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AFP - Taiwan on Wednesday reported the first case of the H7N9 bird flu outside of mainland China. The 53-year-old man, who had been working in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou, showed symptoms three days after returning to Taiwan via Shanghai, the Centers for Disease Control said, adding that he had been hospitalised since April 16 and was in a critical condition. A passenger (right) has her temperature checked by a Centers for Disease Control staff member at the entrance of Sungshan Airport in Taipei on April 4, 2013. Taiwan on Wednesday reported the first case of the H7N9...

A new virus from the same family as SARS that sparked a global alert last September has been found in a further patient in Britain, health officials said on Monday. This latest case of infection with the new virus known as a coronavirus brings the total number of confirmed cases globally to 10, of which five have died. The British patient, who had recently travelled to the Middle East and Pakistan, is receiving intensive care treatment in hospital in Manchester, northern England.

All is not as it appears in the case of Richard Windsor, the alias used by outgoing EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, apparently to shield email messages from discovery and disclosure. Under court order to cough up the email messages to Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and having turned over a first installment of 2,100 such email messages earlier this week, the Obama administration is making this a case that might challenge the ingenuity of Sherlock Holmes. With Horner’s assistance, my daughter Eliana tries to pierce the fog of administrative war in her NRO column “Lisa Jackson’s gadfly.”

The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities increased 4.3 percent from October 2011, the biggest 12-month advance since May 2010. The median forecast projected a 4 percent gain. On a month-over-month basis, house prices rose 0.48% in October. I should not that these are seasonally adjusted numbers. On a non seasonally adjusted basis, house prices actually fell slightly in October by -0.1%. oct12-case-shiller The Case-Shiller 20 (green), FNC 30 (yellow) and FHFA Purchase Only (purple) indices are all showing house price recovery from the the disastrous housing bubble. Of course, The Federal Reserve and the fiscal fiasco in...

A copy of a letter received in the past hour by Gun Rights Examiner addressed to Eric Holder from Senator Chuck Grassley questions the attorney general about a leak on a gun trafficking case tied to the Fast and Furious gunwalking operation that resulted in the indictment of the husband of the then-head of the New Mexico U.S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Division. The letter, sent on Wednesday, provides further details to a story related last Monday in this column, concerning Danny Burnett, married to federal prosecutor Paula Burnett, charged with leaking wiretap information to a suspect in an ATF gun...

Owning or Renting: High Risk or Tragedy of the Commons? The tragedy of the commons is the depletion of a shared resource by individuals, acting independently and rationally according to each one’s self-interest, despite their understanding that depleting the common resource is contrary to their long-term best interests. Examples abound such as common grazing on public land, depletion of fish in the ocean and why public restrooms are usually filthy. Homeownership is an example of the “tragedy of the commons.” Public housing projects, such as the infamous Cabrini Green in Chicago, are an example. Public housing is often poorly maintained...

This coming Wednesday features a myriad of important economic, housing and mortgage reports: GDP, Pending Home Sales, Mortgage Purchase Applications, Pending Homes Sales and Corporate Profits. But on Tuesday, the Case-Shiller home prices indices will be released (and that means a busy day on TV for Yale Professor Robert Shiller). What are we expecting for Tuesday’ Case-Shiller 20 metro home price index? In a nutshell, it will show that house prices are recovering. FNC (blue) and FHFA (gold) have already released their home price indices last week and both show an uptick in their recent release for June 2012. What...

President Obama’s first chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, wrote a paper with her husband, David Romer, showing that higher taxes reduce economic growth. ...After looking at data from 1947 to 2006, and studying the legislative record, the Romers concluded that legislated tax changes have far more effect than automatic tax increases. They wrote, “Our estimates suggest that a tax increase of 1% of GDP reduces output over the next three years by nearly 3%.” Their major reason is that higher taxes have a markedly negative effect on investment. In another finding that argues against raising rates,...

The NYPD is questioning a New Jersey man in connection with the Etan Patz case, the 6-year-old boy who vanished more than 30 years ago as he walked to the school bus from his SoHo home, NBCNewYork.com reported Thursday

SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - Just hours after George Zimmerman walked out of the Seminole County jail $150,000 bail, the court unsealed several documents. (see below for documents) Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester issued an order to unseal several documents. According to one of the documents released Monday, Zimmerman's arraignment was pushed forward from May 29 to May 8. Zimmerman's location is being kept a secret for his safety and could be outside the state of Florida.

I strongly disagree with David French’s analysis. I’m inclined, instead, to agree with commentators ranging from former Reagan Justice Department official Mark Levin to Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz that the affidavit is stunningly weak — “unethical,” as Prof. Dershowitz puts it. In fact, I go further (which, after nearly 20 years of writing and supervising the writing of complaint affidavits, I think I’m qualified to do). This affidavit is not law, it is agitprop: invoking, for example, the explosive term “profiled” but carefully avoiding any discussion of what it means and failing to note that (a) there is no evidence of...

The Department of Justice has given up its bid to prosecute a pro-life counselor and agreed to pay her $120,000 in a case a judge said never should have been brought. Mary Susan Pine, who stands outside abortion clinics and advises women not to have the procedure, was accused of blocking a car from entering a Florida abortion clinic in 2009. In December, a judge threw out the case, in which the government sought $10,000 in fines and a permanent injunction barring Pine from counseling women outside the Presidential Women's Center in West Palm Beach, Fla. The government had been...

March 26, 2012 Gingrich: Case against Obama is 'clear cut' GOP candidate weighs in on 'Your World'

Sanford officials have released a response to the reward offered for the arrest of George Zimmerman, saying, "The City of Sanford does not condone the actions and recommendations of the New Black Panther Party. The City is requesting calm heads and no vigilante justice."

January 17, 2012 The case for American exceptionalism Mark Levin defends constitutionalism in new book

Sandusky seems determined for trial in abuse caseBy Ian Simpson | Reuters – 14 hours ago WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky appears determined to hold out for a trial on child sexual abuse charges that could put him in prison for the rest of his life, legal experts said. **SNIP** Sandusky has already laid out his potential defense, saying in an interview with Bob Costas of NBC television that he engaged in horseplay with alleged victims but stopped short of sexual intercourse or penetration, Mallios said. "Now that he's said that, unless he recants or...

The Arizona Daily Star's Tim Stellar is reporting the federal case file against illegal Mexican bandits accused of killing Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, has disappeared. The case against the alleged killers of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry has disappeared from federal court records, apparently sealed by a federal judge. In May, federal prosecutors won an indictment against Manuel Osorio-Arellanes and others, and they announced it with a press release. Only Osorio-Arellanes’ name was visible in the indictment, but there were blacked-out words where other defendants’ names go. Osorio-Arellanes was charged with second-degree murder and was not considered the likely...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Stunning accusations that a top California Democratic campaign treasurer looted the war chests of her big-name clients have left candidates across the state scrambling to raise more money as election season looms. Kinde Durkee, who controlled the funds of roughly 400 candidates and groups, ranging from Senator Dianne Feinstein to local Democratic youth clubs, was arrested in September and charged with fraud. While the extent of the losses isn't yet clear, the coffers of dozens of Democratic politicians have been frozen, prompting the crippled campaigns to ask the California Fair Political Practices Commission to permit further...

The judge ruled the defendant could not prove her case.

Prosecutors are reportedly set to ask a judge to abandon the case against Dominique Strauss Kahn. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is preparing to ask that all charges against the former head of the IMF accused of attempting to rape hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo are dropped Tuesday. Such requests from the DA 'are never denied', an expert told the New York Post meaning Strauss-Kahn could finally return to his home country after being forced to remian in the U.S for months.