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Canadian police confirmed an arrest has been made in the Netherlands in the case of a Canadian teenager who was blackmailed to expose herself in front of a webcam. The 15-year-old later committed suicide after detailing her harassment on a YouTube video watched by millions around the world. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Insp. Paulette Freill said Thursday a suspect was arrested in the Netherlands and charged with extortion, luring and criminal harassment and possession of child pornography for the purpose of distribution. Police did not release the name of the 35-year-old man and declined to release specifics of the case...

Original Title:American Supersonic Airliners: Race for a Dream Boeing-2707 SST: a Supersonic Marvel, Largely Forgotten Today Capable of transporting 296 passengers across the ocean at 2900 km/h, developed 40 years ago, in 1968... The Sixties (or for that matter, the Fifties) were truly amazing years when it comes to development of fascinating - and often futuristic - technology. The automotive industry, for example, entertained public imagination with powerful full-size cars, a true embodiment of the "American dream" and sheer optimism of the times. In space exploration, we reached all the way to the Moon; in air travel, the dream of...

A fifth-grade teacher in Cambridge who is facing a charge of transportation of child pornography admitted to secretly videotaping children changing in and out of their clothes on more than one occasion, according to federal law enforcement officials. Josh A. Wairi, 27, of Somerville was charged today in federal court in Boston in a criminal complaint filed by a US postal inspector. In the affidavit, the inspector detailed a hunt for Wairi through cyberspace, kicked off by tips from America Online and Dropbox Inc. The search eventually led to Wairi’s Somerville apartment, where law enforcement officials executed a search warrant...

Police say a high school vice principal who had been rescued from a sinking South Korean ferry has been found hanging from a tree. ((snip)) A police officer says the vice principal, identified only by his surname Kang, was found dead on the island of Jindo where rescued passengers have taken shelter.

An avalanche swept down a slope of Mount Everest on Friday along a route used to ascend the world's highest peak, killing at least 13 people in the mountain's deadliest disaster. NBC News confirmed that all of the dead were Sherpa guides. The guides had gone early in the morning to fix the ropes for hundreds of climbers when the avalanche hit them just below Camp 2 around 6:30 a.m. local time, Nepal Tourism Ministry official Krishna Lamsal told The Associated Press. Tilak Ram Pandey, an official at the ministry's mountaineering department, later told Reuters that some other people were...

Well I can say this much for Janet Yellen, she sure learned how to jawbone the market, a skill that was notably lacking in her predecessor Ben Bernancke. On Wednesday the market gapped open, only to follow a recent pattern of the gap gains eroding. But then Janet stepped in. In a speech to the Economic club of New York, Yellen acknowledged that while the economy has made some strides towards recovery the jobs market is at least, if not more than, two years away from healing. That means that stock market types, whatever else may be happening on...

The left's tyrannical suppression of opposing views would be less farcical if leftists weren't such pseudo-champions of tolerance and freedom of expression. In our leftist-dominated culture, the permitted categories of speech are becoming ever more restrictive. If, for example, you are a conservative radio talk show host, you must always remain vigilant because the left wants to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine to suppress the opposing viewpoint and re-establish its major-media monopoly. If you own a small catering company and same-sex marriage violates your religious beliefs, the left wants to force you to provide food for same-sex marriage ceremonies. If you...

President Obama is right. He told Major Garrett of CBS this week that "Mr. Putin's decisions aren't just bad for Ukraine. Over the long term, they're going to be bad for Russia." I believe that Putin's adventures in Russia's "near abroad" are a mistake. Indeed, they are part of a whole tapestry of wrongheadedness. It's also bad for the Kremlin to crush dissent, censor the news and hobble the economy by handing it over to oligarchs and a kleptocratic bureaucracy. Putin's scapegoating and demonizing of gays isn't only morally wrong, it's not in Russia's long-term interests either. That Putin prefers...

