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UNITED NATIONS (AP) — International envoy Kofi Annan told the U.N. Security Council Thursday that the situation in Syria is "bleak" and expressed alarm at reports that government troops are still carrying out military operations in towns where U.N. observers are not present. He expressed particular concern at media reports that government troops entered the central city of Hama on Monday after U.N. observers departed, firing automatic weapons and killing a significant number of people. "If confirmed, this is totally unacceptable and reprehensible," he said. The joint U.N.-Arab League envoy said the speedy deployment of the 300-strong U.N. observer force...

The Wheels Are Already Coming Off: Social Security Disability Insurance Fund to Go Bankrupt by 2016 |And We Have No Confidence Obama or Romney Would Know What To Do http://bit.ly/Jmx8Kx

Increasing public disapproval of Barack Obama is based on more than his extravagant spending, which hangs debt like an albatross around the necks of our children and grandchildren. He is presiding over the most scandal-ridden administration in decades, from Colombia to Las Vegas to the Mexican border to Solyndra and more. The Secret Service's prostitution party in Colombia is an international embarrassment. It's not sufficient punishment that a few guilty men have been allowed to resign or retire with benefits because many questions are still crying to be answered. Who arranged the party at the now notorious Pley Club in...

First Lady Michelle Obama was in Omaha, Neb., today for an address to women and girls, aimed at boosting their confidence as advocates for themselves. She also appealed for campaign cash at a fundraiser hosted by Warren Buffet in Omaha, which could be key to President Obama’s re-election. (Snip) Mrs. Obama delivered the keynote speech at an annual luncheon for Girls Inc., a nonprofit advocacy group for which she is an honorary board chair, exhorting the women not to “be afraid to dream big.” “You have to see yourself in a place. You have to be able to see yourself

Dozens of activists protested on Tuesday evening against an alternative Memorial Day ceremony held by the leftist organization Combatants for Peace at the Tel Aviv port area. The group’s alternative ceremony includes Israeli bereaved parents and Palestinian Authority Arab bereaved parents (parents of terrorists who were killed while fighting IDF soldiers) under the same category of remembrance and loss. On Sunday, one of the protest organizers, Nissim Eliyahu, sharply criticized the alternative ceremony and told Arutz Sheva that it is in fact a political event under the guise of a memorial event. Combatants for Peace’s spokesman said in response to...

WASHINGTON — For a man who has long battled advanced heart disease, Dick Cheney has had a remarkable streak of being in the right place at the right time. Now 71, the former vice president has survived five heart attacks, the first of them at the age of 37. Even before he received a heart transplant a month ago today, Mr. Cheney had benefited from just about every procedure, technology and class of drug available to people with his condition — atherosclerosis, in which fatty deposits block blood flow in the arteries. Indeed, Mr. Cheney’s medical history could almost be...

Soros Compares Euro-Zone Crisis With Soviet Collapse By Martin EderApril 24, 2012 U.S. billionaire investor George Soros compared the euro-zone crisis with factors that led to the Soviet Union’s collapse in the early 1990s. “Europe is similar to the Soviet Union in the way that the euro crisis has the potential of destroying, undermining the European Union,” he said in a debate on public policy education Tuesday. “With the profound social, economic and moral crisis that Europe is in, we can see a similar process of disintegration.” Mr. Soros, who was born in the Hungarian capital Budapest, often visits his...

An angry mob of youngsters brutally battered a man who told them to stop playing basketball outside his home - and allegedly then told him 'that's justice for Trayvon'. Matthew Owens was hit with bricks, chairs, pipes and paint cans on his own Mobile, Alabama, front porch by 20 people on Saturday night after complaining about the noise. Owens' sister, Ashley Parker, claimed the group attacking her white brother were all African-American as she told wkrg.com: 'It was the scariest thing I have ever witnessed.' And she alleged that, as they walked away leaving him badly bruised and bleeding on...

"She just took this gift and put it on the ground and kicked it," claims donor A mum-of-two says has spoken of her 'betrayal' after she donated a kidney to help save her boss's life - who she claims then contributed to her being fired. “I decided to become a kidney donor to my boss, and she took my heart," Debbie Stevens reportedly sobbed to New York Post. “I feel very betrayed. This has been a very hurtful and horrible experience for me. She just took this gift and put it on the ground and kicked it." According to papers...

