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TAYLOR, Mich. (WXYZ) - A chaotic scene erupted at the Taylor Human Services Center when the crowd waiting for a Section 8 Housing voucher distribution got out of control. The center is located at Eureka and Lange Roads. That's between on Eureka, between Beech Daly and Inkster. Officers say thousands of people from all over the area were at the center at the time of the incident. 7 Action News is being told there were 1,000 vouchers available and 5,000 people showed up trying to get one. The crowd had grown overnight as more and more people arrived. Some of...

Houston trial lawyers Steve and Amber Mostyn say they’re giving $1 million to a gun-control group formed by former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly. Steve Mostyn is a major Democratic campaign contributor, backing candidates in Texas and nationally. He gave $3 million to Priorities USA Action, a super PAC aiding President Obama’s re-election. He’s perhaps best known in Texas for launching a media campaign against Rick Perry two years ago in which he chided the Republican governor for his reluctance to debate in his 2010 reelection race with a full-page newspaper ad depicting Perry and...

The attorney general for the District of Columbia, Irvin Nathan, announced Friday that he will not press charges against NBC News’ David Gregory nor any employee of the broadcast network for violating the city’s gun laws. Violation of the city's firearms laws carry a maximum $1,000 fine and one year in jail. Mr. Nathan wrote to an attorney representing Mr. Gregory and NBC News, Lee Levine of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, LLP, that, “OAG has made this determination, despite the clarity of the violation of this important law, because under all of the circumstances here a prosecution would not...

SALEM -- Gov. John Kitzhaber says he won't lead the charge on tougher gun control laws in Oregon, but he expects the Legislature to take up the issue and will support what he considers to be reasonable changes. In an interview with The Oregonian about the upcoming session, Kitzhaber confided that he's a "big supporter of the Second Amendment" and owns a bolt-action .22 hunting rifle that belonged to his grandfather. "It's a lovely piece," he said, and it doesn't just hang on a wall. "I go out and shoot it. Shoot at cans. A good can can see me...

HYDERABAD: India has denied award-winning British journalist Yvonne Ridley a visa. She was scheduled to address the Spring of Islam conference being held here by the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. The London-based journalist, who was captured by the Taliban on an undercover assignment in Afghanistan in 2001 and converted to Islam after her release in 2003, was to address various sessions at the three-day conference, which began Friday. "The Indian Government is refusing to give me a conference visa to address 50,000 women in Hyderabad about women's rights ... I would have thought after the catastrophic handling of the Dehli rape case,...

AUGUSTA, Maine — In the aftermath of the Dec. 14 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., lobbyists and lawmakers expect between 40 and 60 bills related to gun violence to be submitted to the Maine Legislature before the Jan. 18 deadline. Most of the proposed legislation will go to the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. Two new members of that panel, Rep. Timothy Marks, D-Pittston, and Rep. Mark Dion, D-Portland, the House chairman, are former police officers. They bring decades of firsthand experience dealing with gun violence in Maine to the discussion. That experience leaves...

White House responds to secession petitions, calls for unity instead By Alexandra Jaffe - 01/12/13 10:01 AM ET The White House has responded to a handful of petitions calling for various states to be given the right to secede from the United States, calling for unity and participatory government instead. "In a nation of 300 million people — each with their own set of deeply-held beliefs — democracy can be noisy and controversial. And that's a good thing. Free and open debate is what makes this country work, and many people around the world risk their lives every day for...

Former presidents have to give up rides on Air Force One. But now they don't have to give up being shadowed by the armed-and-earpieced bodyguards of the Secret Service. President Barack Obama on Thursday signed into a law a measure giving him, George W. Bush and future former presidents and their spouses lifetime Secret Service protection, the White House announced. The legislation, crafted by Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, rolls back a mid-1990s law that imposed a 10-year limit on Secret Service protection for former presidents. Bush would have been the first former commander in chief affected.

Chinese price manipulation has taken its toll on the U.S. economy Rare earth metals are an increasingly integral part of everything from automobiles to television sets.  But the precious metals are tightly controlled by China, with an excess of 95 percent of current suplly coming from Chinese-owned mines and refineries.  The degree of control has allowed China to manipulate prices, cutting back on demand to sell less material for the same amount of profit, any businessperson's dream. I. New Private-Public Partnership Sets Aim on Chinese Mineral Hegemony The problem is that it takes several years or more to bring rare...

Christmas season was a disappointment. GDP growth is slowing. Taxes are going up. What’s the retail industry to do? There’s really only one choice: close more stores. Through the first nine months of 2012, closings were up 25% over the same period from the prior year (fourth quarter numbers aren’t available just yet). And Howard Davidowitz, chairman of retail banker and consultant Davidowitz & Associates, expects roughly the same pace of closings in 2013. “The consumer is 70% of GDP. If growth is decelerating, how are you going to have (retail) growth? You’re not, you’re going to go on closing...

