Yahoo News – by Julie Pace

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama will remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, the White House announced Tuesday, a key step in his bid to normalize relations between the two countries.

The terror designation has been a stain on Cuba’s pride and a major stumbling block for efforts to mend ties between Washington and Havana.

In a message to Congress, Obama said the government of Cuba “has not provided any support for international terrorism” over the last six months. He also told lawmakers that Cuba “has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future.”   Continue reading “Obama to remove Cuba from state sponsor of terror list”

Yahoo News – by David Alexander

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An Air Force major general has been formally reprimanded and removed from his job for telling a group of officers that talking to Congress in a bid to block retirement of the A-10 Warthog amounted to “treason,” the Air Force said on Friday.

An investigation of remarks by Major General James Post III, who was the vice commander of Air Combat Command, found that his words to some 300 airmen at Nellis Air Force Base on Jan. 10 may have had a “chilling effect” on some of them, convincing them not to speak with lawmakers.   Continue reading “Air Force general reprimanded over A-10 ‘treason’ remark”

Yahoo News – by AVIANNE TAN

A woman could soon be the new face of the U.S. $20 bill.

The nonprofit campaign “Women on 20s” allowed voters to choose three of 15 women candidates for the $20 bill, and now it’s down to the “Final Four,” and you can vote for the ultimate winner. The candidates are Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks and Wilma Mankiller.   Continue reading “‘Women on 20s’ to Ask President Obama to Put One of These 4 Women on $20 Bill”

A water main break flooded 13th Street and Seventh Avenue on Wednesday, April 8. (Credit: Julianne Bond)CBS New York

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — A water main break in the West Village forced the evacuation of 500 people from No. 1 train Wednesday evening.

The 12-inch water main broke at 6:45 p.m. at 13th Street and Seventh Avenue., officials told CBS2.

As of Thursday morning, all the No. 1 and 2 trains’ service, which suffered the most from the water main break, had been fully restored with residual delays.   Continue reading “500 Evacuated From Subway After West Village Water Main Break; Some Service Halted”

North Korea's new deputy U.N. ambassador An Myong Hun speaks during a news conference in New YorkYahoo News – by Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – North Korea accused Mexico on Wednesday of illegally detaining one of its ships with some 50 crew and warned it would take “necessary measures” to release the vessel, which United Nations sanctions monitors say belongs to a blacklisted shipping firm.

The 6,700-tonne freighter Mu Du Bong, which had come from Cuba, ran aground in July on a reef 8 miles (13 km) northeast of Tuxpan in Mexico’s Veracruz state. Mexico said the ship remains in the port of Tuxpan.   Continue reading “North Korea warns will act to get back ship held by Mexico”

Tea Party

(Washington Times) – The American firearms industry is as healthy as ever, seeing an unprecedented surge that has sent production of guns soaring to more than 10.8 million manufactured in 2013 alone — double the total of just three years earlier.

The 2013 surge — the latest for which the government has figures — came in the first full year after the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, signaling that the push for stricter gun controls, strongly backed by President Obama, did little to chill the industry despite the passage of stricter laws in states such as New York, Maryland, Connecticut and California.   Continue reading “Firearms Industry Sees Unprecedented Surge”

white_house_fountain_reutersBreitbart – by CHARLIE SPIERING

If White House staffers feel compelled to visit a gender-neutral bathroom while at work, they now have that option, Politico reports.

If they work in the White House, however, they would have to cross the complex to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in order to use the restroom with special designation.

“An all-gender restroom is also available in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which provides guests and staff an additional option,” White House spokesman Jeff Tiller tells Politico’s Sarah Wheaton.   Continue reading “White House Complex Contains Gender Neutral Bathroom”

Win McNamee/Getty Images/AFPBreitbart – by MICHAEL PATRICK LEAHY

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is changing the story about how he sustained those gruesome New Year’s Day injuries that have left him blind in one eye.

Previously, Reid claimed that an exercise band he was using “broke.”