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- A story that sounds like a movie script is slowly grinding its way to trial. All of the 29 defendants in the massive corruption case involving suspended State Senator Leland Yee and reputed gangster Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow appeared in federal court Thursday. With so many defendants, lawyers, and documents, the judge is trying to set up a system to manage what could be an unwieldy trial. What makes it even harder is that not everyone's on the same page. The frustration is beginning to show. There are 29 defendants, even more lawyers, a 137 page...

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Editor's note: This column was co-authored by Tim Graham. For its second season, the creators of the FX series "The Americans" have chosen a new source for insight into the Cold War during the Reagan years -- one Lt. Col. Oliver North. It's a dramatic reversal from the first season, and it has infuriated some hard leftists. The show began with the shocking promise from creator Joel Weisberg that the series' heroes would be KGB agents: "We're making them the sympathetic characters. I'd go so far as to say they're the heroes." It quickly became apparent that these characters could...

The world-famous mog pretty much blew everyone else out of the water when it came to her outfit choice, after getting style inspiration from a certain pop superstar. Looking her usual *ahem* cheerful self, GC showed up with Pharell's famous over-sized hat sitting casually on a tilt... pulling it off like a pro. Looking suitably unimpressed with the whole event, the 2-year-old greeted the screaming fans with her icy glare, before heading inside.

Critics of the SAT and other standardized testing are disregarding the data. The College Board—the standardized testing behemoth that develops and administers the SAT and other tests—has redesigned its flagship product again. Beginning in spring 2016, the writing section will be optional, the reading section will no longer test “obscure” vocabulary words, and the math section will put more emphasis on solving problems with real-world relevance. Overall, as the College Board explains on its website, “The redesigned SAT will more closely reflect the real work of college and career, where a flexible command of evidence—whether found in text or graphic...

Christian radio broadcaster James Dobson has won a temporary injunction preventing the federal government from requiring his ministry to include the morning-after pill and other emergency contraception in its health insurance. A federal judge in Denver issued the injunction Thursday. Dobson sued in December, saying the Affordable Care Act mandate to provide the contraception violates the religious beliefs of his Colorado Springs-based ministry, called Family Talk.

After the Civil War, Robert E. Lee accepted a position as president of what was then called Washington College. By all accounts, he served the school well and had a nice end of life. After his death, Washington College was renamed Washington & Lee. Today, many black people attend the university that bears Marse Robert’s surname, so I guess we won. But a group of black law students at Washington & Lee Law School is getting really sick of the university’s consistent, stars-and-bars waving support of Lee’s legacy and the whitewashing (no pun intended) of what that legacy represents. They’ve...

Britain's Labour Party leader Ed Miliband has conscripted the services of American campaigns professional David Axelrod, otherwise known as the architect behind President Barack Obama's U.S. election victory in 2008. The appointment of Axelrod to the Labour team is the latest in a long line of foreign consultants brought in to try and help Ed Miliband's team on the run up to the UK General Election in May 2015. Axelrod follows in the footsteps of 69-year-old U.S. community organiser Arnie Graf, who embarrassed Labour by claiming he was working for them, rather than consulting for them, without a UK work...

It used to be that if you went to a college-level debate tournament, the students you’d see would be bookish future lawyers from elite universities, most of them white. In matching navy blazers, they’d recite academic arguments for and against various government policies. It was tame, predictable, and, frankly, boring. No more. These days, an increasingly diverse group of participants has transformed debate competitions, mounting challenges to traditional form and content by incorporating personal experience, performance, and radical politics. These “alternative-style” debaters have achieved success, too, taking top honors at national collegiate tournaments over the past few years. But this...

Last week, masked men in camouflage garb with no insignia, dressed and equipped like Russian special forces, started taking over police stations and other government buildings in the Donets basin in Eastern Ukraine. They appeared to be working in tandem with local militias in defying the Ukrainian government. This week, the Ukrainian government has responded by sending in military forces to counter these actions. There has been shooting and violence. But Ukraine's military doesn't seem capable of asserting control. So Vladimir Putin's Russia, with some 40,000 troops massed just outside Ukraine, seems to have taken effective control of a significant...

