Free Republic

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli airstrike has flattened a high-rise building in central Gaza City. The 14-story Palestine Tower is home to dozens of families. But it also held offices connected to the Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups. Israel gave inhabitants a 10-minute warning before it destroyed the building, which was evacuated. There were no injuries. Abu Obeida, the spokesman for Hamas’ military wing, promised a harsh response. “Tel Aviv must stand on one foot and wait for our earth-shattering response,” he said.

A 12-storey Gaza tower block housing the offices of the U.S.-based Associated Press and Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera collapsed on Saturday after being struck by Israeli missiles, a Reuters witness said. The owner of the building had been warned in advance of an impending Israeli missile strike, and the building had been evacuated. The Israeli military did not immediately provide comment on the incident. The building also contained a number of apartments and other offices.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser declared a state of emergency and a public health emergency on Wednesday as the number of people in the district who tested positive for COVID-19 rose to 10. “We’re not in a vacuum," Bowser said in a news conference. "Our country is experiencing this, and our world is experiencing this." The declaration allows the district to request federal funds to address the public health crisis further and gives the mayor the ability to order quarantines 'without the approval of a court'. Nearly 125,000 people have tested positive for the virus around the world, killing at least...

A FedEx driver was robbed/shot while making a delivery on the 600 block of Unruh. Police say the driver was armed and exchanged gunfire with the robbery suspect. FedEx driver is stable, Suspect was located and is critical. -snip It should have been a routine delivery with the 32-year-old FedEx driver dropping off a package to a home in the area, but that’s when police say, an armed gunman approached and robbed the driver, perhaps not anticipating that the FedEx driver was also armed. “He was able to tell police that he was making a delivery on the 600 block...

Helen Hudson will tell you what the 15th Ward was like when she was a girl. In the 1950s and early ’60s, the Syracuse neighborhood was home to thousands of predominantly black residents who had settled in the growing upstate New York city during and after the Great Migration. Those who remember it, like Hudson, describe it as thriving, self-sufficient community they were proud to call home. “Oh my god, the things we had,” she said recently, her voice softening with the distinct twang of nostalgia. “We had two bowling alleys. We had meat markets.” Charlie Pierce-El will tell you...

Boise, ID—Today, the Idaho Freedom Foundation announced a lawsuit against the city of Boise regarding its abuse of the urban renewal process. The Idaho Freedom Foundation, the state’s leading voice for taxpayers, asserts that Boise is violating Idaho’s Constitution through urban renewal. The Idaho Constitution requires that local government entities receive a two-thirds endorsement from voters before taking on debt. IFF contends, constitutionally-required voter approval of new debt is avoided when Boise Mayor Dave Bieter and the city council use urban renewal mechanisms. IFF believes a recent example of a constitutional end-run occurred in December when city councilors approved the...

Across the United States, some cities are building parks above the roadways in an effort to reconnect communities, often low-income neighborhoods, that had been splintered decades ago when new freeways were rammed through in the name of progress. When Marvin Anderson walks along the tree-lined streets of Rondo – his childhood neighborhood – in St. Paul, Minn., the memories come rushing back. “That’s what I miss about it ... the smells of the food, hearing laughter ... in the barbershop, over a soda fountain,” he says. Mr. Anderson was born in this primarily African-American neighborhood in 1949. As a child,...

PATHS TO PROGRESS   Residents, who include formerly homeless people and those who were in foster care, pay low rent on houses that range from 250 to 400 square feet. After paying rent for seven years, they will be given the deeds to their homes. DETROIT—In 2013, when Keith McElvee got out of prison after a 12-year stint for a drug conviction, he returned to a neighborhood in northwest Detroit that he didn’t recognize. “This is like Beirut,” he thought. “Like a war zone.” Mr. McElvee is naturally gregarious and social-minded. Out of prison he struggled, but then found work...

Brunell Donald-Kyei's interview with a liberal media stooge. She is amazing, nothing he says gets her off track, she just reiterates the salient facts: Trump Offers Inner Cities $100 Billion over next 8 years + School Choice. With ladies like this pulling for Americans I do believe a new day is dawning.

Hollywood Boulevard is the West Coast equivalent of Times Square, an urban reclamation project that transformed a strip once notorious for crime, drug-dealing and prostitution into a tourist destination, a thriving night life district and the home of movie premieres and the Academy Awards. But over the past month, two high-profile crimes — a fatal stabbing of a tourist by a homeless person and a robbery spree by a gang that bounded past people gawking at the Walk of Fame — have threatened this carefully cultivated and civically critical reinvention, worrying community leaders and presenting an early challenge to this...

A wrecking ball is marking the end of an era this morning at 1230 N. Burling St., otherwise known as Cabrini-Green. The tower there is the last of the housing project's high-rise buildings to be demolished. A Target store may be built on the site, according to published reports. And even though some row houses remain, many consider this the end of Cabrini Green, judged by history as one of the most notorious housing projects in the country. Cabrini-Green survived almost 60 years. Cabrini-Green gained a well-earned reputation for gang crime and almost daily violence. Police officers were gunned down...

A farm in every Pittsburgh neighborhood would be one of the goals of a Franco Dok Harris administration, the independent mayoral candidate said today, as his campaign sounded its final notes before Tuesday's election. The novel proposal -- which would have the city assemble vacant lots and help gather the expertise needed to transform them into farms Read more: http://www.postgazette.com/pg/09303/1009555-100.stm#ixzz0VRy1TKRj

Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline... Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country. Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their...

GARY – Gary officials are seeking nearly $25 million in federal money to tear down more than 900 abandoned houses and 200 empty commercial buildings.......

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature. Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area. The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint. Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply...

> "I drove up and down the street three times — where is my house?" Roslonski said. His lawyer, Jeffrey Dworin, said the house was taken off a demolition list, then apparently reinstated without Roslonski's knowledge. "It happens," Dworin said. >

Tomorrow the Pittsburgh Steelers square off against the Baltimore Ravens, and the Philadelphia Eagles square off against the Arizona Cardinals. The winners will go head to head on Feb. 1 in Super Bowl XLIII. If there ever was a time to crow about the wonders of rebuilding a city around a professional sports team, this would be it. Three of the four teams remaining in the play-offs hail from cities -- Baltimore, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh -- that in recent years spent billions rebuilding their downtowns around pro sports facilities and other community "anchors." Except that there's a problem. The teams...

The City of Long Beach is advertising for planning consultants to carry out their plans. Will they be hired if there is some danger that the consultant will say "We have studied the situation carefully and we believe the city should not impose zoning restrictions on property owners and their uses of the land. Nor do we believe that eminent domain is justified." Would such a consultant be considered or hired?...

...The City of Long Beach is advertising for planning consultants to carry out their plans. Will they be hired if there is some danger that the consultant will say "We have studied the situation carefully and we belive the city should not impose zoning restrictions on property owners and their uses of the land. Nor do we believe that eminent domain is justified." Would such a consultant be considered or hired? The planning consultants are accomplices before the fact to legalized theft. They represent in Hannah Arendt's words "the banality of evil." So too do the officials who hire them.

One of the lessons we have learned in newspaper work is the importance of the long view. It often takes dozens of editorials, written over years, to get a law passed. We thought of that yesterday when we read a headline in the Daily News, "Feds eye bldg. sale at housing projects." The news was that the regional administrator of the federal department of Housing and Urban Development, Sean Moss, said the New York City Housing Authority should consider selling some of its buildings in the city's expensive neighborhoods. It's an idea this paper and its columnists have been pushing...