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LOS ANGELES, May 12 (UPI)--Four U.S. TV shows with prominent gay story lines during a record-breaking season for openly gay characters will be cut for the next season, officials said. NBC's "The New Normal" and "Smash" and "Go On" and CBS's "Partners," will get the ax, the Hollywood Reporter said Saturday. Heather Morris, who plays a bisexual on Fox's "Glee," will not be returning next season, the Reporter said. A Hollywood Reporter survey in November discovered that gay characters on TV, including couples on "Grey's Anatomy" and "Modern Family," helped voters to support gay marriage at the polls. "This data...

<p>NORTH HAVEN — A half-dozen workers were in otherwise empty offices Friday at The Marlin Firearms Co. as the company wound down 141 years of manufacturing in Connecticut.</p> <p>A security phone at the visitor's gate was unattended next to a large barren parking lot off Bailey Road near I-91. A reception room that resembles a ski lodge, complete with a fireplace, was dark. The few people left working Friday declined to comment, but one employee said there were six people inside and that Friday was their last day of work.</p>

SIR Bob Geldof says the rock and roll age is dead. The Boomtown Rats star and Live Aid icon said: "The central problem is, for us, rock and roll was a social medium. "That period has passed because now there are many alternative social mediums. Rock and roll needs a context in which to exist. "It doesn't exist anymore. It's ceased to be culturally relevant. "The rock and roll age is dead, in my view. He added: "I'm amazed it died. No-one expected that, but I'm lucky I jumped in halfway through it.''

MSNBC host Ed Schultz announced tonight that, as of April, he will no longer host his weeknight primetime show. But Schultz will stay with the network, hosting a two-hour program on Saturday and Sunday nights, he said. -snip- Sources at MSNBC told POLITICO that that was a very generous interpretation of events. Schultz was pushed out to make way for new talent, they said.

Kiss of death… President Obama and Vice President Biden receive their cheeseburger lunch orders at Ray’s Hell Burger in Arlington, Virginia. (CSM) Ray’s Hell-Burger is closing its doors in Washington DC. The burger joint rose to prominence after Obama visited the business twice. Now they’re closed. One of the Washington area's most iconic burger joints is apparently closed for good. According to Washingtonian magazine, 'For Rent' signs have popped up in the windows of Ray's Hell Burger, the Arlington restaurant that has been frequented by droves of fans, including President Barack Obama. Ray's Hell Burger owner Michael Landrum did not...

Taken from the highest ranks of the clergy, popes should be among the best living pastors, biblical scholars, and theologians. That this has often not been the case is obvious enough throughout history, as any well-informed Roman Catholic will concede. (More than a few instances of corruption and heresy may be found on the Protestant side as well.) However, Benedict XVI has regularly been impressive on these counts. Living alongside Protestants in Germany, he often engages Reformation views with more sympathy and knowledge than most—especially more than many Protestants who convert to Rome and trade on caricatures of the evangelical...

Pope Benedict XVI celebrates Mass in St. Peter's Basilica on Oct. 28, 2012. Credit: Anne Hartney/CNA. Vatican City, Feb 12, 2013 / 08:28 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Amid the buzz created by the Pope’s announcement that he will retire, it could be easy to miss the fact that his last Mass will be on Ash Wednesday and not in the normal location for the first day of Lent. “It’s very clear that St. Peter’s is a much bigger church than Santa Sabina in Aventino, so for a celebration in which we expect there will be a lot of faithful, bishops...

So i'm supposed to suprise my 7 yr old nephew next thursday and meet him for lunch at school for some kind of whatever thing... Anyways i thought i'd bring him a cool gift of one of those Cox .049 engine tethered race cars only to find that they they don't make them anymore? I looked it up on wiki since amazon seemed to be down. Production stopped around 4 years ago. Aparrently wiki is barred from FR so i can't post the thread but i had no idea of all the variants of this motor, wow......anyways.. JEEEEEZZZZZZ.....i grew up...

Predominantly LGBT church on Madison Avenue shuttering after 19 years of ministry. After 19 years of serving the LGBT community, the Liberation United Church of Christ is closing its doors on Madison Avenue. The church will host its last service on Christmas Eve. The building at 13714 Madison Avenue has been home to the church for the past 14 years. When the church began in a community center at Case Western University in 1993, churches weren’t too accepting of the gay community. However, as society became more inclusive, so did churches. “Twenty years ago there were very few churches welcoming the...

