Tuesday, Dec 16th
Last update09:33:48 AM GMT
Domestic Glance
When Christmas comes to Lincoln, Nebraska this year, Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus will find there is no room in the inner halls of the state capitol – and no manger either.
Instead, there will be an 8ft “happy humanist” next to a “reason tree” dedicated to science and “human intellectual achievement”.
The next job Dean Skelos gets for his son will have to be in the prison commissary.
The former state Senate Majority Leader was convicted Friday of bribery, extortion and conspiracy charges for abusing his powerful post to enrich his son. The Manhattan Federal Court jury also convicted his son Adam, 33, of aiding and abetting in the scheme.
The felonious father and son face up to 130 years in prison when they're sentenced by Judge Kimba Wood early next year - the same amount of time former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is facing after his conviction on corruption charges last month.
The National Women’s Studies Association is the newest scholarly group to back the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.
In a vote that involved 35 percent of the association’s total membership, 88.4 percent, or 653 individuals, voted in favor of a boycott measure. Members of the NWSA’s executive committee then took their own vote on Friday to approve the membership’s recommendation that the association support BDS.
“You don’t see many drug traffickers retire,” gloated Bill Furay, head of the DEA’s office in Beaumont, Texas, following the arrest of a wealthy couple from a tiny neighborhood in Pearland. “Either they end up in prison, or they end up dead.”
Furay apparently never had time to give that lecture to his teenage daughter, Sarah, who was arrested earlier this month on drug-trafficking charges that could result in decades behind bars.
The National Security Agency will no longer be able to collect phone records in bulk starting Nov. 29, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement Friday.
The program's closure was required by the USA Freedom Act, signed by President Barack Obama in early June. The program was allowed to continue since then as part of a six-month wind-down period, in which intelligence officials could create and test a new phone records program where the government can only obtain records connected to a specific entity like a person or device that is associated with a foreign power or terrorist group.
Colorado Springs, the location of an attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic that left three people dead, is a centre of rightwing Christian culture with a “wild west mentality” when it comes to guns.
The attack, by a lone gunman carrying a rifle or shotgun, took place at a clinic that is the site of regular anti-abortion protests by the city’s pro-life Christian groups.
When Cedric Cromwell sits down with his family for a meal on Thanksgiving each year, the day holds a unique kind of significance.
Cromwell is the chairman and president of the tribal council of the Mashpee Wampanoag, the same Native American tribe that first made contact with the Pilgrims who arrived in Massachusetts in 1620. While the Wampanoag welcomed the Pilgrims and helped them ensure a successful first harvest, they were nearly wiped out by warfare and disease that arrived with the settlers.
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