United States – Page 2

Baltimore to pay Freddie Gray’s family millions

The city of Baltimore will pay Freddie Gray’s family a $6.4 million settlement for his April arrest and death. If approved, the payout will be larger than all combined police misconduct settlements by the Maryland jurisdiction over the past several years.

The settlement, announced by black Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on Tuesday, does not admit any wrongdoing by the six Baltimore Police Department officers who are charged in Gray’s death.

Gray, a 25-year-old African-American, was arrested by the Baltimore Police Department. While being transported in a police van, Gray fell into a coma and later died.

“The proposed settlement agreement going before the Board of Estimates should not be interpreted as a judgment on the guilt or innocence of the officers facing trial,” Rawlings-Blake said in a statement.

“This settlement is being proposed solely because it is in the best interest of the city, and avoids costly and protracted litigation that would only make it more difficult for our city to heal and potentially cost taxpayers many millions more in damages.”

The proposal calls for Baltimore to pay $2.8 million during the current fiscal year and $3.6 million in next year, the city said. It will have to be approved by the Board of Estimates, the governing body that oversees the city’s spending. The five members, including Rawlings-Blake, are expected to meet Wednesday.

City Council President Bernard C. ‘Jack’ Young, also a member of the Board of Estimates, will support the proposal, spokesman Lester Davis told the Baltimore Sun.

If approved, the settlement would be more than the combined payouts of over 120 lawsuits brought against the Baltimore PD claiming police brutality and misconduct since 2011, according to a 2014 Baltimore Sun investigation.

The city paid some $5.7 million in those cases, with payouts capped at $500,000 per case, unless there were extenuating circumstances like multiple victims or actual malice. Baltimore paid an additional $5.8 million in legal fees in defending the police in those cases.

In the 30 days following the death of Freddie Gray, the Baltimore Sun reports that there have been 34 murders and more than 160 non-fatal shootings in West Baltimore.

Black protests started after the funeral and soon turned to violence. Civil unrest and hooliganism continued with at least twenty police officers injured, at least 250 people arrested, 285 to 350 business damaged, 150 vehicle fires, 60 structure fires, 27 drugstores looted, thousands of police and Maryland Army National Guard troops were deployed, and a state of emergency was declared in the city limits of Baltimore.

Source: RT

British Airways Boeing catches fire on take-off

A British Airways jet has caught fire at Las Vegas airport, sending smoke billowing into the air, after suffering what the pilot described as a “catastrophic failure” of the left engine.

The plane – a Boeing 777 heading from the US city’s McCarran airport to London Gatwick – could be seen with flames around its fuselage.

Fire officials said 14 people were taken to Sunrise hospital to be treated for minor injuries, including cuts and bruises, most a result of sliding down the inflatable chutes to escape.

All 159 passengers and 13 crew on board were evacuated, and the fire was swiftly put out by around 50 firefighters. An airport spokeswoman told reporters: “All passengers were evacuated quickly and safely and taken by bus to the terminal.

“We cannot express enough gratitude to the emergency response crews, as well as the British Airways crew.”

The National Transportation Safety Board was investigating the incident, she added.

The plane’s take-off had been aborted shortly before the fire broke out. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the Boeing’s 777 left engine burst into flames.

Dramatic images of flight BA2276 were shared on social media by members of the public at the airport, which is five miles south of downtown Las Vegas.

Source: The Guardian

Trump tells Jeb to speak the language of the majority

2016 Republican frontrunner Donald Trump told Breitbart News that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush should be speaking the language of the majority.

Jeb Bush spoke Spanish, the migrant language, to attack Trump in Miami this week—on the campaign trail.

Trump had harsh words for Sen. Marco Rubio as well and lit into the donor class, all while saying that the “silent majority” in America is waking up and fighting to take back the country from the corrupt political class.

Trump also predicted that he will not only win the White House in 2016, but that he will be re-elected in 2020–predicting he will be a two-term president–and that at the end of his eventual eight years in the White House he will be known to all as a “great conservative” just like Ronald Reagan.

“I like Jeb,” Trump said. “He’s a nice man. But he should really set the example by speaking English while in the United States.”

“El hombre no es conservador,” Bush said in Spanish of Trump in Miami, according to the Tampa Bay Times. That means, according to that newspaper, that Bush is saying of Trump: “The man is not conservative.”

“Besides, he tries to personalize everything. If you’re not totally in agreement with him you’re an idiot, or stupid, or don’t have energy, or blah blah blah,” Bush continued in English, according to the Times.

