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United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Thursday against an abrupt cut to U.S. funding for the world body, and France's U.N. envoy said a retreat by Washington from global affairs could lead to more instability. "Abrupt funding cuts can force the adoption of ad hoc measures that will undermine the impact of longer-term reform efforts," said Guterres spokesman Stephane Dujarric. "The Secretary-General fully subscribes to the necessity to effectively combat terrorism, but believes that it requires more than military spending," he said in response to Trump's proposal for an additional $54 billion in military spending. French U.N. Ambassador Francois...

I was well impressed with former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) after a magazine profile appeared on him when he first entered the run for the GOP nomination for president. Not so much impressed by his accomplishments, although they were his own and they were formidable; I was impressed by his quiet manner and how he would do the evening cooking at his house and how he became a Catholic to keep his family whole as his wife was Catholic and he was raised otherwise. My Anglo-Irish grandmother had done the same thing. I saw these things as reaching to the...

Jill Stein must be feeling guilty. AFP reports: The former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has raised the necessary $1.1 million to request a vote recount in Wisconsin, her campaign announced Thursday. The Midwestern state was a key battleground in the November 8 election, helping propel the Republican President-elect Donald Trump past his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton to a victory that shocked the nation. Donald Tump won Wisconsin by 22,000, but the Green Party won 31,000 votes in the state. In Michigan, Trump won by 11,000, but Stein got 51,000. In Pennsylvania, she got 49,000 votes, and margin was...

It’s been nearly three years since Wendy Davis stood in the Texas State Capitol and filibustered an abortion bill for 11 hours straight, buoyed by her pink sneakers, a back brace, and the knowledge that there were so many women outside the chamber watching her fight and cheering. The bill eventually passed, Davis later lost a gubernatorial bid, and she is now out of politics for the first time in decades. Throughout all of that, however, she’s proven that she’s more than willing to keep trying to get things done — even when the chance of victory seems to be...

Authorities have found the body of a San Francisco Bay man who they believe was killed by his co-worker after a fight last week, according to police. Investigators searching the area of Jameson Creek Road in Santa Cruz County found the body of Kyle Myrick, 28, around 4 p.m. Thursday. A medical examiner from the coroner's office confirmed Myrick's identity and family members announced the news at a vigil that evening. Myrick vanished Friday, Jan. 22. His co-worker at GP Sports in San Jose, 39-year-old Steve Hlebo, of Los Altos, was charged Wednesday with Myrick’s murder. According to a police...

Politico noted on Sunday that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas has solidified his lead in Iowa, according to a CBS Poll. He is favored by 40 percent of likely caucus-goers, with Donald Trump at 31 percent, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida at 12 percent, Dr. Ben Carson at six percent, and everyone else polling at two percent or less. The numbers are part of the reason that conservative pundit and radio talk show host Erik Erickson had announced that Cruz is favored for the Republican nomination, despite the media dustup over whether and when the senator from Texas did or did not...

President Obama talks a lot about the scientific method. On climate change, he has often invoked the idea of a great divide between those on the progressive left, such as himself, who believe in "settled science" and thus a looming man-caused climatological disaster, and those, presumably on the Neanderthal Right, who are slaves to superstition, ideology, prejudice, and self-interest-and thus deny that the planet is rapidly warming due to inordinate human-induced releases of excessive carbon. Obama's view of science is reductionist. It relies on count-em-up numbers: if more university professors (not known to be an especially independent or courageous cohort)...

In a nationally televised address on Sunday night, President Barack Obama said that while the San Bernardino terrorists—who murdered 14 Americans—had embraced what he described as a “perverted interpretation of Islam” they had also adopted a form of violence that is “all too common” in America: mass shootings.As part of the solution to this type of terrorism, Obama called for more gun control in the United States.“So far, we have no evidence that the killers were directed by a terrorist organization overseas, or that they were part of a broader conspiracy here at home,” Obama said.“But it is clear that the two...

With less than four weeks left in his decades-long congressional career, Boehner is maneuvering to shape the House Republican Conference on his way out. His goal is to leave the conference he helped build —with countless hours of grunt work and hundreds of millions of dollars in fundraising — in the strongest position possible. He has all but officially endorsed Rep. Kevin McCarthy to succeed him, giving the majority leader enough of a nod to express confidence but short of the full-throated endorsement that could sink him. Boehner tried to lure a candidate into the majority leader race against one...