Thanks to a cut in taxpayer funding, the Planned Parenthood abortion business has announced it will close one of its abortion clinics, that operates in Abilene, Texas.Planned Parenthood of West Central Texas announced it is closing the Abilene clinic, which gives out the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug that has claimed the lives of dozens of women and injured thousands more, on November 9. Women will be sent to the nearby San Angelo Heath Center, which provides women with legitimate medical care and not abortions. “We share the concern of community members about what the long term consequences of Texas’...

UPDATED: Telepictures said Monday that the current season of the recently retooled series will be its last. Telepictures, the syndicated arm of Warner Bros. studio, announced Monday that it will not be renewing Anderson Cooper's daytime talk show, Anderson Live, for a third season. A result of continued soft ratings, despite a rebrand at its recent sophomore launch, the decision was first reported by The New York Times. The series will continue to air through summer 2013. "We are extremely proud of Anderson and the show that he and the entire production team have produced," read a statement The Hollywood...

The Associated Press published an article on the reasons for the demise of the print of edition of Newsweek but skipped any mention of the former editor of that magazine, Jon Meacham, who was instumental in ensuring its failure. It's the equivalent of publishing an article on the reasons why the Titanic sunk in which the word "iceberg" does not appear. What Meacham did to destroy Newsweek was so absurd that he really deserves a plaque in the Bad Business Decisions Hall of Fame. Am I exaggerating? Here is Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post explaining the business "genius" of...

The upstate economy took another significant blow today as General Motors announced it will close its fuel cell plant in Honeoye Falls, just south of Rochester. The decision means the 220 salaried employees who worked in the research and development facility won’t be employed in the area. The company said most of the employees will be offered the opportunity to transfer to the Global Powertrain Engineering Headquarters in Pontiac, Mich., the Democrat and Chronicle reports. “This decision has significant business advantages for the company,”said Kim Carpenter, GM spokeswoman. “For example, it will enable GM to capitalize on synergies with the...

'The London 2012 Olympics have ended with a spectacular musical closing ceremony and the official handover to the next host city, Rio de Janeiro. The three-hour show featured some of the biggest names of British pop from decades past, including the Spice Girls, George Michael and Elbow. Games chief Lord Coe said: "When our time came - Britain, we did it right." The official Games flag was handed to the mayor of Rio before the flame at the Olympic Stadium was extinguished. President of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, who declared the Games of the 30th Olympiad closed just...

Talks over the UN Arms Trade Treaty fell apart today, effectively killing the agreement. The Arms Trade Treaty Legal Blog reports that the process seemed to be moving to completion when the United States requested an extension to the time to negotiate the agreement. This opened the door to other countries to begin registering objections, and it soon became clear that reaching agreement within the allowed timeframe would be impossible. The proposed treaty, which raised considerable domestic opposition from gun rights advocates in the United States, died before it had a chance to become a threat. As a delegate from...

Daffy's Inc., a staple of the New York shopping scene for 51 years, is closing its doors. The Secaucus, N.J.-based discount retailer, which had been rumored to be in financial turmoil, said Monday that all its stores will be shuttering over the next few months, as part of a company liquidation. In a statement, Daffy's said it "deeply regrets that this action was necessary due to the impact on its business of the uncertain economy and weak consumer spending and a lack of viable financial and business alternatives." The discounter employs 1,300 people and operates a total of 19 locations,...

The Dutch government says it will abandon the long-standing model of multiculturalism that has encouraged Muslim immigrants to create a parallel society within the Netherlands. A new integration bill (covering letter and 15-page action plan), which Dutch Interior Minister Piet Hein Donner presented to parliament on June 16, reads: "The government shares the social dissatisfaction over the multicultural society model and plans to shift priority to the values of the Dutch people. In the new integration system, the values of the Dutch society play a central role. With this change, the government steps away from the model of a multicultural...

