George Galloway has said he will use his position to rally support for the Palestinian cause if he succeeds in his campaign to become mayor.
The Respect Party leader said he would not call for the city to be an "Israel-free zone" as he did in Bradford when he was an MP there.
But he said that he would use the mayoralty to promote his "moral position" on the conflict in the Middle East.
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| Wisconsin from Pike's Peak, Iowa |
Scott Walker's popularity streak in Iowa is real: He's seven percentage points ahead of his nearest competition in the presidential horse race here, chased by a tight pack of four in a clear top tier: Ben Carson, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee.
Marco Rubio lags in a single-digit scrum, but a deeper look into the numbers shows that if Walker is the hare in Iowa, Rubio may be the tortoise, potentially positioned to pull ahead if he campaigns hard, a new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll finds.
But the announcement was marred by a steady stream of protesters nearby. They shouted about police brutality and economic injustice. "700,000 arrests under your watch, O'Malley!" one man shouted. Others blew whistles during his speech. "Oh, grow up," one O'Malley supporter muttered angrily.
O'Malley, the third Democratic candidate to enter the race, is considered by some a potential challenger to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, but he has an uphill climb to the nomination. While Clinton sits at 64 percent in the polls, O'Malley hovers at less than one percent. His tenure as governor ended with the shocking defeat of his lieutenant governor, Anthony Brown, defeated by longshot Republican candidate Larry Hogan. And Baltimore's riots and soaring crime rate cast new doubt on his tenure as that city's mayor, which ended in 2006.
The protesters at Saturday's campaign announcement drew a direct line between O'Malley's policies and what they say as an oppressive police presence in Baltimore today. "He was brutally murdered!” said Tawanda Jones. Her brother, Tyrone Jones, was killed by Baltimore police during a 2013 traffic stop. She pointed at O'Malley, who was still at the podium. "I blame him!" she said.
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| Riga, Latvia |
A senior NATO general has warned Russia could occupy the Baltic states in two days and the west would be unable to do anything to stop it from happening.More...
Czech General Petr Pavel, soon to become head of NATO's military committee, one of the alliance's most important bodies, added that steps taken to face the threat posed by Russia so far had been "embarrassingly ineffective".
His warning comes amid a growing climate of insecurity in the Baltic region and central Europe. The three Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, have all reported increases in Russian military activity near their borders, skies and waters. They now plan to make a formal request for Nato to station thousands of troops in the region on a permanent basis as a statement of the alliance;s commitment to their territorial defence.
"From a technical point of view, if I consider how many forces Russia is able to deploy in the Baltics when compared to the size of the Baltic countries and the density of their forces it means that they could really be occupied in a couple of days," General Pavel said.Vladimir Putin knows that he'll never see a weaker president than Obama in his lifetime. Will he take advantage of this historic opportunity offered by Obama?
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| Farm in Hastert's old district |
On Friday, federal law enforcement officials said Hastert had paid $1.7 million over the last four years to conceal sexual abuse against a former male student he knew during his days as a teacher in Yorkville, Ill., where Hastert worked until 1981.I've only been to Yorkville once--it in the early 1980s before Hastert was elected to Congress and the village was untouched by the Chicago sprawl. Only about 5,000 people lived there then--it was one of those towns where everyone knew everyone. Things will continue to get worse for the former state champion wrestling coach.
A top federal law enforcement official, who would not be identified speaking about the ongoing federal case, said investigators also spoke with a second man who raised similar allegations that corroborated what the former student said. The second person was not being paid by Hastert, the official said.
The disclosures followed Thursday's federal indictment against Hastert on charges of lying to the FBI about the reasons for large cash withdrawals he is accused of making to buy the man's silence.
"It goes back a long way, back to then," a second official said. "It has nothing to do with public corruption or a corruption scandal. Or to his time in office."
The U.S. economy went into reverse in the first three months of this year as a severe winter and a widening trade deficit took a harsher toll than initially estimated.
The overall economy as measured by the gross domestic product contracted at an annual rate of 0.7 percent in the January-March period, the Commerce Department reported Friday.
The revised figure, even weaker than the government's initial estimate of a 0.2 percent growth rate, reflects a bigger trade gap and slower consumer spending. It marked the first decline since a 2.1 percent contraction in the first three months of 2014, a slump that was also blamed on winter weather.
Economists expect a rebound in the current quarter to growth of around 2 percent and expect the economy to strengthen later this year.
Chicago has maintained its first-place status, but not for something for which the city should be proud.Isn't President Obama from Illinois? Isn't Hillary Clinton from Illinois?
