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Sixties folk singer Donovan Leitch has been convicted of a charge of dangerous driving in Skibbereen, County Cork, with the offense taking place on 11 February after he attended a prerecording of the Tommy Tiernan Show. However, Leitch, aged 77, with an address at Castlemagner, Kanturk in County Cork had a charge of failing to provide an intoxilyzer sample to gardaí on the same occasion dismissed by Judge James McNulty at Skibbereen District Court. Judge McNulty said that the accepted the validity of evidence of respiratory consultant Professor Oisin O’Connell. Professor O’Connell, who carried out a series of tests on...

If you were president of the United States, would you hire an alleged former spy for Fidel Castro to be ambassador to El Salvador, a country teetering on the brink of hard-core socialism? President Obama just did. On Dec. 9, Obama nominated Mari Del Carmen Aponte to be ambassador to El Salvador, despite the fact that in the late 1990s, the FBI discovered that she was working with Cuban intelligence officers. According to Insight Magazine, "When the FBI eventually questioned her about her involvement with Cuban intelligence, she reportedly refused to cooperate." Why would Aponte escape the Obama administration's scrutiny?...

Attorney General TJ Donovan will launch a new “Bias Incident Reporting System” on Monday during a press conference announcing the results of his investigation into criminal complaints made by former state representative Kiah Morris. Morris, who had been the only black woman in Vermont’s Legislature, decided not to run for reelection partly because of racism and hate speech directed at her over the past few years. She claims that police and prosecutors in Bennington county failed to properly investigate her complaints or protect her family. Donovan decided in September to take over the investigation, citing a “breakdown in Bennington” during...

A Rutgers journal will put rare Nuremberg documents online. A plan to rout the church and install a Reich faith is shown. Take over the churches from within, using party sympathizers. Discredit, jail or kill Christian leaders. And re-indoctrinate the congregants. Give them a new faith - in Germany's Third Reich. More than a half-century ago, confidential U.S. government reports on the Nazi plans were prepared for the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and will be available online for free starting tomorrow - some of them for the first time. These rare documents - in their original form, some with ...

Staten Island Rep. Dan Donovan is locked in a surprisingly close race with Democratic challenger Max Rose, according to a poll released Tuesday. Donovan leads Rose by 4 points — 44 to 40 percent, the New York Times Upshot/Siena College survey found. Green Party candidate Henry Gardel gets 1 percent and 15 percent of likely voters remain undecided, the poll said. The 11th congressional district that encompasses Staten Island and southern Brooklyn has been considered a safe Republican seat. Staten Island accounts for about 70 percent of the vote and Brooklyn 30 percent.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - When Staten Island's seat in Congress becomes vacant, Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis will be the first to jump at it. Passed over last year in favor of then-District Attorney Daniel Donovan as the GOP candidate in a special election, Malliotakis is just as eager now to run for the House of Representatives, she indicated in a recent interview. The May 2015 special election saw Donovan elected to fill the remainder of Michael Grimm's term -- he had resigned in disgrace after pleading guilty to tax evasion.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Republican District Attorney Daniel Donovan has won Tuesday's special election and is going to be Staten Island's new congressman. Donovan vied with Democratic Councilman Vincent Gentile and Green Party candidate James Lane for the seat. The final tally for the election is not yet available, but the Donovan camp declared him the winner of the special election on Tuesday night. The DA celebrated with supporters at the Hilton Garden Inn in Bloomfield.

According to the Commerce Department, US housing starts rose 896,000, a little lower than expectations of 900,000. This follows a revised print of 846,000. hs081613 That is the headline news. But 1 unit starts were DOWN 2.15%. Multifamily starts were up 25.54%. hs081613table Single unit starts were rising with homebuilder confidence, but that has changed recently. hsconf Building permits have been increasing since January 2009. permitsjul13 But 1 unit permits fell 1.92% while multifamily (5+ units) permits rose 13.48%. What gives? According to Bloomberg, “Builders are contending with a limited supply of available land as well as rising interest rates...

President Obama is in Phoenix today to discuss fixing the housing market. It is reminiscent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speeches in the 1930 on how to fix the housing market. The federal government began its response to the housing crisis in 1932, with the enactment of the Federal Home Loan Bank Act (the Bank Act). The Bank Act created the Federal Home Loan Bank System and the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBank Board) as its regulator. The federal government also created the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and Fannie Mae. And the creation...

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan gave an interesting speech at the NAACP meeting in Orlando on July 16th. To be sure, inner city poverty is a serious problem. The public policy question is how to best address this problem. But HUD Secretary Donovan lays the blame on racial discrimination. The key phrases in his speech are: “Bottom line: people are being denied their freedom of choice and the benefits of full citizenship. Yet because of the subtle nature of this discrimination, often times, they don’t even know they have been subjected to this abuse.” “That’s why HUD is enhancing its enforcement...

