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Following pointed criticism from President Barack Obama for shelving “The Interview,” Sony Pictures Entertainment on Friday defended its decision, claiming it had no choice but to cancel the film’s Christmas Day theatrical release. Obama said during a press conference Friday that Sony “made a mistake” in dropping “The Interview.” However, the studio fired back, saying the cancellation happened only because the country’s top theater chains pulled out. “This was their decision,” Sony said in a statement.

In the ebullience that surrounded the supposed end of the Cold War, few analysts worried about the nuggets of communist opposition that the tide of freedom had failed to sweep away. Cuba was harmless. China was capitalizing. Those weird little statelets left in the USSR’s wake? Whatever, bro. ........................................................ In fact, Hollywood has amassed so much undisclosed TMZ fodder that it’s willing to do whatever the North says. There is no margin for error, and no taking of chances. Spend enough time in the right/wrong circles here in L.A., and you’ll pick up a tabloid’s worth of sordid stories. Sometimes...

To make the White House more secure from undocumented visitors who are just seeking the same kind of freedom to be harassed by a government agency with guns that all Americans enjoy, a blue ribbon panel is suggesting that a better fence be built around the White House. “An executive summary of the review released Thursday by the Homeland Security Department,” reports the Associated Press, “also concluded that the Secret Service needs more uniformed officers and plain clothes agents, better fencing at the White House and more training for officers.” The report comes on the heels of several undocumented visits...

The new defense spending bill includes $120 million for tanks that the Army has repeatedly said it doesn't want. For three years, the Army in numerous Congressional hearings has pushed a plan that essentially would have suspended tank building and upgrades in the U.S. for the first time since World War II. The Army suggested that production lines could be kept open through foreign sales. Each time, Congress has pushed back. Last week, Congress won again in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2015. In a statement, Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, said that Congress "recognizes the necessity...

Jeb Bush left the Florida governor’s office in January of 2007, after eight years of service. Three months later, he joined the board of a hospital company that had been pillaging government health programs and abusing patients, in Florida and around the country, for most of the years he sat in the governor’s office. Apart from a very generous compensation package, why did Bush sign on with such a tarnished company? And will whatever explanation he now offers hold up under the microscope of a presidential campaign? Tenet Healthcare Corp. is a national for-profit hospital company with a sordid history....

People cannot bring own guns to attraction KISSIMMEE, Fla. —A new tourist attraction promises to give people as young as 13 years old the chance to fire fully automatic weapons. Outside the new attraction, you can hear the unmistakable rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns inside. The automatic weapons are powerful and firing them is intense, but owners are hoping Orlando tourists will want to try the unique experience. "We see this as attractive to someone who might want to go bungee jumping -- adrenaline rush experience," said Bruce Nierenberg, general manager of Machine Gun America Orlando. "There are a lot of...

union carve outs in many minimum wage hikes. Unions may be pushing for resident Obama’s massive minimum wage hike, but many seek special carveouts from existing wage laws, according to a new study. The Chamber of Commerce analyzed dozens of minimum wage laws in cities across the country and found that many of the statutes exempt unionized employees from the requirement. Unions exploit these exemptions in order to make union labor more competitive with non-union shops. “Some local ordinances in particular include an exemption for employers that enter into a collective bargaining agreement with a union,” the report says. “This...

Somewhat remarkably, given that it has presided over the worst recovery–by far–of the post-war era, the Obama administration tries to slice and dice employment numbers to portray itself as a champion of job creation. There are, indeed, a few more jobs today than there were six years ago. Yet for most Americans, the employment scene has gotten worse, not better. Why is that? Senate Budget Committee staff offer data in explanation: According to BLS data, in November of 2007 there were 23.1 million foreign workers in the United States with jobs. Today, the BLS reports, there are 25.1 million foreign...

President Barack Obama says he will try to undertake an overhaul of the tax system with the new Republican majorities in Congress. He says the “devil is in the details.” He says the tax system needs to be simpler and fairer. He says some corporations engage in tax avoidance while others pay full freight. He also says he would like to combine tax changes with money for capital works projects. …

Canada on Friday imposed a new round of sanctions on Russia, including restrictions on exports of energy technology, as part of its effort to put pressure on President Vladimir Putin for Moscow’s involvement in a continuing conflict in neighboring Ukraine.