The city was once again named the corruption capital of America, according to a report released Thursday by the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The judicial district, which includes Chicago, Cook and 17 other counties across the northern tier of Illinois, reported 45 public corruption convictions for 2013 and a total of 1,642 convictions for the 38 years since 1976 when the U.S. Department of Justice began compiling the statistics, the report states.
Federal prosecutors have indicted former U.S. House Speaker House Dennis Hastert on bank-related charges.Too many pols--again particularly those from Illinois--view politics as a way to strike it rich.
Read the full indictment here
Hastert, after leaving the House of Representatives, had been criticized for conducting private business through his government-funded office, but that doesn't appear to be the substance of this indictment.
The indictment alleges that between 2010 and 2014, Hastert withdrew $1.7 million dollars from a variety of different bank accounts he controlled and gave it to an unnamed person, identified at this point only as "Individual A."
Further, the indictment says that Hastert had agreed to provide Individual A with $3.5 million to "compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct against Individual A." The alleged misconduct is not specified in the indictment.
Ask yourself: Do you get automatic raises based on seniority?Illinois' reform governor, Republican Bruce Rauner, has suggested that state workers--gasp!--work forty hours a week. And Rauner wants to cut into the number of paid holidays state workers enjoy.
Do you get overtime promptly after you put in 37.5 hours in a week?
Do you get minimum pay guarantees if you're on standby or called in to work?
Do you get 13 paid holidays? The AFSCME contract gives workers Martin Luther King Day, Lincoln's Birthday, Presidents Day, Columbus Day, the day after Thanksgiving and — of course — Election Day.
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| Omaha's skyline |
Many held American flags, balloons and homemade signs: Heroes Live Forever. You Made a Difference. We Support Our Men and Women in Blue. OPD Blue Forever. #KerrieOn.The real America still lives.
As the procession started, the crowd fell silent. At one point, the only sound was the rumble of police motorcycles and a guitarist in front of the downtown library plucking “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The procession started at 1 p.m. at St. John's and ended at 2:45 p.m. at the cemetery in Council Bluffs. It took about an hour for drivers to complete the route. At one point, vehicles were entering the cemetery while others were still leaving Creighton seven miles away.
More than 450 marked cruisers with first responders from about 200 agencies from several states took part. Many officers held their phones up to the crowd, recording the scene as they passed by. At the same time, people in the crowd pointed their phones back to capture the moment.
A rare bird may become extinct in Syria because of the capture of Palmyra by Islamic State, experts say.
A tiny breeding colony of the northern bald ibis - a critically endangered species - was found near the city in 2002.
Only one female returned from the wintering grounds in spring 2013.
Three further birds held in captivity were abandoned last week after their Bedouin guards fled the fighting. Their fate is unknown.
[Police Commissioner Anthony W.] Batts last week said police are struggling to stop violence in West Baltimore, where officers have been routinely surrounded by dozens of people, video cameras and hostility while performing basic police work since the death of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old who died after suffering a spinal cord injury while in police custody. The Western District, the site of Gray's arrest and the epicenter of the protests and rioting that followed his death, has seen the majority of the city's recent shootings and homicides, which are coming faster than they have in eight years.In a democracy, sadly, sometimes people get the government they deserve.
Six officers are charged criminally in Gray's death. Some police officers have said they feel hesitant on the job under intense public scrutiny.
On Friday, the director and another member of [Mayor Stephanie C.] Rawlings-Blake's criminal justice office left their jobs, marking the biggest shake-up in her administration since the recent rioting and unrest in the city. Their departures came a few weeks after the director of the city's anti-violence initiative, Operation Ceasefire, left his job voluntarily.
Throughout the 1990s, Baltimore saw more than 300 homicides every year. The death toll dropped to 253 in 2002 under then-Mayor Martin O'Malley — who instituted a tough-on-crime policing approach called "zero tolerance" — before rising to 282 in 2007, prompting then-Mayor Sheila Dixon to replace Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm with Frederick H. Bealefeld III midyear.
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| Algonquin Clock Tower |
"This is not something that our company tolerates," said Amy Fasholt-Fisher, vice president of operations for the Kansas City-based chain. "We are taking full responsibility, offering no excuses."The manager who confronted the veteran has since been fired. The vet's mom posted about the nastiness on Facebook earlier today. "It was insulting ... so they decided to leave," a Houlihan's manager told the Daily Herald.
The confrontation occurred Sunday at the restaurant, 1508 S. Randall Road.
