Ukraine Falls Further into Chaos…

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Photo Credit: Interdependent

Photo Credit: Interdependent

The day began with the police station and administration building in Kostiantynivka being overrun; next the airport at Kramatorsk was attacked with rocket propelled grenades and then the mayor of Kharkiv was shot in the back. While America and the European Union impose new sanctions on Russia, violence and turmoil continues unabated in eastern Ukraine.

The attempted murder of Gennady Kernes, the mayor of the country’s second-largest city, raised fears that prominent public figures were being targeted for assassination. On Monday night he was “fighting for his life” after surgery, said his spokesman. The blame was levelled at both the Kremlin and extreme right-wing groups.

Mr Kernes was gunned down while he was out cycling, jogging, or swimming, according to differing accounts. Valeriy Boyko, the director of the Institute of Surgery in Kiev, said the mayor had “suffered a very serious wound with a number of organs damaged”.

The 64-year-old billionaire businessman had been a fervent supporter of Viktor Yanukovych, the overthrown President, and a fierce critic of Kiev’s Maidan protest, banning similar protests in Kharkiv. Since then he had spoken out against those who want to take the region under Moscow’s rule.

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Tornadoes kill 16 in Arkansas, 1 in Oklahoma

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Photo Credit: AP / The Joplin Globe, Roger Nomer

Photo Credit: AP / The Joplin Globe, Roger Nomer

Emergency officials were searching for survivors Monday in the debris left by a powerful tornado that carved an 80-mile path of destruction through suburban Little Rock, killing at least 16 people.

The tornado that slammed into Vilonia, about 10 miles west of the state capital, on Sunday evening grew to about half a mile wide and was among a rash of tornadoes and heavy storms that rumbled across the center and south of the country overnight. The National Weather Service warned that more tornadoes, damaging winds and very large hail would strike in parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Louisiana on Monday.

“We’ve got a powerful storm system affecting the eastern two-thirds of the United States over the next few days,” said Russell Schneider, director of the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.

Brandon Morris, spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management, said crews were sifting through the rubble in the hope of uncovering survivors and to assess the full extent of the destruction.

“Right now, the main focus is life safety,” Morris said. “We’re trying to make sure everyone is accounted for.”

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Painful Video: Watch Americans Fail on Answers To Basic Citizenship Questions

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The Immigrant Archive Project just released this painful-to-watch video of Americans answering the questions asked on the naturalization test. Every applicant for U.S. citizenship must pass a civics exam that “covers important U.S. history and government topics.”

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High Doses of Antidepressants Appear to Increase Risk of Self-Harm in Young Adults

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Photo Credit: Steve Snodgrass / Creative Commons

Photo Credit: Steve Snodgrass / Creative Commons

Children and young adults who start antidepressant therapy at high doses, rather than the “modal” [average or typical] prescribed doses, appear to be at greater risk for suicidal behavior during the first 90 days of treatment.

A previous meta-analysis by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of antidepressant trials suggested that children who received antidepressants had twice the rate of suicidal ideation and behavior than children who were given a placebo. The authors of the current study sought to examine suicidal behavior and antidepressant dose, and whether risk depended on a patient’s age.

The study used data from 162,625 people (between the ages of 10 to 64 years) with depression who started antidepressant treatment with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor at modal (the most prescribed doses on average) or at higher than modal doses from 1998 through 2010.

The rate of suicidal behavior (deliberate self-harm or DSH) among children and adults (24 years or younger) who started antidepressant therapy at high doses was about twice as high compared with a matched group of patients who received generally prescribed doses. The authors suggest this corresponds to about one additional event of DSH for every 150 patients treated with high-dose therapy. For adults 25 to 64 years old, the difference in risk for suicidal behavior was null. The study does not address why higher doses might lead to higher suicide risk.

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WATCH: John Oliver was Tougher On Former NSA Director Keith Alexander than Most Other Journalists

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

Former “Daily Show” reporter John Oliver interviewed former National Security Agency director Gen. Keith Alexander on Sunday night, and it was a much tougher interview than Alexander has been subjected to in the past.

Oliver conducted the interview on his new HBO show “Last Week Tonight,” a weekly news wrap-up show structured similarly to “The Daily Show,” and managed to tweak the former NSA director over the agency’s spy programs.

Oliver began the segment by asking Alexander whether he had any regrets from his time at the NSA and whether the former NSA director believed the agency had a perception problem.

“Absolutely,” Alexander responded.

Alexander then explained that the negative perception was that the American people believed they were having their information collected, but “the reality is the target is not the American people.”

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Baggy Pants Ban Taking Effect On Wildwood Boardwalk (+video)

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Photo Credit: myfoxphilly

Photo Credit: myfoxphilly

Those Wildwood days will have a bit of a different look beginning Tuesday.

That’s right, if you’re heading to the boardwalk there, make sure you hike up your pants!

The ban on overly saggy pants is taking effect.

Philadelphia News, Weather and Sports from WTXF FOX 29

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One-Third of Americans Haven’t Visited Dentist in Past Year

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About one in three U.S. adults say they did not visit the dentist at some point in the past 12 months. The 64.7% in 2013 who said they did visit the dentist at least once in the previous year is essentially unchanged from the rate found in 2008. Women are more likely than men to report visiting the dentist annually.