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan gave an interesting speech at the NAACP meeting in Orlando on July 16th. To be sure, inner city poverty is a serious problem. The public policy question is how to best address this problem. But HUD Secretary Donovan lays the blame on racial discrimination. The key phrases in his speech are: “Bottom line: people are being denied their freedom of choice and the benefits of full citizenship. Yet because of the subtle nature of this discrimination, often times, they don’t even know they have been subjected to this abuse.” “That’s why HUD is enhancing its enforcement...

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan gave an interesting speech at the NAACP meeting in Orlando on July 16th. To be sure, inner city poverty is a serious problem. The public policy question is how to best address this problem. But HUD Secretary Donovan lays the blame on racial discrimination. The key phrases in his speech are: “Bottom line: people are being denied their freedom of choice and the benefits of full citizenship. Yet because of the subtle nature of this discrimination, often times, they don’t even know they have been subjected to this abuse.” “That’s why HUD is enhancing its enforcement...

...Present day Dunwich is a village 14 miles south of Lowestoft in Suffolk, but it was once a thriving port -- similar in size to 14th Century London. Extreme storms forced coastal erosion and flooding that have almost completely wiped out this once prosperous town over the past seven centuries. This process began in 1286 when a huge storm swept much of the settlement into the sea and silted up the Dunwich River. This storm was followed by a succession of others that silted up the harbour and squeezed the economic life out of the town, leading to its eventual...

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said Congress and the Administration “should move forward this year with plans for overhauling the U.S. mortgage finance system,” including GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were “seized by the government in 2008.” Donovan is quoted as saying, “Reform of the failed model of the GSEs, the private gains and socialized losses model, is a top priority and it’s critical that we make progress this year toward that goal.” There have been rumblings of GSE “reform” for the past several years. But the stock answer has been “But not now.” Fannie Mae’s record profits for...

Here are two old songs to ponder and enjoy for what they were, and for what they meant at that time. I don't compare them to each other, the songs have been flying to and fro in my head, so perhaps they 'want to be written about'. In this corner you have Sir Donovan Leitch of Scotland, made his fame in England with Mellow Yellow, Wear Your Love Like Heaven and others. People forget that 1967 didn't just bring us Sergeant Pepper, we also heard a most intriquing stanza of First there is mountain, then thereis no mountain, then there...

With a $2 million bankroll and heavy advertising, Elizabeth Esty won the high-profile Democratic primary for the 5th Congressional District. Now, she has to win a quieter, if still crucial campaign for the support of organized labor. The first test will come Wednesday when the Connecticut AFL-CIO's political committee meets to consider transferring its backing to Esty from Christopher G. Donovan, the union favorite she defeated in a three-way primary. Esty, who voted against labor on a handful of key items during her single term in the General Assembly, concedes she has little hope of defeating Republican Andrew Roraback in...

House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan, D-Meriden, intends to publicly announce tonight that he will continue as a candidate for Congress in the wake of an FBI sting that led to the arrest of his campaign fundraiser and the firing of his campaign manager last week. Donovan's says he "will be available to make a statement" outside his campaign headquarters in Meriden, his first significant public comments since his campaign was upended Thursday by the news of the arrest of Robert Braddock Jr. on charges of concealing the source of campaign donations. His new campaign manager, Tom Swan, declined to say...

The finance director of state House Speaker Christopher Donovan's campaign for Congress has been charged with conspiring with others to conceal the source of $20,000 in campaign contributions. Federal prosecutors on Thursday announced that 33-year-old Robert Braddock Jr. of Meriden was arrested and charged Wednesday in an alleged conspiracy ... Prosecutors allege Braddock and unnamed co-conspirators arranged $10,000 in payments from conduit contributors to Donovan's campaign for the 5th District seat in connection with proposed legislation this year. The purpose of the conduit contributions was to conceal that the individuals who were actually financing the payments had an interest in...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10, 2011 — To the surprisingly inventive uses for banana peels which include polishing silverware, leather shoes, and the leaves of house plants, scientists have added purification of drinking water contaminated with potentially toxic metals. That's the topic of the latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions" podcast series. It actually points out that minced banana peel performs better than an array of other traditional purification materials. Gustavo Castro and colleagues note in the podcast that mining processes, runoff from farms, and industrial wastes can all put heavy metals, such as lead and...

Donovan (Donovan Philips Leitch 5.10.46) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist. Emerging from the British folk scene, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music in a way that had substantial commercial appeal.  Donovan appeared in the UK early in 1965 with a series of live performances on the pop TV show Ready Steady Go!... and his popularity quickly spread from there. After signing with the British label Pye Records in 1965, he recorded a handful of singles and two albums in the folk music vein with leading independent record producer Mickie Most, scoring...