SOME blondes have all the fun. As Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush get more testy, Donald Trump gets more chesty. And more blond. It’s mind-boggling to contemplate a President Trump trying to make peace between North and South Korea, even as we watch the pugnacious Candidate Trump trolling poor Jeb on Twitter and predicting that poor Hillary would have to run the country from Leavenworth. But, as Trump would say, deal with it. The pol who refused to identify himself as a pol on his jury duty questionnaire has utterly scrambled American politics. And he has trademarked the phrase “Make...

... Today, the world is looking forward to what we can accomplish over the next 15 years. The UN has established the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. Amina Mohammed is Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Adviser on Post-2015 Development Planning. Mohammed notes, “The sustainable development agenda addresses the root causes of poverty, inequalities and environmental degradation. It looks at the links between the social, economic and environmental agendas, and it presents more opportunities than the MDGs, which largely focused on the symptoms only.” In an effort to broaden the impact of the U.N.’s efforts, she says, “The sustainable development agenda looks...

Madison, WI - A group of protesters called Monday for the United Nations to conduct an independent investigation of a white Wisconsin police officer who killed an unarmed biracial man because they feel the U.S. government can't be trusted. Members of Young, Gifted and Black along with 19-year-old Tony Robinson's family held a news conference in front of the Dane County courthouse to call on the U.N.'s Human Rights Council to investigate Robinson's death last month. They added they don't have faith that any U.S. government agency could conduct an objective probe because it's all one prejudiced system. Protesters took...

EXCERPT "This afternoon, POTUS will convene a White House news conference. Details later this morning," Earnest said in a post on Twitter.

The Conversation by Jay Rosen, Associate Professor, Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University Foundation essay: This article is part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the US. Our foundation essays are longer than our usual comment and analysis articles and take a wider look at key issues affecting society. If extreme polarization is now an enduring feature of American politics — not just a bug — how does that change the game for journalists? I have some ideas, but mainly I want to put that question on the table. “Conflict makes news,” it...

The Pentagon released a report Monday asserting decisively that climate change poses an immediate threat to national security, with increased risks from terrorism, infectious disease, global poverty and food shortages. It also predicted rising demand for military disaster response as extreme weather creates more global humanitarian crises. The report lays out a road map for how the military will adapt to rising sea levels, more violent storms and widespread droughts. The Defense Department will begin by integrating plans for climate change risks across all of its operations, from war games and strategic defense planning situations to a rethinking of the...

Venezuela's socialist government has quietly secured the backing of Latin America and the Caribbean to obtain a diplomatic trophy that long eluded the late Hugo Chávez: a seat on the United Nations Security Council. The unanimous endorsement of Venezuela's candidacy to represent the region on the Security Council came at a closed-door meeting July 23 in New York, said Amin Cruz, a diplomat at the U.N. from the Dominican Republic, which presided at the meeting. When Chávez last tried for a seat in 2006, the United States succeeded in torpedoing his campaign. This year, Washington has been mum.

The United Nations' human rights chief expressed concern on Thursday at what she said were plans by the U.S. government to deport tens of thousands of unaccompanied children who entered the United States in recent months. Navi Pillay-Wanker, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, urged Washington to protect the child migrants and investigate dozens of reports of abuse against them by U.S. officials. "I am particularly concerned because the United States appears to be taking steps to deport most of these children back," Pillay-Wanker told a final news briefing in Geneva before completing six years in office on Aug. 31....

I agree with Mark Levin. As Levin pointed out on his show today, talking heads claiming Obama is "toast" because of low polling data are naive or delusional. (My opinion)

Ten members of the G20 have joined the United States in accusing the Syrian government of carrying out a chemical weapons attack on civilians last month and called for a strong international response.A joint statement by the 10 countries and the United States stopped short of explicitly calling for military action against the regime of Syrian president Bashar Assad, as Barack Obama is advocating.But the tough language aligned half of the G20 members with the US president, who worked the sidelines of the summit in St Petersburg to build international support for a limited US military response. The 10 countries...

One of the repeating themes I kept hearing on the news for the past few days was how the White House was going to be really glad when this week was over because things really hadn’t been going very well. I assume Sunday is still part of the same week, because not only didn’t things get any better this morning, they seem to have taken a notable turn for the worse. We touched on this briefly earlier today, but the Obama administration dispatched Dan Pfeiffer to make the rounds of the Sunday shows and “clarify” what’s been going on with...