than that of most other states, wage growth has been slower, with wages rising just 2.8% between Q4 2013 and Q4 2014.40. ArizonaAnchored by the metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona has a diverse economy. Among the most disproportionately large industries are mining, professional organizations, financial processing, and electronics manufacturing.Arizona s housing market is recovering well, with housing prices rising 6.03% between Q1 2014 and Q1 2015, a bit faster than the national change of 4.96%. However, the’state s GDP per capita is somewhat lower than in other areas, at just $42,213, about $12,000 lower than the US per capita GDP of $54,307.39. LouisianaShipping services, sugar farming and processing, and petroleum refining and processing are three of the most disproportionately large industries in Louisiana.Louisiana s June 2015 unemployment rate of 6.4% was higher than that of most states. The’state also had a below average year-over-year job growth rate, with nonfarm payrolls increasing by only 0.7% between June 2014 and June 2015.38. AlaskaMining, fishing, and seafood processing are among the most disproportionately large employers in Alaska.While Alaska s $77,477 GDP per capita was the’second highest in the country, the’state s GDP was one of only two that were lower in 2014 than 2013, with a 1.3% drop in economic activity over the year. The’state s unemployment rate of 6.8% was the fourth highest among the’states.37. MarylandLike Virginia, Maryland s proximity to Washington means a huge federal presence in the’state: 15 of the 20 most over-represented industries in Maryland are federal government employers.While Maryland s $1,113 average weekly wage and $58,335 GDP per capita were both quite high, the’state was one of only three to see house prices drop between Q1 2014 and Q1 2015, with the house price index dropping 0.38%. This housing market weakness along with middling scores on our other metrics kept the’state from rising higher in our rankings.36. PennsylvaniaPennsylvania is home to several storied US corporations, like US Steel, Comcast, Rite Aid, and Hershey. This heritage shows up in the industries that employ a disproportionately large number of workers in the’state: about 13,000 Pennsylvanians work in iron and steel mills, and about 8,000 in chocolate candy manufacturing.Pennsylvania was pretty middle of the road on most of our metrics. The’state s June 2015 unemployment rate of 5.4% was just above the national rate of 5.3%, and the Q4 2014 average weekly wage of $1,013 was very close to the national average wage of $1,035.35. South CarolinaSouth Carolina has a disproportionately large manufacturing sector. Various types of fabric and textile manufacturing, tire manufacturing, and fabricated metal product manufacturing all employ a higher proportion of South Carolinians than of Americans as a whole.While South Carolina s housing market was strengthening, with a 6.46% increase in housing prices between Q1 2014 and Q1 2015, the’state s unemployment rate of 6.6% was the’sixth highest among the’states, and its per capita GDP of just $39,380 was the third lowest.34. IndianaManufacturing is still a big part of Indiana s economy: About 21,000 Hoosiers are employed in motor vehicle power train manufacturing, another 34,000 in auto body manufacturing, and about 20,000 in iron and steel mills.Indiana was a mixed bag on our measures. GDP growth was sluggish at just 0.4% in 2014. On the other hand, average weekly wages grew 3.9% between Q4 2013 and Q4 2014, a bit higher than the national rate of 3.5%.33. Rhode IslandRhode Island s coastal location shows up in its economy, with private marinas and shipbuilders among the most disproportionately large employers in the’state.Rhode Island s unemployment rate has dropped quite a bit in recent years, but at 5.9% in June, it is still above the 5.3% national rate. Rhode Island s job creation was middle of the road, with nonfarm payrolls growing by 1.2% between June 2014 and June 2015. On a brighter note, the 4.5% rate of year over year wage growth was the fifth highest among the’states.32. ConnecticutGeneral Electric, No. 8 on the Fortune 500, calls Connecticut home, as do health insurance giants Aetna and Cigna. Not surprisingly, aerospace manufacture, insurance, and financial activities are among the most disproportionately large employers in the Constitution State.While Connecticut s GDP per capita of $70,353 was the’sixth best in the country, and its $1,278 average weekly wage was the fourth best, the’state s house price growth of 0.40% was the fourth worst.31. NevadaThe home of Las Vegas naturally has an outsize gaming sector. About 183,000 Nevadans are employed by Casino hotels, with another 10,000 employed by non-hotel casinos and other gambling establishments.Nevada found itself in the middle of the’states because of a few extreme scores on our rankings. On the positive side, the’state had the’second-highest rate of job growth among the’states, with nonfarm payrolls growing by 3.5% between June 2014 and June 2015. The’state s housing market has been recovering nicely after being slammed especially hard after the collapse of the housing bubble, with housing prices rising 10.11% between Q1 2014 and Q1 2015, the’second-highest jump in the country.On the negative side, Nevada s 6.9% unemployment rate is the third highest in the country, and the’state s average weekly wage only grew by 1.6% between Q4 2013 and Q4 2014, the’second-lowest growth rate among the’states.30. OklahomaThe oil industry plays an outsize role in Oklahoma s economy. About 24,000 people work in the oil-and-gas-extraction industry, with another 37,000 in support activities for mining.Like Nevada, Oklahoma scored very well on a few of our metrics and poorly on others. On the positive side, the’state s 2014 GDP growth rate was 2.8%, the ninth-best among the’states, and the’state unemployment rate of 4.5% was much lower than average. On the negative side, job growth was slow, with a 0.6% year-over-year growth rate in nonfarm payroll jobs.29. WisconsinWisconsin s association with cheese and other dairy products is no accident: Some 17,000 Wisconsinites are employed in dairy product manufacturing, 13,000 in dairy cattle and milk production, and another 5,000 in dairy product wholesale.Wisconsin scored close to average on most of our metrics. The’state s June 2015 unemployment rate of 4.6% was quite a bit lower than the national rate of 5.3%, housing prices went up 5.09% between Q1 2014 and Q1 2015, right in line with the national change of 4.96%, and the’state s Q4 2013-Q4 2014 wage growth of 3.4% was about the’same as the national growth rate of 3.5%.28. MontanaMontana is a big, wide-open state, and cattle ranching is a disproportionately large industry there. Montana s 3.9% unemployment rate was the eighth best among the’states, but its average weekly wage of $794 was the fourth lowest.27. KentuckyKentucky is famous for its bourbon, its horse races, and its coal. All three are disproportionately big employers in the’state: About 4,000 Kentuckians work in distilleries, 1,300 in horse ranching, and 11,000 in coal mining.Kentucky fell in the middle on most of our metrics. The’state saw nonfarm payroll jobs rise by 2.2% between June 2014 and June 2015, close to the national rate of 2.1%. The’state s average weekly wage was a bit lower than average, however, at just $836 compared to the national average of $1,035.26. North CarolinaNorth Carolina is home to 27 Fortune 1000 companies, including Duke Energy, Lowe s, and Bank of America.Job growth was healthy in the’state, with a 2.4% increase in nonfarm payrolls between June 2014 and June 2015, slightly higher than the 2.1% national growth rate. The’state s 2014 GDP per capita of $48,585 was a bit below the national level of $54,307.25. OhioOhio s industrial legacy lives on. About 31,000 Ohioans are employed in motor-vehicle parts manufacturing, with another 11,000 in motor-vehicle metal stamping.Ohio s 2014 2.1% GDP growth was just below the national growth rate of 2.2%, and the’state s 5.2% unemployment rate was just below the national 5.3% rate.24. HawaiiHawaii is a gorgeous state, and tourism is a big part of the economy. Hotels employ about 38,000 residents of the’state, with another 7,000 employed as tour operators and in sightseeing transportation.Hawaii s unemployment rate of 4.0% was below the national rate of 5.3%, but the’state s housing market was more sluggish than average, with home prices rising just 1.53%, lower than the national growth rate of 4.96%.23. DelawareDelaware has an extremely generous corporate law, and over half of US companies are legally incorporated in the’state.Delaware had a high 2014 GDP/capita, at $67,075, much higher than the national GDP per capita of $54,307. However, the’state s year over year wage growth of just 1.5% was the lowest among the’states.22. IowaAgricultural industries are a big part of Iowa s economy. Agricultural equipment manufacturing, starch, and vegetable oil manufacturing, and breakfast-cereal manufacturing are three of the most disproportionately large industries in the’state.Iowa s 3.7% unemployment rate was the fifth lowest in the country. The’state s 2014 GDP growth of just 0.4% was relatively anemic, however.21. South DakotaSouth Dakota s economy still relies heavily on agriculture. Grain farming and wholesale, livestock wholesale, and cattle production all employ South Dakotans at a higher rate than Americans as a whole.While South Dakota s June 2015 unemployment rate of 3.8% was the’sixth lowest in the country, the Q4 2014 average weekly wage was just $791, third lowest among the’states.20. TennesseeTennessee is home to 20 members of the Fortune 1000, including shipping giant FedEx, discount retailer Dollar General, and hospital conglomerate HCA.Tennessee scored about average on many of our metrics. The’state s unemployment rate of 5.7% was a bit higher than the national 5.3% rate, and the average weekly wage in the’state grew by 3.5% between Q4 2013 and Q4 2014, equal to the national growth rate.19. VermontCoffee-pod conglomerate Keurig Green Mountain was founded in Vermont, where it has its headquarters.Vermont s 3.6% unemployment rate was the fourth lowest in the country, but the’state s 2014 GDP growth was rather sluggish at just 0.6%.18. GeorgiaTextiles are a disproportionately large part of Georgia s economy, with carpet and rug mills, fiber and yarn mills, and fabric mills all employing Georgians at a higher rate than other Americans.Georgia s GDP grew by 2.3% in 2014, slightly higher than the 2.2% national growth rate. The’state s unemployment rate of 6.1% continues to be higher than that of most other states.17. Michigan Detroit still looms large in Michigan: About 46,000 residents of Michigan work in auto and light-truck manufacturing, with tens of thousands more in related industries like metal stamping for cars and power train manufacturing.Michigan s housing market has been improving, with home prices rising 6.4% between Q1 2014 and Q1 2015, somewhat faster than the national increase of 5.0%. The’state s 2.2% growth in nonfarm payrolls between June 2014 and June 2015 was right in line with the US rate of 2.1%.16. MinnesotaMinnesota is the headquarters for 25 Fortune 1000 companies, including Target, Best Buy, 2M, and General Mills. All four of those are headquartered in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region.Minnesota s 3.9% unemployment rate was the eighth lowest among the’states. The’state s 2014 GDP per capita of $57,943 was a little higher than the national per-person economic activity of $54,307.15. IdahoMemory and computer-chip maker Micron Technologies recently in the news after talk of a buyout by Chinese tech giant Tsinghua Unigroup that could draw the ire of US regulators is based in Boise, Idaho.Idaho s labor market is looking good, with an unemployment rate of just 4.0% and a 2.6% increase in nonfarm payrolls between June 2014 and June 2015. However, the’state s per capita GDP of $39,127 and average weekly wage of $782 were both the’second lowest among the’states.14. NebraskaAgriculture and meat production are big parts of Nebraska s economy. About 26,000 Nebraskans are employed in animal slaughtering and processing, with thousands more in grain farming, cattle ranching, and agricultural-tool manufacturing.Nebraska s unemployment rate of 2.6% was the lowest in the country in June 2015. The’state s average wage rose an impressive 5.2% between Q4 2013 and Q4 2014. Despite that increase, the Q4 2014 average weekly wage was just $837, quite a bit lower than the national average of $1,035.13. WyomingOil and coal mining are a big part of Wyoming s economy. About 6,500 citizens of the’state work in coal mining, 4,600 in oil and gas drilling, 4,000 in oil- and gas-pipeline construction, and 14,000 in mining-support activities.Wyoming s 2014 GDP growth rate of 5.1% and per capita GDP of $75,648 were both the third highest in the country. However, Wyoming was one of just two states to have fewer people working in the’state in June 2015 than in June 2014, with the number of nonfarm payroll jobs in the’state dropping by 0.7%.12. FloridaWith Disney World, Sea World, and Universal Studios all located in the Sunshine State, it s not surprising that about 69,000 Floridians are employed in the amusement and theme-park industry.Florida s housing market, one of the worst hit by the collapse of the 2000s housing bubble, has been recovering nicely. House prices went up by 8.7%, the third-fastest growth rate among the’states. However, Florida is kept out of the top 10 states with its below average per capita GDP of $42,222.11. CaliforniaThe nation s largest state is home to 10% of the Fortune 1000, with 101 companies on the list having their headquarters in California. These include Silicon Valley giants like Apple, HP, Google, Intel, and Oracle, Disney, and Wells Fargo.While California s 2014 GDP growth of 2.8% was the ninth highest among the’states and the house price increase of 7.5% was the fifth highest, the June unemployment rate of 6.3% was the ninth highest, hurting California s overall score.10. OregonAthletic-apparel and shoe giant Nike was founded in Oregon, where it still has its headquarters.Oregon s 3.2% increase in nonfarm payroll jobs between June 2014 and June 2015 was the fifth best in the country, and its 3.6% GDP growth in 2014 was the’sixth best.9. New YorkBusiness Insider s Sarah Schmalbruch recently pointed out that New York City is the greatest city in the world, and so it s no surprise that the’state economy that includes the financial capital of the US and arguably the world falls in the top 10.New York had the’second-highest average weekly wage in the country, at $1,321. The’state s GDP per capita of $71,128 was the fifth highest. However, the June unemployment rate of 5.5% remains just above the national rate of 5.3%.8. New HampshireThe industrial legacy of New England lives on in New Hampshire. About 7,300 residents work in electronic-instrument manufacturing, 5,000 in semiconductor and electronic-component manufacturing, and 3,700 in miscellaneous fabricated-metal product manufacturing.New Hampshire s 3.8% unemployment rate was the’sixth lowest among the’states, and its average weekly wage grew by a very impressive 6.3% from Q4 2013 to Q4 2014, the’second highest rate in the country.7. UtahUtah is home to four Fortune 1000 companies, the largest of which is the Huntsman chemical corporation.Utah s job market is booming. The number of nonfarm payrolls in the’state grew by 4.3%, the fastest growth rate in the country. Meanwhile, Utah s 3.5% unemployment rate was the third lowest.6. MassachusettsWith its several colleges and universities providing a highly educated workforce, Massachusetts is a major hub of finance and high tech. Big companies like insurer Liberty Mutual, retail giant T.J. Maxx, and defense contractor Raytheon all have their headquarters in the’state.Massachusetts 2014 per capita GDP of $68,185 was the’seventh best among the’states, and the’state had the third highest Q4 2014 average weekly wage, at $1,315.5. WashingtonTen Fortune 500 companies are based in Washington, including discount retail giant Costco, ubiquitous coffee chain Starbucks, and huge tech companies Amazon and Microsoft.Washington s housing market is doing quite well: House prices rose 7.6% between Q1 2014 and Q1 2015, the fourth-highest growth rate among the’states. The’state s 3.5% increase in nonfarm payrolls between June 2014 and June 2015 was the third best in the country.4. TexasWhile Texas has a very diverse economy, and despite turbulence in prices in the last year, oil remains a big part of the Texas story. About 103,000 Texans are employed in the oil-and-gas-extraction industry, and tens of thousands more are in related industries, like pipeline construction, mining support activities, and petrochemical manufacturing.Texas performed very well on all seven of our measures, ranking no worse than 13th in each. Particularly impressive were the’state s second best in the country 2014 GDP growth rate of 5.2% and sixth best housing price increase of 6.5%.3. District of ColumbiaUnsurprisingly, the federal government is the dominant factor in the economy of the nation s capital. About 31% of workers are employed by the federal and local governments in the district.DC is quite different from the’states, and it had some extreme scores on our measures. Washington came up as high in the ranking as it did because of its absolutely stunning per capita GDP of $175,253 over three times the US per capita GDP of $54,307. Also greatly helping DC s standing was its equally impressive average weekly wage of $1,696, about $375 higher than second-place New York.On the downside, the district s 7.0% unemployment rate was the’second highest in the country, and housing prices fell 0.8% between Q1 2014 and Q1 2015, a situation that happened in only two states.2. ColoradoDish Network, Western Union, and Chipotle are three of the 23 Fortune 1000 companies headquartered in Colorado.Colorado s housing market had the most improvement in the country, with house prices rising 11.2% between Q1 2014 and Q1 2015. The’state s 2014 GDP growth rate of 4.7% was also very strong, and was the fifth best among the’states.1. North DakotaNorth Dakota had the’strongest economy in the country. The’state s economy has seen a major boon from the rise of oil fracking in the last few years, and despite chaos in oil prices recently, North Dakota s economy remains robust.North Dakota s 3.1% unemployment rate was the’second lowest in the country. The’state also had both the highest 2014 GDP growth rate of 6.3% and the highest average wage growth rate of a whopping 7.1%.Via: Business Insider

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Now that Donald Trump has completed his disastrous first overseas trip, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer must once again answer to the U.S. media as Trump continues to disgrace the country on its own soil.Following the Memorial Day holiday, it was back to business as usual with Spicer nearly losing his mind at a press briefing earlier today. When reporters asked Spicer about Trump’s claims about fake news, Spicer pretty much imploded as he’sparred with reporters.Spicer tried to defend his mentally incompetent boss by pointing out a tweet in which a BBC reported had made a mistake, claiming that Trump had not been wearing a translation earpiece when he met with foreign leaders. This mistake was quickly and publicly corrected by the reporter as soon as it was realized, but Spicer pathetically latched onto that one incident as proof of fake news. Spicer whined: On Friday, the president was having a great discussion at the G7 and someone from the BBC, and ultimately an incoming reporter for the New York Times retweeted that the president was being rude by disrespecting the Italian prime minister. When in fact, you all in all of the meetings watched the president with that one earpiece that s been used by all the other presidents That s just fake! Spicer s example was beyond ridiculous, and reporters not only reminded him that the inaccurate tweet had been corrected, but that it hadn’t gone any further to major newspapers. But Spicer was beyond reasoning with. He fired back, looking as if a meltdown was just moments away: I was asked to give an example, and I did it. And when another reporter said the BBC reporter s tweet didn’t affect how Trump’s overseas trip was covered, Spicer s reply was nothing but disrespectful and dismissive. He replied sarcastically: Well, thank you, I appreciate it, you get to decide what is big and what is not. A lot of things have been pushed out based on unnamed unaccountable sources that is very troubling. Clearly, Spicer forgot that his own boss is the king of using anonymous sources and perpetuating fake news. You can watch Spicer fight with reporters below:Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images

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A wealthy Turkish gold trader’s decision to hire former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to represent him, as he defends against charges he conspired to violate U.S. sanctions on Iran, raises a potential conflict of interest, prosecutors said. At least eight big banks allegedly victimized by the trader, Reza Zarrab, are current or former clients of Giuliani and Mukasey’s law firms, acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim in Manhattan said in a letter dated Monday to the federal judge hearing the case. The banks’ relationships with the law firms require a special hearing, known as a “Curcio” hearing, to make sure Zarrab understands the potential conflict, Kim said. Giuliani is a lawyer for Greenberg Traurig, while Mukasey, who is also a former federal judge, is a lawyer for Debevoise & Plimpton. Neither firm had an immediate comment. The eight banks are Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Standard Chartered Plc, UBS Group AG and Wells Fargo & Co. “Through various deceptive acts, including layering the transactions and omitting information concerning the Iranian nexus, Zarrab and his co-conspirators allegedly tricked numerous U.S. financial institutions into processing barred transactions, thus exposing them to significant potential loss,” Kim said in a letter to U.S. District Judge Richard Berman, explaining the potential conflict of interest. Prosecutors accused the Iranian-born Zarrab and two others of engaging in hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions for Iran’s government and Iranian entities from 2010 to 2015, in a scheme to evade U.S. sanctions. A trial is scheduled for Aug. 21. Zarrab has been in federal custody since his March 21, 2016, arrest in Miami, while en route to Disney World with his wife and daughter. Holding a Curcio hearing now could eliminate one ground for appeal if the case goes against Zarrab. The case has been closely watched in Turkey, where Zarrab was arrested in 2013 in a corruption probe into individuals with close ties to Tayyip Erdogan, then Turkey’s prime minister and now its president. Zarrab is a dual national of Iran and Turkey. Another lawyer for Zarrab, Benjamin Brafman, said in a letter on Monday that Giuliani and Mukasey’s roles “will not require any appearance in court and, accordingly, a hearing is not required.” The case is U.S. v. Zarrab, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 15-cr-00867.