Trump, in his exclusive with Breitbart News, ripped that argument—that somehow he’s not a conservative.

“You know, Ronald Reagan wasn’t a conservative,” Trump said. “He became a great conservative. By the time I’m finished, people will say I’m a great conservative. By the time I’m finished with the presidency, after eight years of the presidency, people will say I’m a great conservative—far greater than Jeb would ever have the ability to be.”

Trump also fired back at Rubio for aiming to undercut his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.” The campaign slogan was used by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 campaign for the White House alongside George H.W. Bush, Jeb’s father.

According to the New York Times, this week Rubio—while campaigning in Carson City, Nevada—said Trump’s campaign slogan isn’t an accurate assessment of the country. Rubio argued America is “great” now.

Trump, in response, told Breitbart News that this means Rubio is complacent with where America is now—and doesn’t believe there is room for improvement in the country. Trump also called Rubio “Jeb’s plebe.”

Rubio was trained by Bush in Florida politics before the two, along with 15 other Republicans including Trump, started competing against each other for the GOP nomination this cycle.

Rubio and Bush have nearly identical political viewpoints on immigration and trade, and as Bush and his campaign keep slipping more and more, it’s expected the donor class paymasters will get behind Rubio down the road, because he would give them everything they want if he’s elected president, just like Bush would.

Trump said that the donor class paymasters who he says are controlling the politicians like Bush and Rubio “are looking to benefit themselves or their company, whereas I’m looking only to benefit the people of the United States.”

When it comes to the border, Trump again noted that he’d build a wall if elected president.

“There is a great silent majority, and the silent majority is not so silent anymore,” Trump said. “They want to see America become great again.”

Meanwhile the war on Trump continued with Jon Stewart, formerly from the Daily Show, attacking the GOP-frontrunner under the usual guise of humor.

The public, roaring with laughter, is never shown, because there are no people in Stewart’s unfunny show.

Jon is alone in a studio with a camera man.

The canned laughter is edited in later, as a service to the dupes, to indicate when the humor starts, which is not always obvious from the context.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Trump’s chances for the White House may also “hinge on Hezbollah”.

Trump did not take kindly in a radio interview on Thursday to being asked to identify the affiliations of various militant leaders in the Middle East, saying the host was asking “a gotcha question” since these groups change constantly.

Discussing the “War on Terror”, talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Trump who the leaders of militant groups were, and to name the heads of Islamic State, Hezbollah, al-Qaida and its Nusra Front wing in Syria.

Source: Breitbart/Jerusalem Post

Obama prophesies climate zombie apocalypse

President Obama – who graduated Columbia University with a degree in political science – became an environmental and ecological expert Monday night in time to decry America’s contributions to global warming and the alleged melting of Arctic ice caps at this year’s GLACIER Conference, predicting a dire future for humanity.

During the GLACIER event, which stands for Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience, Obama blamed the recent rash of wildfires sweeping parts of Washington State on global warming, insisting that “climate is changing faster than our efforts to address it.”

Overall, the speech painted a fairly doom-and-gloom outlook for America and the rest of the world. So if you’re a Doomsday Prepper, here are a few excerpts from the president’s speech explaining the climate-related disasters heading to a town near you: 

Your house might slide off into the ocean…

Reduced sea levels leaves villages unprotected from floods and storm surges. Some are in imminent danger; some will have to relocate entirely.

…or it might be engulfed in flames.

Alaska’s fire season is now more than a month longer than it was in 1950. At one point this summer, more than 300 wildfires were burning at once. Southeast of here, in our Pacific Northwest, even the rainforest is on fire…this is a threat to many communities.

And if it doesn’t, it will definitely get sucked into a sinkhole.

Thawing permafrost destabilizes the earth on which 100,000 Alaskans live, threatening homes, damaging transportation and energy infrastructure, which could cost billions of dollars to fix.

Your city will either look like Atlantis or something out of the zombie apocalypse.

…we will condemn our children to a planet beyond their capacity to repair: Submerged countries. Abandoned cities.

You might run out of fresh salmon en croûte.

Warmer, more acidic oceans and rivers, and the migration of entire species, threatens the livelihoods of indigenous peoples, and local economies dependent on fishing and tourism.

Or just food, in general.

Climate change is already disrupting our agriculture and ecosystems.

You may simultaneously die of thirst and drown, all at the same time.