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Common Core State Standards could be the under-the-radar issue of the 2014 campaign. Business leaders and politicians had their hearts in the right place. We are a highly mobile society. People are likely to move more than once for jobs. Often they move their whole families to new school districts. Sometimes families move across the country. Children, particularly children whose parents are in the military, are prone to be disadvantaged in education if they move around. A school in one part of the country may be ahead of, behind or on altogether different subjects than a former school is. Because...

For Steve Vittitoe, bitcoin is a fun way to make some extra money. This unassuming 31-year-old family man, who is a computer programmer for a cybersecurity firm, runs a mini bitcoin-mining operation from the basement of his home in Valparaiso, Ind.

A mother was charged Wednesday with trying to kill her three teenage children by driving into the Delaware River, the Burlington County Prosecutor and Florence Township Police announced. “The car was nose down into the water. I heard screaming,” says Darnell Taylor. Taylor was driving by when he saw what was happening and jumped in to help the three teenagers — ages 13, 14 and 15 — and their mother to safety. “The car was going under fast. Once the back window got kicked out, the water started coming in through the window and it was filling up even more,”...

Op-ed: US Secretary of State has failed in his mission, mainly due to the fact that both sides did not desire its success. But he also did not dare to really push them to succeed. Nothing is more fitting to illustrate and summarize the wretchedness of US Secretary of State John Kerry's mission - that some term as "negotiations" - than its final note. Among all the facts, and all the fundamental differences between the two sides, Kerry chosen to blame the crisis in talks - seemingly just to spite - on Uri Ariel's announcement of further construction in Jerusalem....

One of the most remarkable aspects of the crucifixion of Jesus is his humble reserve. As God he has all power to end his suffering and humiliation in an instant. He had already reminded Peter, Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”(Matt26:52-54)And now as he hung on the Cross, Satan and the crowds give him one last and final temptation, the call  to come down from the...

In a 2006 interview, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said the Constitution is “basically about” one word — “democracy” — that appears in neither that document nor the Declaration of Independence. Democracy is America’s way of allocating political power. The Constitution, however, was adopted to confine that power in order to “secure the blessings of” that which simultaneously justifies and limits democratic government — natural liberty. The fundamental division in U.S. politics is between those who take their bearings from the individual’s right to a capacious, indeed indefinite, realm of freedom, and those whose fundamental value is the right of...

MAURICE RIVER TWP. — A Cumberland County woman argues that the state Motor Vehicle Commission’s alleged denial of issuing an “8theist” license plate violated her First Amendment rights, according to a lawsuit filed on Thursday.

Former Barcelona captain Juan Manuel Asensi believes there is something bothering Lionel Messi, but he can’t put his finger on what. Asensi has told La Xarxa that he doesn’t believe Messi is bothered by the delay in agreeing a new contract with Barcelona and nor does he feel the Argentina forward is already concentrating on the World Cup. “I’m surprised and concerned. Something must have happened because Messi has always been committed to the most difficult games,” AS reports Asensi as saying. “Something’s happened and it must be big because Messi’s attitude hasn’t been right in recent games. He must...

...Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday again vigorously denied Western claims that Russian forces were operating in eastern Ukraine. But he also finally confirmed what had long been suspected and that he had repeatedly denied: that the well-armed forces with no insignia on their uniforms that took control of Crimea last month were in fact Russian troops.

MOSCOW — Russia's economy has been hit hard by the turmoil in neighboring Ukraine, Kremlin officials said Wednesday, as pro-Russia separatists battled to take over more territory in Ukraine's east — and potentially add to Moscow's economic burden. Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region last month and the instability it created in Russian financial markets were cited by government officials for record capital flight and sharply downgraded growth forecasts for the country. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that instead of projected 2.5% growth this year, Russia's economy might show no growth at all.

Russia should not be concerned about NATO expansion, as they are not going to do anything rather than some symbolic financial gestures, Jeffrey F. Addicott, Director of Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University School of Law in Texas told RIA Novosti. “Putin understands that NATO is largely a paper tiger,” Addicott said, adding that the alliance is now more in a defensive mode. “The Russian leader also realizes that their signals to send out some additional ships here and there, or do some additional flights really mean nothing.” Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke for almost four hours to...