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Donald Trump’sure hasn’t done himself any favors by appointing equally incompetent staffers and advisors to head up his administration. Kellyanne Conway has definitely made a name for herself amongst these moronic characters, as she has become one of the least liked people on Trump’s team due to her alternative facts, refusal to answer questions, and being disturbingly misinformed about how the government works.This was shown perfectly on Friday when Kellyanne Conway went on Fox News and tried to defend Trump from the grand jury that will be examining Trump’s Russia scandal. Instead of making a sound argument for Trump, she humiliated herself on national television by not knowing that grand juries are public information. You can watch this moment below, where Conway said: You know, the grand jury investigations are meant to remain secret, so someone leaked it. It could be anybody that s in the grand jury. It could be one of the lawyers. It could be anyone, I suppose. Leaking the phone calls between our president and other heads of state is nothing short of a national disgrace. @KellyannePolls pic.twitter.com/AbiHaRpIVJ FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) August 4, 2017Once again, the incompetence of Trump’s team is astounding. Law and justice reporter Brad Heath was quick to point out how wrong Conway was:Conway had tried to attack the grand jury investigating Trump, and pretty much fell flat on her face. Unfortunately, while the fact that she’s this moronic is somewhat comical, the Trump voters watching this won’t know any better and will end up believing her.After Conway s flub, Fox News did its best to redirect the conversation back to something that would keep viewers from noticing so everyone started freaking out about the leaks coming from the White House. It is absolutely pathetic that at a time when the president is under investigation for financial crimes and collusion with Russia, as well as obstruction of justice, Conway and Fox News are whining about leaks and grand juries. Then again, you can’t expect much from people who are THIS stupid.Featured image via screenshot

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World-renowned writer/director Joss Whedon has returned to social media with a vengeance and a message that needs to be heard by everyone. Especially those who are apparently severely apathetic to the election this year.The Avengers director and Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator knows all too well that we can’t sit this election out and has recruited some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry to get his message out there.His Save the Day PAC is described as such: We are a short-form digital productions company dedicated to the idea that voting is a necessary and heroic act. That every voice in this wonderfully diverse nation should, and must, be heard. That the only thing that can save democracy is the act that defines it. We are committed to fighting the apathy, cynicism, and honest confusion that keeps citizens from using their vote. And to reminding an increasingly out-of-touch and compromised set of representatives that they are answerable to the people they were hired to serve. It s clear in the video that Donald Trump must be defeated for the good of all humanity, so it makes absolute sense that Whedon would use those who have played superheroes in his movies to get this very important message across.It s absolutely important that we all vote, not only for president, but also for legislators all the way down to the local level. This election defines not only who will lead the nation, but also who will sit on the Supreme Court, and as Whedon s video points out, it s a tipping point for the world.Sitting at home because you think both parties are equally as bad isn’t only wrong, it s dangerous and allows that which we despise the most to gain power and control.Go here to visit Save the Day PAC, register to vote, and make sure your voice is heard.Watch the video here:Featured Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images

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U.S. President Barack Obama sought on Wednesday to ease growing Asian worries about the raucous election campaign to succeed him which has been dominated by the incendiary rhetoric of mogul Donald Trump, now the Republican Party’s nominee. “I think other people sometimes look at our election system and say ‘what a mess’,” Obama told a townhall meeting with young leaders in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. “But usually we end up doing okay because the American people are good people ... Sometimes our politics doesn’t express all the goodness of the people,” he said, without referring specifically to any of the presidential candidates. Obama made the comments just before ending a three-day trip to Vietnam, whose high point was an announcement that Washington’s ban on sales of lethal weapons to the country - a vestige of the Vietnam War - would be completely lifted. Obama repeatedly insisted that lifting the embargo was not a response to Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea. Critics accused Washington of throwing away a powerful lever it had to press communist-ruled Vietnam for improvements in human rights. White House officials say the arms move was a natural step to take with a country that, once an enemy, is now a key part of Obama’s strategic ‘rebalance’ towards Asia and an important trade partner as its economy grows apace. Obama also announced the Peace Corps would begin operating in Vietnam for the first time. Across Asia, policymakers have been startled by Trump’s “isolationist” foreign policy pronouncements, which have challenged much of the status quo in Washington’s relations with the region. Many fear Trump will feed insecurity in nations worried about China’s growing power, embolden nationalists and authoritarians, and unravel Obama’s ‘pivot’ to the Asia-Pacific. At the townhall in Ho Chi Minh City, a young woman who had been an exchange student in Montana asked Obama what he thought of the prospects that Trump or Democratic contenders Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders following him to the White House. “Usually, eventually the voters make good decisions and democracy works,” replied Obama, whose criticism of Trump has sharpened since he all but clinched the Republican nomination. “Things are going to be ok. I promise.” Thousands of people lined the streets of Ho Chi Minh City for a second day to cheer enthusiastically and wave mini-flags of Vietnam and the United States as Obama drove by on his way to the airport for a flight to Japan. At his freewheeling townhall, where he was greeted with a standing ovation, Obama noted that two-thirds of the country’s population were born after 1975, when the war ended with North Vietnamese tanks rolling into Saigon to bring U.S.-backed South Vietnam under communist rule. Obama prodded Vietnam’s leaders on political freedoms during his visit after critics of the government were prevented from meeting him. When a woman rapper at the townhall asked him about supporting arts and culture, he segued into an appeal for people to be allowed to express themselves. However, his unusually long one-country visit was warm and mostly about strengthening diplomatic and economic relations. Annual U.S.-Vietnam trade has swelled from $450 million when ties were normalized in 1995 to $45 billion last year. Washington is a big buyer of Vietnam’s televisions, smartphones, clothing and seafood. Obama repeatedly touted the benefits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, of which export-led Vietnam will be one of the biggest beneficiaries, if it survives opponents in Washington concerned about competition and a loss of U.S. jobs. He also talked about the challenges of climate change when asked about the drying-up of the Mekong River in the rice-bowl delta of southern Vietnam, urging Southeast Asian countries to work together. The Mekong River, which sustains 60 million livelihoods as it flows through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, is under threat from at least 39 hydro-electric dams being built or under development upstream of Vietnam, most of them in China. Low river levels have allowed seawater to penetrate inland, ruining vast swathes of cropland in the fertile delta. Obama did not name any of the upstream countries but said the United States would provide smaller member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with technical assistance and evaluations of what needs to be done. “Hopefully ... that information can be used to negotiate on an international level to try to prevent some projects that might have very bad effects,” he said. “One of the things that we’ve seen in ASEAN is that when small countries band together as a unit, then the power magnifies.” Japan is the final stop on Obama’s swing through Asia, where he is attending a summit of the Group of Seven industrialized nations starting Thursday.

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Donald Trump’swears he had no idea that former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had lobbied for Turkish interests. None at all. Mike Pence says he was also clueless that Flynn had basically been a foreign agent. Hearing that story today was the first I d heard of it, Pence told Fox News Bret Baier on Thursday night.Now, this may come as a shock to you, but they lied. I know, I know. Who d of thought something said by the Trump administration would turn out to be a steaming load of crap. (Insert eye roll here.)Business Insider reports that Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent sent Pence a letter on November 18 requesting more information about the potential conflicts of interest posed by Flynn s lobbying work. Recent news reports have revealed that Lt. Gen. Flynn was receiving classified briefings during the presidential campaign while his consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group, Inc., was being paid to lobby the U.S. Government on behalf of a foreign government s interests, Cummings wrote. Lt. Gen. Flynn s General Counsel and Principal, Robert Kelley, confirmed that they were hired by a foreign company to lobby for Turkish interests, stating: They want to keep posted on what we all want to be informed of: the present situation, the transition between President Obama and President-Elect Trump. When asked whether the firm had been hired because of Lt. Gen. Flynn s close ties to President-elect Trump, Mr. Kelley responded, I hope so.' Between August and November of last year, Flynn s consulting firm was hired by Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin to lobby the U.S. government for the extradition of Fetullah Gulen a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania who Erdogan believes is responsible for planning last year s attempted coup and generally fomenting dissent inside Turkey. Flynn resigned as Trump’s national security adviser after he was busted in shady talks with Russia. He claims he acted alone and it was all harmless, but that seems unlikely to anybody wth even the tiniest shred of common sense. Now, he is at the center of yet another scandal with foreign powers.Cummings said that if Pence had listened to him months ago the administration might have been able to avoid the problems that have occurred with Lt. General Flynn. In addition to being in the press, I warned the Vice President directly three months ago about the conflicts created by Lt. General Flynn s company lobbying on behalf of Turkish interests, Cummings said. If the Vice President had heeded my warnings, it s clear now he could have prevented the problems that occurred with Lt. General Flynn. Republicans in Congress are doing a disservice to the White House and our national security interests by not conducting rigorous and serious oversight of the administration, especially to help catch issues early and address them. Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images

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https://twitter.com/Rosie/status/800939338615824384

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Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said he won assurances of greater U.S. support in fighting Islamic State militants in talks on Monday with President Donald Trump and top advisers, but cautioned that military might alone would not be sufficient. Abadi’s remarks followed his first face-to-face meeting at the White House with Trump, who took office on Jan. 20 pledging a new strategy to defeat the hardline militant group that seized large swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014. Even before Trump took office, Iraqi forces recaptured a string of major cities from Islamic State, shrank the militant group’s finances and significantly stemmed the flow of foreign fighters, all with the support of U.S.-led coalition air strikes and military advisers. Abadi said Trump appeared more enthusiastic about battling Islamist extremists than Barack Obama’s administration had been. “I think they’re prepared to do more to fight terrorism and be more engaged,” Abadi told a forum in Washington hours after his meeting with Trump, adding he had been told U.S. “support will not only continue but will accelerate.” “But of course we have to be careful here,” Abadi said. “We are not talking about military confrontation as such. Committing troops is one thing, while fighting terrorism is another thing.” Abadi, who leads the Shi’ite majority government in Baghdad, said it would be crucial to win over the local population in Sunni-dominated Mosul to achieve lasting peace. A White House statement about the meeting said both Trump and Abadi agreed that “terrorism cannot be defeated by military might alone,” and the two leaders called for deepening commercial ties, including in the energy sector. At the forum, Abadi called for more financial contributions from the international community. “We (would) love to see more funds so that we can quickly (regain) prosperity and stabilization in these areas,” he said. Abadi spoke as Iraqi forces made steady progress in seizing back Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, from Islamic State, which officials expect will become a more classic insurgency once it loses its last major strongholds. In a sign of the threat, a car bomb killed at least 23 people and wounded more than 45 in a mainly Shi’ite southern district, police and medical sources said. There was no claim of responsibility, but Islamic State has carried out similar attacks in Baghdad and other cities as its hold on Mosul weakens. Earlier in the day, as the two men met, Trump told Abadi that he knew his forces were fighting hard. “It’s not an easy job,” Trump said. “It’s a very tough job. Your soldiers are fighting hard. I know Mosul is moving along. ... We will figure something out. “Our main thrust is we have to get rid of ISIS. We’re going to get rid of ISIS. It will happen. It’s happening right now,” Trump added, using an acronym for Islamic State. Asked whether he had seen the Trump administration’s plan to wipe out Islamic State, Abadi said: “I haven’t seen a full plan. I know there is a plan. I haven’t seen it.” Abadi is in Washington this week ahead of a gathering of world leaders of a coalition fighting Islamic State. In many ways, his visit comes at a high point for him after successfully appealing to Trump to remove Iraq from a list of countries included in a revamped travel ban. Trump decided this month’s revised order temporarily banning the entry of travelers from several Muslim-majority nations would not include Iraq because of its cooperation with the United States. Both the initial Jan. 27 travel ban and the revised version have been blocked by federal courts. Detractors argue the ban discriminated against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom. Trump says the measure is necessary for national security to protect the country from terrorist attacks. “I thank you for removing Iraq from the presidential order ... this was a positive response to the Iraqi request that betters the relationship with Iraq and the value of Iraq as far as Iraqi-American relations,” Abadi told Trump.

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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is considering Goldman Sachs Group President and Chief Operating Officer Gary Cohn for energy secretary, Fox Business Network reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources. Reuters reported on Wednesday that Cohn was being considered to head the White House budget office or another post in the Trump administration.

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Kuwait s foreign ministry ordered its nationals to leave Lebanon immediately, according to a statement on Thursday carried by state news agency KUNA. The decision came hours after Saudi Arabia warned its citizens against traveling to Lebanon and asked those in the country to leave as soon as possible.

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A bitterly divided U.S. Senate confirmed Republican Senator Jeff Sessions on Wednesday as the next attorney general of the United States after strong pushback from Democrats concerned about his record on civil rights. Sessions, 70, who has served two decades in the Senate from Alabama, was confirmed by a 52-47 vote largely along party lines after Democrats raised public opposition to his confirmation. In a rare move for a senator recently confirmed to a Cabinet position, Sessions took to the floor of the chamber after the vote and called for members of Congress to have some “latitude” in their relationships with members of the other party. “I want to thank those who after it all found sufficient confidence to confirm me as the next attorney general,” Sessions said. “Denigrating people who disagree with us, I think, is not a healthy trend for our body,” he said, referring to the Senate. On Tuesday, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a darling of the political left, was silenced in the Senate for reading a 1986 letter from Coretta Scott King, the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., that criticized Sessions for his civil rights record. Democrats, civil rights and immigration groups have voiced alarm about Sessions’ record of controversial positions on race, immigration and criminal justice reform. With Sessions as attorney general, eight of President Donald Trump’s 22 Cabinet nominees have been confirmed. The Republican-led Senate also voted on Wednesday to advance Representative Tom Price’s nomination to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Senate is likely to vote to confirm Price on Friday. Sessions, a known immigration hardliner, will take the lead of the Justice Department as its lawyers are defending Trump’s temporary entry ban on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries and all refugees, the most controversial executive order of the young administration. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is due to rule this week on whether to overrule a district court judge in Seattle who suspended the ban last week. Civil rights groups worry that the Justice Department’s civil rights division will not be aggressive in prosecuting abuses under Sessions. They cite his failure to win Senate confirmation to become a federal judge in 1986 because of allegations he made racist remarks, including testimony that he had called an African-American prosecutor “boy,” an allegation Sessions denied. Sessions said at his hearing in 1986 that groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union could be considered “un-American.” He also acknowledged he had called the Voting Rights Act of 1965 a “piece of intrusive legislation.” The left-leaning Center for American Progress think tank questioned whether Sessions would be an independent legal voice to challenge Trump’s agenda. “Trump has shown little respect for the courts or the constitutional limits on his power, and there is no reason to think that Attorney General Sessions will act as an independent check on the president,” said Michele Jawando, vice president for legal progress at the think tank. Sessions has pushed to curb immigration into the United States, including by those who enter legally on work permits. He has also voted against many measures to reduce sentences for prisoners. The Republican National Committee pushed back against what it called “obstructing” by Democrats. “That Democrats would try to skew Sessions’ strong civil rights record and consistent adherence to rule of law in a partisan effort to block their colleague’s nomination shows their only commitment is to blindly obstructing this administration,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said on Sessions’ confirmation.

