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Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton continue to lead their respective fields nationally, according to the NBC|SurveyMonkey weekly online tracking poll. In the GOP race, it's Trump at 38 percent among Republican and Republican-leaning voters, Ted Cruz at 21 percent, Marco Rubio at 11 percent and Ben Carson at 8 percent - all essentially unchanged from last week. No other Republican gets more than 4 percent.

How Donald Trump defeats Hillary Clinton Obama’s black supporters are crucial to a Trump win, and pollsters say he has a chance with this bloc. By Ben Schreckinger 01/19/16 05:17 AM EST If Donald Trump becomes the next president of the United States, there will be plenty of surprises along the way. One of the biggest will be the help he gets from black voters. According to Republican pollsters and Trump’s allies, the GOP poll-leader — who has been dogged by accusations of racism, most recently for tweeting out a chart that exaggerated the share of murders committed by blacks...

BRAVE SAS heroes dressed up in BURKAS to carry out a daring raid on the Islamic State (ISIS) headquarters in Syria which led to an evil jihadi leader being vaporised. Fearless special forces troops donned the full-length Islamic dress to sneak undetected through the terrorists’ de facto capital Raqqa and take down the terrorist commander. The eight-man SAS squad also eliminated several jihadi fighters after lifting up their burkas and opening fire on the stunned militants, who had no time to hide from the hail of bullets. The group posed as the wives of ISIS chiefs by covering themselves from...

Wow! That was Mika Brzezinski's repeated reaction to Robert Gates' amazingly frank take on the presidential field. Appearing on today's Morning Joe, the former Defense Secretary shot down all contenders mentioned, dumped on two who have not yet entered the race, and retroactively knocked President Obama for always thinking he was the smartest guy in the room. Here was Gates' rap on various candidates: Ted Cruz: people proposing carpet bombing "don't know what they're talking about." Joe Biden: "I don't think so." Donald Trump: "if you have never beeen in government, your ability to make the government work is going...

US lifts ban on funding ‘neo-Nazi’ Ukrainian militia By SAM SOKOL \ 01/18/2016 06:14 Last June, Congress passed a resolution intended to block American military funding for Ukraine from being used to provide training or weaponry for the Azov Battalion. Congress is reported to have recently repealed its ban on a Ukrainian militia accused of being neo-Nazi, opening the way for American military assistance. Last June, Congress passed a resolution intended to block American military funding for Ukraine from being used to provide training or weaponry for the Azov Battalion, an independent unit that had been integrated into the former...

This is to such a great extent that the city has come to be known by some as 'Catstantinople'. While they may be pleasant to look at, the cats don't always have a saucer of food and a warm place to sleep. A kind Imam has decided to remedy this by opening up his mosque to the stray cats and kittens, so they can eat and safely rest their heads away from the perils of the outdoors. Imam Mustafa Efe calls the cats "guests" of the mosque, and they've made themselves quite at home. They sit down on the plush...

After Jada Pinkett Smith suggested on Twitter that minorities should boycott the upcoming 88th Academy Awards over the ceremony’s lack of diversity, the actress and wife of Will Smith is now calling on the black community to separate itself from “mainstream” culture.

How does one go about finding a CEO? If you’re Wal-Mart, you designate your heir like a Viking chief, picking the strongest of your children. If you’re Yahoo!, however, you put “Affirmative Action Hire” or “Easy, Breezy, Covergirl” in your third-rate search engine and hope for the best. What dubious specimen does the search engine spit out? One Marissa Mayer.

"I Am Ground, Like a Grain of Wheat" -- A Reflection on the Paradoxical Passion of St. Bernadette Msgr. Charles Pope January 18, 2016 The life of St. Bernadette Soubirous was steeped in paradox and irony. She was the chosen visionary of our Lady at Lourdes and was to bring forth, by heavenly guidance, a spring that would bring miraculous healing to thousands. Yet Bernadette herself was beset with health problems that would cause her dreadful suffering. Her quiet and heroic suffering, something she accepted with obedience and as a kind of mission for souls, is not common knowledge...

While the nation's legal scholars differ over the exact meaning of the Constitution's requirement that a person must be a "natural born citizen" to become president, they're unanimous in saying Ted Cruz is wrong about an important point. "As a legal matter, the question is quite straightforward and settled law," Cruz has said. "People will continue to make political noise about it, but as a legal matter it is quite straightforward." In fact, the experts say, it is neither settled nor straightforward. It's not settled — because the Constitution does not define "natural born," a phrase that appears in the...