The college class of 2012 is in for a rude welcome to the world of work. A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don’t fully use their skills and knowledge. Young adults with bachelor’s degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs — waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example — and that’s confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans. An analysis of government data conducted for The Associated Press lays bare the highly uneven prospects for...

Newt Gingrich has been inching towards the door over the last couple of days, admitting that tonight’s Delaware primary is likely a make-or-break situation for his campaign. However, a new poll out today might give the former Speaker some pause. Public Policy Polling shows that Mitt Romney leads in the state of Texas by a 45% to 35% margin, putting Gingrich within striking distance. Coming up lame in his home state, only 14% of GOP supporters support Ron Paul. More encouraging for Gingrich, or troubling for Romney, is that the presumptive nominee is trailing the former Speaker 45% to 40%...

"I have had to live with being constantly tired all my life and I walk around in a constant daze", says the former Emmerdale actressFormer Emmerdale actress ­Roxanne Pallett, 29, has suffered from insomnia since childhood. Her chronic sleep problem was at its worst when her best friend committed suicide two years ago. Here she tells how it can affect her ability to lead a normal life… Being constantly tired is something I have had to live with all my life and most days I walk around in a constant daze. Normally I can never ever get to sleep before...

“FDA is relying on 20th century regulatory science to evaluate 21st century medical products,” declared Food and Drug Administration Commissioner (FDA) Margaret Hamburg back in October 2010. One result: As biotech and medical discoveries accelerate, the number of new drugs approved by the agency remains basically flat. A 2010 study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by researchers from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas found that the time from drug discovery to marketing increased from eight years in 1960 to 12 to 15 years in 2010. Five years of this increase results from new regulations boosting the...

A Sacramento Superior Court judge has tentatively ruled that the state controller has no authority to judge whether the state budget is balanced or block lawmakers' pay as he did last June. In a bitter feud during last year's budget battle, Controller John Chiang determined that the budget passed by legislative Democrats was not balanced. Using new powers he believed he had under voter-approved Proposition 25, Chiang then blocked lawmakers' pay and expense money for 12 days until they cut a budget deal with Gov. Jerry Brown. In a tentative ruling today, Judge David I. Brown said that the controller...

An 18-year-old Egyptian girl who shed ‘blood tears’ claimed she had been touched by jinn, which are ghosts and spirits popular in Upper Egyptian folklore. According to a report in the Arabic language quotidian, Sabea’a, a girl named Dawa’a appeared on Al Nahar Television, to share her experience. She said she had been touched by tribe of about one-thousand jinn. Amr Al-Laithi, a Muslim scholar, recited verses from Qur’an as the teenager fell unconscious. When she woke up after about 20 minutes, she claimed she could not remember anything but was suffering an intense headache. The Muslim scholar explained that...

A kit-built, high-performance light plane crashed Monday in central Oregon, killing two men, the Deschutes County sheriff's office said. [snip] The victims were identified as Harry Mortimer League, 68, of Chicago and Patrick Franzen, 52, of Bend. Their bodies were recovered and their relatives have been notified, Davis said. The plane was described as a single-engine Lancair IV-Propjet. The cause of the crash was under investigation. [snip to end]

Outrage!  Or something!  Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has "stepped on a landmine" by having the temerity to appoint -- I hope you're sitting down -- an openly gay national security spokesman, according to one leader of a social conservative group.  Once you've pried yourself from the floor, feel free to persuse some choice excerpts from this person's incensed column:   Gov. Mitt Romney stepped on a landmine by appointing Richard Grenell, an out, loud and proud homosexual, to be his spokesman on national security and foreign policy issues. Grenell has for years been an outspoken advocate for homosexual...

Roman Catholic leaders are calling for two weeks of public protests against President Barack Obama's policies as they intensify their argument that the administration is engaged in a war on religion. The days between June 21 and July 4 have been set aside by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops which has sought to end the administration's contraception mandate, among other policies. The protests against the Obama administration’s policies could be “the game-changer” in the presidential election, one leading lay churchman told Newsmax on Tuesday. The protests, dubbed “A Fortnight for Freedom” will be an “unprecedented, aggressive attack” against policies...

In the wake of the Arab Spring, the Obama administration is grappling with how to handle Islamists, radical adherents to Islam. Particularly, the issue has come to the fore in regards to Egypt, which, as Reuel Marc Gerecht notes, "is now certain" to elect "an Islamist" as its leaders the next time the Egyptian people go to the polls. But some in the Obama administration are now seeing things differently. "The war on terror is over," a senior official in the State Department official tells the National Journal. "Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people...