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Former US President Jimmy Carter, in an analysis he wrote for Foreign Policy (FP), stated that "Hamas cannot be wished away, nor will it cooperate in its own demise. Only by recognizing its legitimacy as a political actor - one that represents a substantial portion of the Palestinian people - can the West begin to provide the right incentives for Hamas to lay down its weapons." In the article, Carter praised Hamas for making a "major concession" in April when it entered into a reconciliation agreement with the Palestinian Authority's President Mahmoud Abbas. In the reconciliation agreement, Hamas gave up...

"The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul," he wrote. "The only difference between this and the use of gas (which President Franklin D. Roosevelt had barred as a first-use weapon in World War II) is the fear of retaliation." Those harsh words, written three days after the Hiroshima bombing in August, 1945, were not by a man of the American left, but rather by a very prominent conservative -- former President Herbert Hoover, a foe of the New Deal and Fair Deal. In 1959, Medford Evans, a conservative writing in...

....decorated WNBA veteran Becky Hammon has never had the experience of shattering a backboard with a dunk. She's busting through the glass ceiling instead. The San Antonio Spurs hired Hammon as an assistant coach on Tuesday, making her the first full-time, paid female assistant on an NBA coaching staff...

Charles Simons and Tracy Lamar claim they were each bitten after being called to calm down the 'out of control' Emmy Award-winning journalist. The cable network continued to employ the senior international correspondent despite her 'history of becoming intoxicated and then abusive.' On Monday, Damon apologized in an email and wrote that she's 'beyond embarrassed.'

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.......Plans to demolish the illegal camp known as Jungle 2 have been delayed as there have been clashes between rival gangs of immigrants within the camps. As a result, the prefect of the Pas-de-Calais area, Denis Robin, said delegations would be sent in to speak to the migrants to prevent any further trouble. Mr Mignonet, who is also the town's deputy mayor, added: "People say we are not doing anything, but we can't stop the migrants going from Africa to Italy and making their way to England. We are just one town. "Europe should help us but they do nothing....

Stories about Milton Wolf, the conservative physician aiming to unseat Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) on Tuesday, always include one particularly interesting detail: The guy running to the right of the incumbent Republican senator is also a second cousin to the president of the United States. What's not usually articulated is precisely how the two are related. In short, Wolf's mother was cousins with Obama's grandmother. But the story is a bit more interesting than that. We pieced together the family tree from a number of sources: a tombstone database, online genealogy sites, old newspapers. Giving us this family tree, with...

In November 2013, 54-year-old Theodore Wafer was charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter, and possession of a firearm for fatally shooting 19-year-old Renisha McBride on the front porch of his suburban Detroit home. McBride, who had been drinking heavily and smoking pot that night, wound up at Wafer's door after wandering away from the scene of a late-night car accident several hours before. (Witnesses said she appeared "disoriented.") Prosecutors and McBride's family say she was clearly looking for help. Wafer said that he acted in self-defense, having taken the noise McBride was making outside for a sign that someone was trying...

If you suspect someone in your life is a narcissist, there may be an incredibly straightforward way to confirm your suspicions: Just ask them. New research suggests that simply asking narcissists to out themselves can be surprisingly effective. Specifically, researchers asked this question over a series of 11 studies: “To what extent do you agree with this statement: I am a narcissist.’” The participants — and there were about 2,200 of them in total — were told to answer on a scale of one to seven. As it turned out, their self-scoring results closely matched scores on the traditional method...

Those around the world who are looking to the United States for support against intimidation, oppression or outright massacres have learned a tough lesson in the past few years: This U.S. president, despite his bold pronouncements and moral posturing, cannot be counted on. In Syria, President Obama declared that the brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad “must go.” The U.S. ambassador in that country and other administration officials openly encouraged opposition groups campaigning against the Assad regime. Yet when it came time to organize and provide lethal assistance to moderate opposition groups to help defend them against Assad’s attacks, the president turned...

On July 31, when all eyes were focused on the Ted Cruz-stoked chaos unfolding in the House chamber over the border bill, the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee did something rather remarkable. It voted to declassify its Benghazi report. After two years of investigation, it found no evidence to buttress any of the conspiracy theories surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, attack that killed Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans. We didn’t get this news from committee chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.). Nope. There was a story in the San Francisco Chronicle on Friday. A press release...

