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AP) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted to hospital with blood clot following concussion. APTV 12-30-12 1953EST

December 29, 2012 Bill and Hillary Clinton in Punta Cana for New Year's celebration Staff report Punta Cana, DR.– Ex-president Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton are enjoying their year-end vacation in Punta Cana, in the eastern coast of the Dominican Republic. According to press reports, the Clintons will celebrate New Year’s at the Puntacana Resort & Club and could also attend a fashion show scheduled for December 29, which will be held in honor of famous Dominican designer Oscar de la Renta. Also expected to attend are American journalist Barbara Walters, Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Spanish actress Mar...

Two women from the Dominican Republic told The Daily Caller that Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez paid them for sex earlier this year.

Seven people, including three children, have been killed after an out-of-control van drove off a road and plunged more than 100ft into New York's Bronx Zoo. The van had been heading south down the Bronx River Parkway when it suddenly bounced off the central section, careered across two lanes and then hit the guardrail. Police said it flipped over the rail and then landed upside down in an area that is used by the zoo to store its monorail trains, some way from the animal enclosures. All seven people in the van were killed in the accident. They have been...

‘S-HERTOGENBOSCH, Netherlands (Reuters) - When Christianity fades, it doesn't just leave empty pews behind. With each church that shuts, the statues, crucifixes, chalices, paintings or vestments that were part of regular Sunday services suddenly have no liturgical home.In the Netherlands, where faith has faded more dramatically than in many other parts of Europe, two churches close down on average every week. The sacred art left over is piling up in cellars and storerooms around the country.Some congregations elsewhere have the opposite problem. New Catholic and Protestant churches are springing up in Latin America, Africa and Asia, and pastors in eastern...

A Southern Californian man thrown off a Caribbean gay cruise earlier this week has said that that he and his partner were taunted, humiliated and subjected to inhumane treatment when they were arrested for indecent exposure.Dennis Jay Mayer, 53, of Palm Springs said he has no doubt they were arrested in Dominica because they were gay. Police said it was because they were seen having sex in public on the balcony of their ship cabin. Mayer said they were not having sex, but were ‘partially clothed’. (edit) The pastor of Dominica's Trinity Baptist Church, Randy Rodney, praised the police for their...

SNIPPET: "In July, the British government warned that Al Qaeda’s exploitation of social networking websites is on the rise." SNIPPET: "The massive and multifarious network of websites and social media has presented a challenge to authorities in trying to combat it. Additionally, civil liberty concerns have conflicted with government efforts to spy on communications. Reducing terrorist activity on social media sites has been particularly difficult because users have adopted new forms of communication to conform with the new formats. Many Arabic speakers on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other sites use Arabizi, a form of colloquial Arabic written in the Latin...

A Dominican with an anti-American grudge has been busted for building a bomb in his upper Manhattan apartment to blow up a police station, sources said Sunday night. -snip- The suspect was identified through one of the al-Awlaki web sites, where he posted anti-American comments, the source said.

Having tied the knot in a white wedding, a lesbian couple thought the icing on the cake would be a traditional honeymoon along with other young couples. But the trip turned out to be a nightmare after staff at their resort treated them as if it was not a "real honeymoon" and excluded them from special romantic meals and dances. Gemma Harman, 24, and Tamsin Harper, 36, said it was the "worst two weeks" of their lives and the "homophobic manner" in which they were treated was "disgusting". The couple, from Brighouse, near Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, decided to go on...

Why It's No Longer Raining Cocaine in the Dominican Republic By Ezra Fieser / Santo Domingo Drug cartels often drop their product from small planes for it to be picked up by traffickers on land. But sometimes those air deliveries miss their mark — and until recently, errant bundles of cocaine used to fall from the sky into the Dominican Republic's countryside so frequently that one rural cab driver tells TIME they were like "gifts from God," because residents who found them could sell them back to the narcos for a handsome price. "It paid better than any other job,"...

(English-language translation) A septuagenarian missionary became the first person to import the dangerous cholera bacterium to Puerto Rico in over a century. Confirmation was done by the Department of Health, following protocol which requires that confirmed cholera cases be reported within 24 hours. The man, whom the Department of Health only identified as a missionary who lives in the northern part of the island, traveled to the Dominican Republic two weeks ago to do work in an area where hygienic conditions were not the best. "He is a person who travels to the Dominican Republic frequently," State Epidemiologist Carmen Deseda...

