NEW YORK – Federal marshals seized disgraced financier Bernard Madoff's $7 million Manhattan penthouse on Thursday and forced his wife to move out and leave her possessions behind (Snip)Ruth Madoff first argued with marshals who came to the apartment and asked to stay, then asked if she could take a fur coat with her...
STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. (AP) -- Clerks from Michigan's three largest counties and a state legislator proposed a plan on Thursday that they say would speed the process of sending election ballots to overseas state residents and ensure those ballots are counted. Oakland County Clerk Ruth Johnson said Michigan is one of 16 states that does not give residents who are overseas in the military enough time to vote, according to a study by
Baghdad -- U.S. Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Iraq on Thursday to visit U.S. soldiers, just two days after all American combat troops withdrew from Baghdad and all of Iraq's cities and towns. (snip) A White House statement said Biden will reiterate the U.S. commitment to carry out President Barack Obama's plan to withdraw combat forces. (snip)It was his first trip to Iraq as vice president.
The Supreme Court's decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, the case of the New Haven firefighters, was a ringing endorsement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964's ban on racial discrimination and a repudiation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's decision in the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. While five justices flatly rejected Sotomayor's ruling, even the four dissenters wouldn't have let stand her ruling allowing
While the nation continues to lose hundreds of thousands of jobs each month, job creation through a ''new clean energy economy'' will bolster the country's economic recovery and its ''long-term prosperity,'' President Obama said today. (Snip) Obama said ''new ways of producing and saving and distributing energy offer a unique opportunity to create millions of jobs for the American people.''
The New York Stock Exchange extended trading by 15 minutes Thursday, in an extraordinary move prompted by what the exchange said were “system irregularities.”
Vernon, N.J. - A northwestern New Jersey man says he was mugged in his driveway by a sandwich-craving bear.Henry Rouwendal says he was packing his car last Friday when he was hit from behind and knocked to the ground. He says the culprit was a black bear who took his Italian sandwich. (Snip) the bruin made off with the bread, salami and other meats but left behind the lettuce, onions and tomatoes.
Washington - Could North Korea hit Hawaii with a missile, if it wanted to? In theory, yes. Pyongyang has ballistic missile technology that technically, if it worked to perfection, could throw a small payload across the 7,100 kilometers or so that separate the Korean peninsula from Honolulu, according to a US Congressional Research Service (CRS) report. But North Korea has tested its most advanced long-range missiles only a few times
Harve Presnell, the commanding baritone who starred in such Broadway musicals as "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" and "Annie," died of pancreatic cancer Tuesday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, according to his agent, Gregg Klein. (snip)The rugged, 6-foot-4 Presnell first gained prominence as the lucky mining prospector "Leadville" Johnny Brown in the 1960 Broadway production of "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," playing opposite Tammy Grimes as the feisty Molly.
The American lawyer Alan Dershowitz is one of the most prolific, high-profile and indefatiguable defenders of Israel and the Jewish people against the tidal wave of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish feeling currently coursing through the west. (snip) But just like the majority of American Jews, getting on for 80 per cent of whom voted for Obama, he is a Democrat supporter who is incapable of acknowledging the truth about this President.
Washington - Americans who refuse to buy affordable medical coverage could be hit with fines of more than $1,000 under a health care overhaul bill unveiled Thursday by key Senate Democrats looking to fulfill President Obama's top domestic priority. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the fines will raise around $36 billion over 10 years. Senate aides said the penalties would be modeled on the approach taken by Massachusetts
Cambridge, Mass. OUR economy, energy supply, means of transportation and military defenses are dependent on vast, interconnected computer and telecommunications networks. These networks are poorly defended and vulnerable to theft, disruption or destruction by foreign states, criminal organizations, individual hackers and, potentially, terrorists. In the last few months it has been reported that Chinese network operations have found their way into American electricity grids, and computer spies have broken into the Pentagon’s Joint Strike Fighter project.
