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Germany wants to end all fossil fuel imports from Russia, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Tuesday. "Germany wants to completely phase out fossil fuel dependence on Russia," Baerbock told the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue conference. "Germany has already halved its imports in the last few weeks, especially in hard coal, and we will not only halve this in all other areas, we will also completely phase out fossil fuels that come from Russia," she added.

U.S.—Pioneering smart thermostat company Matrimostat announced a brand-new thermostat that will automatically set the temperature to whatever your wife wants. “The Matrimostat 2000 uses advanced quantum technology to identify your wife’s temperature preference before she even mentions it --often before she even knows it!” says CTO Ted Shmarmanarf. “It’s a lot more challenging than it sounds. Research showed that many women don’t know what they want until at least an hour after they wish it had already happened, so the thermostat had to be able to accommodate for that.” "Now this is one smart thermostat." Shmarmanarf says that the solution...

Newly appointed White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci has posted his support for stringent gun-control laws – a position that would be at odds with President Trump’s views. “I have always been for strong gun control laws,” Scaramucci tweeted after the December 2012 shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in which 20 kids were gunned down. In August 2012, he tweeted: “We (the USA) has 5% of the world’s population but 50% of the world’s guns. Enough is enough. It is just common sense it apply more controls.”

France's foreign minister called on Saturday for the European Union to move ahead quickly to seal the terms of a British exit, arguing that the other 27 members needed to give the bloc new purpose or risk populism taking hold. "Negotiations have to go quickly in the common interest," Jean-Marc Ayrault said on his way to a meeting in Berlin of foreign ministers from the six founding members of the EU - Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Britain voted on Thursday to leave the EU, forcing the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron and dealing the biggest...

The FBI is ready to indict Hillary Clinton and if its recommendation isn't followed by the U.S. attorney general, the agency's investigators plan to blow the whistle and go public with their findings, former U.S. House Majority leader Tom DeLay tells Newsmax TV. "I have friends that are in the FBI and they tell me they're ready to indict," DeLay said Monday on "The Steve Malzberg Show." "They're ready to recommend an indictment and they also say that if the attorney general does not indict, they're going public."

Forget Fort Knox or the Federal Reserve. Texas has decided to start keeping its gold holdings within in its own borders. But what makes sense politically in such a sovereignty-loving place is creating a logistical conundrum. Texas is the only state that owns an actual stockpile of gold, according to public sector and financial industry experts - not just gold futures or investment positions, but approximately 5,600 gold bars worth around $650 million. The holdings, stored at a New York bank, for some harken back to century-old fears about the security of currency not backed by shiny bullion. The Legislature's...

In a Blog post which may be found here, Deacon Ryan Duns argues that same-sex "marriage" could actually be beneficial to society. Deacon Duns quotes from Louis Dupre, who said that, "The quality of a civilization may be measured both by the complexity of its ingredients and by the harmony of their order. The more diverse elements it succeeds in integrating within a harmonious and unified balance, the greater its potential and, usually, its achievements are." (Louis Dupré, Passage to Modernity, 29). Then this confused soul writes, "...the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) has...

A “Wants” based consumption = Satisfying Wants = Greed = Spending = Waste = Not Being Green = Being Mean = Socialism Or A “Needs” based consumption = Satisfying Needs = Conservation = Thrift = Saving = Investment = Increased Efficiency = Lower Prices = Less Waste = Being Green = Being Nice = Capitalism

Almost all of them jumped alone, although eyewitnesses talked of a couple who held hands as they fell. One woman, in a final act of modesty, appeared to be holding down her skirt. Others tried to make parachutes out of curtains or tablecloths, only to have them wrenched from their grip by the force of their descent. The fall was said to take about ten seconds. It would vary according to the body position and how long it took to reach terminal velocity — around 125mph in most cases, but if someone fell head down with their body straight, as

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is demanding records from the White House about Democratic Party-organized and fundraising-related events involving the Obama administration, POLITICO's Jake Sherman reports. Issa's Monday letter to the White House, posted here, cites a variety of press reports including some in POLITICO about fundraising-related activity involving President Barack Obama and his aides. The events include a Democratic National Committee-organized meeting with Wall Street donors in March and the recent videotaping of a fundraising appeal by Obama at the White House.