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21st Century Wire says Is Washington preparing to carpet bomb Raqqa? If so, what will be the trigger for this boldly adroit military maneuver to deploy B-52 Bombers to the Middle East?Back in Dec 2015, GOP contender Ted Cruz vowed he would carpet bomb ISIS if elected president (and to hell with any collateral damage). He recently repeated that call on FOX network s Kelly File show. If I am elected president, we will defeat radical Islamic terrorism, and we will utterly destroy ISIS, he’said. And yes that means carpet bombing them into oblivion. But it s not Cruz ramping up the Pentagon s military footprint it s Barack Obama who is the international aggressor, but he’s leading from behind safely in the background in order to preserve his party s fast-diminishing dovish allure in a delicate election year.Regardless, the U.S. are desperate to save face in the Middle East after 5 years of failed policy and arming terrorists in Syria and northern Iraq while acting as if they were forming a Coalition to defeat the terrorists a totally fraudulent narrative (yes, you’read that correctly, and the evidence is now in).Is this a sign of thing to come..?In a conventional conflict, the B-52 can perform air interdiction, offensive counter-air and maritime operations. During Desert Storm, B-52s delivered 40 percent of all the weapons dropped by coalition forces. It is highly effective when used for ocean surveillance, and can assist the U.S. Navy in anti-ship and mine-laying operations. Two B-52s, in two hours, can monitor 140,000 square miles (364,000 square kilometers) of ocean surface. All B-52s are equipped with an electro-optical viewing system that uses platinum silicide forward-looking infrared and high resolution low-light-level television sensors to augment the targeting, battle assessment, flight safety and terrain-avoidance system, thus further improving its combat ability and low-level flight capability. (U.S. Air Force photo) RTAmerican B-52 Stratofortress bombers have been sent for their first Middle East operational deployment since the 1991 Gulf War 26 years ago. The aircraft are flying from Qatar to bomb Islamic State targets.An undisclosed number of B-52s have arrived at the Al Udeid Air Base on Sunday, the US Air Force said. The B-52 will provide the coalition continued precision and deliver desired airpower effects, Lt. Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., commander, US Air Forces Central Command said in the’statement.The B-52 is a long-range multi-purpose heavy bomber. The Central Command last used them during Operation Desert Storm against Saddam Hussein s Iraq, when the aircraft flew sorties from Saudi Arabia.The deployment is meant to replace a contingent of B-1 Lancer swing-wing bombers which departed the Middle East in January for maintenance and a series of upgrades, the US Army s Stars and Stripes reported. The B-52 demonstrates our continued resolve to apply persistent pressure on Daesh and defend the region in any future contingency, Brown said, referring to Islamic State by its Arabic-language acronym.The deployment comes shortly after Russia used its long-range Tupolev Tu-22, Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers to strike terrorist targets in Syria. The Russian aircraft flew from their home bases over the Caspian Sea, Iran and Iraq to reach the Syrian territory.READ MORE PENTAGON NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Pentagon Files

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U.S. Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz apologized to Ben Carson on Tuesday over an email his campaign sent on Monday night that implied Carson was about to drop out of the race and that his Iowa backers should be urged to vote for Cruz instead. A staffer for Cruz sent the email after rumors began circulating that Carson would return to Florida following Iowa’s caucuses on Monday rather than go straight to New Hampshire or South Carolina, other early voting states in the state-by-state nominating contests for the Nov. 8 election. “The press is reporting that Dr. Ben Carson is taking time off from the campaign trail after Iowa and making a big announcement next week,” the email read, according to CNN. “Please inform any Carson caucusgoers of this news and urge them to caucus for Ted Cruz.” Carson said he was simply leaving Iowa to avoid a winter storm and to get fresh clothes before continuing his campaign on Wednesday. The retired neurosurgeon, who said his fourth-place performance in Iowa would have been better had the email never been sent, criticized the move as “a dirty trick” and said the Cruz campaign should face some kind of consequences. “What this does is makes me more determined than ever to try to save our country,” Carson said on Fox News on Tuesday. In an apology released on Tuesday afternoon, Cruz, who won the Iowa Republican caucuses, categorized the email as a regular update the campaign would send to grassroots leaders. But the U.S. senator from Texas acknowledged another email should have been sent once Carson clarified he was not dropping out. “This was a mistake from our end, and for that I apologize to Dr. Carson,” Cruz wrote. Carson accepted the apology, his communications director, A. Larry Ross, said in a statement later on Tuesday. “This incident further demonstrates that we need an individual who is not a politician to lead and to heal our nation, not someone driven by ambition,” Ross said, adding that Carson would continue his campaign in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said he would not interfere in the situation. “You take them at their word for it, and you move on to the next state,” he said on CNN. The question remains whether the dispute will hurt Cruz, a favorite of conservative evangelicals looking to win over Carson supporters should Carson drop out. Dartmouth University political scientist Linda Fowler said it could hurt Cruz if other candidates start to pick up on the interaction and say: “There’s a reason why nobody likes Ted Cruz, and here it is.” (Reporting by Megan Cassella, Additional reporting by Emily Stephenson; Editing by Peter Cooney and Cynthia Osterman) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency.

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The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday easily passed a bill requiring federal environmental regulators to act faster when lead contamination is found in drinking water. The bill passed 416-2. It was crafted by Michigan Representatives Dan Kildee, a Democrat, and Fred Upton, a Republican, in the wake of Flint’s drinking water crisis. The measure requires the Environmental Protection Agency to notify the public when concentrations of lead in drinking water rise above mandated levels and to create a plan to improve communication between the agency, utilities, states, and consumers. In 2014, under a state-appointed emergency manager, Flint, a city of 100,000, switched water supplies to the Flint River, from Detroit’s system as part of a plan to save money in the poverty-stricken city. The more corrosive river water leached lead from aging pipes. Thousands of children are believed to have ingested dangerous levels of lead, a toxin that can harm brains and cause other health problems. The bill “wouldn’t have prevented Flint, but it would have caught it far sooner,” Kildee, who is from Flint, said after the vote. The measure must be passed by the Senate and signed by President Barack Obama before becoming law. Other measures in Congress to provide Flint with millions of dollars in aid to deal with the crisis face an uncertain future. Kildee has also introduced a bill to provide about $700 million in federal aid, with a match in funding from Michigan. That and other measures languished as Democrats and Republicans struggled to agree on where the funds would come from. The Department of Agriculture said on Thursday it would temporarily allow Michigan to use funds from its Women, Infants and Children program for low income citizens to conduct lead testing. The department estimated some 3,800 people could get tested in this way.

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SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) - Transgender people would be allowed to use public restrooms in North Carolina that match their gender identity under a settlement agreement filed on Wednesday that aims to resolve the federal lawsuit over the state’s widely criticized bathroom law. The consent decree proposed by Governor Roy Cooper, the American Civil Liberties Union and transgender people who sued the state would remove some of the law’s harmful effects, civil rights groups said. The judge in the case must sign off on the proposal before it takes effect. North Carolina has been mired in litigation about transgender rights since Republican lawmakers enacted a law in 2016 that restricted bathroom choice in state-run buildings to the sex on people’s birth certificates rather than their gender identity. A measure passed in March rescinded the so-called bathroom bill known as HB 2 and helped bring back some business and sports events pulled from the state in protest. But activists said transgender people still faced discrimination under the new law, which left state lawmakers in control of bathroom policies. The consent decree says that under current state law, transgender people are not prevented from using their preferred public facilities. “For too many reasons, it is not in our state’s best interest to remain in drawn-out court battles that still linger because of HB 2,” Cooper, a Democrat, said in a statement. Republican legislative leaders, who intervened in the court dispute, were not part of the agreement. They had no immediate comment. Cooper on Wednesday also signed an executive order that bars state agencies and those who have contracts with the state from discriminating on the basis of gender identity or expression. Activists were pleased by both actions but said they would continue to fight for full nondiscrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the state. “Nothing can make up for the cruel and senseless attacks transgender people have faced in North Carolina, but I am hopeful that the court will agree to clarify the law so that we can live our lives in less fear,” said Joaquín Carcaño, a transgender man and the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of NC Values Coalition, which supported HB 2’s bathroom restrictions, criticized the consent decree and executive order. The “actions today constitute a massive power grab, with sweeping changes that only the legislative branch has the authority to enact,” she said in a statement.

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A top leader of militant group al-Qaeda was killed along with 80 people in a joint military operation by Afghan army, intelligence and NATO-led forces, the South Asian nation s intelligence service said on Tuesday. Omar Khetab, also known as Omar Mansoor, was the most senior member of his branch of the group killed in Afghanistan, the National Directorate of Security said in a statement. Security forces also arrested 27 individuals in the operation in the eastern Afghan provinces of Ghazni, Paktia and Zabul, the agency said, without giving further details.

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President Barack Obama will meet with Abu Dhabi’s crown prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan on Wednesday at his Riyadh hotel ahead of a summit with Gulf leaders on Thursday, the White House said. The two leaders are set to discuss ways to “deepen cooperation” in the fight against Islamic State militants, as well as ways to “resolve regional conflicts,” the White House said.

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Obviously not the’smartest cowards in the desert https://youtu.be/QsZN_0barc8h/t Weasel Zippers

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They re President Trump’s #1 fans and they’ve been with him from the’start of his campaign. The wildly popular, hilarious and outspoken Diamond and Silk duo have been hitting it out of the park on YouTube with their videos that rely entirely on pro-Trump commentary. They never use vulgarity or threats and their videos are always G-rated (Well, okay, a few of their videos may be PG-13). Apparently supporting the President of the United States now violates YouTube s monetization policies. Their videos have received millions of hits and had such an effect on liberals that Youtube recently made the decision to pull 95% of their revenue.Conservative Trump’supporters Lynnette Hardway and Rochelle Richardson of North Carolina, know they’re never going to get an invitation to leftist The View show, so, by using a few special effects, Diamond and Silk have decided to make a surprise visit to The View hags and give them a piece of their mind. The result is hilarious!Watch, as Diamond and Silk school Whoopie, Joy Behar and the rest of the liberal hags on The View about who is, and who is not our President, and remind them of what the President s role is and what is expected of Congress.Enjoy:.@DiamondandSilk have been anxious to get Whoopi & the ladies from The View straighten out because they've gotten a lot of stuff twisted. pic.twitter.com/ddkgKcW7yF Diamond and Silk (@DiamondandSilk) September 9, 2017

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A court in Ohio sentenced an environmental activist to six months in jail after pleading guilty to 13 felony counts of voter fraud.Rebecca Hammonds faced 35 counts of falsely registering people to vote and forging signatures on voter registration forms. Political InsiderHammonds was a paid canvasser for the Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC), a liberal activist group that was active in registering voters in the’southern part of the county during September and October 2015, when the voter registration fraud occurred. In October of that year, the county elections board director contacted the’sheriff s office after his staff began finding discrepancies in voter registration applications filed by OOC, including five submitted in the name of dead people.Ironically, In October 2015, The’sheriff s office conducted the initial probe before turning the investigation over to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, a division of the Ohio Attorney General s Office, which handled the prosecution. The felony charges carried a maximum possible one-year prison sentence on each count. Brian Deckert, an associate assistant attorney general, had recommended a one-year prison sentence for Hammonds but he did not oppose her request for probation. Salem NewsIn an ironic twist, Hammonds group once accused the local Board of Elections of engaging in voter fraud themselves.Hammonds was one of two supporters of a Youngstown anti-fracking charter amendment on the Nov. 3 ballot that questioned the legitimacy of the results of the last time the proposal was on the ballot, losing by 15.4 percent.The accusations drew a quick response from David Betras, vice chairman of the Mahoning County Board of Elections, who said: You just basically accused this board of elections of election fraud. I can’t help it if some rinky-dink polling company did a poll for you and the results are different. This is just ridiculous. I m not going to let you impugn the integrity of this board and our staff. I ve got news for you: Mitt Romney s poll said he d win on Election Day [in 2012] and he didn’t. I find it highly offensive you’d accuse me of a crime. Vindy It s our last great hope that our elections are fair, and it seems to have gone wrong on the local level, a representative of the group said at the time. Something has run amok. Indeed it has, but little did he know it would involve a member of his group.The Judge in Hammonds case could have granted her probation, though he felt the charges were too serious to overlook. I just can’t overlook this, Judge C. Anthony Pike said. You attempted to violate the integrity of our election process in the county. He then ruled that Hammond made a mockery of our system. If 180 days (in the county jail) doesn’t teach you a lesson, nothing will. Political Insider

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A Colorado talk radio host who once chaired the state Republican Party and has accused Democrats of widespread voter fraud has been charged with forging his ex-wife’s signature on a mail-in ballot in the 2016 election, court records showed on Wednesday. Steven Curtis, 57, who served as state GOP boss from 1997 until 1999, is charged with one felony count of forgery and one misdemeanor count of tampering with a mail-in ballot, according to a criminal complaint filed in Weld County District Court. The case stems from an inquiry lodged with the Weld County Clerk and Recorder’s Office by Curtis’s former spouse, Kelly Ireland, who contacted the agency in October to check on the status of her voter registration after the couple split. Ireland was informed then that a signed mail-in ballot bearing her name and voter information had already been submitted, according to Carly Koppes, an elected Republican who serves as the county clerk. “At that point, my office researched the situation further, and the signature was questionable, so we then contacted the District Attorney’s Office to start an investigation,” Koppes told Reuters. If convicted, Curtis faces a maximum three years in prison for forgery and up to 18 months in jail and a $5,000 fine for ballot-tampering, said Tyler Hill, a spokesman for the district attorney. Curtis’s lawyer, Christopher Gregory, declined comment. The former Republican Party boss hosts a morning political talk show on conservative Denver radio station KLZ-AM called “Wake Up With Steve Curtis.” Curtis spoke about election tampering in a segment titled “Voter Fraud and Other Democratic Misbehaviors” on his Oct. 6, 2016 broadcast. “It seems to me, and correct me if I’m wrong, but virtually every case of voter fraud I can remember in my lifetime was committed by Democrats,” Cutis said, according to an archived podcast on the station’s website. Prosecutors allege that weeks after that broadcast, he forged his ex-wife’s ballot. A spokeswoman for Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams said the Curtis case is the only allegation of voter fraud in the state from the 2016 election cycle that has resulted in a prosecution. Curtis on Tuesday made his first appearance in court, where he was advised of the charges. A disposition hearing has been set for May, the District Attorney’s Office said. Republican President Donald Trump has claimed, without presenting evidence, that millions of illegal voters cast ballots in the 2016 election.

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I m so proud of him. Isn t that a great story? And to think it shows the impact that you can have on people s lives. So, Jim, we’re proud of you, Jim. Who would of thought that was going to happen? It s called talent. Donald Trump on Jim Herman This is such a great story no matter which candidate you support for president. Trump discovered a golfer who was an assistant pro and now sponsors him on the tour. It started with a question from Donald Trump: Why are you folding shirts and giving lessons? Golfer Jim Herman won his first PGA Tour event Sunday, securing an invitation to the Masters tournament, Cincinnati.com reported:He earned one of the most coveted invitations in all of golf by holding on for a one-stroke victory at the Shell Houston Open. And Donald Trump gets some of the credit.The 38-year-old Cincinnati native has been backed financially by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and says the front-runner encouraged him to get on the pro golf circuit.Herman met Trump while working as an assistant pro at Trump National in New Jersey, where the businessman gave him some advice.Trump asked, Why are you folding shirts and giving lessons? Why aren’t you on the Tour? I ve played with Tour players, you’re good enough, according to the Golf Channel. I don’t know, maybe something like that gives you more confidence, Herman said.Now, he wears the Trump logo on his shirt and his bag.Trump tweeted about the victory on Sunday evening.Read more: The Hill

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U.S. President Donald Trump will nominate Kenneth Juster to be ambassador to India, the White House said on Friday. Juster was a deputy assistant to Trump for international economic affairs and the deputy director of the National Economic Council until June. From 2001 to 2005 he was under secretary of Commerce under former president George W. Bush.

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The European Union, United Nations and African Union have agreed to an emergency plan to dismantle people-smuggling networks and repatriate stranded migrants, in an effort to ease a human rights disaster in Libya, officials said. Images broadcast by CNN earlier this month appeared to show migrants being auctioned off as slaves by Libyan traffickers, sparking outrage in Europe and anger in Africa. It forced the issue of abuse of African migrants heading for Europe to the top of the agenda of a summit meant to focus on Africa s youth. European Council President Donald Tusk called the slavery reports horrifying during the opening ceremony of the African Union-European Union summit on Wednesday. French President Emmanuel Macron said the plan included the establishment of an operational task-force composed of European and African police and intelligence services. The goal will be in very short order to be able to arrest identified traffickers, dismantle these networks and their financing which goes through banks and payments that in the region contribute ... to sustaining terrorism, he said late on Wednesday. France would use its military presence in the region to help break up trafficking networks, but the plan would not involve sending French troops into Libya, Macron said at a press conference in Ghana on Thursday. On Libyan soil, it is now up to the Libyan government to decide in connection with the African Union, he said. It is important to preserve the sovereignty of Libya. The plan, the details of which emerged on Thursday, came from a meeting of UN officials, EU leaders and government representatives from Chad, Niger, Morocco, Congo and Libya that was called by France on Wednesday. The European Union, African Union and United Nations agreed to freeze assets and impose financial sanctions against known smugglers. Libya s government, which has promised to investigate reports of slave auctions, said it would grant U.N. agencies access to migrant camps in areas under its control, German officials said. EU countries, meanwhile, will finance the repatriation of migrants from Libya, a process that is already being organized by the International Organization for Migration, they said. Allowing Africans to come to Europe on a temporary basis for three of four years of training or schooling was also discussed, according to European government officials. Circular migration could be key to easing illegal migration, experts have said. Regional governments have also agreed to educate Africans about the dangers of migration, and there will be stronger coordination between security services across North, West and Central Africa to eradicate smuggling. Vulnerable migrants who might eventually qualify for asylum will be brought to Chad or Niger before being relocated to a third country either in Europe or another region.