“I was doing exercises that I’ve been doing for many years with those large rubber bands and one of them broke and spun me around and I crashed into these cabinets and injured my eye,” (emphasis added) Reid said at a press conference on January 22.   Continue reading “Harry Reid Changes His Story On How He Sustained New Year’s Day Injuries”

Yahoo News

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Rioting youths have clashed with Greek police in central Athens, damaging vehicles and property, following a demonstration by hundreds of anarchists seeking the abolition of a maximum security prison.

Dozens of rioters threw petrol bombs and stones at police, who responded with tear gas. Four people were detained in Tuesday’s clashes, while no injuries were immediately reported.   Continue reading “Anarchists attack police with petrol bombs after Athens demo”

635634030741492243-handgun-Jae-S.-Lee-TennesseanThe Tennessean – by Dave Boucher

The Tennessee House of Representatives passed a bill Monday night that makes it illegal to take a squirt gun — but not a real gun — within 150 feet of a school.

The new ban was included in a larger bill that would nix any local laws prohibiting people with gun permits from taking guns to parks.

The federal “Guns Free School Zones” act makes it illegal for anyone who doesn’t have a permit from taking a gun within 1,000 feet of a school. If that person has a permit from the state in which the school is located, though, they can take the gun near school property, the law states.   Continue reading “House bill bans fake guns — not real guns — near schools”

Yahoo News

Police in a northern Indian city said Tuesday they have a new weapon for controlling unruly protesters in the world’s largest democracy: pepper-spraying drones.

Yashasvi Yadav, police chief of Lucknow, said his officers have successfully test-flown the newly purchased drones with a view to better crowd control.   Continue reading “Indian police to use pepper-spraying drones on unruly protesters”

A man stands near the national flags of the U.S. and Cuba (R) on the balcony of a hotel being used by the first U.S. congressional delegation to Cuba since the change of policy announced by U.S. President Barack Obama on December 17, in Havana, January 19, 2015. REUTERS/StringerYahoo News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama vowed on Tuesday to act quickly once he receives a State Department recommendation on whether to remove Cuba from the U.S. list of terrorism-sponsoring countries, a remaining obstacle to the restoration of relations between Washington and Havana.

With just days to go before a hemispheric summit in Panama where Obama will come face-to-face with Cuban President Raul Castro, he offered no clear sign of how he was leaning or the timeframe for his decision. He ordered the review immediately after announcing a diplomatic breakthrough with Havana on Dec. 17.   Continue reading “Obama says would move fast to take Cuba off terrorism sponsor list”

635640271474399790-home-frontpicUSA Today – by Brad Heath

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government started keeping secret records of Americans’ international telephone calls nearly a decade before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, harvesting billions of calls in a program that provided a blueprint for the far broader National Security Agency surveillance that followed.

For more than two decades, the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking, current and former officials involved with the operation said. The targeted countries changed over time but included Canada, Mexico and most of Central and South America. Continue reading “U.S. secretly tracked billions of calls for decades”

Capture111aBreitbart – by Lana Shadwick

DREAMers and their supporters were on the Texas Capitol steps early this morning in preparation for lobbying legislators on S.B. 1819. They are in Austin to speak to the Texas Senate’s Sub-Committee on Border Security. The sub-committee is part of the Senate Committee on Veteran Affairs and Military Installations. The bill would remove in-state tuition eligibility for certain children who came to America illegally.   Continue reading “Texas: DREAMers And Supporters Descend On Austin To Lobby Legislators”

A soldier stands guard among marijuana plants at an illegal plantation found during a military operation on Friday at the Culiacan mountains, northern Mexico, Monday, Jan. 30, 2012. The drought in northern Mexico is so bad that it has hurt even illicit drug growers and their normally well-tended crops of marijuana and opium poppies, Gen. Pedro Gurrola, commander of army forces in the state of Sinaloa, said Monday.Breitbart – by Brandon Darby