New York has joined the campaign to effectively end the Electoral College’s role in determining winners of presidential elections. Under the National Popular Vote Compact, which Gov. Cuomo signed off on Tuesday, the state has agreed to award its electoral college votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the national popular vote. Currently New York’s electoral colleges votes go to the winner of the state’s popular vote. …

Impossible planets, mysterious noises from the deep, and inexplicable artifacts buried for centuries, there are some things even the smartest of scientists struggle to explain. Take a look at the ten most baffling discoveries.

Sanctions imposed against Russia are working as a deterrent, President Barack Obama and other White House senior administration officials said Wednesday in a detailed defense and explanation of the U.S. response to the escalating crisis in Ukraine. And new sanctions could be imposed as early as Friday, with key Putin allies, institutions and top oligarchs among the targets, other senior administration officials said.

The Russian leader blames American hypocrisy for the deterioration between the two nations, which have reached they lowest point since the end of the Cold War. President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that trust between Russia and the United States had been damaged before the crisis in Ukraine, but added that he wanted to restore their cooperation and had no interest in pushing his country behind a Soviet-style Iron Curtain. "To a certain extent trust has been lost, but we do not think we are to blame," Putin said in a televised phone-in with the nation. He said it was...

April 18, 2014Friday of the Passion of the Lord (Good Friday)    Reading 1 Is 52:13-53:12 See, my servant shall prosper,he shall be raised high and greatly exalted.Even as many were amazed at himCso marred was his look beyond human semblanceand his appearance beyond that of the sons of manCso shall he startle many nations,because of him kings shall stand speechless;for those who have not been told shall see,those who have not heard shall ponder it. Who would believe what we have heard?To whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?He grew up like a sapling before him,like...

Washington state has blown past its targets for signing up new Medicaid participants under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The program’s ranks have grown roughly 25 percent in the past six months, helping fulfill one of the act’s key goals to provide health care to nearly all Americans. By the end of March, more than 285,000 adults who are newly eligible to participate in Medicaid had signed up for coverage. That’s twice the number officials had hoped to reach by then, and a target they hadn’t expected to hit for three more years.

“Lead Us Not into Temptation” (The Lord’s Prayer; Luke 22:1-46) During this Lenten season we’ve been doing a series on the Lord’s Prayer called “Lord, Teach Us to Pray.” And that’s exactly what our Lord does on this Holy Thursday evening. He teaches us to pray. That’s what he instructs us to do, that’s what he gives us an example of doing, and, even more than that, he prays for us. In particular, on this night Jesus instructs his disciples to pray for strength in the face of temptation. “Pray that you may not enter into temptation,” Jesus tells them...

UNMISS said in a statement that "the armed mob forced entry into the site and opened fire on the internally displaced persons sheltering inside the base". Its forces returned fire -- first firing warning shots and then taking part in a ferocious gun battle -- before the fighters retreated, it added. The civilians had fled into the base weeks ago amid brutal ethnic massacres in the world's newest nation. Information Minister Michael Makuei said that a "huge number" of gunmen had come seeking revenge for the rebel capture of the oil town of Bentiu two days ago hoping to kill...

Glenn Beck worked the crowd like a preacher at a rally this month in Louisville, Ky., declaring that God had responded to conservatives’ prayers by sending a slate of tea party candidates to wrest control of the Republican Party from Mitch McConnell. But there was a more earthly benefit to the arrangement that brought Beck to the rally. It was organized by the tea party nonprofit group FreedomWorks, which had endorsed the candidates — and which has paid more than $6 million in recent years to have Beck promote the group, its initiatives and events. ..............

Berlin (AFP) - The German government rejected Wednesday a call by two newspapers to remove Russian tanks from a World War II memorial in central Berlin in protest against spiralling tensions in Ukraine. The top-selling daily Bild and local tabloid B.Z. launched a petition drive Tuesday to urge parliament to send a message to Moscow against last month's annexation of Crimean peninsula and the military build-up on Ukraine's eastern border. However Chancellor Angela Merkel's deputy spokesman Georg Streiter quashed the bid Wednesday, noting that Berlin had signed a 1990 treaty with Russia pledging to "respect, maintain and care for" the...