The veteran, whose name was not released by the company, entered with his mother and his dog and requested to be seated, Fasholt-Fisher said.
A hostess got a manager, who asked what service the animal provides, Fasholt-Fisher said.
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| World War I Monument, Peoria, Illinois |
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| Author at John Wayne birthplace |
The legislature is scheduled to adjourn May 31, but Senate Republican leader Christine Radogno dismissed the deadline and said the package of bills Rauner presented to the General Assembly represents the bare minimum for the governor and GOP lawmakers to even begin to consider a tax hike to help close a gaping $6.6 billion hole for the budget year that starts July 1.
But many of Rauner's proposals are politically toxic to Democratic lawmakers and their allies, including legislative term limits, changes in workers' compensation, limitations on damage awards in civil lawsuits, and weakened union rights for municipal workers and teachers to bargain for pay.
Rauner also is proposing a property tax freeze that many mayors oppose and allowing cities to file for bankruptcy, which many unions see as an attempt to allow municipalities to get out of pension obligations.
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| Coal barge, Guttenberg, Iowa |
Murray also announced layoffs of 249 workers in Ohio and 162 people in Illinois, bringing the total to as many as 1,829 workers.
Ohio-based Murray Energy Corp. made the announcement one day after its president and CEO, Robert Murray, told a gathering at the North American Coalbed Methane Forum in Cecil that a massive workforce reduction could be coming.
In a statement, the company acknowledged both market conditions and policies from state and federal governments had led to the cuts.
"We regret that, due to the vastly increased use of natural gas in the Ohio Valley area to generate electricity, the ongoing destruction of the United State coal industry by President Barack Obama, and the excessive coal severance tax in the State of West Virginia, workforce reductions and operational changes have been forced upon the company," the statement read.
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| Omaha's skyline |
Omaha cop Kerrie Orozco had put off starting maternity leave until her premature baby girl could come home from the hospital. Just hours before bringing her daughter home and taking the long-awaited leave, Orozco was gunned down on the job by a suspect.
Orozco, 29, a seven-year veteran, delivered Olivia Ruth early in February. The baby girl stayed in the hospital for three months and was scheduled to come home Thursday — when Orozco was "due to take time off to look after her," Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer said Thursday.
But first Orozco, who had served on the city's gang unit since 2012, went to help serve a felony arrest warrant Wednesday on 26-year-old Marcus Wheeler. Gunfire erupted, and both Orozco and Wheeler — a "convicted felon and a known gang member" wanted in relation to a previous shooting in Omaha — were hit, Schmaderer said.
Schmaderer said the fatal bullet struck Orozco, 29, in her upper chest — just above the top of her protective vest.
Chicago's population saw the slowest growth rates of any of the top 10 cities in the U.S. from 2013-2014, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.A massive unfunded pension liability for city workers is the reason for Chicago's rotten credit. Why should people move there--most of whom don't have pensions--so they can bail out those who do.
The city grew by just 82 residents during the one-year period, an increase of just .003 percent, officials said. That;s compared to New York, which saw an increase of 52,700 and Los Angeles, which grew by 30,924 people.
Though Chicago still maintains its third-place status with 2,722,389 people as of July 1, 2014, Houston closely follows with 2,239,588 residents. The Texas city also grew by 1.6 percent from 2013-2014 with an increase of 35,752 residents.
A longtime Clinton confidant reportedly advised then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton two days after the 2012 Benghazi terror attack that an Al Qaeda-tied group had planned the deadly assault and used a protest as cover -- but despite this warning, Clinton's U.N. ambassador went on to publicly claim the attack was "spontaneous."Clinton also blamed the Benghazi murders on that Z-list video.
The guidance from ex-Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal was contained in a memo sent Sept. 13, according to The New York Times. It is the latest documentation effectively contradicting the administration's early narrative that the attack was driven by protests over an anti-Islam Internet video -- and raising questions over why officials stuck to that story for days.
According to the Times, Blumenthal initially blamed "demonstrators" angry over that video for the attacks. But the next day, he sent Clinton a very different memo.
According to the Times, Blumenthal told Clinton the attack was driven by Al Qaeda-tied Ansar al-Shariah members who had planned it for a month and used a protest as cover. He cited "sensitive sources."
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| Lake Michigan |
NEW LONDON — President Barack Obama warned graduating Coast Guard cadets Wednesday that their careers would be spent battling the "indisputable" effects of climate change, a global menace with the power to weaken American infrastructure and stoke unrest around the world
Rescuing people in distress, stopping terrorists at ports, seizing international drug shipments and patrolling waters in the Middle East are part of their duties, Obama told the 217 new officers at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy's commencement at Cadet Memorial Field.