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Ever since Donald Trump’s true character was revealed in his presidential campaign, his racism, bigotry and misogyny has easily convinced Americans that he is without question one of the most evil, revolting human beings this country has ever seen. Thanks to Marvel Comics, Trump is finally going to be portrayed for who he really is a villain.Marvel Comics has transformed The Donald into an orange-faced villain with tiny hands, hilariously named M.O.D.A.A.K. (aka Mental Organism Designed As America s King) in the publication Spider-Gwen Annual #1. The comic is set in an alternate universe where Peter Parker s girlfriend, Gwen Stacey, was the one bitten by a radioactive spider instead of him.The brilliant minds behind this masterpiece are Jason Latour, Chris Visions, and Jim Campbell, who released the comic just this week. In Spider-Gwen, Trump is pretty much doing exactly what he does every day as the Republican Party s presidential candidate act like an egotistical bigot. Trump’s character is seen bossing a minion around, calling him derogatory names such as foreign filth and announcing If America will not act, M.O.D.A.A.K. must! as he tries to rule America. True to Trump’s character, his rival ends up being Captain America who is portrayed as a woman.Here are just a few of the amazing panels:MarvelMarvelYou can watch a report on Trump’s comic book alter-ego below:It just so happens that Trump has played the role of a villain before several times. At last year s New York Comic-Con, io9 went to Artist s Alley at the Javits Center to have Trump drawn into various bad guys one of them was Modok. And in Issue No. 1 of Steve Rogers: Captain America, there was a character named Red Skull that gave a hateful anti-immigration speech that could have been taken directly from one of Trump’s speeches. Calling for a race war, Red Skull said: I have just come from Europe my homeland, in fact. And do you know what I saw there? It was an invading army. These so-called refugees millions of them marching across the continent, bringing their fanatical beliefs and their crime with them. They attack our women, and bomb our cities. And how do our leaders respond? Do they push them back and enforce the borders, as is our sovereign duty? Of course not. They say, Here, take our food. Take our shelter. Take our way of life, and then take our lives. Despicable. Trump as a villain was clearly meant to be.Featured image via screenshots

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A “lone hacker” has taken responsibility for a cyber attack on the U.S. Democratic National Committee, which the DNC and a cyber-security firm have blamed on the Russian government. The DNC and cyber firm CrowdStrike disclosed the attack on Tuesday, saying that hackers working for Russia broke into the DNC’s computer network, spied on internal communications and stole research on presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. A Russian government spokesman responded by saying that Moscow had not been involved. On Wednesday, an individual using the moniker Guccifer 2.0 took responsibility for the attack in a post on the blogging site WordPress.com, saying the DNC was “hacked by a lone hacker.” The DNC did not respond to a request for comment late on Wednesday evening on Guccifer 2.0’s claim. CrowdStrike said it stands by findings that the Russian government was behind the attacks. Guccifer 2.0’s blog includes images of documents it claims were stolen from DNC servers, including one titled “Donald Trump Report,” which was dated Dec. 19, and spreadsheets purportedly containing information about party donors. Reuters was unable to verify the authenticity of the documents, which the blog said were among “thousands of files and mails” removed from DNC servers that would soon be published on WikiLeaks. CrowdStrike issued a statement saying it “stands fully by its analysis” that two groups affiliated with Russian intelligence were discovered in the DNC’s network last month. The company said it was reviewing the documents published by Guccifer 2.0 to determine whether they were authentic.

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Cuban police backed by hundreds of shouting pro-government demonstrators broke up a march by the dissident group Ladies in White on Sunday, detaining about 50 people hours before U.S. President Barack Obama was due for a historic visit. The women and their male supporters carried out their normal Sunday demonstration calling for free speech and amnesty for political prisoners after attending Roman Catholic Mass in an upscale neighborhood. A similar but less intense scene plays out every Sunday. This one was much more raucous, with a larger-than-normal crowd of pro-government demonstrators. Both sides appeared more animated in front of the unusual contingent of foreign journalists, many in town for the first visit by a U.S. president in 88 years. The Ladies marched toward the much larger pro-government crowd, which was shouting: “These streets belong to Fidel,” referring to retired leader Fidel Castro. When the two groups met at an intersection, the Ladies tossed leaflets into the air and sat down, at which point police seized them and wrestled them into buses. Most allowed themselves to be taken away but others went kicking and screaming. As the detainees were driven away, the counter-demonstrators banged on the windows. Some Ladies flashed back the L sign for “Liberty,” formed by a thumb and forefinger. The dissidents are usually released after a few hours. Such short-term detentions have increased in recent months, according to the dissident Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which has reported 1,000 a month since October, up from a previous monthly average of more than 700. Obama will meet dissidents at the U.S. Embassy on Tuesday, heightening tensions between two governments that only restored diplomatic relations last year after a 54-year break. The leader of the Ladies in White, Berta Soler, has been invited to meet Obama. She was among those detained on Sunday. In a letter dated March 10, Obama promised the Ladies he would raise the issues of freedom of speech and assembly with Cuban President Raul Castro. The Cuban government dismisses dissidents as mercenaries seeking to destabilize the country. Many dissidents are funded by U.S. interests, which the Cuban government uses to discredit them. Dissidents say they have no choice but to take foreign money since their careers are derailed once they become opponents. Cuba defends its universal healthcare and education as human rights and criticizes the U.S. record on race relations and the Guantanamo Bay military prison.

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Voicemails from the DNC have been released by Wikileaks: LINK HEREJust a couple examples of voicemails are pretty funny:*Voicemails show former ambassadors calling DNC officials for time with Obama.*Passionate Clinton supporter calls DNC (audio file #16014) to demand that Sanders be stopped.These voicemails will give an insight into some of the inner workings of the DNC so dig, dig, dig and find something gooood!The video below is shocking because it s from the main stream media! The news reporting the news? Shocking!

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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump should stay committed to the international nuclear deal with Iran, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency on Wednesday. “The United States should fulfill its commitments in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the nuclear deal) as a multilateral international agreement,” Zarif was quoted as saying while on a visit to Romania.

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Tanzania s government on Tuesday suspended publication of an opposition-leaning newspaper for three months, the fourth newspaper to be shut down since June in what critics say is a crackdown on press freedom. The newspaper, Tanzania Daima, was shut down for publishing an article about the number of Tanzanians on life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs used to treat AIDS, the director general of the Tanzania Information Services, Hassan Abbasi, said in a statement. The article was factually incorrect, Abbasi said. The move comes after President John Magufuli warned in January that the days of newspapers his government viewed as unethical were numbered a statement that triggered concern about censorship. The government banned the critical newspaper MwanaHalisi in September for two years after accusing it of inciting violence. Another independent newspaper, Mawio, was banned in June over articles linking two former presidents to alleged improprieties in mining deals signed in the 1990s and early 2000s. Magufuli has won some praise from western donors for an anti-corruption drive and cutting wasteful public spending. But opponents accuse him of increasingly undermining democracy by curbing dissent and stifling free speech. Magufuli has denied opposition accusations that his government was becoming increasingly autocratic.

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If you’ve ever noticed how Donald Trump brags more about how much money he’s made than how much he’s given away, that s because he’s notoriously uncharitable. Apparently that same level of pennypinching applies to the people who come out to endorse him even conservative celebrity Sarah Palin.According to a new fundraising email sent from Sarah Palin s controversial Political Action Committee (SarahPAC), Palin needs her supporters to break out their checkbooks and give as much as they can’to the one time vice presidential candidate so she can attend political events to support endorsed candidates like Trump. The email, captured by Politico reporter Ken Vogel shamelessly tells Palin s loyal fans to visit the PAC s website to [contribute] what you can because Palin went all in for Donald Trump. As bizarre as it is for Trump to not offer to cover travel expenses for his new best friend and political ally, it s downright offensive to suggest Palin herself can’t afford to pay her own way, either. This is the’same person, after all, who recently put her $2.5 million Arizona mansion on the market. She’s also the person who quit her job as governor in order to cash in on a book deal and a Fox News gig that earned her around $12 million. She may not be Donald Trump rich, but she’s wealthy enough to buy a ticket or two from Travelocity.Longtime followers of Sarah Palin s grift machine won’t be surprised by this latest moneygrab. SarahPAC has consistently operated like a personal bank account for Palin. The millions of dollars pulled in by gullible conservatives rarely go to meaningful political campaigns. Instead, the fiscal conservative uses the money to fund her lifestyle and promote her brand.As political watchdog group Open Secrets noted in 2014:What did SarahPAC spend most of its money on, then, in the third quarter? Many of the’same consultants she has used all along for speechwriting, fundraising, logistics and research. There s even someone paid to consult on coalitions. Travel, presumably for Palin, is part of the equation; a PAC like this is useful for keeping a high profile nationally without having to pay those pesky airline and hotel tabs out of personal funds. And the PAC sent $10,885 to HarperCollins publisher of all three of Palin s books for books for donor fulfillment. That wasn’t the only book purchase by the committee: A lump sum of $13,000 was listed as being spent for lodging, SUV rental, books for donors. In other words, Palin s SuperPAC is designed exclusively to (legally) steal money from conservatives hoping to get involved in the political process. Instead of using that money to fulfill her commitment, she’spends it on SUV rentals and buying her own book in bulk to boost her sales. Now she’says she needs more to keep up with Trump’s traveling circus.In the interest of transparency, let’s consider what one would get should they’decide to give Palin some traveling money:It s been less than 24 hours Featured image: screengrab

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HILLARY IS TOAST!Here are the polls that had must’ve pained CNN to post:CNN, The most biased political media source there is, polled its viewers, & even they agree WE NEED TRUMP #Trump2016 pic.twitter.com/MR3LqIqPeP Jesse (@EaglesJesse) July 22, 2016MSNBC isn’t the only leftist cable news network to be shocked by the most recent polls:An @MSNBC online poll asked: "Will Hillary be elected president?"After 78,000 votes 72% Say NO#Trump2016 pic.twitter.com/Nqrz36r3K5 Jesse (@EaglesJesse) July 23, 2016This liberal apparently panicked after the attention his crybaby tweet got and removed his tweet:

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In the first two months after a June Supreme Court ruling allowed partial implementation of President Donald Trump’s travel ban, visas issued on average each month to citizens of six countries targeted by the order were 18 percent lower compared to the month prior to the ban, a Reuters analysis of government data shows. The 3,268 visas issued in July and 3,884 visas issued in August to citizens of the six majority-Muslim countries were down from 4,351 issued in June. The July figure was lower than the monthly average at any point since 2007, when an average of 3,080 visas per month were issued to those countries. The lower July and August numbers were especially noteworthy, immigration attorneys say, because a larger number of visas are typically issued in the summer months, as foreign students prepare to arrive in the United States for the fall semester. “We are processing visa applications for nationals of the six affected countries as directed by the Executive Order and to the extent permitted by court decisions,” a State Department official said on condition of anonymity when asked about the lower numbers. The decline comes on top of already plummeting figures for U.S. visas issued to citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen after Trump issued an executive order in late January halting entry of travelers from those countries for 90 days. That order, and a more limited form of the ban issued in March, were hamstrung by months of legal challenges until the Supreme Court approved a limited version in June. But in the interim, the State Department issued far fewer visas to travelers from those six countries compared to the number issued in 2016 under the administration of President Barack Obama. On Sunday, Trump issued a third version of the ban, which indefinitely restricts travelers from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea. Certain government officials from Venezuela will also be barred. From March through June, a period when Trump’s order was mostly blocked by the courts, citizens of the six countries were issued an average of 3,929 visas monthly, 42 percent fewer than the 2016 monthly average of 6,799, according to State Department data. After the Supreme Court ruling, that monthly average was 47 percent lower than in 2016. (For a graphic of visas issued to six countries affected by the travel ban, see tmsnrt.rs/2yd6BAA) Trump’s initial travel ban, which barred citizens of the six countries as well as Iraq, sparked chaos and protests at airports around the United States. Issued with little forewarning, the order’s scope was unclear and sowed confusion among travelers as well as authorities responsible for implementing it. Courts quickly enjoined the main parts of the order. Trump eventually issued a new order that excluded Iraq and delayed its enactment to allow the administration and travelers time to prepare. But that order, too, was soon blocked by courts. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court, which allowed a limited version of the ban affecting only those citizens of the six countries lacking “bona fide” ties to the United States. After Trump issued the revised ban on Sunday, the Supreme Court canceled oral arguments scheduled  for Oct. 10 to decide whether or not the earlier version of the ban was discriminatory. Even as sharply fewer visas were being issued, the president often complained on social media and in speeches about limits imposed by U.S. courts on the two executive orders establishing the travel ban. “The travel ban into the United States should be far larger, tougher and more specific-but stupidly, that would not be politically correct!” Trump tweeted on Sept. 15. (Follow Trump’s impact on energy, environment, healthcare, immigration and the economy at The Trump Effect www.reuters.com/trump-effect) Because the State Department only releases data on how many visas are issued and not total application numbers, it is unclear if the drop is due to fewer people applying, or because the administration is denying more applications. In addition, a month-by-month comparison with prior years is not possible because the State Department released only annual numbers – not monthly data - until March of this year. Stephen Pattison, a former U.S. consular official and now an immigration attorney, said he suspects that the huge drop in visas issued is due to fewer people applying rather than higher rejection rates. “Quantifying the chilling effect of the Trump administration’s policies on the international public is hard to do, but I think that’s the biggest impact of what this administration has done,” Pattison said. “This atmosphere is causing bona fide, legitimate travelers to think twice about coming to the United States.” Michael Boos, general counsel for the conservative nonprofit Citizens United, which filed a brief to the Supreme Court in support of the Trump administration in the travel ban case, said the figures show the ban is having its intended effect. “Clearly the purpose of the temporary ban was to reduce the number of visas that would be issued to persons from the affected countries, so it’s not surprising that...when the court reinstated the ban, the number of visas would have dramatically diminished,” Boos said. “If people are deterred from seeking admission to the United States because they’re going to go through a vetting process that’s real and substantial, then maybe they shouldn’t be coming here in the first place.” (This version of the story corrects penultimate paragraph spelling to Michael instead of Michel)

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Perhaps a few random flash mobs protesting Target s decision to put the feelings of .01% of our population before the’safety of our women and children are in order?Video showing a woman protesting the bathroom policy at Target has gone viral. A video posted on YouTube shows the woman, who says she’s a mother of 12, carrying a Bible through the’store and yelling, America, when are you going to wake up? It s time to take a stand and have a voice. She calls the’store s bathroom policy a wicked practice and says she wouldn’t spend a penny there.You can see other people with her in the video, which lasts less than two minutes, and then shows them walking out.https://youtu.be/TCIYsXhR1D0Target has said that in its stores, transgender people are free to use whichever restroom they feel comfortable with. Via: Fox 8

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21st Century WireYesterday, violence broke out in Charlottesville, Virginia, when far-left direct action group Antifa organized a flash mob to disrupt another demonstration organized by Unite the Right. At least one person was killed and many others injured after a car hit a crowd of anti-fascist protesters in an alley way off a the high street.Controversial right-wing coalition Unite the Right gathered on Saturday to protest to the planned removal of a statue of the Civil War Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a local park. They were met by hundreds of counter-protesters from extremist left-wing Antifa antifascist group who descended on the event. State riot police reinforcements and the Virginia National Guard were called into to quell any unrest, although it s clear they had no control over crowds and numerous reports indicate that police actually stood down and allowed violence to take place. As police began to disperse protesters, hundreds of Antifa agitators were then funneled into the’surrounding streets. This led to a three car, rear end pile-up in which the third and last car apparently struck a number of pedestrians, said to be Antifa protesters, leaving at least 1 dead and many more injured.Police have arrested the alleged driver of the third vehicle, 20 yr-old James Alex Fields Jr. of Maumee, Ohio. He is charged with second-degree murder for the alleged intentional running-over of street demonstrators and also failure to stop after being involved in a collision. It is not yet exactly clear whether or not the driver s actions were politically motivated.21WIRE editor Patrick Henningsen spoke with RT International giving live commentary as the’story broke SUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV

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Congress is already setting the’stage to cut off U.S. funding to the United Nations in the wake of a contested vote last week in which the Obama administration permitted an anti-Israel resolution to win overwhelming approval, according to congressional leaders, who told the Washington Free Beacon that the current administration is already plotting to take further action against the Jewish state before vacating office.Other punitive actions by Congress could include expelling Palestinian diplomats from U.S. soil and scaling back ties with foreign nations that voted in favor of the controversial measure, according to multiple sources who spoke to the Free Beacon about the’situation both on and off the record.The Obama administration is still under bipartisan attack for its decision to help craft and facilitate the passage of a U.N. resolution condemning the construction of Jewish homes in Jerusalem, a move that reversed years of U.S. policy on the matter.The Free Beacon was the first to disclose on Monday that senior Obama administration officials played a key role in ensuring the measure was passed unanimously by the U.N. Security Council. This included a phone call by Vice President Joe Biden to Ukraine s president to ensure that country voted in favor of the measure.While Biden s office continues to dispute the claim, reporters in Israel and Europe confirmed in the intervening days that the call between Biden and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko did in fact take place.With anger over the issue still roiling, leading members of Congress told the Free Beacon on Wednesday that they will not delay in seeking retribution against the U.N. for the vote. This could include cutting off U.S. funding for the U.N. and stripping the Palestinian mission s diplomatic privileges.Lawmakers also will work to rebuff further attempts by the Obama administration to chastise Israel on the international stage. This would include freezing funds that could be spent by the administration on further U.N. action. The disgraceful anti-Israel resolution passed by the UNSC was apparently only the opening salvo in the Obama administration s final assault on Israel, Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) told the Free Beacon. President Obama, Secretary Kerry, Ambassador Power, and their colleagues should remember that the United States Congress reconvenes on January 3rd, and under the Constitution we control the taxpayer funds they would use for their anti-Israel initiatives. The 115th Congress must stop the current administration s vicious attack on our great ally Israel, and address the major priorities of the incoming administration, Cruz said, expressing his desire to work with the incoming Trump administration to reset the U.S. relationship with Israel.< Senior congressional sources currently working on the issue further disclosed to the Free Beacon that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are in an uproar over the Obama administration, which they accuse of plotting behind closed doors to smear Israel. Not content with spending the last eight years using the United Nations to undermine American sovereignty, the Obama administration has finally trained their sights on Israel and is trying to exploit this unelected and unaccountable international body to impose their resolution of the Palestinian issue on Israel, one senior congressional aide told the Free Beacon. Enough is enough. While the Trump administration will not take office until the end of January, Congress will be working overtime before then to stop the Obama administration from further damaging the U.S.-Israel relationship, according to the’source, who hinted that a full cut-off of U.S. funding to the U.N. currently is on the table. A new administration will arrive on January 20th, but in the intervening weeks Congress has an important role mitigating the damage President Obama can do in his final hours, the’source said. Why on earth would we throw good taxpayer dollars after bad in support of the UN, which has proven itself again and again utterly unable to encourage any positive progress? Just take Syria if they were doing anything over the last five years, it should have been working out a fair and equitable adjudication of the Syrian war. Instead, they’ve proven themselves utterly useless in fact they’ve probably made a gut-wrenching catastrophe worse, the’source explained. There s no reason to think this action will turn out any more favorably. For entire story WFB

