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BALTIMORE (AP) — The disgraced former mayor of Baltimore was sentenced to three years in federal prison Thursday for arranging fraudulent sales of her self-published children’s books to nonprofits and foundations to promote her political career and fund her run for the city’s highest office. The scandal has shaken Maryland’s largest city, which for years has struggled with grinding poverty, political mismanagement, record crime rates and police abuses that led to massive riots. And it made a mockery of Catherine Pugh’s inaugural promise to restore trust in Baltimore’s leaders. Pugh was also sentenced to serve three years of supervised release...

Former Florida Department of Corrections officer, Terrance Reynolds, 30, was convicted Friday following a 14-day trial for conspiring to assault youthful offender inmates, announced the Department of Justice. The jury acquitted Reynolds of two counts of depriving the youthful offender inmates of their civil rights.Evidence presented at trial established that on March 27, 2017, Reynolds and former Sergeant Brendan Butler, 30, conspired to physically assault and intimidate youthful offender inmates for being disruptive and disrespectful earlier that morning. Reynolds and Butler then instructed three of the inmates to exit their housing unit and took them into a mop closet....

Remarks as Prepared for DeliveryCraig, I appreciate the kind introduction.  You have dedicated your career to advancing law and faith in an era when so many of our country’s influential institutions seek to undermine both, particularly religion.  I thank you for your tireless work to counter this trend.  I know that those here, and millions of the faithful across America and around the world, appreciate it too.Good afternoon, everyone.  It is wonderful to be in Nashville, and I am deeply honored to be with you at such an important gathering. We live at a time when religion – long an...

A woman who was working as a tour bus guide was reinfected with the COVID-19 coronavirus, testing positive after having recovered from a prior infection, said a local government agency in Japan. Osaka’s prefectural government confirmed that a woman in her 40s, who tested positive twice, was a resident in Osaka. She tested positive Wednesday after developing chest pains and a sore throat, the government told public broadcaster NHK. She had first tested positive in late January and was released from the hospital on Feb. 1 and was declared coronavirus-free on Feb. 6, the government said. However, officials said she...

Today, Vice President Mike Pence and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced the addition of the following individuals to the President’s Coronavirus Task Force:Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the TreasuryDr. Jerome Adams, Surgeon General of the United StatesLarry Kudlow, Director of the National Economic CouncilEarlier today, the Vice President announced the addition of White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx to the task force. Additional members can be found here.  

Today, Vice President Mike Pence announced the following individual to a key position on his team to combat the spread of the Coronavirus:  Ambassador Debbie Birx, to serve as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator. Ambassador Birx is a world-renowned global health official and physician. She will be detailed to the Office of the Vice President and will report to Vice President Mike Pence. She will also join the Task Force led by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.  She will be supported by the National Security Council staff.  Dr. Birx serves as the U.S. government’s leader for combatting...

(Feb. 26, 2020) — On Wednesday afternoon, citizen researcher, blogger and retired Navy Commander Charles F. Kerchner, Jr. tweeted to President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, his thoughts on the “Deep State” and any potential probe the president might order into the findings that Barack Obama’s “long-form” birth certificate and Selective Service registration form are fraudulent. “One of [the] major reasons the Deep State is after Trump is because he was questioning Obama’s pres[idential] eligibility & missing birth certificate,” Kerchner tweeted to Giuliani, who has been researching what he alleges is massive corruption involving the Obama regime, Ukraine, China and...

The visit of the United States (US) President Donald Trump will be remembered for its extravaganza apart from the ostensible chemistry between the two leaders. The visit also resulted in upgrading the India-US partnership to the level of a “Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership”. The $3-billion defence deal saw India purchase Apache and MH-60R helicopters: A deal to benefit the US military establishment, and upgrading our security environment. Bilateral relationships bloom only when both sides understand and sympathise with each other’s concerns. Let us list some of India’s concerns that were left unaddressed by the US: First, we were hoping for...

MEXICO CITY - The cruise ship MSC Meraviglia, turned away by two nations due to fears of a virus outbreak, docked at Mexico’s Caribbean island of Cozumel on Thursday and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said passengers will be allowed to disembark, López Obrador said Mexico had to act with “humanity”after the ship was refused entry at ports in Grand Cayman and Jamaica. The cruise line had expressed frustration with the rejections, which came after it reported one crew member from the Philippines was sick with common seasonal flu. It said no passengers had shown evidence of the Covid-19 virus....

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania named its next dean and it's a historic choice. Erika H. James will be the first woman and first person of color to lead the prestigious business school. "This is an exciting time to be in business education," James said. "The scope and platform of the Wharton School provides an opportunity to create far reaching impact for students, scholars, and the business community." The announcement was made Wednesday by Penn President Amy Gutmann and Provost Wendell Pritchett.

