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The cost of living crisis in the United Kingdom has seen nearly three-quarters of a million Britons miss a housing payment last month, according to data compiled by a leading consumer body. Research conducted by the British consumer advocate agency Which? found that an estimated 700,000 people in the UK missed or defaulted on a rent or mortgage payment in April. The consumer body reported that the problem paying for housing was “particularly high” among renters, with their figures finding that among those surveyed, one in 20 tenants had difficulties paying their housing bills, including energy costs and local council...

The National Audit Office has warned that there are between 240,000 and 740,000 “missing” urgent GP doctor referrals for suspected cancer during the pandemic because millions of people have not been able to access healthcare or have avoided doing so. The National Audit Office (NAO), the independent spending watchdog for the British government, warned in a report that hundreds of thousands of people in England who should have been referred by their doctor for suspected cancer have not been, while there may be tens of thousands fewer people starting cancer treatment than was expected.

Primaries ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER this year and next. Less than 10% of the people vote in primaries so that means that JUST FREEPERS ALONE can affect the outcome. There are millions of us! AND TURNOUT WAS *LOW*???????

A new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report reveals that President Barack Obama has attended only 42.1% of his daily intelligence briefings (known officially as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB) in the 2,079 days of his presidency through September 29, 2014. The GAI report also included a breakdown of Obama’s PDB attendance record between terms; he attended 42.4% of his PDBs in his first term and 41.3% in his second. The GAI’s alarming findings come on the heels of Obama’s 60 Minutes comments on Sunday, wherein the president laid the blame for the Islamic State’s (ISIS) rapid rise squarely at...

Dozens of agitators emanating from the Palestinian Authority ruled zones threw rocks and bricks at residents of Yitzhar. The incident took place Tuesday afternoon. The spokesperson of the Yitzhar community council stated that security forces are pursuing the suspect...

SANFORD, Fla. - As controversy over the $200,000 George Zimmerman raised on PayPal took center stage Friday, Special Prosecutor Angela Corey's decision to ignore legal questions raised over whether she's obeying Florida's public record law went largely unnoticed. But the issue of whether Corey has the legal right to continue preventing the public from seeing the evidence she says proves Zimmerman committed the second degree murder of Trayvon Martin seems to be coming to a head. The special prosecutor's office on Friday refused to make that evidence public -- even though an attorney fighting for the public's access insists Friday...

A Troy man is accused of firing a gunshot at a man he found in bed with his wife early Wednesday, af­ter the woman met the stranger on a late-night bike ride, po­lice said. Troy po­lice say the 30-year-old moth­er of five chil­dren, ages 1-14, went for a bike ride at 4 a.m. Wednesday. She met a 30-year-old man walking down the street and invited the man back to her house for sex, reports said. The man agreed, and they fell asleep af­terward, po­lice said. The husband returned at 5 a.m. and discovered the stranger in his bed, accord­ing to...

A quarter of cancer sufferers are being sent away by GPs with their early warning signs dismissed as minor ailments, a study reveals today. Tens of thousands of patients are initially told that their symptoms are ‘nothing to worry about’ or advised to take painkillers or antibiotics for months. They have to make repeated trips to their doctor before being given a correct diagnosis, the report concludes. Britain has one of the lowest cancer survival rates in Europe despite billions being invested in treatment over the last decade.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal authorities ignored warnings that could have prevented a 2009 massacre at an Army base, two U.S. senators said in a report on Thursday that outlined intelligence failures similar to those in the September 11, 2001, attacks. Major Nidal Malik Hasan -- an Army psychiatrist who had been dubbed by two colleagues as "a ticking time bomb" -- was charged with murder in the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas that killed 13 and wounded 32. Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, and Susan Collins, the panel's top Republican, said in the probe that authorities had...

The Obama administration has publicly chastised BP America for its handling of the spreading oil gusher, yet a review of the response suggests it may be too simplistic to place all the blame for the unfolding environmental catastrophe on the oil company. The federal government also had opportunities to move more quickly, but did not do so .... The Department of Homeland Security waited until Thursday to declare that the incident was “a spill of national significance,” and then set up a second command center in Mobile, Ala. The actions came only after the estimate of the size of the...

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) was years ahead of the curve when it came to Take Your Dog to Work Day. The constant presence of his three Portuguese water dogs in his Russell building office helped humanize their owner and brought a sense of fun to a workplace known for rules and formalities. Now, lobbyists, staffers and other Hill dwellers say they mourn not only the passing of Kennedy but also he end of a unique chapter in Capitol Hill’s canine history. With their black curly hair, floppy ears and bouncy gait, Kennedy’s dogs became a part of the lawmaker’s nearly...