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These findings are based on interviews with 178,072 American adults conducted during 2013 and with 354,645 adults conducted during 2008 as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. Respondents were asked whether they had visited the dentist in the previous 12 months. Results for all years between 2008 and 2013 are similar.

The American Dental Association recommends that adults develop a plan for dental visits with their dentist, but say even those at low risk of oral disease benefit from at least annual cleanings. Thus, one in three American adults do not meet this minimum level of dental care.

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Emails Reportedly Show Close Coordination Between CNN Team, Emanuel on ‘Chicagoland’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Chicago Tribune reviewed more than 700 emails pertaining to the making and filming of “Chicagoland,” an eight-part series which finished airing last week.

Though coordination can be expected in any documentary series, the emails reportedly show the Emanuel administration playing an active role in the narrative — and producers encouraging them to play ball.

One email showed executive producer Marc Levin appealing to the mayor’s office last May to be “on the phone in his SUV, in city hall with key advisers and his kitchen cabinet and meeting with CPS head BBB (Barbara Byrd-Bennett) and with CPD (Superintendent Garry) McCarthy.”

The first episode of the series showed several such scenes.

In a separate exchange, the daughter of a PR executive who helped arrange the CNN/Emanuel project reportedly emailed the mayor’s press secretary asking for “the list of story/interview ideas that you and your team were going to put together” for the producers.

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Cops Arrest Man for Quoting Winston Churchill

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

Photo Credit: Breitbart

The leader of an anti-immigration pressure group has been arrested for quoting Winston Churchill. Paul Weston, chairman of LibertyGB, was taken into custody in Winchester, southern England, after delivering a speech in which he quoted an excerpt from the wartime Prime Minister’s book The River War.

Addressing a gathering of people from the steps of Winchester Guildhall, Weston quoted the passage:

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith.”

A woman came of the Guildhall and asked Weston if he had authorisation to make the speech. He replied that he did not, at which point she called him “disgusting” and called the police. At least six police officers arrived, questioned by-standers and arrested Weston and took him away. Britain’s ITV News is now reporting the story.

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ObamaCare and Common Core – Both are Bad to the Bone

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

Photo Credit: Weekly Standard

By Bruce Deitrick Price.

Medical insurance and public education might seem to be two different worlds with different problems. But the proposed solutions by the left were essentially the same. Here are ten descriptions that apply equally to ObamaCare and Common Core:

1) Huge federal power grab: The obvious result from both ObamaCare and Common Core is that Obama and his Czars get a bigger government to administer, more money to play with, more jobs for their loyal troops, and more control over people’s lives.

2) Unresponsive to popular demand.:ObamaCare and Common Core were massive, top-down interventions demanded by leftwing politics and ideology, not something the public asked for. Alleged problems were used as an excuse for adopting solutions that would grow government. The big question was, what can they get away with? (We see the same dynamics playing out in climate change.)

3) Incomprehensible by design: A sentence was not used if a paragraph could be concocted. Thousands of new requirements, regulations, laws, and standards were contained in dense verbiage that neither Congress nor the public would ever read and couldn’t understand if they did. Almost every paragraph includes expanded powers and hidden consequences. Citizens would be further reduced to a childlike dependence on bureaucrats.

4) Public excluded from legislative process. The complexity of the political process, plus the density of jargon and propaganda, ensured that John Q Citizen was ignored. These programs were passed by stealth, chicanery, arm-twisting, and bribes. The Cornhusker Kickback put ObamaCare over the top. Similarly, so-called stimulus money earmarked for shovel-ready jobs was used as grants (i.e. bribes) to persuade the states to embrace Race to the Top, a precursor of Common Core. The fix was in.

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Photo Credit: Sara Caldwell / The Augusta Chronicle / ZUMAPRESS.com

Photo Credit: Sara Caldwell / The Augusta Chronicle / ZUMAPRESS.com

Pushback Continues: States Grow Increasingly Wary of Common Core

By Brittany Corona.

Common Core is on the ropes. More and more states are pulling back from the national standards as the 2014–15 school year implementation deadline looms near.

In Louisiana, Governor Bobby Jindal (R)—formerly a Common Core supporter—is now encouraging the legislature to remove the state from the Common Core aligned Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for Colleges and Careers (PARCC) test. And if they don’t act, he will.

Jindal’s new stance comes after eight members of the Louisiana State House of Representatives sent him a letter, informing him of his prerogative to opt out of the standards and encouraging him to do so. As The New Orleans Advocate reported:

Gov. Bobby Jindal said Monday that a gubernatorial order for the state to drop controversial Common Core tests is a ‘very viable option’ if state lawmakers fail to act. Jindal made the comment in response to a letter from eight House members who said the governor can opt the state out of the exams and should do that… ‘We believe you have the authority, as governor, under the 2010 PARCC memorandum of understanding, to opt out of the consortium,’ state Rep. Brett Geymann, (R–Lake Charles), and seven other legislators wrote.

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