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A federal judge in Florida has scheduled a trial for January for a case charging Bill and Hillary Clinton with RICO violations. **SNIP** According to Klayman, the Clintons, through mail and wire fraud and false statements, misappropriated documents which he was entitled to receive and possess under the Freedom of Information Act regarding Hillary Clinton’s involvement in releasing Israeli war and cyber-warfare plans and practices. Hillary Clinton orchestrated this release to harm and thwart Israeli plans to preemptively attack Iranian nuclear sites to stop the Islamic nation’s march to producing atomic weapons, according to Klayman. The claim also explains Klayman...

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — US authorities should probe the Clinton Foundation instead of going after FIFA officials abroad, Wall Street financial analyst Charles Ortel told Sputnik. “The FIFA prosecution is outrageous. It reflects a complete double standard,” Ortel said on Thursday. “The first thing that the United States should do is to get its own financial house in order.” **SNIP** Ortel, who is investigating the financial records of the Clinton Foundation, argued the US government should investigate institutions based within the country with suspect financial records rather officials in Zurich-based FIFA.

Lingering snow piles from the record-setting New England winter continue to plague the Boston area, even as the weather turns summer-like. A 75-foot-high snow mound in Boston's Seaport District has been reduced to a three-story pile of dirt and trash — including bicycles, traffic cones and even half a $5 bill — that remains encrusted in solid ice. In Boston, 108.6 inches of snow broke a two-decade-old record this past winter.

Clinton Foundation took at least $1,250,000 from Qatar and World Cup committee embroiled in soccer bribery scandal - and up to $100,000 from FIFA itself The fast-moving FIFA bribery scandal now has a Clinton connection, after news that the nation of Qatar and its 2022 World Cup organizing committee - and even FIFA itself - donated between $1.3 million and $5.55 million to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The scandal-hit football world authority is listed by the foundation as having handed over at least $50,001 and as much as $100,000 to the Clinton's controversial organization in a direct...

House Democrats, backed by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.), are pushing hard for the Department of Homeland Security to end its program of holding illegal immigrant families in “jail-like” detention centers. “We believe your department has not fully grasped the serious harm being inflicted upon mothers and their children in custody,” said a letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson signed by 135 lawmakers on Wednesday. In 2014, the DHS ramped up its practice of holding immigrant families in detention facilities amid an influx of 60,000 families arriving at the Mexican border. But lawmakers are...

**SNIP** In a CNBC interview released Tuesday, Sanders said Bill and Hillary Clinton’s money “hustle” makes the former secretary of state and her philandering former president husband out of touch with the average American voter. “Theoretically you could be a multibillionaire and, in fact, be very concerned about the issues of working people,” Sanders said. “Theoretically that’s true.” But “When you hustle money like that, you don’t sit in restaurants like this. You sit in restaurants where you spend—I don’t know what they spend—hundreds of dollars for dinner and so forth. That’s the world that you are accustomed to. And...

Hay fever misery to increase with global warming: Invasive ragweed to spread pollen further due to climate change Climate change could help a notorious invasive weed known to trigger severe allergy attacks to spread and bring misery to hay fever sufferers, experts have warned. Ragweed, also known as Ambrosia artemisiifolia, is native to North America but since the 1960s has been spreading rapidly across warmer parts of Europe. It is still rare in the UK, but researchers predict by 2050 it could be scattering pollen throughout much of Britain and northern Europe.

Japanese man flushes his dead wife's ashes down the loo at a supermarket saying that 'life was such a pain before she died' A Japanese man who hated his dead wife tried to flush her ashes down a toilet in a supermarket, local police said yesterday. Officers were baffled after ashes and human bone fragments, including a chin, were discovered in the toilet bowl at the store in Tokyo. But the 68-year-old man turned himself in to police and revealed he dumped his spouse’s remains there immediately after she was cremated last month.

Barack Obama has been putting his new Twitter account to good use, using it to support a little girl’s ideas on gay marriage. Five-year-old Yasmeen Faruqui wrote a letter to the President with a list of insightful requests, and was amazed when she received a reply. ‘Please stop war for our world, instead have a meeting’, Yasmeen said in the handwritten note. ‘Please give a speech to tell everyone they can marry who they want.’

Fresh air raids launched against ISIS close to ancient ruins in Palmyra amid fears ISIS will slaughter rare bird - reward offered in attempt to find bird Fresh air strikes have been launched against ISIS-controlled buildings in the ancient city of Palmyra amid fears ISIS will slaughter an endangered bird that is crucial to its species' survival. Prior to the city being overrun by ISIS last week, four of the exceptionally rare northern bald ibis were kept in a breeding colony. But three of these were abandoned in the fighting and a fourth - a female which knows the species'...

