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The U.S. economy is hitting a stride, growing at a 2.4-percent rate in the second quarter in a surprisingly strong showing that adds confidence to the idea that the nation may avoid a long-threatened recession. The growing economy comes coupled with other good economic news: Inflation is slowing, and unemployment sits at just 3.6 percent. Markets have noticed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up more than 4 percent over the last month and more than six percent this year, despite dropping on Thursday. It’s all good news for the White House and President Biden, who have used the recent...

Schematic diagram of the newly discovered Ross 508 planetary system. The green region represents the habitable zone where liquid water can exist on the planetary surface. The planetary orbit is shown as a blue line. A Planet has Been Found That Shifts In and Out of the Habitable Zone A super-Earth planet has been found orbiting a red dwarf star, only 37 light-years from the Earth. Named Ross 508 b, the newly found world has an unusual elliptical orbit that causes it to shift in and out of the habitable zone. Therefore, part of the time conditions would be...

MONROE, Mich. – A Monroe County major has been charged after he submitted overtime documents for shifts he didn’t work, state officials said. Monroe County Major Jeffrey Kemp turned himself in Friday and was arraigned in 1st District Court on two counts of misconduct in office and two counts of false pretenses between $200 and $1,000. The misconduct in office charges are five-year felonies, and the false pretenses charges are one-year misdemeanors. Officials said Kemp falsified overtime documents in 2018 to show that he was participating in marine patrol shifts when, in reality, he wasn’t working.

Multi-agency analysts working to review new Clinton emails A special team of analysts has been activated to sort and sift through the cache of newly discovered emails that kick-started the dormant Hillary Clinton email probe, two intelligence sources confirmed to Fox News. The sources say the multi-agency task force was re-engaged over the weekend, with analysts working overlapping shifts covering 16 hours a day to identify new classified material.

Washington - The U.S. is planning a concerted campaign against lower-level corruption in Afghanistan thought to be directly feeding the insurgency and is ceding more control to Afghans of the higher-level investigations that soured relations with President Hamid Karzai. The Obama administration has made the battle against government corruption a key part of its Afghanistan war strategy for the past year, arguing that graft and fraud within Mr. Karzai's inner circle fuel public support for the Taliban. Now some top officials say corruption further down the food chain has a bigger impact on the insurgency's strength. (Snip) Officials said the

GENEVA (AFP) – Climate scientists must urgently look into changes in atmospheric currents linked to devastating floods in Pakistan and wildfires in Russia, UN climate and weather bodies said on Wednesday. Ghassem Asrar, director of the World Climate Research Programme, told AFP that changes, known as blocking episodes, can prevent humidity or hot weather dispersing. That intensified heavy rain or heatwaves and locked them over an area, he explained, potentially with a growing impact on extreme weather events that scientists expect to happen more frequently with global warming. Asrar said that European researchers had modelled the blocking pattern in atmospheric...

Republican Senate nominee Carly Fiorina has shifted her position on the extension of jobless benefits to America’s long-term unemployed, stating Tuesday morning that she “probably” would break with her party and support the extension if she was in the Senate for the vote expected today. In recent weeks, Sen. Barbara Boxer has called Fiorina heartless for stating that she would not support the pending aid to an estimated 2.5 million Americans. As part of her attempt to frame Fiorina as out of touch with average workers, the California Democrat has tried to tie Fiorina’s position on the legislation to her...

The White House is revising its Afghanistan strategy to embrace the idea of negotiating with senior members of the Taliban through third parties – a policy to which it had previously been lukewarm. Negotiating with the Taliban has long been advocated by Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, and the British and Pakistani governments, but resisted by Washington. The Guardian has learned that while the American government is still officially resistant to the idea of talks with Taliban leaders, behind the scenes a shift is under way and Washington is encouraging Karzai to take a lead in such negotiations. "There is...

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration, in a major shift on housing policy, is abandoning George W. Bush’s vision of creating an “ownership society’’ and instead plans to pump $4.25 billion of economic stimulus money into creating tens of thousands of federally subsidized rental units in American cities. The idea is to pay for the construction of low-rise rental apartment buildings and town houses, as well as the purchase of foreclosed homes that can be refurbished and rented to low- and moderate-income families at

SAN DIEGO - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says that if an initiative to ban gay marriage qualifies for the November ballot, he's prepared to fight it. California's governor spoke Friday in San Diego at the convention of the Log Cabin Republicans, the nation's largest gay Republican group. He has previously vetoed bills that would have legalized gay marriage. A Schwarzenegger spokeswoman did not say what prompted the governor to shift his position. Schwarzenegger said he was confident a ban would never pass in California and called the effort "a waste of time."