U.S. law enforcement discovered a two million dollar marijuana field in Texas linked the Mexican Los Zetas cartel. The field was discovered in Webb County, near the border city of Laredo, Texas. The cartel link was confirmed by Border Patrol agent Hector Garza, speaking to Breitbart Texas in his role as president of National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) Local 2455. Agent Garza declined to name the specific Mexican transnational criminal organization involved in this case, though he did acknowledge that both the Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and the Laredo, Texas regions are controlled by the Los Zetas cartel and that they ruthlessly deny competition in their territory.   Continue reading “Mexican Los Zetas Cartel Grew $2 Million Drug Field on Texas Soil”

CBS SF

BERKELEY (CBS SF) – Residents living in some Berkeley neighborhoods have been kept up at night over mysterious booms heard in the area over the past few weeks. It’s an unsolved mystery that even has police scratching their heads.

Rachael Marzoline told KPIX 5 about the boom she heard two nights ago. “I’d say it was around one in the morning, scared the hell out of me. I jumped out of bed,” Marzoline recalled.

Joel Bryant said he heard the booms at least eight different times in the last month. “We’re puzzled by it,” he said. “It’s not as crisp as a gunshot. It sounds like an aerial bomb explosion.”   Continue reading “Mysterious Booms heard in California and New Jersey”

A religious cross is seen as the moon is illuminated by sunlight reflected off the Earth during a total lunar eclipse, one of four so-called 'blood moons', on October 8, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. The first in the current tetrad of blood moons fell on Passover and the current eclipse occurs on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the fifth day after Yom Kippur, leading some religious people to believe that it is a prophetic sign of the end times of civilization. This blood moon appears 5.3% larger than the last one on April 15 because it occurs right after the perigee, the closest point in its orbit to the Earth. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)CBS San Fransisco

(CBS SF) — Get ready to feast your eyes on an extra special and rare total lunar eclipse Saturday morning that has some Christians worried this Easter weekend.

For the third time in less than a year, the moon will dip into Earth’s shadow, turning its bright white globe a deep coppery red in a matter of minutes.

The action begins at 3:16 a.m. PST on the morning of April 4 when the edge of the moon first enters the amber core of Earth’s shadow.   Continue reading “Blood Moon With Total Lunar Eclipse & Eerie Biblical Message Rising Over U.S. Easter Weekend”

Concord Monitor – by CASEY McDERMOTT and JEREMY BLACKMAN

The federal resettlement program began 35 years ago, and today includes some 190 sites across the country.

In New Hampshire, four cities – Nashua, Manchester, Laconia and Concord – take in refugees, but the numbers are not evenly distributed. Nationally, nearly 70,000 refugees immigrated to the U.S. in the last fiscal year; 373 of those came to New Hampshire, and 189 of those came to Concord.   Continue reading “Communities have little say about the amount of refugees they receive”

APBreitbart – by Ildefonso Ortiz

A group of robbers on the south side of Chicago appear to have taken a page out of the Gulf Cartel or Los Zetas manual for setting up roadblocks in order to carry out violent robberies. Just last week a group of three or four robbers have used a construction area in the city’s south side to set up roadblocks as a trap for motorists.

Once the motorists stop, they were assaulted and robbed, UPI news reported.   Continue reading “Chicago Robbers Appear to Copy Mexican Cartel Roadblock Tactics”

flag-boysBreitbart – by  William Bigelow

The U.S. Supreme Court, prompted by the May 5, 2010 incident at Live Oak High School near San Jose where several students were punished after they wore shirts emblazoned with the American flag on Cinco de Mayo, may institute new standards for free speech.

On Cinco de Mayo 2009, Mexican-American students at the school raised a Mexican flag and marched around the campus, some white students responded by chanting, “USA! USA!” The white students answered one year later with the shirts adorned by American flags; the Mexican-American students then called them racists and protested to Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez.   Continue reading “Supreme Court May Hear Case on Banning US flag on Cinco de Mayo”