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Many plan to work well into their 60s or even 70s, thinking they can compensate for years of undersaving. But according to recent surveys, retirement may come earlier than expected for many Americans – whether they're ready for it or not. The average retirement age in the U.S. is about 62 years old, even though most workers expect to retire around 67. In fact, more than 56% of retirees left the workforce earlier than they planned, according to a Transamerica survey. So, what's causing this gap between expectations and reality?

Chicago has reportedly taken meetings with illegal alien advocates from St. Louis, Missouri, about a deal to ship thousands of border crossers from the Windy City to the Gateway City. St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones (D) recently launched the city’s “Office of New Americans” with an eye toward helping illegals settle in the city on the Ohio River, and now several advocacy groups in St. Louis are nudging Chicago officials to open up the spigot, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The nonprofit International Institute of St. Louis is one organization asking Chicago’s city hall to consider shipping illegals south to...

Three years after the coronavirus pandemic began and authoritarianism strengthened around the world, nearly half of U.S. adults (47 percent) say they do not expect their lives to “return to pre-pandemic normalcy,” a Gallup News poll found. That percentage was the same in October 2022 and is slightly down from July and August 2022 when 53 percent of U.S. adults said they do not expect their lives to return to the way they were before the pandemic. Results of the poll are based on self-administered web surveys conducted February 21-28 with 5,167 adults. The margin of error is ±2 percentage...

Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis cop convicted of murdering George Floyd, is being sentenced in the closely watched case Friday. What was Derek Chauvin convicted of? The jury found Chauvin, 45, guilty of all three charges against him — second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter — on April 20. The verdict came on the second day of deliberations following nearly three weeks of testimony from 45 witnesses — 38 of them called by the prosecution.

The San Leandro Police Officers’ Association is expressing concern over a report that shows an almost 50 percent increase in month-over-month violent crime with significant increases in robbery, assault, residential burglary, and shoplifting in San Leandro. New crime numbers released Friday from July show a 500 percent increase in robberies involving a firearm, a 125 percent increase in assaults with a deadly weapon, a 100 percent increase in shoplifting, and a 75 percent increase in residential burglaries over the previous month of June 2020. Year-over-year crime statistics show that rape is up 38 percent, assault with a deadly weapon is...

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Two-thirds of Americans expect an Islamic suicide bomb attack on American soil within six months, according to a new poll that also shows Republicans are significantly more concerned than Democrats. Fritz Wenzel of Wenzel Strategies said one of the most shocking findings of his recent polling on the subject was that 65 percent are expecting an attack within six months. "Some of the communication between Fort Hood shooter Hasan and al-Qaida figures included discussion of such attacks inside the United States, and it has been a common form of violence in the Middle East for years," he said. "Now, Americans...

WASHINGTON, May 1, 2007 – Commanders on the ground expected the rise in violence that has accompanied the U.S. troop surge into Baghdad, and the new security plan there will take time to be effective, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said here today. “I think it's a sad reality, but I think we anticipated that there would be, in some respects, an increase in the violence, and particularly in the belts around Baghdad, as we pushed the bad guys out of some of the neighborhoods where we had not been active in a long time, or the Iraqi security...

WASHINGTON - Beginning Friday, airline passengers will go through double screening to make sure they're not carrying liquids onto planes, the head of the airline industry's largest trade group said. Passengers and their carry-on luggage will be checked not only at the main security checkpoint, but also a second time at the boarding gate. The stepped-up screening in response to a new terrorist threat began Thursday at 25 airports where planes leave for Britain. "It's going to spread across the whole system tomorrow," James May, president of the Air Transport Association, said Thursday. The response to the terrorist threat produced...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Americans are far more likely than the Japanese to expect another world war in their lifetime, according to AP-Kyodo polling 60 years after World War II ended. Most people in both countries believe the first use of a nuclear weapon is never justified. Those findings come six decades after the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war claimed about 400,000 U.S. troops around the world, more than three times that many Japanese troops and at least 300,000 Japanese civilians. Out of the ashes, Japan and the United States forged...

Republicans vow retaliation in ethics feud Democrats are told to expect rash of inquiries into actions By KAREN MacPHERSON BLADE WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON - Angry House Republicans yesterday warned their Democratic colleagues to expect a spate of inquiries into possible ethics violations in retaliation for forcing GOP leaders to jettison controversial new rules for ethics probes. The Republican admonitions came a day after House GOP leaders, under intense pressure from Democrats, made a rare policy reversal and grudgingly scrapped ethics rules they had pushed through the House only a few months ago. Republicans contended the rules made the ethics process...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) is striking twin themes for a second term, vowing to fight hard for his political agenda while reaching across the aisle to Democrats. "Americans are expecting bipartisan effort and results," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. "My administration will work with both parties in Congress to achieve those results, and to meet the responsibility we share." Offering some words of conciliation, he said Republicans and Democrats can agree to aggressively pursue the war on terror, with every citizen having a stake in the outcome. The challenge to working together, Bush...

GAZA (Reuters) - The Palestinians have been promised substantial U.S. aid if they ensure peace in the Gaza Strip (news - web sites) should Israel end its 37-year occupation, their foreign minister said on Thursday. Nabil Shaath told Reuters in an interview that talks were going ahead on drawing Islamist militants into a body to help end violence in Gaza and further a U.S.-backed peace plan that promises statehood to Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) wants to evacuate Jewish settlers from Gaza in a unilateral move that could supersede Washington's "road map" plan, stymied by...

'Expect al-Qaeda to attack every 3 months' January 07 2004 at 01:27PM Singapore - Al-Qaeda is expected to launch attacks every three months in 2004, with growing threats from a number of smaller terrorist organisations, an international terrorist expert warned on Wednesday. "As the memory of September 11 recedes, the West is likely to witness another mass casualty attack on Western soil," Rohan Gunaratna told a south-east Asian outlook forum in Singapore. Before September 11, the network launched an attack every two years, but since then, there has been one al-Qaeda-linked attack every three months, he said. Singapore-based Gunaratna, the...

Expect the unexpected - don't believe everything you hearSo far the third Gulf War since 1980 has contained several surprises. By Christopher Bellamy 23 March 2003 The first was that instead of a discrete, even prolonged, initial air campaign, the opening strike was an "opportunity target" – a meeting of five leadership figures including Saddam Hussein himself. The fog of war still clouds what happened. Saddam may have escaped by half an hour, may have been injured or may even have been killed. We still do not know. There were two good reasons for not having a heavy air campaign...