Lorrie R. and her family live near a heavily wooded park that is behind a train station and a very busy highway in south Florida. Every morning, they take out their very large Akita, Lily, there for a walk. Despite the highway and trains, the park is a refuge for many birds and animals. Unfortunately, it’s also the place where other people dump their pets. In recent months, Lorrie have discovered 5 animals in the park and find birds in distress. One day, They were out for a usual walk with her dog Lily, she said. ‘I heard a loud...

Slavyansk (Ukraine) (AFP) - It's a welcome more suited for rock stars and matinee idols, not necessarily black-masked soldiers in camouflage here to protect a rebellion. "You're our heroes! We love you!" the crowd clamours, smartphones in hand to capture history in this eastern Ukrainian town of Slavyansk with a population of 140,000, pro-Moscow Russian speakers in their vast majority. Slavyansk is now part of a Kiev-ruled Ukraine in name only. Since Saturday, pro-Russian insurgents have controlled every political lever in town: the town hall, the police station and even the secret service headquarters, taking any weapons still left for...

The cattle-ranch protest in Nevada was an armed insurrection by the Tea Party. One thousand Tea Party, so-called “patriots,” came to Bunkerville, NV, brandished weapons and the government backed down. Other mass protests in America have either ended in arrests or violent clashes between authorities and protesters. There is an obvious double standard here because the government relented and turned away. Why did the government do this? The main difference between many other mass protests and the cattle-ranch protest is that the cattle-ranch protesters were armed with handguns and assault rifles. Is American in such a state where the new...

Russia has achieved a strategic psychological victory over NATO in the Ukraine with the announcement by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva that an agreement had been reached with Ukrainian and NATO member diplomats to ease tensions in the country. Over the last few weeks, NATO has been shown to be economically unstable, fully dependent on Russian energy, and lacking a meaningful military deterrent. Russia has brutally humiliated NATO and has strategically reemerged as the dominant nation in Europe. The Geneva, Switzerland, talks were originally supposed to focus on disarming illegal militant groups in Ukraine, de-escalating tensions, and instituting the...

Staunton, April 17 – If current trends continue, half of the population of the Russian Federation in its current borders will consist of immigrants, according to a new Moscow study, a conclusion clearly intended to feed anti-immigrant feelings and, more speculatively, designed to promote a discussion of what can and should be done, including the changing of those borders. If half of the country’s population in 2050 does in fact consist of migrants, that country will have a Muslim majority, given the share of indigenous Muslim peoples already there. On the one hand, that is a frightening prospect for many...

One of the hallmarks of the Obama administration is that it is among the most corrupt administrations in living memory. The degree of corruption and thuggery to which many administration members have stooped would make even Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall fame blush. But what’s truly remarkable about the Obama administration is that its corruption is so unabashed.

The “reverend” not only discounted Christ’s sacrifice by suggesting we can all experience something akin to his suffering, he also found a way to turn the holy day into political fodder. Al Sharpton, the incredible shrinking man, has not only lost the majority of his weight in recent years; he has also shed any credibility he had left. For a man whose rise to prominence as a race hustler was on the back of a lying teenager named Tawana Brawley, he obviously had very little to begin with. Nevertheless, he still has the audacity to refer to himself as a...

I quoted the story as it was written some hours ago. But they've changed it, without acknowledging the change. WAS: Pushilin acknowledged the flyers were distributed by his organization but he disavowed their content, according to the web site Jews of Kiev, Ynet reported… NOW IS: Pushilin acknowledged that fliers were distributed under his organization's name in Donetsk but denied any connection to them, Ynet reported in Hebrew. This is a major change in reporting -- from Pushilin admitting his men to handing them out, to a mere acknowledgement that he's aware of leaftlets purporting to come from his organization....