LOS ANGELES - More people live in Los Angeles County than in the state of Michigan. That's just one of many startling challenges California poses for presidential candidates. More than half the state's primary ballots may be cast before polls open Tuesday. New rules for choosing presidential nominating delegates encourage Republicans to turn up in heavily Democratic districts. Independents can vote for Democrats but not Republicans. Home to nearly one in eight Americans, California is a giant, diverse political landscape, enormously expensive for candidates yet offering the campaign's largest batch of delegates. For years, candidates for presidential nominations mostly ignored...

FLORISSANT, Mo. - Political momentum now shifted her way, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton flew to Missouri, a key Feb. 5 battleground state, while rival Barack Obama hoped to rejuvenate his candidacy with the help of black voters in the South. "Now we're back here in the Midwest, where I'm from. I'm so happy to see all of you," Clinton, a Chicago native, said to cheers at a campaign rally late Saturday in this St. Louis suburb. Nevada's presidential caucuses gave Clinton a big boost, powering her to a second straight win over Obama in the first Western contest of the...

WASHINGTON, June 29, 2007 – All of the $11 billion appropriated for the Iraqi Relief and Reconstruction Fund has been obligated, the work is 83 percent complete, and Iraqis are doing more and more of the work, a senior military official said yesterday. Work continues at an electrical substation to be built on the Nasiriyah Water Treatment Plant site. The $245 million project is scheduled to be finished soon. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Betsy Weiner  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. But work will need to continue in the region for at least another year and...

WASHINGTON, March 1, 2007 – Rebuilding Iraq is shifting from a U.S.-led “jump start” effort to a self-sustaining Iraqi driven phase, the director of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office said today. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has built the majority of its large projects, Ambassador Joseph Saloom, director of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office. “It is a shift away from us building large things … to more working to build their capacity to do things for themselves,” Saloom said. All but 15 percent of the $13.4 billion Iraq Relief and Reconstruction fund has been spent, and that will...

TECATE The number of immigrants illegally jumping the California-Mexico border appears to be increasing as enforcement gets tougher in Arizona, Border Patrol arrest statistics suggest. It's known as the water-balloon effect: Squeeze one spot and illegal immigration will bulge elsewhere along the 1,952-mile frontier. While overall arrests have fallen a modest 3 percent since October, they are up sharply in some places, including the San Diego area. Thanks to a surge in hiring new agents, the Border Patrol says it's ready for a shift in traffic. Skeptics aren't so sure. In the early 1990s, San Diego was overrun by border...

Older but Mellower: Aging brain shifts gears to emotional advantage Bruce Bower Given all the bad news that science has delivered about brain cells withering and memory waning as the years mount, older people have a right to be cranky. But, instead, the over-50 crowd handles life's rotten realities and finds life's bright side more effectively than whippersnappers do. In no small part, that's because the aging brain makes critical emotional adjustments, a new study indicates. NEURAL FEEL. As people age, from 12 to 79 years old, they respond to fear with greater and greater boosts in medial prefrontal activity...

LOS ANGELES – Last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger backed a federal plan to build a stretch of border fence between San Diego and Tijuana. This week, he said walling off hundreds of miles of the California-Mexico border is a strategy from the Stone Age. It's not the only example of his complex – and sometimes shifting – views on illegal immigration, an issue that has given rise to a national movement during his time in office. California's governor certainly should have a role in the debate over leaky borders and the not-so-invisible illegal labor economy. The state has more illegal...

China's communist leadership is trying to paint a smiley face over its most recent brutal suppression of dissent. Five days ago, protestors were gunned downed by police in a village not far from Hong Kong. The authorities blame a "few instigators" for the violence, but this event is indicative of growing socio-economic shifts in mainland China; namely the disparity between those profiting from communist experimentation with capitalism, and those left on the sidelines. China's government is trying to put lipstick on the pig. From MSNBC.com: The government said three people died in Tuesday’s violence in this coastal village northeast of...

Sacramento -- Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has moved his resignation date from Tuesday to Friday, citing "administrative convenience,'' according to his resignation letter. Shelley, who was mired in ethics scandals and the subject of multiple investigations into his fund raising and his handling of federal voting act money, announced Feb. 3 that he would step down from the office effective Tuesday. Neither the secretary of state's office nor the governor's office could provide more information Friday about why the resignation date had changed.

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