.....Since the recession began in December 2007, 1.2 million net jobs have been created in Texas. Only 700,000 net jobs have been created in the other 49 states combined......... Only North Dakota has outpaced Texas on percent job growth, thanks to jobs created by the fracking revolution. California, Texas’ biggest economic rival, has created 985,600 fewer net jobs during the same period. California’s 1.5 percent job growth is ten percentage points lower than Texas’ percent job growth.............................

CNBCStaples confirmed on Friday a data breach that may have affected more than 1 million cards. An in-house investigation detected malware at some point-of-sale systems at 115 locations, the company said in a press release. Staples has more than 1,400 U.S. retail stores. About 1.16 million cards may have been affected, the release said.

PARIS (AP) — Hundreds of Russian sailors pulled out of a French port Thursday, bearing perfumes for their loved ones but lacking the controversial bounty they came for: a 1-billion-euro, French-built warship that has become a hostage to the biggest East-West conflict since the Cold War. The Vladivostok helicopter carrier is part of a strange and divisive arms deal now on hold — and perhaps on the verge of collapse — because of the conflict in Ukraine. France built it for Russia's navy but is now having second thoughts, notably amid heavy U.S. criticism of the deal. After months training...

Look if you can’t screw up the economy in this country anymore, the least you can do is help out the one remaining Stalinist regime in the Americas. That’s the take away I get from Obama’s phone and pen ploy to “normalize” relations with Cuba. Since he’s failed at creating jobs here, maybe he’ll do a better job creating jobs in communist Cuba, an economy he better understands. After all, Cuba has all those old cars, and Obama loves those Cash for Clunkers. Or maybe it’s just this: Obama really hates Hillary so much that he’s willing to throw away...

Bitcomposer, the publisher of games such as Space Hulk and Jagged Alliance, has filed for bankruptcy after having applied for a protective shield procedure back in September. The company also published Shadowrun Returns in German and Russian. The procedure was applied for on September 26th and protected the company from creditors while it organised a plan for insolvency, reports Develop. It was still able to publish titles in the period of time between then and now, and hopes to find an investor at this point to ensure it can continue to operate as a publisher and aid with development. Bitcomposer...

My top story is the economy, and I think the Fed and Congress just signaled that something is seriously wrong, and it’s going to get worse. First off, the Federal Reserve just came out and said that it was going to be “patient” when normalizing the monetary policy. I know Wall Street is jubilant and the stock market spiked on the news, but I think this is really ominous, and it is nothing to be celebrated. To me, that means don’t expect the Fed to raise interest rates anytime soon because the economy is much worse than what they are...

While enrollment on government-run Obamacare exchanges gets the bulk of media attention, sign-ups for Medicaid have been even greater, in no small part due to another part of the Affordable Care Act. Since October 2013, enrollment in Medicaid and the related Children's Health Insurance Program had grown by about 9.7 million people as of this past October, according to data released Thursday by the federal government. That's 17 percent higher than what was the average monthly enrollment level seen from July through September 2013. That bump brings total enrollment in the programs that provide coverage without a premium charge to...

Two multinational energy giants, Chevron Corp. of the United States and Norway’s Statoil, have begun extracting oil and gas from the large Jack and St. Malo fields in US waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The two fields are among the largest in the Gulf and are expected to yield 94,000 barrels of oil equivalent and 21 million cubic feet of gas per day for an estimated 30 years, Chevron said in a statement on Dec 2. The Jack field’s reserves were discovered in 2004 and the St. Malo oil was discovered a year earlier. The fields are situated about...

The US Federal Reserve has given Wall Street banks even more time to comply with parts of the Volcker Rule, a key provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. The rule prevents federally-insured banks from using their own money when investing in certain risky assets. It will now grant an extension to other types of funds. Initially, the Fed had said banks would have until 21 July 2017 to stop trading in collateralised loan obligations, which essentially move the risk of investments in loans off their balance sheets.

The UK's oil industry is in "crisis" as prices drop, a senior industry leader has told the BBC. Oil companies and service providers are cutting staff and investment to save money. Robin Allan, chairman of the independent explorers' association Brindex, told the BBC that the industry was "close to collapse". Almost no new projects in the North Sea are profitable with oil below $60 a barrel, he claims. "It's almost impossible to make money at these oil prices", Mr Allan, who is a director of Premier Oil in addition to chairing Brindex, told the BBC. "It's a huge crisis." "This...