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Bouthaina Shaaban, Political & Media Advisor to Syrian President, Bashar Al AssadThe crimes committed by the US forces by bombing units of the Syrian Arab Army that were advancing to liberate the Al-Tanf crossing on the border with Iraq, and before it in Al-Thardah Mountain in Deir Al-Zour, and then Al-Shaerat Airport were not random or coincidental. They were, as in the case of the war crimes committed by US aircrafts against the Syrian people and Syrian infrastructure, calculated, and are part of the general geopolitical scheme to divide the region.The truth is that any connection between Syria and Iraq has been forbidden since the two countries independence in the middle of the 20th century. The Baghdad Pact of 1955, which included Britain, Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan was meant contain’the Arab national tide on the one hand, and to counter what then was called Soviet influence in the region on the other hand. Although this alliance fell in 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared a set principles in a private letter to Congress, which became known as the Eisenhower Doctrine. According to these principles, any country could request US economic aid or aid of the US armed forces if subjected to threats from another country. This was what Camille Chamoun did in 1958, when the nationalists in Lebanon rebelled to pursue the Arab national line and against Chamoun s attempt to rig elections. Eisenhower responded to Chamoun s request and sent the Marines to Beirut to preserve the neutrality of Lebanon s foreign policy, despite its sympathy with Arab issues.After Sadat signed the Sinai 2 Agreement, and later the Camp David Accords, President Hafez al-Assad tried to compensate for the Arabs loss of Egypt by establishing a Levantine Front. He went to Iraq, Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization in Beirut.To the present day, secret CIA documents show that the instructions were issued at the time to Saddam Hussein to mobilise military forces on the Syrian border, to threaten Syria, and to advise Yasser Arafat against cooperation or even coordination with Syria . Despite President Hafez al-Assad s visit to Jordan, King Hussein has never been able shake off Western influence and engage in any joint Arab action.Today, despite the various reasons and pretexts, all the actions of the United States, Britain and France in Syria aim to continue to weaken the Syrian state, and cut off ties with neighbouring Arab countries, as well as countering the Russian efforts to support Syrian unity. After years of intervening in support of terrorism and arming its gangs, Britain and France recently recognised the presence of their troops on Syrian soil. U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (left) and President Eisenhower (right)The United States is applying the Eisenhower Doctrine, at times under the guise of supporting Kurds, or supporting democracy, but the real aim is to drain each Arab country separately, so that the Arab Nation could not form a human, geographical, historical, and cultural unity in the face of the Zionist project and the Western influence in the region.President Hafez al-Assad has tried, with all Arabs, to create any form of Arab solidarity and has expressed his willingness to make any necessary concessions, especially with Iraq. During the Iraq-Iran war he made an offer to Iraq to establish a Syrian-Iraqi unity, in which he would be vice-president, as a way out of the war through negotiations with the Iranians, but all his offers were rejected.Instead, Saddam Hussein supported and armed the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist gangs associated with Israel and the Western intelligence, who hit Syrian cities by car bombs, assassination, and sectarian killingsbetween the late seventies and early eighties.If we look closely at the history of the twentieth century and what is happening today in our country, it is certain’that the main’target of Britain, France and the United States since World War I, is the Arab civilization, Arab identity and the geographical unity of Arab lands.What is remarkable is that very few Arabs have shown any awareness of this strategy, not to mention developing their own strategies for ensuring the Arabs interests and rights. Hence, the Syrian Arab Army s plan to give priority for reaching the al-Tanf crossing and to make way for the geographical, economic and social ties with Iraq is to undermine the old old western plans to prevent communication between these two brotherly countries.The replacement of Israel with Iran as an enemy of the Arabs and the fabrication of the danger of Shiism are the latest pretexts for the continuation of Western hegemony on our land, our people and our wealth, using terrorism and Wahhabi money this time. These lies are a new episode in a series of lies, and their main aim is to prevent Arab unity and the rise of Arab power.***READ MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Syria FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

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New Jersey taxpayers will owe $2.62 million for roughly a year’s worth of work by a team of professionals called in to help turn around the distressed gambling hub Atlantic City, according to invoices obtained and compiled by Reuters. It is not clear what taxpayers have to show for it. Despite the work by a state-appointed emergency manager and the law and accounting firms he hired, so little progress has been made in reversing the seaside resort’s fortunes that lawmakers are now considering a full takeover of city operations. Reuters reported in September that the amount was $2.15 million, but invoice reports since then for additional work by restructuring lawyers at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom have pushed the total up by 20 percent. Reuters obtained the documents through a public records request. Governor Chris Christie appointed Kevin Lavin as emergency manager on Jan. 22, 2015. Since then, Lavin’s team has produced one report, in March. The Press of Atlantic City this month obtained a non-public draft of a follow-up report. A spokesman for Lavin told Reuters last week that a report is expected “within the coming weeks.” Four of the city’s eight casinos closed in 2014, pummeled by competition from neighboring states. That contributed to a 70 percent reduction in the city’s property tax base, to a projected $6 billion this year from $20.5 billion in 2010. Lavin and his team - including Skadden, Ernst & Young LLP [ERNY.UL], and mediator Donald Steckroth - were to review and propose solutions to the city’s immediate fiscal crisis, suggest possible longer-term fixes and negotiate with labor unions. Separately, the state had already appointed a monitor and had to approve the city’s budget and hiring. But lawmakers are seeking an even firmer grasp. On Tuesday, they introduced legislation that would strip Atlantic City’s elected officials of most of their control, except for the ability to file for municipal bankruptcy. “You can’t justify a $262 million budget for 40,000 people. It’s obscene,” Senate President Steve Sweeney, a co-sponsor of the bill, said earlier this week. “(The mayor and city council) need to make the tough decisions now.” Mayor Don Guardian and city council members denounced the takeover proposal. Guardian said on Wednesday the city trimmed $14 million from its 2015 budget and expects to cut $16 million more this year.

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Add Trump’s national security adviser, General H.R. McMaster, to the growing list of high-profile people who think he’s a total buffoon. McMaster, a seasoned combat officer in the Army, is reportedly fed up with Trump’s lack of intelligence, lack of focus, and inability to understand even the most basic premises of national security.According to several Buzzfeed sources, McMaster was attending a private dinner with Oracle CEO Safra Catz, and dragged Trump through the mud, calling him an idiot, a dope, and someone with the intelligence of a kindergartner. Another source who wasn’t at the dinner told Buzzfeed that McMaster has made similar comments before.Recently, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly called Trump a moron, prompting the man-baby to jump on Twitter and challenge Tillerson to an IQ test. Trump either knows exactly what he is and is riddled with self-loathing and embarrassment over it, or he honestly believes he has one of the great minds and memories of all time, just like he’s claimed, and his fragile fee-fees can’t handle anyone thinking otherwise.Then there s Senator Bob Corker, who s had no qualms at all about criticizing Trump, which led the two of them into a Twitter war because Trump can’t stand looking like the pathetic, ineffective pseudo-man that he is. And we all know how Senator Jeff Flake feels.Officials who are on Trump’s side, however, push back against all these things vehemently. From their stories, everything is hunky-dory in the White House, and Trump is highly competent, calm, collected, respected in short, presidential. Anyone inside or outside the White House talking badly about him is just, well, jealous ? Or un-American ? To them, these stories are nothing more than people deliberately working to undermine Trump, at least in the world Trump and his loyalists are desperate to create.These stories keep coming out, though, and when taken with his embarrassing public appearances and his ridiculous behavior on Twitter, they are ever harder to ignore. Buzzfeed has five sources for McMaster s words, with a sixth saying they’d heard similar words from him before.This dinner between McMaster and Catz took place over the’summer, and was allegedly peppered with insults toward Trump and other senior members of the White House staff, including Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. McMaster reportedly (and, if true, correctly) said that Kushner doesn’t belong in the White House and shouldn’t be involved in national security matters.In short, Trump doesn’t have the respect he thinks he has. Poor widdle Donnie.Featured image via Thomas Peter-Pool/Getty Images

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The American-led UN Command just released very dramatic video showing a North Korean soldier trying to escape across the border into South Korea. The tricky thing is that four soldiers were firing on him the entire time The video starts with a lone soldier driving a dark olive-green jeep down a straight, tree-lined road, past drab, barren fields and, headlights shining, across the replacement for the Bridge of No Return, which was used for prisoner exchanges during the Korean War, the Associated Press reported.Fellow North Korean soldiers realize that one of their comrades is trying to defect to South Korea and start chasing the jeep through the Korean Demilitarized Zone, or DMV, until the defector crashes and exits the vehicle under fire. He then sprints across the border before hitting the ground in critical condition but alive.The four soldiers unloaded an estimated 40 rounds from multiple types of firearms.The defector a 24-year-old soldier surnamed Oh, according to CNN was taken to a South Korean hospital in critical condition from the gunshot wounds and lost nearly half of his blood. Oh s surgeon, Lee Cook-jong, said that he found four major wounds on the’soldier, who received four pints of blood.The’soldier underwent multiple surgeries to repair damage, and in doing so, surgeons found dozens of parasites including a 10.6-inch roundworm, possibly indicating improper nutrition in North Korea s military. His condition has become much better since yesterday. We ve turned on the TV for him since yesterday, Lee told reporters.Read more: WFB

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U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump offered a message of ethnic harmony on Friday at a Christian evangelical conference as he sought to calm concern about his criticism of a Mexican-American judge. In a departure from his usual freewheeling style, Trump read a carefully scripted speech from a teleprompter as part of a new push by his campaign to tone down the outspoken New Yorker’s harsh rhetoric. Trump’s remarks included a wide-ranging attack on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, and he said money aimed at resettling Syrian refugees in the United States should instead be spent on tackling poverty in U.S. cities. Speaking to the annual conference of the conservative Faith & Freedom Coalition, Trump did not mention the controversy over his charge that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel cannot treat him fairly because of his Mexican heritage. But Trump did make a point of saying he would represent all Americans if elected president on Nov. 8. “Freedom of any kind means no one should be judged by their race or their color and the tone of his hue,” Trump said. “Right now, we have a very divided nation. We’re going to bring our nation together.” Paul Ryan, the top elected U.S. Republican, had criticized Trump for what he called a “textbook definition of a racist comment” for his remarks about the judge. Other Republican leaders warned Trump to change his tone or risk losing their support. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee who led a movement to derail Trump’s nomination, told CNN he would not consider running for the White House. Romney blasted Trump for comments that he said denigrated Mexicans, women and religion. “Presidents have an impact on the nature of our nation, and trickle-down racism, trickle-down bigotry and trickle-down misogyny - all these things are extraordinarily dangerous to the heart and character of America,” he said. Romney said he expects Trump to get the Republican nomination, but said that he will not vote for either Trump or Clinton. He left open the possibility of casting a ballot for the Libertarian Party candidate, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson. As Trump sought to rally more Republicans behind him, Clinton met with U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to try and shore up support from the left wing of the Democratic Party. Clinton later addressed the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the nonpartisan arm of the women’s health group, and had Trump trained in her sights. “This is a man who has called women pigs, dogs and disgusting animals, it’s kind of hard to imagine counting on him to respect our fundamental rights,” said Clinton, the first woman to become the presumptive presidential nominee of a major party. Clinton leads Trump by 11 percentage points, nearly the same as a week ago, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday. Trump on Friday criticized Clinton’s willingness to accept thousands of Syrian refugees into the United States and challenged her to “replace her support for increased refugee admission” in favor of a new jobs program for inner cities. He stopped short of repeating his call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, a proposal that has drawn heavy fire from Republicans and Democrats. “We have to temporarily stop this whole thing with what’s going on with refugees where we don’t know where they’re coming from,” Trump said. “We have to use the money to take care of our poorest Americans so they can come out of this horrible situation that they’re in.” At the funeral on Friday of boxing champion Muhammad Ali, a convert to Islam, one speaker, a rabbi, inveighed against politicians promoting intolerance of Muslims. “We will not tolerate politicians or anyone else putting down Muslims and blaming Muslims for a few people,” said Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine, who said he attended the ceremony in Louisville, Kentucky, as a representative of American Jews. Trump said Clinton’s refusal to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” - favored by Republicans to describe violent Islamist militants - makes her unfit to be president. The real estate mogul’s struggle to unify Republicans behind his insurgent candidacy was apparent at the evangelical Faith & Freedom conference, where several speakers studiously avoided speaking his name. Former campaign rival Carly Fiorina steered clear of Trump, speaking instead of the need to prevent liberal policies taking hold. U.S. Representative Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican, said a Republican president is needed, without mentioning Trump. “We don’t want this contest this fall to just be a contest of personalities,” she said. But conference organizer Ralph Reed was adamant in his support for Trump, saying the New Yorker has energized the evangelical vote in a way that past Republican presidential nominees failed to do. “We understand that perfection is not the measure that should be applied,” Reed told the crowd.

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Texas measures criticized as being discriminatory for limiting transgender people’s access to bathrooms in schools and public buildings died on Tuesday, as the House adjourned and ended its special legislative session. Business leaders and civil rights groups had battled to defeat the bills, saying they advanced bigotry, would tarnish the state’s image and damage its economy. The measures were blocked by moderate House Republicans. Adoption by Texas, the most populous Republican-dominated state, could have fed momentum in other socially conservative states on the issue, a flashpoint in the U.S. culture wars. “Finally, Texans can breathe a temporary sigh of relief,” said JoDee Winterhof, an official of the Human Rights Campaign that lobbied against the bills. “Texans don’t want harmful, anti-transgender legislation,” Winterhof, the campaign’s senior vice president for policy and political affairs, said in a statement. Momentum for so-called bathroom bills stalled this year when North Carolina partially repealed a similar law in March. The original law prompted boycotts by athletic bodies and businesses that are estimated to have cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars. Texas could have lost about $5.6 billion through 2026 if it had enacted such a measure, said the Texas Association of Business, the state’s leading employer grouping. The House wound up its duties without taking action on any of the bills and adjourned “sine die,” a day ahead of the official end of the 30-day special session. House Speaker Joe Straus, a pro-business Republican who controls the agenda in the chamber, said the issue was not a priority. Straus’ position was reinforced by a well-financed campaign by major corporations, including Texas-based energy companies Halliburton and ExxonMobil Global Services, which have said the bills would make it hard for them to recruit top talent. The measure that advanced the farthest was Senate Bill 3, which passed easily on a party-line vote in the Republican-controlled Senate and then died in the House. It would have required people to use restrooms, showers and locker rooms in public schools and other state and local government facilities that match the sex on their birth certificate, as opposed to their gender identity. Supporters, including Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, a staunch social conservative, say the proposed curbs promote public safety and protect vulnerable women and children.

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REPORT: WikiLeaks email leak alleges Clinton divulged details of Bin Laden raid in 2013 speech that were a national security violation pic.twitter.com/W9jmi0zc3z FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) October 11, 2016

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The United Nations refugee chief said on Wednesday the big question regarding the up to 800,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh was whether they would be allowed to return to their homeland. Filippo Grandi, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said he hoped to discuss the statelessness of Rohingya with Myanmar officials in Geneva next week but recognized it was a very complex issue . It is very clear that the cause of this crisis is in Myanmar, but that the solution of this crisis also lies in Myanmar, Grandi told a news conference in Geneva on his return from Bangladesh. He called on the Myanmar authorities to end the violence in northern Rakhine state so that solutions to the situation could then be discussed. Some 480,000 Rohingya have fled northern Rakhine since Aug. 25 and accused the army of a campaign of violence that the U.N. has called ethnic cleansing , following attacks by Rohingya insurgents on police posts. About 300,000 Rohingya had previously crossed into neighboring Bangladesh. A Myanmar minister was quoted as saying on Wednesday that the Yangon government will manage the redevelopment of villages torched during the violence in Rakhine state. Since it is most likely that return will take time, if it happens, if violence stops, it will be important also to find in the medium term suitable solutions for the people that are in Bangladesh, Grandi said. He called for the Myanmar government to implement the recommendations of a commission led by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The lack of citizenship for the Rohingya, this needs to be addressed and resolved, he said. Clearly if only the people with papers can go back, that will be a very small number if at all, he said. So I think that the exercise should go beyond that and should really determine, if that s what is needed, who is a national, and those people should be allowed to go back and be given that citizenship. Grandi condemned violence by Rohingya insurgents, warning: It was also very obvious to me when I visited northern Rakhine that it is only a matter of time before terrorists would spring up from the situation of discrimination, of poverty, that prevailed in that area, he said. If the situation is not resolved, the risk of the spread of terrorist violence in the whole region - and this is a particularly fragile region - is very, very high.

