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Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected spending would rise 0.2% in April and income would climb 0.3%. Consumer spending generates more than two-thirds of U.S. economic output, and is a key driver of growth. But outlays slowed during a harsh winter and have yet to show signs of a sustained pickup despite better weather, solid job creation and gasoline prices that remain well below levels from a year ago. Indeed, consumer confidence appears to have softened. The University of Michigan final May sentiment index, out last week, came in at a six-month low. Monday’s report showed spending...

Iraqi forces have seized from Islamic State militants a string of hamlets and villages in the dust-choked desert southeast of Ramadi... But the yellow-and-green flags that line the sides of the newly secured roads and flutter from rooftops leave no doubt as to who is leading the fighting here: Kitaeb Hezbollah, a Shiite militia designated a terrorist organization by the United States. Iraq’s two main allies — Iran and the United States — have vied for influence over Iraq’s battle to retake ground from Islamic State militants in the past year. While Iranian-linked Shiite militias have spearheaded the fight elsewhere,...

Houthi rebels have taken at least four Americans hostage in Yemen, The Washington Post reported Saturday. According to the report, three of the hostages were working in the private sector. The fourth is a dual citizen of Yemen and the US, whose job is unknown. An unnamed US official in the report said that a number of rescues operation have been attempted and failed.

Indian Minister of State for Defence Rao Inderjit Singh struck an alarmist tone on Saturday, saying India is concerned that extremist groups such as Islamic State may get their hands on nuclear arms from Pakistan. “With the rise of ISIS in West Asia, one is afraid to an extent that perhaps they might get access to a nuclear arsenal from states like Pakistan,” Singh said on Saturday on the sidelines of the Shangri-La regional security conference in Singapore, Bloomberg reported. Singh went on to add that if Pakistan develops technology that enables its submarines to carry nuclear warheads, “it would...

A week ago Friday was an unusual day for the editorial page of The New York Times. An unsigned editorial in the paper lashed out at the president for his public statements about reengaging in Iraq. A Paul Krugman column attacked the administration’s defense of the new trade agreement. Both pieces said the administration was being … (how shall we say it?) … dishonest. Granted, this was nothing like the language Krugman and the Times typically use to describe Republicans. A few days earlier, Krugman accused Jeb Bush of “cowardice and vileness” with respect to his statements about Iraq. In...

In September 2013, the Obama administration congratulated itself on an agreement, brokered by Russia, that supposedly ended the use of chemical weapons (CW) in Syria. For the killings by using sarin gas, Syria’s president Assad was not punished in any way, but he was supposedly going to turn over all his CW and the possibility of a recurrence was thus ended. President Obama said this: "I welcome the progress made between the United States and Russia through our talks in Geneva, which represents an important, concrete step toward the goal of moving Syria’s chemical weapons under international control so that...

Ten dead in twin bomb attacks outside central Baghdad hotels, say Iraqi police This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly

The Islamic State terror group recently released a propaganda article justifying the raping of girls, while boasting that they released some Yazidi women to their "ISIS husbands" after they converted to Islam.In an ISIS propaganda article titled, "Slave-Girls or Prostitutes?, a woman who goes by the name Umm Sumayyah Al-Muhajirah was quoted as saying, "I swear by Allah, O you who feign to be knowledgeable and shout with falsehoods in every gathering, surely the slave markets will be established against the will of the politically correct. "Some slave girls in our State are now pregnant," she added, "and some of...

Muslims raped a young woman named Suzan in Iraq, and forced her to recite the Koran as they were raping her. They also poured boiling hot water on her body. According to one report:[S]he was bought by a man from Chechnya who purchased her and two other girls in a matter of 10 minutes. Suzan gave horrific accounts of daily rapes by the man’s bodyguards. “They forced me to say things from the Quran during the time they did their actions, and if I didn’t they whipped me.”On an occasion Suzan resisted, they burned her thigh with boiling water. “They...

RUSH: Got these two stories here. One is in the Washington Post, and the other is in The Politico, and they're almost identical. "Supreme Court Ruling Puts Obama's Immigration Legacy in Jeopardy." That's The Politico. The Washington Post: "President Obama's Legacy is Increasingly in Legal Jeopardy." Is this not amazing? Two wholly different, separate news companies have lead stories with almost identical headlines and the same premise. Sorry, narrative. And the narrative is that that hayseed judge in Texas, that Hanen, and these three judges at it Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals who upheld that stupid hayseed judge in Texas,...

