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Crude oil has become so cheap it could speed the oil market to a recovery. U.S. crude plunged on Thursday to a 12-year low, an ominous milestone for Houston's oil hub, which already has shed thousands of jobs in the 19-month oil downturn. With crude now fetching less than $34 a barrel, about half the nation's scattered collection of 400,000 aging, nearly depleted wells may have to be shut in as their product becomes less valuable than their operating costs. Called stripper wells, these produce a negligible amount of oil individually but together account for about a tenth of U.S....

A Saudi man has been repatriated from the Guantanamo Bay military prison to Saudi Arabia, leaving 103 detainees at the facility, the Pentagon said in a statement on Monday. Muhammed Abd Al Rahman Awn Al-Shamrani was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in early 2002 after being arrested by Pakistani officials in Pakistan in late 2001, Defense Department documents showed. The transfer is part of US President Barack Obama’s ongoing effort to close the US naval prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Boeing and ANA (All Nippon Airways) have celebrated ANA becoming the first airline to reach its 100,000th revenue flight with the 787 Dreamliner, during a gate ceremony at Sea-Tac International Airport, Seattle, US. "The 787 Dreamliner has played an important role especially in forming the backbone of our international fleet," said Osamu Shinobe, President and CEO, ANA. "Reaching the 100,000th revenue flight milestone with the 787 Dreamliner is a significant milestone for ANA. As the largest customer of the 787, we look to forward to introducing the entire family of Dreamliners into our fleet as we aim to celebrate another...

With the Golden Globe awards airing last Sunday and the Oscar nominations coming out later this week, I recently took a look at the films of the past year and come up with my annual list of the ten best movies of the year.Overall, 2015 was a great year at the movies with a lot of great films arriving (including big budget fare like Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Jurassic World). There were plenty of box office failures as well (including financial flops like Fantastic Four and cinematic duds like Fifty Shades of Grey) but overall, the local cineplex...

And Moses answered and said, But, behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice: for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto thee. And the Lord said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod. And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it. And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a...

"HARVEST" - Planned Parenthood's Custom Abortions for Better Baby Parts Published on Jan 12, 2016 Planned Parenthood senior executives and medical directors told CMP investigators that Planned Parenthood’s abortion providers would be happy to alter their abortion procedures in order to harvest higher-quality baby body parts. The representatives with the most experience harvesting fetal organs, Planned Parenthood’s Senior Director of Medical Services Dr. Deborah Nucatola, and Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s Director of Research Melissa Farrell, indicated this already happens at their sites as a routine matter. When Planned Parenthood makes decisions about a woman’s abortion procedure based on what will...

Under New Hampshire's modified primary system, undeclared voters may vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary, although voters who are members of one of the parties cannot vote in the other party's primary...Sanders (50 percent) now leads Clinton (44 percent) among women voters, and he's holding his lead among men, 57 percent - 32 percent, similar to previous months. And voters under the age of 50 prefer Sanders, 58 percent - 30 percent. Older voters said in this survey they would support Sanders over Clinton by 50 percent to 44 percent. Two months ago, Clinton led this group 56...

Two officials from a group designated by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot to fund the terrorist group Hamas will attend President Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday as guests of Democratic lawmakers. The invitations to the Council on American-Islamic Relations leaders came after the nation’s first Muslim congressman, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., challenged House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to bring a Muslim American as one of his guests to the speech, The Hill reported. Ellison called it "an opportunity to really drive the point home that there are no Americans who are suspect just...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil fell briefly below $30 a barrel on Tuesday, extending a relentless selloff that has wiped almost 20 percent off prices this year amid deepening concerns about fragile Chinese demand and the absence of output restraint.

Fox Business Network anchor Maria Bartiromo said Tuesday that Donald Trump would likely continue his all-Donald-all-the-time strategy with the news media if he were to win the White House.*snip*A Trump presidency 'is obviously going to be more transparent' than what Americans have seen in the Obama years, Bartiromo said in a phone interview, 'because frankly I think he likes it. There's a reason you see him on TV so much: He's obviously enjoying it!' 'You probably have to assume that if he were to gain the highest office, he's going to be out there regularly,' she explained. 'The American people...

Vice President Joe Biden is hoping Donald Trump does not become the next president, but he acknowledged it's a possibility."Yes, I think it's possible," Biden told Savannah Guthrie during TODAY's live broadcast from the White House on Tuesday when asked whether he could imagine Trump taking the Oval Office. "I hope that if that were to occur - I hope it doesn't because I have fundamentally different views than he does - I'd hope that he gets a lot more serious about the issues, a lot more serious about gaining knowledge about this this nation functions and foreign policy and...