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Disputes about climate and immigration policy dominated German media ahead of resumed talks among Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the environmental Greens about forming a coalition government. Officials from all three political groups traded barbs and insults in a series of media interviews, dimming hopes that next week s talks could result in progress for a so-called Jamaica coalition - a name chosen because the parties black, yellow and green colors mirror those of the Jamaican flag. Simone Peter, co-leader of the Greens, told Reuters the FDP must agree to honor existing carbon dioxide reduction promises before her party would continue coalition talks. She said her party viewed conservative s insistence on a migrant cap as a no go . FDP Leader Christian Lindner shot back in an interview with the Bild am Sonntag newspaper: If the Greens don t budge in future talks, Jamaica will remain a castle in the air. Merkel, whose conservative alliance suffered its worst result in September elections since 1949, is trying to forge a tricky three-way coalition that is untested at a national level. The exploratory talks are to continue Monday after the three sides failed to reach agreement on immigration and climate issues during an 11-hour session on Thursday. A new poll for Bild am Sonntag newspaper showed support for conservatives down one percentage point to 31 percent - its lowest level this year - while support for the Greens and FDP was unchanged at 10 percent and 11 percent. Peter told Reuters it was nonsense to continue talks unless the FDP committed to a 2007 pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. Before exploratory talks continue, the FDP must accept unconditionally the climate protection goals, Peter told Reuters in an interview. Otherwise the talks make no sense. Deputy FDP leader Wolfgang Kubicki told the RND newspaper chain on Friday that no agreement was possible if the Greens insisted on sticking to that target. Lindner blasted the Greens maximum demands for ending coal production and giving refugees unlimited rights to bring their families to Germany. He told the Bild am Sonntag such actions would only boost support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which parlayed public frustration to win 12.6 percent of the vote in September. Alexander Dobrindt, a top negotiator for the Bavarian sister party of Merkel s conservatives, told the paper that building a coalition would be more than difficult unless the Greens modified their position rejecting limits on migration. Many conservatives want to take a harder line on immigration, blaming the election setback on Merkel s decision to allow in more than a million migrants in 2015 and 2016. They insist that an agreement by Merkel s CDU and the CSU on guidelines that would limit annual refugee numbers must form the basis of any coalition accord. The Greens reject such a cap. The right to asylum is guaranteed under Germany s constitution.

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Iran s air defenses have forced an approaching U.S. spy plane and a reconnaissance drone to change course near its air space over the past six months, a military official was quoted as saying on Sunday . Brigadier General Farzad Esmaili, commander of the Iran s air defense force, said an unmanned RQ-4 drone was intercepted last week and a U2 spy plane was warned away in March, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. When the warning was given to the pilot of this (U2) plane at the Strait of Hormuz, he knew that he was being targeted by two separate radars ... and missile systems, Esmaili said. Iran will never allow such hostile planes to approach its airspace and would not hesitate to bring them down if necessary, said Esmaili, quoted by the Tasnim news agency. U.S. officials have frequently complained of what they call unsafe and unprofessional interactions by Iranian maritime forces in the Gulf this year. Iran has said its forces act within their rights to protect Iranian territorial waters. The Trump administration has recently struck a hard line on Iran, accusing Tehran of violating the spirit of an accord with world powers that lifted sanctions and sought to curb The Islamic Republic s nuclear program.

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Wow! Just wow Where are you from?Syria.Syria?Why don’t you claim asylum in France?France? Because I don’t like it.You don’t like France? Why not?Because they’re shit. Because they’re shit government.Okay. You want to come to England?Yes, because they’re the best.Why are they the best?Because they treat people very good.So you want to come to England. But that doesn’t mean you, and you and you can come to our countryWe would come anyway .If you agree or not, we’re coming.It doesn’t matter.

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South Dakota would be the first U.S. state to dictate what bathrooms transgender students are allowed to use in public schools if Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard signs a bill into law. The state Senate on Tuesday voted 20-15 to send a bill to Daugaard that requires transgender pupils to use restrooms and locker rooms in public schools that correspond to their gender at birth and not the gender that fits their current identity, legislative records showed. “This bill is about protecting young children who are too innocent ... to understand the complexity of life,” Republican Senator David Omdahl said before voting for the bill. Staff in Daugaard’s office were not immediately available for comment. Daugaard has said that he will research the issue before deciding whether to sign the legislation, local media reported. The bill also requires schools to provide “reasonable” accommodations for transgender students. Those accommodations include a single-occupancy restroom, a unisex restroom, or the controlled use of a restroom, locker room or shower room. “South Dakota lawmakers are sending a message that it’s okay to segregate, humiliate, and bully transgender students,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in an online post on the organization’s website. The passage of the bill comes two weeks after a U.S. appeals court heard arguments over whether a high school in Virginia should be ordered to allow a transgender student to use the boys’ bathroom, even though he was born a biological female. In December, a suburban Chicago school district reached an accord with the U.S. government over locker room access for a transgender student after the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights found the district discriminated against the student.

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President Donald Trump condemned North Korea s nuclear test during on Monday and urged the United Nations to quickly agree on tougher sanctions against Pyongyang, a German government spokesman said. Both agreed that the test of a hydrogen bomb means a new and unacceptable escalation by the North Korean regime, Steffen Seibert said in a statement after they spoke by telephone. The German chancellor and the American president expressed the view that the international community must continue to exert pressure on the regime in North Korea and that the United Nations Security Council has to quickly adopt further and stricter sanctions, Seibert added. For her part, Merkel told Trump that Germany would push for tougher sanctions against North Korea by the European Union, Seibert said, adding: The aim is to dissuade North Korea from its violations of international law and to achieve a peaceful solution to the conflict.

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Transcanada Corp’s (TRP.TO)(TRP.N) legal challenge against the United States over its past rejection of Keystone XL pipeline has been dropped, the website for the arbitration court showed on Friday, minutes after President Donald Trump formally green-lit the project. The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes said its secretary-general has issued a “procedural order taking note of the discontinuance” of the lawsuit under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

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Who needs family when you have a neighborhood mentor who can’teach you the value of racism, communism and hate for America?In his 1995 book, Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama never discussed the identity of the mysterious Frank who had given him important advice on growing up black in what was described as a white racist world. We learned in 2008 that Frank was Frank Marshall Davis, a member of the Communist Party who was the’subject of a 600-page FBI file. Still, the major media never asked Obama about this important relationship during his growing up years in Hawaii.Now, in an extraordinary development, video of Obama explicitly and openly identifying Frank as Frank Marshall Davis has suddenly surfaced on the Internet. The footage is said to have been recorded on September 20, 1995, with the program originally airing on Channel 37 Cambridge Municipal Television as an episode of the’show, The Author Series. It s not clear how many saw this program when it aired. For some reason, this From the Vault Barack Obama presentation was just recently posted on YouTube. In the video, Obama is introduced as a Harvard Law School student and President of the Harvard Law Review. He discusses Frank as Frank Marshall Davis at about 8:37 in the video.In his remarks, Obama never identifies Davis as a communist or even a leftist. But the remarks do reflect the’significant influence that Davis had over his young life as he was growing up in Hawaii. Obama talks about how Davis schools him on the’subject of race relations. The term implies a teacher-student relationship the two of them had, confirming what we had reported back in 2008, that Davis had functioned as Obama s mentor. It s important to understand what Obama is saying here. Getting ready to read directly from his book, Dreams from My Father, Obama talks about the passages ending with me having a conversation with a close friend of my maternal grandfather, a close friend of gramps, a black man from Kansas, named Frank, actually at the time a fairly well-known poet named Frank Marshall Davis, who had moved to Hawaii and lived there, and so I have a discussion with him about the kinds of frustrations I m having, and he’sorts of schools me that I should get used to these frustrations Davis was indeed a black poet. His works included attacks on Christianity. One Davis poem referred to Christ irreverently as a nigger. Davis was himself an atheist.However, Davis was better known as a communist propagandist whose work for the Communist Party in Hawaii earned him surveillance by the FBI and placement on its security index. Davis was also a pornographer who engaged in bizarre sexual practices, even pedophilia.Needless to say, Obama s willingness to identify Frank as Davis before this audience raises questions as to why Frank wasn’t identified by his full name Frank Marshall Davis in the book itself. Obama made references to Frank 22 times throughout his book. Paul Kengor notes that Obama s audio version of Dreams from My Father omitted every reference to Frank that was in the book. Those omissions were clearly designed to keep people from asking questions about Frank, since Obama was considering a run for the presidency.Today, in 2015, discovering film of Obama identifying Frank as Davis is confirmation of the obvious. It doesn’t make a lot of difference politically, since Obama is serving out his second term. But it could have made a difference seven years ago, in 2008, when we identified Frank as Davis, during Obama s campaign for his first term in office.The clip of Obama talking about Davis during his 1995 Cambridge presentation is important for other reasons, however.By his own admission, Obama was preoccupied with his own feelings and thoughts about race relations. He saw himself as an angry young man whose father was absent from his life. He said he was without father figures around who might guide and steer my anger. That s significant because it s clear, from the passages he reads, that Davis became that father figure. Davis was indeed picked by his white grandfather to be a role model or father figure for the young Barack Obama.In the passages he read back in 1995, Obama discussed inviting some white friends to a black party and seeing them squirm. They re trying to tap their foot to the beat and being extraordinarily friendly, he’said. They are trying to fit in but they are uncomfortable and they tell Obama they want to leave. Obama concluded, What I have had to put up with every day of my life is something that they find so objectionable that they can’t even put up with a day. This is like a revelation to Obama about the world of white racism. All of this he’says triggers something in his head and he comprehends a new map of the world. He gets a sense of the anger and betrayal in society and even in his own family, where he is being raised by his white grandfather, Gramps, and white grandmother, Toot. This leads him to seek advice from Frank. Frank Marshall Davis then sort of schools me that I should get used to these frustrations, Obama says.The passages that he reads from the book before the Cambridge audience include a discussion of when his own white grandmother was accosted by a black panhandler. Davis told Obama that his grandmother was right to be scared and that She understands that black people have reason to hate. In other words, Davis did not encourage Obama to pursue racial harmony or reconciliation. He told Obama that blacks have a reason, or right, to hate.Via:AIM.comh/t Weasel Zippers

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North Koreans stage a demonstration of devotion to their leader Kim Jong Un at least once a year, in a large ceremonial square in Pyongyang. Mansae! the people call as they parade past the 33-year old, who stands on a balcony above them: Live long! This December, Kim will mark six years in power. In that time he has purged or executed around 340 people, according to the Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank of South Korea s National Intelligence Service (NIS). The people on parade carry flowers including North Korea s national blooms, Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia, which were specially created in honor of Kim s grandfather and father, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. North Korea is the only socialist country to have passed power down the family line. Images of former presidents are pinned on the left side of every jacket and dress. They are worn there to be close to the wearers hearts. In private conversations, some North Koreans quietly lament the shortcomings of their system: It s too bureaucratic, takes too long to get things done, is disorganized, they say. But few dare to openly criticize the Supreme Leader. North Korea s GDP per capita, estimated at $1,700 in the CIA Factbook, places it 215th in the world it is poorer than Haiti, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan. Defectors say many North Koreans lead double lives, earning money in unofficial market places to supplement state incomes. The leadership turns a blind eye to this. Traditionally, Pyongyang has been the home of North Korea s elites. But the inhabitants of the capital must also prepare for the parades. Around this time, everyone everywhere must increase production in a process known as a battle. People, organized into work units, are assigned duties on top of their usual jobs. The 70-day battle ahead of a Party congress in 2016 meant long after-work hours sprucing up the capital. State media released a report: Some work units had delivered 110 percent of their quotas. The fatigue shows in some flower-wavers faces. On June 1, 2016, the country announced that a new campaign of celebration was to be held. This time, it said, the battle would last 200 days.

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Jill Stein got less than 1% of the vote nationwide in our presidential election, but after raising more than $7 million to do a recount (at an estimated cost of around $2 million), Jill Stein finds out she missed the deadline to file for a recount in PA. Where will all of the money go that she raised to either throw the election for Crooked Hillary, or to make Trump’s presidency appear to be illegitimate? Jill Stein had everything she needed to launch a presidential recount. She had the cash, the grassroots fervor and the’spotlight of an adoring media. But there s one thing she needed to overturn Trump’s victory: a calendar. Washington ExaminerThe Wisconsin Elections Commission agreed Monday to begin a recount of the presidential election on Thursday but was sued by Green Party candidate Jill Stein after the agency declined to require county officials to recount the votes by hand.It will be a race to finish the recount in time to meet a daunting federal deadline, and the lawsuit could delay the process. Under state law, the recount must begin this week as long as Stein or another candidate pays the $3.5 million estimated cost of the recount by Tuesday, election officials said.Also Monday, Stein filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania to force a recount there and her supporters began filing recount requests at the precinct level in the Keystone State. Stein who received just a tiny piece of the national vote also plans to ask for a recount in Michigan on Wednesday.Unless Stein wins her lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court, officials in each of Wisconsin s 72 counties would decide on their own whether to do their recounts of the 2.98 million statewide votes by machine or by hand, with dozens of counties expected to hand count the paper ballots. JS

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I just want to start with what you just heard from Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee, both going public against Mitt Romney for secretary of state. You seemed to join in as well. You tweeted: Receiving deluge of social media and private coms re: Romney. Some Trump loyalists warn against Romney as secretary of state. Do you think Mitt Romney could be a loyal secretary of state for Donald Trump?KELLYANNE CONWAY, TRUMP SENIOR ADVISER: I would hope so, because that s the first job of any secretary of state, Dana, is to support and work directly for and advise the president for whom you work.I felt compelled to mention it because I it s just breathtaking in scope and intensity the type of messages I have received from all over the country. And I m just me. I m not Donald Trump.And so, just as his former campaign manager, the number of people who feel betrayed to think that a Governor Romney would get the most prominent Cabinet post, after he went so far out of his way to hurt Donald Trump there was the never-Trump movement and then there was Mitt Romney.He gave speeches against Donald Trump. He attacked his character. I never heard Governor Romney come out and say, hey, you know, I have a problem with X, Y and Z, but that 25 million job creation plan over the next 10 years is really something to look at. The fact that you will reduce the capital gains tax and the tax on employers and businesses, or you will unleash energy investment, or you have 10-point plan to reform the Veterans Administration, none of that was ever said.And his the Romney consultants transparent were the worst to all of us, including Mr. Trump. Their Twitter feeds were complete 100 percent anti-Trump’screed.And, look, if president-elect Trump chooses Mitt Romney as his secretary of state, or whomever he chooses, that will have the full support and backing of all of us. I respect the brilliance and judgment and sheer instincts of president-elect Trump to form his Cabinet as he wishes.But I felt compelled to come forward on behalf of the people who were weighing in.Watch:https://youtu.be/CiokZm91hCA

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U.S. President Donald Trump gave his in principle approval to lift restriction on South Korea s missile payload capabilities, the White House said on Monday. Trump agreed to strengthen joint military capabilities during a call with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and gave conceptual approval for South Korea to buy billions of dollars of weapons from the United States. North Korea said it tested an advanced hydrogen bomb for a long-range missile on Sunday, prompting global condemnation and a U.S. warning of a massive military response if it or its allies were threatened.