Even as it runs ads thanking America for a $182 billion bailout, insurer AIG might join a lawsuit claiming that shareholders were unfairly hurt by the terms of the federal rescue that kept it out of bankruptcy four years ago.

Following the defeat of 2012, it seems as if everyone – yours truly included – has an opinion about where the conservative movement goes from here. But right now presents an excellent opportunity to rally the Right again. Following the fiscal cliff fiasco, the next big battle inside the beltway will be the debt ceiling in March. Some Republicans who caved on the fiscal cliff are already talking tough. Take Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey, for example. After voting for the largest tax increase in 20 years, Toomey is one of several Republicans now saying the debt ceiling showdown may require...

An Ohio school board has unanimously voted to place armed custodians on their k-12 campus in an effort to better protect their students from a future mass shooting. Following Wednesday's believed unprecedented 5-0 vote in the state, four male janitors were the first to volunteer to arm themselves with their own handguns on the rural Montpelier campus, the Toledo Blade reports. The vote will permit only non-teaching employees to carry the firearms on the campus, so long as they complete a weapons training course. 'It's kind of a sign of the times,' Superintendent Jamies Grime said on Friday. The move...

MINNEAPOLIS — Information and examples of how to reduce gun violence will be shared at a regional conference on gun violence Thursday. Law enforcement leaders and elected officials from several Midwestern cities and scholars who study crime and violence are expected to participate in the day-long conference in Minneapolis. Mayor R.T. Rybak said the planning of this regional gun summit began last year before the mass shootings at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis and at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut. He said those tragic events have added urgency to efforts to fight gun violence. Rybak said it is important...

Thursday was inauguration day in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez — who has dominated Venezuelan politics one way or another for 14 years — was again sworn in as President. Only this time, the authoritarian populist could not take the oath in person. He departed for cancer surgery in Cuba on Dec. 10, 2012, and has not been seen in public since. This latest surgery is his fourth round of treatment in Cuba. Few expect Chavez to serve out this next six-year presidential term.

Mental-health professionals, not more guns, are the way to address school violence, Sen. Al Franken said on Wednesday. The Minnesota Democrat, in Duluth to announce legislation related to mental health, said he hasn’t seen support for proposals to arm teachers or place armed guards in schools. “In the discussion that I’ve had with Minnesota teachers and school officials, they don’t think that’s the solution,” Franken said after a news conference at the Federal Building in Duluth. “There’s agreement in the educational community in Minnesota … that we need more counselors, and we need more mental-health professionals in our schools.” The...

As we reflect on 2012, there were a number of gun-related incidents that made many of us outraged. The senseless shootings at the movie theater in Aurora, Colo.; the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin shootings in Oak Creek; and, most recently, the shootings in Newtown, Conn., that took the lives of innocent children and their teachers. Quite often, gun violence has been associated with urban central city neighborhoods, and it is true that urban violence is much too prevalent. For example, both locally and nationally, in some African-American neighborhoods, we have black males killing other black males with guns in alarming...

In the past few weeks there has been a veritable explosion of White House petitions ranging from the bizarre to the surreal to the outright absurd, including such demands as Texas (and other southern states) seceding, deporting Piers Morgan, not deporting Piers Morgan, creating a Joe Biden sitcom, and even making a total mockery out of the US, and global, monetary system and evading the debt ceiling using a cheap, platinum coin-based parlor trick. All of these are, for lack of a better word, a la carte distractions launched by bored American citizens, meant to evade the menial drudgery of...

Hong Kong action hero Jackie Chan has once again provoked criticism, this time from an American blogger, after suggesting on Chinese television that the US is the "most corrupt" country in the world. "When you talk about corruption -- the whole world, is there corruption in the United States? The most corrupt in the world!" the Rush Hour star, who has made headlines recently for his controversial views, told Phoenix TV last month. Chan reaffirmed his view after the show's host questioned him -- "Of course! Where did the great breakdown come from? The world, the United States started it,"...

MINNEAPOLIS — A joint statement from legislators asks Vice President Joe Biden to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's ability to research gun violence. The statement is signed by Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., and three other House Democrats. It says while the law does not legally prohibit data collection on gun violence, "it has a chilling effect on the CDC Center for Injury Prevention and Control which compiles and analyzes data in order to help protect people from deaths and injuries both accidental and intentional." Next week, Biden is expected to reveal anti-gun violence proposals that likely include...