The toll on public television would also be harsh, says a new revenue analysis from Booz & Company presented in Washington DC. Booz says 54 public TV stations would be at high risk of shutting down, without revenue support from CPB. The outside experts looked at five alternative scenarios, including allowing public stations to accept some advertising. It decided that “a shift from a non-commercial model to a commercial advertising model would have dramatically negative consequences for many of the communities that public broadcasters serve.” It observes that federal support has already shrunk by $50 million in the last two...

It's the end of the road for "Car Talk." After 35 years on the air, Click and Clack have run out of gas, and will stop taping new shows this fall. Tom and Ray Magliozzi have hosted NPR's most popular show for decades, but the brothers say it's "time to stop and smell the cappuccino." The mechanic brothers started their auto advice show in Boston in 1977, and have been dishing out car tips and jokes every Saturday morning on NPR since 1987. "We've managed to avoid getting thrown off NPR for 25 years, giving tens of thousands of wrong...

Pete Stark's days in Congress might be numbered The nearly four-decade reign of Rep. Pete Stark, D-Fremont, is about to end. Stark finished first among three candidates in the 15th Congressional District, but the message of discontent with his boorish and increasingly erratic approach to his job as a public servant could not have been louder. Nearly 59 percent of voters in the freshly realigned district preferred someone other than Stark: 36 percent for Eric Swalwell, a 31-year-old prosecutor and Dublin City Council member, and 22 percent for Chris Pareja, an independent who ran a spirited low-budget campaign. In years...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told The Daily Caller in a video interview that he is dropping out of the Republican presidential race 'probably about Wednesday' May 2 and endorsing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Gingrich, alongside his wife Callista, said the GOP's message in the general election should be, "Can you afford four more years like this? Not complicated. Do you want this much unemployment, this high a gasoline price, this much deficit spending? You have a great president but if you don't want this, you better vote for somebody new."

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A Central Florida supermarket chain is about to close almost all of its local stores. It's part of a move by Albertson's to end the majority of its operations in the state. For the last year or so, Albertson's has been shrinking the number of stores it operates in Florida. In Central Florida, six more stores are going to close in the next few weeks. Only a store in Altamonte Springs will remain open. Albertson's says the Florida market is not good for it, and with fuel and utility costs being what they are, it's closing all...

Fox Confirms: Rick Santorum to suspend Presidential Campaign. Will post link and source when it hits Fox News Website.

Alaska Airlines, America's seventh-largest carrier in terms of passenger traffic, said on Wednesday that it would end a decades-old tradition of handing out prayer cards with its in-flight meals. The prayer cards, which the Seattle-based airline began offering in the 1970s after an executive spotted them on another airline, were intended to serve as a marketing strategy and to put passengers at ease, a spokeswoman said. The airline sent an e-mail to its frequent flyers on Wednesday explaining the change, which takes effect February 1.

Waiting on Perry to take podium any moment! He will endorse Newt!

The United States was still a young nation when three major earthquakes rocked the central Mississippi River valley in the winter of 1811-1812. Chimneys fell, the earth heaved and church bells rang hundreds of miles away, set off by the powerful vibrations from what is now called the New Madrid Seismic Zone. As farmland rolled and shuddered, the shock waves spread as far as New York and the Carolinas. Now on the 200th anniversary of those devastating quakes, some seismologists are warning that the region should be on guard because of the risk that another "Big One" could strike the...

Mid-East Prophecy Update - December 11th 2011 Pastor JD's latest. Part 2 of 2. Topic: The rise of Islam, and the role of Islam, as it relates to the future of Islam which suggests, at best, that Islam plays a most prominent role, and at worst, Islam plays a dominant role in the Anti-Christ's one world religion.

After the news of Herman Cain, it appears to me that conservatives are lost. How can you abandoned a man on allegations yet flock over to support someone who has a history of doing worse. It reminds me of when Jesus was being betrayed by his own people instead they wanted the guy that use to rape their women an steal from them to go free.. America, you deserve what you get in 2012. You are constantly being played like sheep to a slaughter. We can now proceed with the plans for the New World Order for the next century...

(podcast ... a must listen) Was the collapse of MF Global an accident or the calculated move of a political insider? Ann passionately lays the whole scheme bare, explaining the massive implications this has for our legal and financial systems, not to mention how investors should prepare in the face of massive corruption.