A video documenting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s visit to a mosque in Canada has recently emerged, showing him joining Muslim worshipers for evening prayers during Ramadan in 2013, nearly two years before he was elected, the CIJNews website reported on Monday. Trudeau was leader of the Liberal Party when he visited the Jamea Masjid mosque in Surrey, British Columbia, in West Canada. In the video, he is seen wearing traditional Islamic clothing as he delivers a speech that he begins with the Muslim greeting “peace be upon you.” In his speech, he thanked worshipers for granting him the honor...

Full title: Disgraced ex-politician John Edwards back practicing law and now vying to lead 'goldmine' case against Volkswagen over emissions cheatingFormer vice presidential candidate John Edwards is competing to lead private litigation against Volkswagen over its emissions cheating scandal. The former U.S. Senator, a Democrat, was a trial lawyer in North Carolina before his political career was felled by a sex scandal after it emerged he had an affair with actress Rielle Hunter - who then gave birth to their daughter. Last Friday, he sent a letter to U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco asking to be...

Or is it the consequence of a crisis of government?There is certainly a dis-ease here and it has spread for quite a long time. Justin Dyer makes the attempt to diagnose.On a stage in St. Paul, Minnesota (in 2008), the first-term Illinois senator (Barack Obama) positioned himself as a visionary leader ushering in a new era of American politics, shedding past partisan divisions and uniting a generation around the promises of hope and change. So what went wrong?Perhaps we were just not willing to work for that vision, to fight for it and believe in it. Or perhaps—as James Piereson suggests...

January 11, 1994 The Superhighway Summit is held at UCLA's Royce Hall. It was the "first public conference bringing together all of the major industry, government and academic leaders in the field [and] also began the national dialogue about the Information Superhighway and its implications." The conference was organized by Richard Frank of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and Jeffrey Cole and Geoffrey Cowan, the former co-directors of UCLA's Center for Communication Policy. The keynote speaker was Vice President Al Gore who said: "We have a dream for…an information superhighway that can save lives, create jobs and give...

A couple weeks ago, I posted about a case in Kansas in which a couple was wrongly raided by a police tactical team. Robert and Addie Harte and their two children were held in their home by armed officers for over two hours as the officers searched the house for marijuana. They found no drugs. After spending $25,000 to get a judge to order the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department to turn over documents related to the search and investigation leading up to it, the Hartes discovered that Robert Harte, along with hundreds of other people, became a suspect when Missouri...

Matt TurnerJanuary 12,2016Bank of America Merrill Lynch's high-yield team is bearish. So bearish, in fact, that it is getting into debates with its clients and colleagues over exactly how bad it is. "It is our fear that many of the signs we see in high yield ultimately foreshadows further economic and risk asset malaise in 2016 and 2017," the team led by Michael Contopoulos said Monday in a note. "However, as we sort through the financial press releases and discuss our views with investors and internally, we realize our disposition is perhaps on the unconventional side of where most currently...

A new Gallup poll concludes that Americans hate their government much more than they did when Obama first took office.  In 2009, the burden of government was ranked fourth on the list of problems faced by Americans. At that time, seven percent of those surveyed ranked burdensome government as the worst problem they faced.  At the end of 2014, that percentage stood at 16%. More importantly, government was the most often cited concern above all others. At his inauguration, Ronald Reagan said "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem.  It is the problem."  If we...

On CNN's AC360 on Monday, Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker revealed her own ignorance of Christian teachings, as she targeted Senator Ted Cruz for something "astonishing" he recently said at a campaign stop: "I don't think there's any chance Ted Cruz can win a general — and here's why....He said...'It's time for the Body of Christ to rise up and support me.' I don't know anyone who takes their religion seriously who would think that Jesus should rise from the grave and resurrect himself to serve Ted Cruz. I know so many people who are offended by that comment." [video...

A 70-year-old citizen of Taif got the surprise of his life when his two wives egged him on to get married a third time, and that too to a younger woman. They not only made the suggestion but also offered help in the form of arranging the marriage. Awad bin Aouaimer Al-Thouaibi told local media that he could not believe his ears when his wives came up with the idea. “First I thought they were pulling a fast one on me. However, they looked serious about it and said they want to do that out of love and respect for...