Link only - Memory of Rahway World War II vets kept alive in park

**SNIP** Professor Garrett makes the controversial point that carbon dioxide emissions, which are a major cause of runaway climate change, can only be stabilized by a complete collapse of the global industrial economy or society builds the equivalent of one nuclear reactor per day. "Stabilization of carbon dioxide emissions at current rates will require approximately 300 gigawatts of new non-carbon-dioxide-emitting power production capacity annually - approximately one new nuclear power plant (or equivalent) per day," Garrett says. "Physically, there are no other options without killing the economy." Every week new scientific reports are published that note how industrial civilization is...

Weather experts from around the world began convening in Geneva on Monday for a congress where Swiss Interior Minister Alain Berset emphasized the need to reduce the impact of natural disasters and climate change. Organizers of the congress, held by the World Meteorological Organization once every four years, say it will focus on how to strengthen weather and climate services to meet the needs of a growing global population and to cope with climate variability and change, extreme weather and related shocks on all socio-economic sectors. "To ensure sustainable development, the global community needs reliable information on the state of...

Almost 70 Oxford alumni have symbolically handed back their degrees to criticise the university’s weak policy on fossil fuels investment – which excludes only direct investment in oil sands and coal but fails to address other money invested in unsustainable sources of energy. Oxford University announced last week it would maintain its position of not having direct investment in high-risk oil sands and coal; it also pledged to follow environmental and social criteria for its investment. However, many have noted this policy does not go far enough, since it doesn’t rule out investment in all dirty energy sources. As a...

Congress should act immediately on President Obama's request for new use of force powers in the fight against Islamic militants, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday. “The ball is definitely in our court to take up this issue,” Pelosi said during a press briefing in the Capitol. “There should be an authorization for the use of military force as we go forward. It's long overdue.” The remarks were a rebuke of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who earlier this week called Obama's war powers request “irresponsible” and urged the president to “start over” with a fresh proposal. “The president's...

In the past three weeks, U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson of Orlando has been on a verbal tear.. He has cussed out journalists for asking about his girlfriend's political ambitions and offshore investment funds, blasted the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as "out-of-touch party bosses sipping cognac in a smoke-filled room" and called his ex-wife a gold digger. Such firebrand comments have been typical of his career. Now they have opened the potential for a bloody U.S. Senate primary fight next year with moderate U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy of Jupiter, who has quickly wrapped up endorsements from almost all of the party's...

**SNIP** Derision, rather than refutation, seems to be the norm of discourse in mainstream politics as well. Accordingly, opposing views are seen as a sign of some moral defect, not genuine disagreement. Earlier this year, for example, a prominent Democrat compared delaying the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as attorney general (she’s the first African-American woman to be given the role) to Jim Crow segregation. Elsewhere, questioning certain sexual-assault statistics makes one a ‘rape apologist’; proponents of traditional marriage are dismissed as ‘bigots’; and even President Obama is called sexist for arguing with Senator Elizabeth Warren about a trade bill (he...

**SNIP** Much like Clinton’s speech to Salesforce, the former secretary of state’s speech isn’t available online nor would ISRI give video upon request. The speech of ISRI’s 2015 convention speaker, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, appears on the company’s YouTube page, but Bill Clinton’s 2009 speech to the same group does not. But such is the case for almost all of Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches from 2014 — though most were given to massive audiences, almost none are available in their entirety online. What’s clear is that most, if not all, of the companies and organizations that hired Hillary...

Deep into the seventh year of his tenure, Barack Obama is thinking about his post-presidential legacy. We know this because he’s telling us so. In an interview this week with The Atlantic about the potential deal with Iran regarding its nuclear program, the president sought to use the fact of his relative youth and his consciousness about how history might judge him to his advantage: “Look, 20 years from now, I’m still going to be around, God willing. If Iran has a nuclear weapon, it’s my name on this. I think it’s fair to say that in addition to our...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Security Agency has begun winding down its collection and storage of American phone records after the Senate failed to agree on a path forward to change or extend the once-secret program ahead of its expiration at the end of the month. Barring an 11th hour compromise when the Senate returns to session May 31, a much-debated provision of the Patriot Act — and some other lesser known surveillance tools — will sunset at midnight that day. The change also would have a major impact on the FBI, which uses the Patriot Act and the other...