The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will take up a case challenging the legality of President Barack Obama's executive actions aimed at granting quasi-legal status and work permits to up to five million people who entered the U.S. illegally as children or who have children who are American citizens. The high court's widely-expected move gives Obama a chance to revive a key legacy item that has been in limbo for nearly a year, since a federal judge in Texas issued an order halting immigration moves the president announced just after the 2014 midterm elections.

Taking 12ga to a whole new level of destruction. 12ga slugs have been rightly known as good stoppers on dangerous game, but tend to over-penetrate in hominids. OATH Ammunition has two new designs that solve over-penetration along with greatly improving reliability in box-fed shotguns. Above is their 1.25oz 1600fps all-copper slug designed to expand to an incredible 2.5" and penetrate just enough to punch through a hostile human with little energy left to harm anyone downrange. If you've ever heard the expression: "a hole big enough to toss a cat through," consider that cats can fit any opening larger than...

After a battle-heavy first two episodes, it was pure, unadulterated romance that left viewers misty-eyed while watching War And Peace last night. An emotionally charged scene which saw dashing Prince Andrei (James Norton) whisk Natasha Rostova (Lily James) on to the dancefloor at the Tsar's New Year's Eve ball left the audience of the hit BBC One period drama reeling. Viewers took to social media to praise the romantic scene, which showed the couple falling in love - calling it 'this generation's Mr Darcy in the pond' - referring to Colin Firth in Pride And Prejudice.

It is probably the most unpleasant creature on Earth - the wriggling hagfish that envelopes would-be assailants with a cloud of slime. For the first time, scientists have unraveled exactly how the marine animal manages to produce this disgusting defensive response. And the researchers are now attempting to recreate the process for themselves in the laboratory in the hope of making new super-absorbant materials that can be used in plasters or babies nappies.

Complete Headline: EXCLUSIVE: Anonymous phone calls, fears of stalking and veiled threats: How power-hungry Hillary torpedoed the torrid affair between Bill Clinton and 21-year-old campaign worker that threatened to destroy her master plan to become president She was a pretty 21-year-old political science major, and he was a 27-year-old law school graduate embarking on his first political campaign. They instantly fell for each other. But when the other woman in his life learned of their affair, things turned frighteningly ugly. It may sound like the story line for a juicy TV miniseries, but it was real-life. The characters in the...

In May 2013, Huma Abedin and Anthony D. Weiner allowed filmmakers full access to his mayoral campaign with the hopes that the end result would document a spectacular political comeback, with Mr. Weiner being sworn in as mayor of New York having emerged from a scandal centered on explicit texting that forced him to resign from Congress. Things did not go quite according to plan. Instead, Weiner, a new documentary that The New York Times was allowed to view exclusively ahead of its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Sunday, provides an unfettered look at the implosion of Mr....

ISIS terrorists will be seeing a cut in pay. The treasury minister for the terror group ISIS, Bayt al-Mal, announced a pay cut for terrorists affiliated with the group due to what he called "exceptional circumstances." The Jerusalem Post reported terrorists could see their pay cut by as much as half because of circumstances that weren't elaborated upon, but that are being seen as a sign by some military analysts of the terror group's dwindling influence, Fox News reported.

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 18, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) - The head of one of the nation's largest abortion advocacy groups has said that Democrats should stop talking about the traditional, two-parent family. Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, particularly faulted insurgent Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders for placing his socialistic economic policies ahead of liberal social issues, like abortion and redefining the family. Sanders' traditional emphasis on economics "showed a lot in that first debate when he kept saying, 'You know we need parental leave, so mommies can stay home with their babies,'" Hogue said. Last October, Sanders used child-rearing to...

A 60-year-old illegal immigrant wanted for killing a police officer in the Dominican Republic is behind bars after Lowell cops took him in at gunpoint, police said. Ramon Aguasviva-Mejia, who had recently lived in Lawrence, also has warrants out of Suffolk Superior Court for drug distribution. He is also wanted by Quincy District Court for felony assault, police said. Detectives from the Lowell Police Department’s Special Investigations Section had Aguasviva-Mejia under surveillance Sunday afternoon in Central Plaza on Church Street, but he spotted the tail and bolted, narrowly avoiding hitting the cops as he fled, police said.

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Character Studies From The Bible Paul (Paul's Letter to The Romans) 8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery," "You shall not murder," "You shall not steal," "You shall not covet," and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." 10 Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (Romans 13) New International Version...