WASHINGTON - Banning hydraulic fracturing and halting new drilling on federal land would cost the U.S. economy $7 trillion in the next decade and kill millions of jobs, the U.S. oil industry’s main lobby group said on Thursday in a report targeting the climate plans of top Democratic presidential candidates. The report from the American Petroleum Institute underscores mounting concern in the U.S. drilling industry over the possibility a candidate in favor of rapidly ending the fossil fuel economy to fight global warming will win the Democratic Party’s nomination to face Republican President Donald Trump in the November election. U.S....

For a time, former Trump campaign official Carter Page was seen as Darth Vader. Why? Well, he might be a Russian asset because he did some work in the country when he worked for Merrill Lynch. Oh, and he was alleged to be some key player in the collusion scheme between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin based on the unverified and now totally debunked dossier compiled by ex-MI6 spook Christopher Steele. That piece of political opposition research was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and used as credible evidence to secure a FISA spy warrant on Page. He was...

Drain the swamp, baby, and Make America Great Again and Keep America Great Always!! Prayers up for continuing progress and success. FR is funded solely by contributions made by the liberty loving patriots who love and use it. We are beholden to no political party. No advertisers, no outsiders, no sugar daddies, no corporate string pullers. Definitely no government subsidies or tax breaks. No 501c or other IRS non-profit status. This means no commercial ads. No annoying pop-ups. No ad tracking. No mail campaigns. No spam. No third-parties -- not even the IRS -- trying to control what we do...

WASHINGTON — Climate change activism in popular culture may be associated with woke millennials and graying hippies, but some of the most dire warnings about global warming are coming today from national security professionals. As the Trump administration has downplayed climate change as a national priority, it has increasingly fallen to members of the military and intelligence establishment to argue to keep focus and resources on climate change. On the whole, they treat global warming not as an environmental phenomenon or a moral imperative, but, rather as a force capable of altering the nation’s security outlook. The calculus is, as...

New Mexico Goveror Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a red-flag gun bill Tuesday that will allow state district courts to order the temporary surrender of firearms, and she urged sheriffs to resign if they still refuse to enforce it. Flanked by advocates for stricter gun control and supportive law enforcement officials at a signing ceremony, Lujan Grisham said the legislation provides law enforcement authorities with an urgently needed tool to deter deadly violence by temporarily removing firearms from people who pose a threat to themselves or others. Some sheriffs from mostly rural areas opposed the bill in committee hearings as a...

Bernie Sanders had better find a way to get a majority of first-ballot delegates for the Democratic convention. If he doesn’t, his plurality won’t suffice — if the party establishment has anything to say about it. And as the New York Times discovers, they do — quite a bit, in fact, and they may be past the point of caring about splitting the party. They will do anything to prevent a socialist takeover of the party, if it comes to that: Dozens of interviews with Democratic establishment leaders this week show that they are not just worried about Mr....

The huge amount of carbon dioxide we are producing and pumping into the Earth's atmosphere is causing much more damage than previously thought. Rising CO2 levels aren't just responsible not for global warming; they also have a massive impact on the global food system, according to a Science Advances study. An increase in carbon dioxide can significantly reduce the level of micronutrients in certain plants. Researchers studied the effects of the gas on rice and it was found to contain significantly less protein, iron, zinc and B vitamins after exposure to the level of carbon dioxide our atmosphere is expected...

The State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) has registered a criminal case on pressure from former U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden on former Prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Shokin. "The SBI has added information on the criminal offence to the Unified Register of Pretrial Investigations," Shokin's lawyer Oleksandr Teleshetsky said during a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency on February 27. The case was opened under an appeal from Shokin. The court obliged the SBI to register the proceeding. In his motion, Shokin spoke of pressure put on him by Biden, Teleshetsky said. "The reason for the pressure was the...

As the person who posts the daily Live thread on COVIOD-19, I am often pointed at as a ring leader for the "hype" and "hysteria". I don't think its fair, but I get it. I want to make a couple of over arching statements based on my life experience working in hospitals, emergency management and along side municipal and federal emergency preparedness organizations and departments. My work experience in hospital emergency planning and working with local, state, and federal officials provides me with a perspective that is different than most. The planning for these is things is pretty unemotional and...

The 17 state colleges and universities have been directed to immediately suspend or cancel institutionally-sponsored travel to several countries due to concerns about coronavirus. ... An announcement sent to the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities community on Thursday says that all colleges and universities must immediately suspend or cancel institutionally-sponsored travel to countries designated Level 3 (warning) and Level 2 (watch) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention out of an abundance of caution. ...