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When Mike Sylvester entered a career training center earlier this year in southwestern Pennsylvania, he found more than one hundred federally funded courses covering everything from computer programming to nursing. He settled instead on something familiar: a coal mining course. I think there is a coal comeback, said the 33-year-old son of a miner. Despite broad consensus about coal s bleak future, a years-long effort to diversify the economy of this hard-hit region away from mining is stumbling, with Obama-era jobs retraining classes undersubscribed and future programs at risk under President Donald Trump s proposed 2018 budget. Trump has promised to revive coal by rolling back environmental regulations and moved to repeal Obama-era curbs on carbon emissions from power plants. I have a lot of faith in President Trump, Sylvester said. But hundreds of coal-fired plants have closed in recent years, and cheap natural gas continues to erode domestic demand. The Appalachian region has lost about 33,500 mining jobs since 2011, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission. Although there have been small gains in coal output and hiring this year, driven by foreign demand, production levels remain near lows hit in 1978. A White House official did not respond to requests for comment on coal policy and retraining for coal workers. What many experts call false hopes for a coal resurgence have mired economic development efforts here in a catch-22: Coal miners are resisting retraining without ready jobs from new industries, but new companies are unlikely to move here without a trained workforce. The stalled diversification push leaves some of the nation s poorest areas with no clear path to prosperity. Federal retraining programs have fared better, with some approaching full participation, in the parts of Appalachia where mining has been crushed in a way that leaves little hope for a comeback, according to county officials and recruiters. They include West Virginia and Kentucky, where coal resources have been depleted. But in southern Pennsylvania, where the industry still has ample reserves and is showing flickers of life, federal jobs retraining programs see sign-up rates below 20 percent, the officials and recruiters said. In southern Virginia s coal country, participation rates run about 50 percent, they said. Part of our problem is we still have coal, said Robbie Matesic, executive director of Greene County s economic development department. Out-of-work miners cite many reasons beyond faith in Trump policy for their reluctance to train for new industries, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen former and prospective coal workers, career counselors and local economic development officials. They say mining pays well; other industries are unfamiliar; and there s no income during training and no guarantee of a job afterward. In Pennsylvania, Corsa Coal opened a mine in Somerset in June which will create about 70 jobs one of the first mines to open here in years. And Consol Energy recently expanded its Bailey mine complex in Greene County. But Consol also announced in January that it plans to sell its coal holdings to focus on natural gas. And it has commissioned a recruitment agency, GMS Mines and Repair, to find contract laborers for its coal expansion who will be paid about $13 an hour - half the hourly wage of a starting unionized coal worker. The program Sylvester signed up for was set up by GMS. The new hiring in Pennsylvania is related mainly to an uptick in foreign demand for metallurgical coal, used in producing steel, rather than domestic demand for thermal coal from power plants, the industry s main business. Some market analysts describe the foreign demand as a temporary blip driven by production problems in the coal hub of Australia. Officials for U.S. coal companies operating in the region, including Consol and Corsa, declined requests for comment. The coal industry has stabilized, but it s not going to come back, said Blair Zimmerman, a 40-year veteran of the mines who is now the commissioner for Greene County, one of Pennsylvania s oldest coal regions. We need to look at the future. The Pennsylvania Department of Labor has received about $2 million since 2015 from the federal POWER program, an initiative of former President Barack Obama to help retrain workers in coal-dependent areas. But the state is having trouble putting even that modest amount of money to good use. In Greene and Washington counties, 120 people have signed up for jobs retraining outside the mines, far short of the target of 700, said Ami Gatts, director of the Washington-Greene County Job Training Agency. In Westmoreland and Fayette counties, participation in federal job retraining programs has been about 15 percent of capacity, officials said. I can t even get them to show up for free food I set up in the office, said Dave Serock, an ex-miner who recruits in Fayette County for Southwest Training Services. Programs administered by the Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal and state partnership to strengthen the region s economy, have had similar struggles. One $1.4 million ARC project to teach laid-off miners in Greene County and in West Virginia computer coding has signed up only 20 people for 95 slots. Not a single worker has enrolled in another program launched this summer to prepare ex-miners to work in the natural gas sector, officials said. Greene County Commissioner Zimmerman said he d like to see a big company like Amazon or Toyota come to southwestern Pennsylvania to build a distribution or manufacturing plant that could employ thousands. But he knows first the region needs a ready workforce. Amazon spokeswoman Ashley Robinson said the company the company typically works with local organizations to evaluate whether locations have an appropriate workforce and has no current plans for distribution operations in Western Pennsylvania. Toyota spokesman Edward Lewis said the company considers local workforce training an important consideration when deciding where to locate facilities. Sean Moodie and his brother Steve spent the last two years working in the natural gas industry, but see coal as a good bet in the current political climate. I am optimistic that you can make a good career out of coal for the next 50 years, said Sean Moodie. Coal jobs are preferable to those in natural gas, they said, because the mines are close to home, while pipeline work requires travel. Like Sylvester, the Moodie brothers are taking mining courses offered by Consol s recruiter, GMS. Bob Levo, who runs a GMS training program, offered a measure of realism: The point of the training is to provide low-cost and potentially short-term labor to a struggling industry, he said. That s a major part of the reason that coal mines have been able to survive, he said. They rely on us to provide labor at lower cost. Clemmy Allen, 63, a veteran miner and head of the United Mineworkers of America s Career Centers, said miners are taking a big risk in holding out for a coal recovery. He s placing his hopes for the region s future on retraining. UMWA s 64-acre campus in Prosperity, Pennsylvania - which once trained coal miners - will use nearly $3 million in federal and state grants to retrofit classrooms to teach cybersecurity, truck driving and mechanical engineering. Unlike when I worked in the mines, he said, if you get laid off now, you are pretty much laid off. Follow Trump s impact on energy, environment, healthcare, immigration and the economy at The Trump Effect - www.reuters.com/trump-effect (Refiles to remove repeated words the company in paragraph 26)

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Sabih al Masri, a Palestinian billionaire and Jordan s most influential businessman, was released after several days of detention in Saudi Arabia, the latest in a series of events marking the worst crackdown on the rich and powerful in the country s modern history. Masri, the chairman of Amman-based Arab Bank, the country s largest lender, was detained last Tuesday hours before he was planning to leave after chairing meetings of companies he owns, sources said. He said on Sunday Saudi authorities had given him all respect . The authorities have not commented on his detention, which came after his confidants had warned him against traveling to the Saudi capital following a series of mass arrests in early November, the sources said. Sources familiar with the case said he was questioned about his links to Saudi partners among the royals, ministers and officials who were rounded up in last month s crackdown. His case carried echoes of that of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, who announced his resignation from Riyadh, drawing accusations from Lebanese officials that he had been coerced by the Saudis. Both the Saudis and Hariri denied that, but Hariri later rescinded his resignation. Masri s detention sent shockwaves through business circles in Jordan and the Palestinian territories. Masri s multi-billion- dollar investments in hotels and banking in Jordan are a cornerstone of the economy of the kingdom and he is by far the biggest investor in Palestinian territories. Arab Bank shares, which account for almost a quarter of the $24 billion market capitalization of the Amman exchange, ended just 1.44 percent lower at start of weekly trade as investor fears ebbed with news of his release. Officials and businessmen had warned of the reverberations of the crisis on an aid-strapped Jordanian economy already plagued by high debts. Saudi Arabia is a major donor. Masri has since taking the helm at Arab Bank in 2012 helped boost confidence in one of the Arab world s largest private financial institutions. The bank, which was first established in Jerusalem in 1930, has a balance sheet of over $45 billion and has earned a reputation of resilience in the face of regional political turmoil. Masri said on Sunday that he would be returning to Jordan after finishing business meetings in Riyadh in the next two days. All is well and am happy (to be released) and I was given all respect by everyone here, a Saudi citizen of Palestinian origin, told Reuters from his home in Riyadh. A member of a prominent merchant family from Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Masri amassed a fortune by partnering with influential Saudis in a catering business to supply troops during the U.S.-led military operation to retake Kuwait from Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War. Masri is the founder of Saudi Astra Group, which has wide interests in diversified industries ranging from agro-industry to telecommunications, construction and mining across the region. Reasons for Masri s detention were not clear, but political sources said the Saudis might have used him to put pressure on Jordan s King Abdullah not to attend a Muslim summit last week to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital. The Jordanian monarch attended the Istanbul summit, however. He is a custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem and has been vocal in criticizing Trump over his decision on Jerusalem. Saudi Arabia, whose relations with the United States have warmed with Trump taking a harder line against its arch-rival Iran than his predecessor, appears to have taken a softer line on the decision on Jerusalem than in the past, according to analysts. Riyadh sent a junior minister to the Istanbul meeting.

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The U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee said on Friday it had invited FBI, NSA and Obama administration officials to testify as it restarts its investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. After stalling over the committee chairman’s ties to President Donald Trump’s White House and disagreements over who should testify, the bipartisan committee said it sent a letter inviting James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, to appear behind closed doors on May 2. A second letter invited three officials who left the government as President Barack Obama’s administration ended - former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates - to appear at a public hearing to be scheduled after May 2. The planned hearings are the first the committee has announced since its chairman, Republican Representative Devin Nunes, recused himself from the Russia investigation on April 6 after receiving information at the White House about surveillance that swept up some information about members of Trump’s transition team. Echoing Trump, Nunes suggested that Obama’s administration had handled that information incorrectly. Nunes remains the committee’s chairman. Comey and Rogers testified in a public hearing on March 20. At that hearing, Comey confirmed for the first time that the FBI was investigating possible ties between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia as Moscow sought to influence the election. Nunes was a supporter of Trump’s campaign and a member of his transition team. His decision two days after the public hearing to hold a press conference about the information and discuss it with Trump before disclosing it to Democrats raised questions about whether he could lead a credible investigation. Committee Democrats also were angered when Nunes scrapped a scheduled public hearing with Brennan, Yates and Clapper. A planned closed hearing with Comey and Rogers also was put off. The House panel is examining whether Russia tried to influence the election in Trump’s favor, mostly by hacking Democratic operatives’ emails and releasing embarrassing information, or possibly by colluding with Trump associates. Russia denies the allegations, which Trump also dismisses. The Senate Intelligence Committee is conducting a separate, similar investigation. Senate investigators currently are interviewing analysts and intelligence agents who prepared public and classified reports in January that concluded that Russia had interfered in last year’s election on Trump’s behalf, an official familiar with the congressional activity said. At this point they are a long way from scheduling interviews or hearings with any principal witnesses from either the Obama or Trump administrations, the official said.

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NBC News handpicked anti-Trump tykes for two propaganda videos to make it appear that every child in American’thinks Pres. Trump is an ignorant racist and threat to the country.The video starts out with a blurry picture of President Trump (the kind of picture used in political ads by the opponent to make the candidate look bad) and goes downhill from there:Not one child in either Dear Mr. President: kids Talk Trump or Dear Mr. President: Letters from the American Children says he actually supports Trump’s efforts to keep America safe from terrorism or stop the influx of illegal aliens.Both videos open with smarmy, false compliments to give the illusion that these kids haven’t been indoctrinated by leftist teachers and liberal media but, then, both launch into unrelenting snide rebukes couched in innocent-kid-speak.The kids accuse Trump of racism and violence against blacks: Most of my family is black. I m afraid that you’re gonna hurt some of us blacks. You are here, attempting to white-wash America. I don’t like your definition of American, because I don’t seem to fit within it. These adolescent activists really, really don’t want a border wall or travel ban on state-sponsors of terror, because it s not nice and fair : Not letting immigrants into America is really not nice, so please let them in. It s not fair for refugees. Just because I m Mexican, doesn’t mean you can build a wall around the country. Please don’t build a wall, and don’t let people have guns. P.S. Please don’t build a wall around Mexico. P.P.S. Please, please don’t stop the refugees from coming. You re going to separate me away from the rest of my family, and I really don’t what that because I love them too much. Some of my friends are really scared about you building a wall, and the travel ban, because a lot of their families live in different places. WATCH: And, then, there s this rebuke from a young lady who appears in both videos: When you speak on things that make me feel uncomfortable or I disagree with, you make me feel small, because I know I can’t change it. Apparently, the president should never disagree with her or say things she doesn’t like because it ll hurt Susie Snowflake s feelings. CNS news HERE S THE SECOND VIDEO:

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Yeah, because taking Trump down is more important to these flame throwers on the left (and right) than exposing the truth about Obama s overt allegiance to Muslims living in America and the actual Muslim training camps that are taking place across America right now.Donald Trump pulled out of a Republican gathering in South Carolina Friday as he took hits from members of both parties for failing to correct a questioner who said President Obama is a Muslim. Mr. Trump has a significant business transaction that was expected to close Thursday. Due to the delay he is unable to attend today s Heritage Action Presidential Forum, Trump’s campaign announced in a release Friday.Trump had been scheduled to join most of the Republican field at the meeting of the influential conservative group.Trump drew condemnation Friday from some of his rivals for his failure to confront the questioner at a New Hampshire town hall who had labeled the president a Muslim, asked what he would do to get rid of Muslims and mentioned Islamic training camps. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told NBC Friday, I wouldn’t have permitted that. If someone brought that up at a town hall meeting of mine, I would’ve said, No, listen. Before we answer, let’s clear some things up for the rest of the audience. And I think you have an obligation as a leader to do that. If that person had been in my event I would have called him out in it, Hillary Clinton said at a press conference after a campaign event in New Hampshire. Not only is it out of place and wrong it is totally factually untrue. Sen. Bernie Sanders demanded that Trump apologize for continuing the lie that the president is not an American and not a Christian. FOX News Hidden in a remote area off a primitive dirt road lies a mysterious 70-acre compound in which more than 100 Muslims live in seclusion, following the teachings of its founder, a radical cleric with alleged ties to terrorism.It s neither a Taliban stronghold outside Jalalabad, nor an extremist madrassa on the outskirts of Karachi.It s a place called Islamberg, a closed and seemingly quiet community at the foot of the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York, about three hours north of Manhattan.It s also a compound shrouded in local rumors, mystery and fear sitting near the huge reservoir system that provides New York City with most of its drinking water.Quietly nestled in the woods, Islamberg remained unnoticed for the two decades leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked by a determined band of Islamic extremists.That s when people started questioning the community s ties to a Pakistani cleric allegedly connected to worldwide terrorism. They also started talking about the unusual sounds of gunfire and explosions some said they heard emanating from the compound.But before you leap to conclusions and head to the Catskills to personally fight the war on terror you need to know the entire story. The truth, as is often the case, is a lot more complicated than the headlines suggest.Islamberg got its start about 20 years ago, when inspired by the words of the Sufi cleric Sheikh Syed Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani a group of primarily black Muslims from Brooklyn left New York City to escape crime, poverty and racism. Aiming to lead what they believed was a peaceful and holy Muslim life, they built a community of some 40 family houses, their own grocery store and a bookstore.And they weren’t alone. Other groups, also inspired by Gilani, have set up similiar communities in 19 other states. According to the group s own Web site, the Islamberg community is still struggling, and is asking for donations to complete its mosque.According to locals, the land previously belonged to a Deposit, N.Y., woman who opened up her home in the in the late 1970s or early 80s to disadvantaged youths from the city so that they could avoid being led astray by a financially and morally bankrupt urban environment.Those boys, according to locals who were friendly with some of the group, eventually went on to form Islamberg, and at some point they were joined by another group of more militant Muslims, who created something of a rival faction within the community.The group lived quietly there for years with little interaction with the local communities except for forays into town for supplies or to sell baked goods at the weekly flea market. Some of the men had jobs at a local credit-processing center or working for the Port Authority in New York City (where they are said to maintain a residence near a bridge that runs between two boroughs).In the few instances when they’did have relationships with the locals, they were almost always friendly, many said. Sometimes local children would visit their friends in the compound. There was a sense of camaraderie with them, one woman said.Watch video here:There was a notable exception, a situation involving the local schools in the late 1990s when some of the Islamberg boys got into a scuffle with local boys. They broke my nephew s nose, said a Hancock, N.Y., woman, who asked that her name not be used.Another man said the Muslim boys trashed the’school in Deposit.Locals variously blamed the fighting on an angry attitude on the part of the Muslim boys, racism on the part of the local boys or the usual relatively trivial events that lead almost all teenage boys into a confrontation at one point or another in their lives.According to Joy Felber, 62, a retired taxidermist who s lived in Deposit for 19 years, the cause lay with a group of local boys who picked a fight with the Muslims. We had some young boys in town who were causing trouble not from the Muslim community but they were antagonizing the boys in the Muslim community, Felber said. It was lack of knowledge. When people don’t know other people, they have a tendency to lash out. And you put two teenage boys together and sparks fly. After a further controversy about whether the Islamberg boys should have been going to public school in Deposit or Hancock (the compound lies on the border between the two towns, and even longtime residents differ on whether it s technically in Deposit, Hancock or nearby Tompkins), the boys were pulled from the’schools and the Muslim community drew away from town life.All Islamberg children are now schooled on the compound in a school that, according to one report, has a total of 62 students.

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The media and the Democrat Party has been coming down pretty hard on President Trump for not doing enough to call out the rise of hateful anti-semitism, as though Trump has a direct line to the anti-semites. Well, as it turns out, the first person to be arrested for his involvement in a string of bomb threats that were made to Jewish Community Centers is an openly racist, leftist journalist. Let that sink in. When 31 year old disgraced journalist Juan Thompson was arrested in connection with making threats against eight Jewish Community Centers, he immediately took to Twitter (where his feed is filled with hateful, racist views) to blame a white former girlfriend for framing you so you’d be raped in jail what else? Juan Thompson, of Missouri, is accused of making the threats as part of an extensive cyber-stalking campaign against his ex-girlfriend to harass and intimidate her, the U.S. Attorney s Office for the Southern District of New York announced on March 3.Thompson was fired by The Intercept last February after he was accused of fabricating sources in a story about the Charleston church shooting.Here s what you need to know.1. During One Threat, Thompson Claimed There Were Bombs in a Middle School & There Was Going to be a Jewish Newtown In the now-retracted article, Thompson had claimed that Scott Roof had speculated during a phone conversation that Dylann Roof may been driven to murder nine black churchgoers at a Charleston, South Carolina church because he kind of went over the edge when a girl he liked starting dating a black guy two years back. Thompson s report was picked up by dozens of other news outlets.Thompson was hired by The Intercept s founding editor-in-chief, John Cook, in November 2014. Reed replaced Cook, a former editor of Gawker.com and the current executive editor of Gawker Media, in December 2014. Prior to The Intercept, Thompson had reported in Chicago for DNAInfo and interned at the local NPR affiliate, WBEZ.*On Twitter, Thompson claimed that the threats were made by his ex-girlfriend, the FBI said in court documents.The FBI has been investigating more than 100 bomb threats made to Jewish Community Centers, schools and the Anti-Defamation League, along with other Jewish organizations, since early January. There have been at least five waves of attacks, with multiple threats coming on the’same day.Police do not believe Thompson is the main suspect behind the majority of the threats, ABC News reports. Police sources told ABC News that Thompson appears to have taken advantage of national news coverage of the threats to continue his ongoing harassment against his ex-girlfriend in revenge for her breaking up with him. HeavyHere are a few sampling of tweets (language warning) from the racist liberal reporter Juan Thompson:Wow. The #Oscars are fucking and toying and exploiting black ppl like America has done for centuries. White folk are trash. Juan M. Thompson (@JuanMThompson) February 27, 2017Make no mistake. Trump is a developer. This is his and the white establishment's effort to remove black ppl from the’southside of Chicago. https://t.co/fe47RB8gQU Juan M. Thompson (@JuanMThompson) February 24, 2017.@ChrisCuomo Thinks there such a thing as shaming white folk. You're an idiot. White ppl have no shame. History taught us that. #dncdebate Juan M. Thompson (@JuanMThompson) February 23, 2017https://twitter.com/Mbarakat1990/status/834603029852725248.@ChrisCuomo You are a horrible race/religious baiter. "How could a black Muslim be opposed to anti-semitism?" #dncdebate Juan M. Thompson (@JuanMThompson) February 23, 2017My family was on food stamps and we actually ate steaks and escargot. Surf and turf all the way. Go fuck yourself Mississippi Senator. #ebt https://t.co/xFVVwrQ7or Juan M. Thompson (@JuanMThompson) February 22, 2017Daily Caller The criminal complaint states that threats made to the Jewish establishments across the country by Thompson were under his name and the name of his ex-girlfriend, and occurred after the relationship ended. The threats were made by both email and phone calls.Dozens of Jewish Community Center bomb threats have occurred throughout the country since President Donald Trump’s election, and liberal groups and politicians have attacked Trump for them. The president condemned the threats during his address to Congress, but he reportedly said earlier that day, sometimes it s the reverse, to make people or to make others look bad. Well-known liberal civil rights lawyer Alan Dershowitz defends anti-semitic accusations by leftist media and Democrat leaders against Trump’s top White House advisor Steve Bannon:

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U.S. Senate Republicans were considering a raft of last-minute changes to their sweeping tax bill on Friday, as they edged toward a final vote that could move Congress to year-end enactment of tax cuts for businesses and individuals. Deals include a higher tax deduction for owners of pass-through businesses and a phase-out of full expensing for business capital investments. To pay for these changes, Republicans say they will no longer repeal the alternative minimum taxes for corporations and individuals and will raise tax rates on the repatriation of corporate profits held overseas. Senate Republicans have yet to unveil a final bill for adoption. But here is an unofficial list of anticipated changes, according to lawmakers and lobbyists. * PASS-THROUGHS: Senators Ron Johnson and Steve Daines announced their support for the tax bill after securing agreement on a bigger tax break for the owners of pass-through enterprises, including small businesses, S-corporations, partnerships and sole-proprietorships. An original 17.4 percent deduction would rise to 23 percent. * FULL EXPENSING: Senator Jeff Flake, who was a holdout over deficit concerns, agreed to vote “yes” after Republican leaders agreed to change a provision allowing the full expensing of business capital investments to sunset after five years. Flake worried that Congress would be unable to eliminate the benefit cold turkey, allowing it to bleed red ink for years to come. But the Arizona Republican says the change would instead phase out full expensing over three years beginning in year six. * RETIREMENT SAVINGS: Senator Susan Collins said she persuaded Republican leaders to retain catch-up contributions to retirement accounts for church, charity, school and public employees. * MEDICAL EXPENSES: Collins also said she was able to include language to reduce the threshold for deducting unreimbursed medical expenses for two years to 7.5 percent of household income from 10 percent. * STATE AND LOCAL PROPERTY TAXES: Collins has proposed an amendment that would retain a federal deduction for up to $10,000 in state and local property taxes. * INDIVIDUAL ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX: Rescinding a proposed repeal of the AMT and instead increase exemption levels and phase-out thresholds is also on the table. * CORPORATE ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX: So is rescinding a proposed repeal of the corporate AMT. * REPATRIATION: Another change could be to increase tax rates on U.S. corporate profits held overseas to 14 percent for liquid assets and 7 percent for illiquid holdings, up from 10 percent and 5 percent, respectively.

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A walking tour to learn about Budapest s Muslim community and its mosques has become popular with Hungarians as a way of overcoming fears and reservations amid a strident anti-immigrant campaign by the government. Budapest-based tour operator Setamuhely (Budapest Walkshop) runs 30 different walks taking visitors around the city s architectural and cultural sites and the Jewish and Muslim communities. I can say that this walk, Muslims who live among us , is the most popular tour, said Anna Lenard who runs the business. When the Muslim tour was set up three years ago very few people were interested. Most people have never met a Muslim in their life and this ... together with what they hear every day in the media causes a lot of tension and stress in daily life. I think this is the main reason why people are coming now. Most of the people on the four-hour walk have a college degree, and two-thirds are women, she said. Hungary s Muslim community, estimated to number about 40,000, grew with the migration crisis of 2015, though most of them arrived earlier to study at Hungarian universities. Though hundreds of thousands of migrants crossed into Hungary from the Balkans at the peak of the crisis the majority went on to richer parts of western Europe. Data from think tank Tarki shows the proportion of people deemed to be xenophobic and resentful of foreign immigrants shot up to 60 percent this year, rising 19 points from two years ago. About 80 people go on the Muslim tour per month, the organizers said. A typical group of around 30 people first goes to a small mosque hidden in an old apartment where Muslims come to pray at the time of the visit. I am very interested in everything multi-cultural and in cultures and religions that live among us, said Nauszika, a psychologist who did not want to give her full name. It is the best way to lose your fears if you start to ask the one who you (are) afraid of, added tour leader Marianna Karman, an Africa expert who converted to Islam herself. These people choose to come on these walks because they would like to talk about this problem. They want to fight against their fears. Other points on the tour can include Muslim food shops and Budapest s largest mosque, located in a former office building.

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James Clinger, picked by President Donald Trump in June to head the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, announced on Wednesday he was withdrawing his name from consideration. He has asked to be removed as the president’s pick to head the U.S. bank regulator, citing family-related issues. “It is ... with a sense of regret that I have asked the White House to withdraw my nomination. I did so after concluding that the family-related obligations that prompted me to leave government service earlier this year - which have grown more challenging in the interim - are incompatible with the demands of leading an important federal agency like the FDIC,” Clinger said in a statement. Clinger, who spent two decades as a Republican staff member of the House Financial Services Committee, was nominated for the post in June. His withdrawal is a setback for the Trump administration, as the president has said his top priorities include easing rules on the banking sector to spur economic growth. The FDIC chairman plays a key role in supervising banks as well as determining if large financial institutions have credible “living wills,” detailing how they could be taken apart in a financial crisis. Martin Gruenberg, the current FDIC chairman who was appointed by President Obama, plans to serve until his term expires in November. Before leaving the committee in November, Clinger had served as the committee’s chief Republican counsel since 2007, and his time as a staffer to the panel going back to 1995. He spent two years serving as a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department from 2005 to 2007. Shortly after Clinger was nominated, a senior administration official touted his extensive experience with banking policy in a briefing call with reporters, while describing him as a pragmatic and well-informed policymaker.

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HERE S A REMINDER OF JONATHAN GRUBER INSULTING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE OVER AND OVER:

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U.S. spy chief James Clapper and President-elect Donald Trump gave different accounts of a phone conversation they had about a dossier of unverified, salacious claims linking Russia to Trump, who is locked in a war of words with the intelligence agencies he will command in eight days. A newcomer to politics, businessman Trump has been at odds with U.S. spy agencies for months, disputing their conclusions that Russia used hacking and other tactics to try to tilt the 2016 presidential election in his favor. On Wednesday, he acknowledged the point but opened a new battlefront, responding to media reports of unsubstantiated claims that he was caught in a compromising position in Russia by accusing intelligence agencies of practices reminiscent of Nazi Germany. In a Wednesday night statement Clapper, director of national intelligence, said that in a call with Trump he expressed his dismay over media leaks. Clapper added that he did not believe the leaks came from U.S. intelligence agencies. Clapper said he emphasized to Trump that the report was not produced by U.S. intelligence agencies and that they had not judged whether the information was reliable. He did not say the document was false. By contrast, Trump suggested in a tweet on Thursday that Clapper agreed that the report was untrue. “James Clapper called me yesterday to denounce the false and fictitious report that was illegally circulated. Made up, phony facts. Too bad!” Trump wrote. Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, an opponent of the Republican Trump, was asked by CNN on Thursday morning about Trump’s characterization of Clapper’s statement that the document was false. “Sadly, you cannot rely on the president-elect’s tweets or statements about what he’s receiving in intelligence briefings. And that’s a real problem,” said Schiff, the leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “If people really want to know what Director Clapper had to say to Donald Trump, do not rely on Donald Trump’s tweets, rely on Director Clapper’s statement.” At a news conference before speaking to Clapper, Trump accused U.S. intelligence agencies of leaking the document to the media. Two U.S. officials said the allegations about Trump, which one called “unsubstantiated,” were contained in a two-page memo appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election given to Trump and President Barack Obama. CNN reported on Tuesday about the existence of the memo. BuzzFeed published a fuller 35-page document produced by a former British foreign intelligence official that outlined the allegations of compromising behavior by Trump and his purported ties with people in Russia. The claims were included in reports about Trump known as opposition research reports prepared for political rivals of Trump during the 2016 presidential election campaign.

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UPDATE: No #BlackLivesMatter Protests PlannedChicago has no shortage of thugs. What they’do have a shortage of is support from the #BlackLivesMatter terrorists and Obama Regime. You don’t hear our Community Organizer In Chief running to a microphone every time a young black man or woman is murdered at the hands of another black man or woman. Sadly, it doesn’t fit their narrative. This young boy s murder is far more tragic than the plight of the Muslim boy, with a history of discipline issues, who took a fake bomb to school in Texas on 9-11 and was rightly punished for his behavior by school officials. The phony outrage that Obama showed the world over this little fake clock boy s arrest should sicken every American. It is especially disturbing when one considers Obama s deafening silence over the horrific gang violence that plagues his hometown of Chicago. Where were the tweets of outrage from the White House over the loss of this beautiful young boy s life? Crickets On Friday, prosecutors laid out their case against a man accused of murdering 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee on Nov. 2Corey Morgan, 27, of suburban Lansing, was charged in the murder. Police have one other man in custody who has not yet been charged, and a third man, Kevin Edwards, is also wanted in the’slaying.Prosecutors say Corey Morgan (left) and Kevin Edwards planned the heinous murder of 9-year-old Tyshawn Lee.Assistant State s Attorney George Canellis said Friday the’shooting stemmed from an ongoing feud between Morgan s gang, the BBG (Bang Bang Gang)/Terror Dome faction of the Black P Stones and the Killaward faction of the Gangster Disciples.The feud came to a boil after an Oct. 13 shooting in which Morgan s brother, Tracey Morgan was killed and his mother was wounded. Morgan was so enraged he threatened to shoot grandmas, mamas, kids and all in retaliation, prosecutors said.Tyshawn was hit in his back, forearm and head, and part of his thumb was shot off as if he was raising his hand to block the’shots, Canellis said. This murder was committed in a cold, calculated and premeditated manner, Canellis said.Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy vowed to destroy the group responsible for the boy s brutal murder. They are going to be obliterated, he’said. That gang just signed its death warrant. McCarthy did not detail each suspect s role in the’shooting. We know that there were three individuals involved in this, he’said.Morgan s arrest comes nearly a month after Tyshawn s Nov. 2 shooting death.Police are hunting for Kevin Edwards, also suspected in the’shooting.Court documents paint a disturbing picture of the planned attack, explaining that Morgan and his accomplices allegedly saw Tyshawn playing on the’swings in a playlot with his basketball beside him. One of the’suspects allegedly started dribbling Tyshawn s ball, ultimately luring him into the alley where police say he was executed. Read more on what happened in court Friday here.Tyshawn Lee Case: Cory Morgan ProfferVia: DNAinfochicago

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The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation on Friday that would allow the families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia’s government for damages, despite the White House’s threat to veto the measure. The U.S. Senate in May unanimously passed the “Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act,” known as JASTA. The bill’s passage in the House by voice vote, two days before the 15th anniversary of the attacks that killed about 3,000 people, was greeted with cheers and applause in the chamber. “We can no longer allow those who injure and kill Americans to hide behind legal loopholes, denying justice to the victims of terrorism,” said Republican Representative Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Fifteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers who crashed airliners in New York, outside Washington and in Pennsylvania were Saudi nationals. The Saudi government, which strongly denies responsibility, has lobbied against the bill. Opponents of the measure said it could strain relations with Saudi Arabia and lead to retaliatory laws that would allow foreign nationals to sue Americans for alleged involvement in terrorist attacks. The White House on Friday reiterated that President Barack Obama would veto the bill. But some members of Congress have become increasingly restive about relations with Saudi Arabia, long an important player in U.S. Middle East policy. On Thursday, four senators introduced a resolution seeking to block a $1.15 billion arms sale to the kingdom, after 64 House members signed a letter in August asking Obama to delay the sale. If Obama carries out the veto threat and the required two-thirds of both the Republican-majority House and Senate still support the bill, it would be the first time since Obama’s presidency began in 2009 that Congress had overridden a veto. The House passed the measure by voice vote, without objections or recorded individual votes. That could make it easier for Obama’s fellow Democrats to uphold his veto later without officially changing their positions. JASTA would remove sovereign immunity, preventing lawsuits against governments, for countries found to be involved in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. It also would allow survivors, and relatives of those killed in them to seek damages from other countries. In this case, it would allow suits to proceed in federal court in New York as lawyers try to prove that the Saudis were involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Backers say passage is long overdue. They argue that if Saudi Arabia, or any other government, is innocent of involvement in attacks, they have nothing to fear from the legislation. “If they’ve done nothing wrong, they have nothing to worry about,” said Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, a vocal advocate for the measure. Previous versions of the bill had stalled in Congress because they provided fewer protections for countries against lawsuits. Lawmakers had been under intense pressure from the Sept. 11 families to pass JASTA before the 15th anniversary of the attacks on Sunday. A member of the French parliament, Pierre Lellouche, said he would consider retaliatory legislation in France, and would anticipate it elsewhere, if the final version of JASTA does not include waivers for countries that are U.S. allies and actively involved in fighting terrorism. “It may trigger similar acts all over the place, and then you enter into a ‘state of jungle’ where everybody sues everybody,” Lellouche, who runs a parliamentary committee on international law, told reporters on a conference call on Friday.

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The White House expects the U.S. Congress to soon waive a rule known as “Paygo” that could trigger deep spending cuts in areas such as Medicare and agriculture in order to cover the costs of the recently passed tax overhaul, a White House official said on Wednesday. Congress will likely waive the rule, which requires the Senate to find offsets for the large tax cuts in the bill, through the spending resolution it must soon pass in order to keep the government open, the official added. The official said the Internal Revenue Service, the country’s tax agency, can immediately begin implementing changes called for in the $1.5 trillion overhaul of the U.S. tax code and does not need to wait for President Donald Trump to sign the bill into law.

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You thought the people passing through Fargo, North Dakota were crazy. Now we have to worry about wood chippers in the Wal-Mart parking lot.On Tuesday, genuinely terrifying racist Amber E. Hensley confronted some Muslim women who she felt had parked too close for her to get in her car, although vehicle proximity may not have been the only factor, it appears. In mere moments, the disagreement turned into death threats against sisters Sarah and Laleyla Hassan and another passenger in their car, Rowda Soyan. All are Somali-American Muslims.The trio was on their way to see a movie, Raw Story reports, when they were approached by Hensley, who shouted at them through the window of their car. After exchanging taunts about who was or was not an American, the’sister with the camera, Sarah, asked the woman what are you gonna do? Hensley leaned in and told the young women just what her intentions were: We re gonna kill all of ya. We re gonna kill every one of you fuckin Muslims.Later, she asked the would-be moviegoers why are you in our country, anyway? Hensley was fired nearly as soon as the video went public. From a statement issued by Horab & Wentz, the accounting firm where she previously worked:The women, of course, disagreed about what happened when the camera wasn’t rolling. After her firing, Amber Hensley posted an apology on her now-deleted Facebook page:In an interview with the Twin Cities Pioneer Press, Sarah Hassan denied ever having insulted Jesus.We Muslims, we believe in Jesus, too. If I abuse Jesus it s like I m abusing my own god and I not going to be considered a Muslim.This is a common mistake among Christians who don’t know anything about Islam. There are a great many parallels between the two Abrahamic religions, although names differ between them. In addition to lying about what Sarah said, Sarah claims that Hensley also mocked her sister Lalelya s crossed eyes and said it was the reason the women were parked so poorly.Amber Hensley was, of course, a big fan of Donald Trump:Trump may have said some things years ago But Hilary has BLOOD on her hands! What's worse?!?! #trumpforpres. Amber Hensley (@ambere162000) October 9, 2016You must bring up the 12yr old rape victim Hilary called promiscuous! She defended her rapest! And she calls us deplorable! #trumpforpres Amber Hensley (@ambere162000) October 9, 2016We wish Amber E. Hensley the worst, as she’searches in vain for another place that will hire crazy-ass racists who threaten to kill people for parking too close.Watch the video here:Amber Hensley. She just lost her job for this racist rant: "We're gonna kill all of ya Do you think the police care?"Don't be like her pic.twitter.com/okNXRXxSkQ The Oklahuman (@TheOklahuman) July 26, 2017Featured image via Scott Olson/Getty Images

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The ease with which some state-built homes collapsed in Sunday s earthquake in western Iran showed corrupt practices when they were constructed, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday in a sentiment shared by many ordinary Iranians. Some of the houses which collapsed in an earthquake that killed at least 530 people and injured thousands of others were built under an affordable housing scheme initiated in 2011 by Rouhani s predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That a house built by (ordinary) people in the Sarpol-e Zahab region has remained standing while in front of it a government-built building has collapsed is a sign of corruption, Rouhani told a cabinet meeting, state media said. It s clear there has been corruption in construction contracts, he said. Sarpol-e Zahab is the town hardest hit by Sunday s 7.3 magnitude quake, the deadliest in Iran in more than a decade. A picture widely circulated by ordinary Iranians on social media shows a building with relatively little damage in Sarpol-e Zahab next to a heavily damaged government-constructed building. This has fueled speculation that shoddy construction in the building of government housing had led to a higher number of casualties from the earthquake. Rouhani said on Tuesday that any shortcomings in government constructed buildings in the earthquake zone will be punished. Mohammad Hossein Sadeghi, the prosecutor general in Kermanshah, the largest city in the earthquake zone, said on Wednesday that the quality of construction of new buildings that were heavily damaged would be investigated and charges may be brought against anyone deemed responsible. If there are any problems with the construction, the individuals who were negligent must answer for their deeds, Sadeghi said, according to the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA). An arrest warrant has been issued for a contractor responsible for a recently built hospital which was heavily damaged in the town of Islamabad-e Gharb, parliamentarian Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh said on Tuesday, according to the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA). Residents in the earthquake zone have also complained about the slow and inadequate government response as they struggle to find food, water and shelter.