The U.S. Department of Defense did not receive personal data on users of Internet privacy service Tor through a government-funded project to detect vulnerabilities, a Defense spokeswoman told Reuters on Tuesday. "This particular project was focused on identifying vulnerabilities in Tor, not to collect data that would reveal personal identities of users," said Defense Department spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Valerie Henderson, adding that the National Security Agency also did not receive data. The project was conducted by two researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute with funding from the Defense Department.

Sherifatu Sumaila scored the game’s lone goal as Ghana defeated Canada 1-0 on Tuesday in the opening game of the FIFA Under-20 Women’s World Cup. The 17-year-old Sumaila capitalized on a cross from Edem Atovor to score in the 22nd minute, pouncing on a rebound after Canada’s ’keeper Kailen Sheridan had pushed a shot away. The loss was a disappointing beginning for a Canadian host team hoping to go deep into this tournament.

“We cannot support a fractured party. The stakes are too high,” Roberts told the crowd. Republicans need to gain six seats in November to take control of the Senate. “We must be united,” Roberts continued. “We need to take another hill in the fight to stop the liberal agenda. Help us replace the Obama way with the Kansas way.” Wolf, a radiologist and distant cousin of President Obama, cut into Roberts’ 20-point polling lead in the closing weeks of the race, but was also damaged by political attacks, primarily TV ads about him posting gruesome X-ray images on Facebook in 2010.

The news that just came across my screen on Fox that incumbent Senator Pat Roberts has prevailed in his primary for reelection to the Senate from Kansas (or in his case from Arlington, Virginia) is heartbreaking. The implications are dispiriting. His victory implies that in the American heartland the Republican Party cannot reform itself when confronted with an egregious example of elitism. If the Republican Party in Kansas (Kansas!) cannot reform itself there, how can it expect to prevail in purple states? How can we expect to carry a message to Reagan Democrats and Independents if The Tea Party cannot...

EXTON, Pa. — A Pennsylvania veterinarian has used an overdose reversal drug to save a kitten that had been given heroin. Police said Tuesday they arrested the suburban Philadelphia man who abused the cat.

Last week, U.S. equities dropped 2% to 3%, depending on what index you monitor. That had the financial columns full of crash warnings about the coming plunge. Now to be fair, we have seen these headlines for a while now, so it's not like they just suddenly began to appear, but the fact that there actually was some selling added a little credence to the crash worries. Sure there were a few voices of reason, but for the most part, the coming declines were all but set in stone as far as most commentators were concerned. But is that really...

Via RCP, I want to believe it, I almost believe it — but I don’t really believe it. All the makings of a Democratic clusterfark are there. If O legalizes five million workers, plenty of blue-collar Democrats are bound to put two and two together and wonder what that means for their wages. And plenty of Democratic Senate incumbents in red states, like, oh, let’s say Mark Pryor, are going to panic, knowing what could happen if the backlash among conservatives is as ferocious as everyone expects. In fact, as Newt alludes to, both Pryor and North Carolina’s Kay Hagan...

What everyone gets wrong about Beijing's bullying in the South China Sea.As China jousts with Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and other neighbors over contested maritime territory, the conventional wisdom is that energy concerns are a motivating force. China claims virtually the entire South China Sea -- a claim disputed by its neighbors (most notably Vietnam and the Philippines) -- and there have been an increasing number of conflicts in recent years over who has the right to exploit the energy resources under the seabed in disputed waters. China's introduction of a deep-water drilling rig into contested waters around the Paracel...

The 19th anniversary of Serb exodus from Croatia in Operation Storm was marked in Serbia and the Serb Republic (RS) in Bosnia on Monday [August 4, 2014].The victims of the continuation of the military operation that took place in the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina, known as Operation Mistral, were also remembered. In St. Marko's Church in Belgrade, Bishop Jovan of Slavonia headed the memorial service honoring slaughtered Serb civilians and soldiers. The memorial was co-served by priests of the Serbian Orthodox Church. In the speech delivered after the service, Bishop Jovan said that nobody can say that they seized Lika, Banija...