FXstreet.com (Barcelona) - S&P rating agency has just downgraded 37 global banks. Goldman, BofA, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, BNY Mellon are amongst the cuts based on a new methodology. Japanese and UK banks cut or outlook lowered as well.

THE first thing I would do if I was the benevolent dictator of planet Earth would be to fire all politicians — who are basically university lecturers in positions of power. They might be able to quote the existential philosophers but that doesn't mean they know how to run businesses. Countries are businesses — they have imports and exports and you want your exports to be higher than your imports so you can have a profit. You want to make sure that whatever money you give out to your population is money that you can afford to send out. Countries...

UPDATE - Nov. 9: The Associated Press is reporting that Joe Paterno has decided to retire at the end of the season. As the amount of alleged victims in the Jerry Sandusky case climbs rapidly, reports are emerging that Penn State head coach Joe Paterno's coaching career will soon come to an end. Official support for Paterno is reportedly "eroding," even as Nittany Lion fans rally in support of the longtime coach. The New York Times reported Tuesday that Paterno's 46 years as Nittany Lion head coach "will soon be over, perhaps within days or weeks." According to two sources...

The Best Places To Stay After The Zombie Apocalypse Andrew Shen Oct. 20, 2011, 9:00 PM Image: Wikimedia Commons The 2011 Zombie Safe House Competition has begun. When the zombie apocalypse happens, where will you live? See some of this year's new ideas for how to survive. Humans can go to the water, underground, above ground, or just fight back. We've gathered some of our favorite proposals here. Voting for the best safe house ends today.(Click to the site to see the choices)

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Someday, cultural historians will look back on the early 21st century and speculate about what killed the credibility of America’s so-called liberal-media elite. They will ask, Were the wounds self-inflicted or the product of a methodical plot? Make no mistake about it. We did this to ourselves. As a card-carrying member of the leftist media near-elite — alas, I’m not nearly rich or famous enough to be regarded as a 100% elitist — it pains me to see my brethren sinking like the sun in the west. But we have nobody to blame but ourselves. We’ve...

Breitbart: I Have E-Mails Showing Organized Plan For #OccupyWallStreet Protests To Destabilize Government On Fox Business, Andrew Breitbart breaks the news that Big Government has obtained and will release e-mails that prove the organized plan behind the "Occupy Wall Street" protests.

WASHINGTON – Maj. Walter Reed's sword was symbolically handed over to the Navy at a ceremony Wednesday marking the closure of the Army hospital bearing his name, where hundreds of thousands of the nation's war wounded have been treated for more than a century. The tone was somber at times, but mostly celebratory, as more than a thousand former and current staff members and patients — some of them wounded troops from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in wheelchairs who have lost limbs —gathered under a white tent to say goodbye to the Army's flagship hospital. The Army band played,...

The new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll on the debt ceiling crisis reinforces points made in the new issue of National Affairs in two important articles, the first by AEI Vice President Henry Olsen, and the second by Weekly Standard writer Jay Cost. What the poll reveals, as NBC’s Deputy Political Director Mark Murray writes, is that “Strong majorities of Democrats and independents prefer that Democratic congressional leaders make compromises in this budget debate, while almost 70 percent of independents want Republican leaders to do the same.” For me the key phrase in Murray’s comment refers to the desire of independents....

Glenn Beck later this year will end his Fox News Channel talk show, which has sunk in the ratings and has suffered from an advertiser boycott.

Large crowds gathered at Porky's in St. Paul Friday, a few days before the decades-old restaurant closes its doors. Nora Truelson and her late husband opened Porky's in 1953, establishing it as the St. Paul gathering place on Saturday nights. Truelson declined to speak on camera, but her son told 5 EYEWITNESS News light rail construction along University Avenue was a factor in the decision to close. The Truelsons say they are selling their property to their next door neighbor, Episcopal Homes. The restaurant is scheduled to close Sunday; everything at Porky's will be auctioned off Monday. The Preservation Alliance...

Reporting from Las Vegas and Los Angeles — The Sahara hotel-casino, a Rat Pack-era jewel of the Las Vegas Strip that age and a prolonged recession had tarnished, will close in May, owner SBE Entertainment announced Friday morning. Chief Executive Sam Nazarian, the Los Angeles nightclub impresario who purchased the Moroccan-themed casino in 2007 and vowed to restore its hipness, said in a statement that running the property was "no longer economically viable."