The wise man smiled and proclaimed that government should use "regulatory steps" as well as market forces to intervene in the power generation sector. The man also told his UC Berkeley audience that government should set higher targets for non-fossil-fuel-based energy production and penalize producers that don't comply. The issuer of these decrees was John Bryson, who at the time just happened to be CEO of Edison International, a company whose fortunes would increase under alternative energy mandates. Bryson now happens to be President Obama's nominee to head the Commerce Department. Just another day in Barack Obama's crony capitalist paradise....

Unprecedented accusation against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: a Muslim cleric accused the Iranian president of wanting "friendship with Israel," an Iranian website associated with the opposition reported on Thursday. According to religious scholar Mahmoud Nubian, Ahmadinejad's top adviser Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei stated three years ago that Iran should have "friendly ties" with the Jewish State, but Ahmadinejad has refrained from reiterating this position in public because of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's fierce objection. Nubian further claimed that the Iranian president personally told him that he supported Mashaei's statement, but couldn’t say anything out of respect to the leader.

I’m completely speechless. What? What did he say? Really?

Participants of 50-member delegation that met with president says he also relayed that Palestinians 'don't feel confident' about Netanyahu's commitment to territorial concessions and urged Israel 'search your souls' about seriousness on peace. U.S. President Barack Obama told Jewish leaders this week that Israel must use its military, political and cultural strength to create a context for peace with the Palestinians, according to participants of a 50-member delegation that met the president at the White House on Tuesday. Obama stressed to the delegates of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations that Washington was committed in its support...

JERUSALEM – An international "crisis management" group led by billionaire George Soros long has petitioned for the Algerian government to cease "excessive" military activities against al-Qaida-linked groups and to allow organizations seeking to create an Islamic state to participate in the Algerian government. The organization, the International Crisis Group, also is tied strongly to the Egyptian opposition movement whose protests led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.

(CNN) -- Facebook wants your address and mobile phone number. But it's not sure exactly how to ask. It's a complicated digital courtship, particularly because Facebook doesn't just want this data for itself -- it wants to "share" this info with all of its friends, which in this case happens to be app developers (think FarmVille, Compare People and Where I've Been -- all that non-Facebook stuff that pops up in your news feed). That may sound confusing, but the debate over this Facebook phone-number-sharing -- which caused Facebook to backtrack a bit from the request after bloggers and users...

Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSJ), a charity that campaigns for social change, delivered a petition with 10,000 signatures to Fox News Thursday demanding that talk show host Glenn Beck get the pink slip. The petition drive began in November after Fox News aired a three-part Beck special on businessman and philanthropist George Soros called "Puppet Master." The television show was deemed anti-Semitic by many in the media and Jewish groups. Beck once said that his election coverage goal was to "make George Soros cry," which is "hard to do," as Soros "saw people into gas chambers."

The Democrat set to face off against Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on the House Oversight panel suggested brokering an agreement between Issa and the Obama administration on the public release of sensitive information to congressional investigators. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the incoming ranking member of the committee, said it might be possible to negotiate a compromise that would avoid exposing national security secrets or other privileged information. "I think that Mr. Issa and I should sit down and try to figure this out. Make sure the country isn't being threatened," Cummings said on Monday during an appearance on MSNBC.

Advertising often results in overspending and over-consumption by creating artificially induced needs. The usual catch phrases are "New", "An exclusive offer", "Everyone has one of these", and/or "You deserve the best." Other fallacious "Protect your children with ..." not to mention lastly "Want to know what women really like?" manipulate the minds of targeted groups and raise/lower self esteem to encourage people to purchase their products.

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) on Wednesday called for President Obama's "czars," or appointed high-level advisers, to testify before Congress about their "authority and responsibilities" in the executive branch. The president's "czars" have become a point of controversy among his opponents because they do not have to be confirmed by the Senate as cabinet-level officials do.