ISIS fanatics 'called people to watch' as they executed 20 local men in a Roman ampitheatre in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, a watchdog has claimed. The men were shot dead in the restored ruin, which had been used for an annual festival in the city, in front of the crowd on Wednesday. The murdered locals were accused of being government supporters, according to a report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In a village 20 km south east of Mosul in northern Iraq, Islamic State (IS) militants have burned an Iraqi Christian woman to death. Sa’ed Mamuzini, representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) office in Mosul, told BasNews on Tuesday that the militants burned the 80-year-old Iraqi Christian woman, who was from Kremlis in the Nimrud area of the Hamdaneya sub district, east of Mosul. Mamuzini said that villagers told him that the woman was killed for failing to comply with the strict laws of the Islamic State. This is the first instance of IS militants burning a person since...

Deep into the seventh year of his tenure, Barack Obama is thinking about his post-presidential legacy. We know this because he’s telling us so. In an interview this week with The Atlantic about the potential deal with Iran regarding its nuclear program, the president sought to use the fact of his relative youth and his consciousness about how history might judge him to his advantage: “Look, 20 years from now, I’m still going to be around, God willing. If Iran has a nuclear weapon, it’s my name on this. I think it’s fair to say that in addition to our...

Speaking in Camden, New Jersey, President Obama just uttered the following Detroit-esque words of doom: *OBAMA SAYS CAMDEN IS SYMBOL OF PROMISE FOR NATION We discussed Camden in 2012, 2013, and 2014... and had a different opinion. And this... All over America, formerly prosperous communities are being transformed into crime-infested wastelands of poverty and despair. At one time, Detroit was the greatest manufacturing city that the world had ever seen and it had the highest per capita income in the entire country. But now it has become a rotting, decaying hellhole that the rest of the planet laughs at. And...

Paste your docume(CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama issued a statement on Saturday indicating that he and First Lady Michelle Obama would commemorate this Sunday as "the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia." In the statement, the preisdent said he is working to "address the specific needs of transgender persons." Here is the president's statement : Michelle and I join our fellow Americans and others around the world in commemorating the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia tomorrow, May 17. We take this opportunity to reaffirm that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights are human rights, to celebrate the dignity...

With poor results at home and abroad, Obamas will continue to stir the racial pot, distract from their reign of error and lead Americans on a very disturbing race to the bottom on the issue of race relations As the Obama administration mercifully begins to wind toward the end of its second term, both the President and the First Lady will continue to distract from their horrible record. Their favorite distraction is to claim racial discrimination exists in this nation and it needs to be corrected through government action. Even though we are not living in Mississippi in 1964, the...

(Editor’s note: Dr. Dobson has prepared this letter for the constituents of his ministry, Family Talk. It is being shared here before being widely disseminated.) Dear Friends, May I urge you to read this letter carefully? It has been written with a fervent prayer that you will recognize the urgency it conveys. It deals with a decision that is about to be announced by the U.S. Supreme Court, dealing with the definition of marriage. In late June or early July, the justices will reveal their decision to either affirm the definition of marriage as being exclusively between one man and...

As our first African-American president, Barack Obama had the opportunity to personify the final triumph of civil rights, and in the process, become a celebrated and historic figure. Instead, his ironic legacy on race is one of abject failure, as the rioting and looting in Baltimore underscore. The tragic reality is that Obama passed on the opportunity to the “post-racial” president he promised to be when he first ran in 2008. Instead, he farmed out leadership on racial issues to Al Sharpton, for whom grievance is like oxygen. The prejudgment of George Zimmerman, and related fury, set the stage...

White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett is praising President Obama for helping “accelerate” the cause of gay marriage, and she marvels at the speed of the cultural change that swept the nation. Jarrett spoke during a reception for the plaintiffs of the Supreme Court Case hosted by the group Freedom to Marry. “The arc of the moral universe bent a little faster than even we thought it would,” Jarrett said to a Buzzfeed reporter who attended the reception. Jarrett delivered a speech at the reception, thanking everyone who fought to bring the case before the Supreme Court and recognizing the...

During his farewell address to the Justice Department Friday, Attorney General Eric Holder referred to his tenure at the Department of Justice as its “golden age” and in the same mold as Robert Kennedy’s storied tenure.. Loretta Lynch will take over the department following the Senate’s 56-43 confirmation vote Thursday. HOLDER: I said earlier that when we celebrated Robert Kennedy’s 50th anniversary of his swearing in 2011, people said that was the golden age for the United States Department of Justice. Well, I think 50 years from now, maybe even sooner than that, people will look at the work you...