SAN DIEGO, Texas - A reserve deputy driving home from work swerved violently off the road and overturned his car after his headlights revealed the battered bodies of three men on a dark South Texas road. The incident happened about 1 a.m. Tuesday as Duval County reserve deputy Alonzo Zamora was driving along Farm-to-Market Road 1329. Sheriff's Sgt. David Canales says Zamora suffered only bumps and bruises in the crash. Canales says the men were a 30-year-old from El Salvador, a 23-year-old from the Dominican Republic and a 23-year-old from Mexico. Each suffered head injuries, and the Salvadoran also had...

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) sold his villa in the Dominican Republic that played a role in his conviction on ethics charges last year, according to his financial disclosure forms released Wednesday. Rangel received between $250,001 and $500,000 from the sale of his beach villa in Punta Cana. The former Ways and Means Committee chairman was sanctioned for committing 11 violations of House ethics rules, including improperly using his office to solicit donations for an educational center in his name and filing incorrect financial disclosures and tax forms that failed to list income earned on his Dominican villa. The 81-year-old lawmaker...

A Dominican Republic-bound JetBlue flight made a U-turn and headed back to Kennedy Airport after the pilot discovered a scamming TSA screener had sneaked aboard... ... Insisting that he was authorized to use a jump seat in the cabin, he caught the pilot's attention 45 minutes into the flight.

Households headed by immigrants have a substantially higher rate of welfare use than native-headed households, according a report released by the Center for Immigration Studies this week. The report examined census data about the use of welfare programs – cash assistance, food assistance, housing assistance, and Medicaid – and compared usage by immigrant headed households with at least one child – those headed both by legal and illegal immigrants – with usage by native headed households with at least one child. 57 percent of immigrant headed households participate in at least one welfare program, compared to 39 percent of native...

Although it is not in the form of binding resolution, the American push for U.N. action has helped win over a handful of new countries to the cause. A resolution could be brought to a vote later this year. The issue of gay rights has polarized nations at the U.N. for years. And despite growing acceptance for homosexuality in Western nations and parts of Latin America, lawyers say there is still a gap in human rights treaties for the protection of gays against discrimination and mistreatment. "We are very concerned that individuals continue to be killed, arrested and harassed around...

HOUSTON — A truck driver was resentenced to nearly 34 years in prison on Monday after a federal appeals court last year overturned the multiple life sentences he received for his role in America's deadliest human smuggling attempt, which resulted in the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants from Central America. The new sentence of 405 months that Tyrone Williams was given during a court hearing is equal to the longest prison term he previously got in the case, for another count that was upheld on appeal. During the sentencing hearing, prosecutor Daniel Rodriguez made an impassioned plea that despite the...

The United States has signed a deal with Bhutan giving US citizens in the country immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), the State Department said Tuesday. The deal with Bhutan brings to 34 the number of countries with which the United States has signed so-called "Article 98" agreements exempting US citizens from the court's jurisdiction, said Lynn Cassel, a department spokesman. Bhutan and Bosnia-Herzegovina both agreed to the pacts on May 16 but the deal with Thimphu was not announced until Tuesday. Washington refuses to support the ICC, arguing that it could become a forum for politically...

Hazleton police cruisers escorted a caravan of sport utility vehicles with whom Dominican Revolutionary Party leaders are calling the next president of the Dominican Republic along North Wyoming Street late Saturday morning. Miguel Vargas Maldonado, the party's president and candidate for the Dominican Republic's highest office, made several stops in Hazleton to talk to his fellow citizens, encouraging them to vote for him and the change he plans to bring to their country. The caravan crawled through town, stopping on Wyoming Street between Maple and Green streets, where Maldonado and those in his entourage got out of their vehicles and...

NEWARK — Two New Jersey men intent on killing American troops were arrested Saturday as they boarded flights to link up with a virulent jihadist group in Somalia, authorities said. The men, both North Jersey residents, were charged with conspiring to commit an act of international terrorism through a group tied to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, according to officials familiar with the details of the arrests. Mohamed Hamoud Alessa, 20, of North Bergen, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, 26, of Elmwood Park were apprehended at John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens before they could board separate flights to...