The Libyan leader has lost all three pillars of his rule - tribal, military and diplomatic. Judging from his desperate speech last night, he seems to be losing his mind and perhaps his nerves. That's why it's only a question of time for his regime to breakdown. For the last four decades, Gaddafi has based the stability of his rule on a careful balancing act among more than 100 tribes and clans, especially the 30 influential among them, that pride themselves on playing an important role in freeing Libya from colonialism. Gaddafi has used bribes when possible, blackmail and scare...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Kennedys have held congressional seats, the presidency and the public's imagination for more than 60 years. That era ends when Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island vacates his U.S. House seat next month, leaving a City Council post in California as Camelot's sole remaining political holding.

Departing Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter on Tuesday said conservative Republicans who backed Tea Party challengers against establishment candidates in the recent elections engaged in political cannibalism. In his final floor speech, Specter complained there's scant room for centrists like himself in a polarized Senate where civility is in short supply. "In some quarters, compromise has become a dirty word," said Pennsylvania's longest-serving senator, who lost his re-election bid after three decades in the Senate. Specter complained that some GOP senators had helped Tea Party challengers beat incumbent Republicans like Utah Sen. Bob Bennett and Rep. Mike Castle in his Delaware...

Throughout my adult life governments around the Western world have been propagating the gospel of multiculturalism, which tells us that immigrants, from whatever part of the world and whatever way of life, are a welcome part of our "multicultural" society. Differences of language, religion, custom, and attachment don't matter, they have reassured us, since all can form part of the colorful tapestry of the modern state. Anybody who publicly disagreed with that claim invited the attentions of the thought police, always ready with the charge of racism, and never so scrupulous as to think it a sin to destroy the...

PICTURES: UK Harriers to make final operational flights today By Craig Hoyle Operations with the UK’s BAE Systems Harrier GR9/9A ground-attack aircraft will come to an end today, with the nation’s Joint Force Harrier organisation to perform a final series of sorties from the Royal Air Force’s Cottesmore base in Rutland. The farewell is to involve a 16-aircraft formation which will perform flypasts at the RAF’s facilities at Wyton, Cranwell, Waddington, Scampton and Coningsby and also over Stamford, Lincoln and Oakham before returning to land at Cottesmore. The aircraft should take off from around 13:15 local time and land around...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected numerous polls predicting a Republican landslide among House candidates and defiantly predicted tonight that Democrats will retain control of the House of Representatives.

DETROIT — Pontiac, the brand that invented the muscle car under its flamboyant engineer John Z. DeLorean, helped Burt Reynolds elude Sheriff Justice in “Smokey and the Bandit” and taught baby boomers to salivate over horsepower, but produced mostly forgettable cars for their children, will endure a lonely death on Sunday after about 40 million in sales. It was 84 years old. The cause of death was in dispute. Fans said Pontiac’s wounds were self-inflicted, while General Motors blamed a terminal illness contracted during last year’s bankruptcy. Pontiac built its last car nearly a year ago, but the official end...

Due to the fierce competition among the music players, Sony will retire its once-popular Walkman tape player in Japan, the Associated Press (AP) reported on Monday. "Those of us who grew up in the Reagan Decade know: By six years after its 1979 debut, the Walkman had become the iPod of its day," Rob Pegoraro of The Washington Post wrote in a blog post on Monday. "Much like Apple's music player, Sony's gadget was near-ubiquitous, got a little smaller over subsequent revisions, and had cheaper competitors that Weren't Quite The Same Thing."

CHICAGO (AFP) – Little Orphan Annie, the plucky redheaded star of Broadway musical and comic strip fame, has run out of tomorrows ---at least in print. The pop culture icon who sang and danced her way to international fame in the Broadway musical that gave us tunes such as "It's The Hard-Knock Life," and "Tomorrow," ended her decades-long run as a comic strip heroine on Sunday, June 13. Tribune Media Services, the division of media conglomerate the Tribune Company that syndicates the strip to US newspapers, is pulling the plug on the irrepressible Annie, her trusty dog Sandy and her...

How LOST should have ended... Dream of the yellow dog