In the spirit of transparency, the Obama Administration posted on its White House blog a detailed list of who makes what at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.(snip)The $172,200 Club: This exclusive club includes Obama's top aides, such as Senior Advisers David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, press secretary Robert Gibbs and Jon "Favs" Favreau, Obama's head speechwriter.
Raleigh, N.C. — Imagine your power bill going up by $200 a month. Progress Energy spokesman Mike Hughes said Thursday that it's a possibility under President Barack Obama's energy plan that narrowly passed the U.S. House of Representatives last week.
President Barack Obama said Thursday that he remains confident the economy will turn around in the short term and the nation will prosper in the long term despite another dose of bad unemployment news. "And I'm absolutely confident that we can, at this period of difficulty, prove, once again, what this nation can achieve when challenged," Obama said in the Rose Garden after a meeting with executives from energy companies.
Bangkok, Thailand -- Fossils recently discovered in Myanmar could prove that the common ancestors of humans, monkeys and apes evolved from primates in Asia, rather than Africa, researchers contend in a study released Wednesday. (snip) The pieces of 38-million-year-old jawbones and teeth found near Bagan in central Myanmar in 2005 show typical characteristics of primates,
American troops fight for our freedom every day in Iraq and some never make it home. That's the grim reality in any war, but imagine the reality of going to war without a rifle or going out on night patrol without night vision goggles. That's a reality North Carolina National Guard member Sgt. First Class Brent Mast faced.
Washington -- President Barack Obama wants to produce early results after promising to reset relations with Russia, hoping to emerge from a Moscow summit next week with clear progress on reducing both nations' nuclear arsenals and changing the way the Russian people view the United States. Obama's pursuit of a new U.S.-Russia nuclear arms pact to replace one that expires in December has dominated the attention focused on his trip to Moscow,
Americans lucky enough to still have a job are noticing something unpleasant in their paychecks: They're making less money. Employers cut 467,000 jobs in June, far more than expected, and the jobless rate hit a 26-year high of 9.5 percent. Just as worrisome, wages shrank to their lowest in nearly a year.
LOS ANGELES — A federal judge tentatively threw out the convictions of a Missouri mother for her role in a MySpace hoax directed at a 13-year-old neighbor girl who later killed herself. (Snip) ....but the judge says that if she is to be found guilty of illegally accessing computers, anyone who has ever violated the social networking site's terms of service would be guilty of a misdemeanor.
VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The restoration of Michelangelo's frescoes in the Vatican's Pauline Chapel may have produced a special prize - a previously unknown self-portrait of the artist. Chief Vatican restorer Maurizio De Luca said Thursday that the face of a man on horseback in the artist's "The Crucifixion of St. Peter" could well be the artist, though he told AP Television News that nobody will ever know "with absolute certainty that the face is Michelangelo's."
California's a mess. A bankrupt fiasco. A state that has regulated and spent itself into a well of debt so deep it makes the economic situation in the other 49 states seem not half-bad.
LONDON (AP) -- British researchers have announced the discovery of a rare original copy of America's Declaration of Independence - just in time for the Fourth of July. Katrina McClintock, a spokeswoman at the National Archives, said Thursday that a researcher accidentally discovered the "Dunlap print," named after a printer, several months ago.(snip) Edward Hampshire, the National Archives' specialist in colonial materials, said the find was "incredibly exciting."
Lie to me. In Islam it is expected. [snip] When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes hash out reality, he isn't only perfecting one of the wiles of a dictator. He's practicing his religion. WikiIslam defines taqiyya as "sanctified hypocrisy." That's generous. [snip] Taqiyya is a right that Muslims believe brings its own reward.
"Appalled” and “disappointed” are among the words — at least the published ones — officials at the Washington Post are using today to describe actions by, well, the Washington Post. As the paper reports: Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth today canceled plans for a series of policy dinners at her home after learning that marketing fliers offered lobbyists access to Obama administration officials, members of Congress and