JERUSALEM (Map, News) - An American demonstrator was critically wounded Friday in a clash between protesters and Israeli troops over Israel's West Bank separation barrier. Peace activists with the International Solidarity Movement said Tristan Anderson, of the Oakland, Calif., area, was struck in the head with a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops. The military and the Tel Aviv hospital where Anderson was taken had no details on how he was hurt. "He's in critical condition, anesthetized and on a ventilator and undergoing imaging tests," said Orly Levi, a spokeswoman at the Tel Hashomer hospital. She described Anderson's condition...

A lot has been written about George W Bush's unpopularity around the globe - but what about those places where the outgoing president was popular? As he leaves office with a record high domestic disapproval rate - 73%, according to an October ABC News/Washington Post poll - President George W Bush can perhaps take some comfort from the fact that this feeling is not uniformly shared abroad. While the shoe-throwing incident in Iraq may come to symbolise the world's opinion of a president who is often referred to as the worst in America's history, some corners of the world will...

'PATH' MISSED REAL 9/11 STORY September 8, 2006 -- FIRST things first: ABC's miniseries "The Path to 9/11," which will air Sept. 10 and 11, is a stiff. For those well-versed in the infuriating details of the missteps and missed opportunities in pursing al Qaeda between the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the attack five years ago, there is nothing new here. SNIP Of course, the question obsessing everyone today is: Does the movie misrepresent events, conversations and policies of the Clinton administration? Yes and no. Ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's anger is unquestionably justified....

An estimated 75 percent of applicants for immigrant benefits - green cards, work visas, and a host of other documents - at a major federal processing center were not screened through the U.S. terrorism watch list over the past four years, the Daily Bulletin has learned. The error - on nearly 3 million applications dating to 2002 - was confirmed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officers at the National Benefits Center in Lee's Summit, Mo., near Kansas City. The center is one of several facilities across the country that process foreign applications for immigrant benefits. Numerous Department of...

After early hopes that California might have its first on-time budget in 20 years, lawmakers Wednesday failed to bridge differences over funding health care for the children of illegal immigrants and settle on a plan to pay down state debt. Lawmakers from both parties said they plan to continue negotiating Thursday - the constitutional deadline to pass the budget - but no vote on the proposed $131 billion spending plan is scheduled. Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, criticized Republicans for the delay, saying the party had gone looking for reasons to hold up a vote. Republicans' attempt to block...

The FBI missed many opportunities to identify a suspected Chinese spy and her FBI lover, including a tip that she "was in bed with" the bureau's Los Angeles office, a Justice Department internal review said Wednesday. Katrina Leung, a Chinese-American paid informant for the FBI, and her handler, former counterintelligence agent James J. Smith, were able to deceive the FBI about their romantic relationship for nearly 20 years, Justice Department inspector general Glenn A. Fine said. In all, the FBI paid Leung $1.7 million over 18 years, Fine said. FBI supervisors failed to act on two serious incidents just 10...

WASHINGTON, April 14, 2006 – Democracy in Iraq could secure the beginnings of a new Middle East, the nation's top diplomat said yesterday in a radio interview. On "The Sean Hannity Show," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that leaving Iraq would be to leave the country to fugitive Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his ilk. "I would just ask the American people to think about the alternative," Rice said. "The alternative is to leave prematurely from Iraq and leave that country to the likes of Zarqawi and al Qaeda and to miss the chance, to miss the opportunity...

In 2005 California increased the education budget by $3 billion and poured $50 billion into schools at the rate of more than $10,000 per pupil. Yet there is little to show for these efforts. Student achievement remains low and the dropout rate is high. Teacher quality varies widely from school to school and the state lacks an accurate way to measure student progress. Throughout this past year, California missed crucial opportunities to enhance accountability and boost achievement. Not giving more choice to parents and students trapped at low-performing schools. Federal legislation gives parents whose children are in failing schools the...

WASHINGTON - The New York Times' Judith Miller belatedly gave prosecutors her notes of a key meeting in the CIA leak probe only after being shown White House records of it, and her boss declared Friday she appeared to have misled the newspaper about her role. In a dramatic e-mail, Executive Editor Bill Keller wrote Times' employees he wished he'd more carefully interviewed Miller and had "missed what should have been significant alarm bells" that she had been the recipient of leaked information about the CIA officer at the heart of the case. "Judy seems to have misled (Times Washington...