At the same time, they must contend with a warmer planet, melting glaciers and rising seas — "an immediate risk to our national security," Obama said.
"Even as we meet threats like terrorism, we cannot and we must not ignore a peril that can affect generations," said Obama, calling for more renewable energy and curbing of carbon emissions. "Cadets, the threat of a changing climate cuts to the very core of your service. ... You know the beauty of the sea, but you also know its unforgiving power."
In a comment tweeted Tuesday, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., described the sexual assault in the most-recent episode of the hit show as "gratuitous" and "disgusting." She added she was done with the show.Each episode begins with viewer warnings.
Others critics included the website The Mary Sue, which offers a feminist view of pop culture. The website posted that it would no longer promote "Game of Thrones" and said that rape is not a device to drive a story.
HBO declined comment Tuesday on the reaction to the episode that debuted last Sunday. An after-hours call to McCaskill's office seeking further comment was not immediately returned.
The attack involved newly married characters Sansa, played by Sophie Turner, and Ramsay, portrayed by Iwan Rheon. Ramsay's rape of Sansa was off-camera, suggested in her cries and the distress on a bystander's face.
Flint-area officials, including Clerk Inez Brown and Genesee County Clerk-Register John Gleason, are expected to testify today, May 20, about the need to change state law to allow for a standard mayoral primary election in August.If the law isn't changed there will be no primaries and the general election will be an all-write in contest.
Both officials are waiting to address the state House of Representatives Elections Committee about House Bill 4589, which would amend Michigan's election law to correct an error made by Brown's office.
Flint officials have said the city clerk's office mistakenly told candidates for mayor and two City Council seats that they had until April 28 to file nominating petitions with her office.
But the actual deadline -- established by state law -- was April 21, and no mayoral candidates filed early enough to qualify for the ballot.
The union for Amtrak's locomotive engineers urged the railroad on Tuesday to put a second crew member at the controls of trains on the busy Northeast Corridor, where a derailment killed eight people and injured more than 200 others.
"The public would never accept an airline operation with a single person in the cockpit," the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen said in a statement. "There is no reason that rail employees and rail passengers' lives should be viewed any differently."
Brandon Bostian, 32, was alone in the locomotive of Train 188 when it derailed May 12, about 10 minutes after departing Philadelphia for New York.
Amtrak hasn't had a second crew member in the locomotive of its Northeast Corridor trains since Congress ended the requirement in the early 1980s, the union said.
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| Ten Commandments |
After a particularly bloody weekend in Chicago, Fr. Michael Pfleger pointed to Gov. Bruce Rauner's declared budget cuts as a future obstacle in stemming the violence.Illinois is broke--when will Pfleger figure that out?
"With all these state cuts taking place in this city, all the jobs that are not going to be there, the programs are not going to be there, I think it's frightening what's ahead of us right now in this city," Pfleger, the pastor at St. Sabina Church, told NBC Chicago.
The Hillary Clinton email mystery took yet another confusing turn Tuesday with accusations from Republicans that the former secretary of state "misled" the public about her email practices, by using multiple "secret" addresses despite claims to the contrary.
However, a spokesman with the House committee probing the 2012 Benghazi attack, and Clinton's handling of it, would not go so far. Rather, he told FoxNews.com the confusion only further underscores the need to subject Clinton's private server to a third-party analysis, saying that's the only way to resolve this.
The questions over multiple Clinton addresses were raised after emails were published as part of a lengthy New York Times report on Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal's memos on Libya before and after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi. The emails show Clinton writing from the address, hrod17@clintonemail.com. This is distinct from the other address she has acknowledged using as secretary of state, hdr22@clintonemail.com.
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| Darkness is coming to Chicago |
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| Park City Utah, Feb. 2015 |
After another dreadful ski season for many resorts in North America, scientists warn that the future of skiing and snowboarding could be in jeopardy as a result of global warming.Of course if the environmentalists had their way there'd be no skiing or snowboarding at all in the Rockies and other western mountainous areas. I'm sure they'll come up with some obscure minnow that might be impacted by ski resorts. And of course since skiing can only take place in isolated areas, they'll point to fossil fuel usage.
Resorts across California and Oregon were forced to close early this year due to lack of snow. In Utah, which boasts the tag-line "Greatest Snow on Earth", even emblazoning it across its licence plates, Park City endured a fifth consecutive season of below average snowfall.