Entire nations will find themselves under severe, severe problems. More drought; more floods; rising sea level…

You might have to begin training for the Hunger Games.

…more refugees; more scarcity; more conflict.

And if the famine, flood, fire and fighting doesn’t get you, the fumes definitely will.

Consider, as well, that many of the fires burning today are actually burning through the permafrost in the Arctic. So this permafrost stores massive amounts of carbon. When the permafrost is no longer permanent, when it thaws or burns, these gases are released into our atmosphere over time, and that could mean that the Arctic may become a new source of emissions that further accelerates global warming.

After all, we’re running out of time.

 On this issue, of all issues, there is such a thing as being too late. That moment is almost upon us.

Perhaps the president got some of his research from the crew of the Canadian CCGS Amundsen during their four-month global warming expedition — you know, before they had to bail on their mission due to ships getting stuck in ice.

Source: MRC TV

Black shooter Vester Flanagan wanted a race war

Vester Lee Flanagan faxed a 23-page suicide note to ABC News after he killed two Roanoke, Virginia, journalists from WDBJ at approximately 7 a.m. Wednesday.

At 8:26 a.m., ABC News reports it received a fax from a “Bryce Williams,” which was Flanagan’s name on WDBJ.

According to ABC News, Flanagan wrote he purchased his gun two days after the Charleston, South Carolina, church shooting in June. “The church shooting was the tipping point… but my anger has been building steadily… I’ve been a human powder keg for a while… just waiting to go BOOM!!!!”

Flanagan said Charleston suspect Dylann Roof is getting the “race war” he wanted.

Flanagan also spoke of being attacked for being black and gay.

He had been a reporter at WDBJ for about a year using the on-air name, Bryce Williams, according to a former WDBJ employee.

Flanagan was fired from the station.

Jeffrey Marks, WDBJ’s president and general manager, said Flanagan had to be escorted by police out of the station when he was fired.

Marks described him as “an unhappy man” and “difficult to work with,” always “looking out for people to say things he could take offense to.”

Marks said Williams alleged that other employees made racially tinged comments to him, but said his EEOC claim was dismissed and none of his allegations could be corroborated.

“We think they were fabricated,” Marks said.

Trump dominates Republican field in New Hampshire

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is dominating the crowded GOP field in the early-voting state of New Hampshire, holding a 24-point lead over his nearest rival, according to a new poll.

Trump is supported by 35 percent of GOP primary voters in the state, followed by Ohio Gov. John Kasich (11 percent) and businesswoman Carly Fiorina (10 percent), according to the survey released Tuesday from the left-leaning Public Policy Polling.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker each take 7 percent, followed by retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 6 percent. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio each have 4 percent, while Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has dropped to 3 percent.

The new poll has found a drop in support for several candidates, including a major drop for Walker (17 points), who has similarly seen his Trump recently steal his lead in Iowa, another early-voting state.

Bush has accused Asians of abusing rules allowing infants born in the United States to be American citizens, amid a campaign row over immigration.

Bush has clashed with Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton over use of the term “anchor babies,” a derogatory description of children born in the United States to undocumented parents.

Source: The Hill

Ferguson voids 10 000 arrest warrants

The new municipal judge in Ferguson has recalled all arrest warrants issued before 2015. The decision gives many residents of the troubled Missouri city a fresh start, just days before a court reform law is to take effect.

Issued by Ferguson Municipal Court Judge Donald McCullin, the order applies to all arrest warrants prior to December 31, 2014, whether for minor traffic violations or more serious offenses. Close to 10,000 warrants are affected by the decision, municipal prosecutor Stephanie Karr told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

“These changes should continue the process of restoring confidence in the court, alleviating fears of the consequences of appearing in court, and giving many residents a fresh start,” said McCullin, who was appointed to the post in June. His predecessor, Ronald Brockmeyer, resigned in March following a scathing Department of Justice report accused Ferguson of unconstitutional practices and racial profiling.

Voiding the warrants does not get rid of the charges for the original violations, however. To resolve those, defendants will be given new court dates as well as options to pay their fines, from payment plans to community service, Judge McCullin said. In addition, the Missouri Department of Revenue said it would reinstate drivers’ licenses suspended solely due to unpaid fines or failure to appear in court.

“It is meaningful and will have a real impact on the lives of many,” Brendan Roediger, a St. Louis-area lawyer who has represented some of the protesters in Ferguson, told Reuters. “That being said, payment plans and community service do not solve racial profiling or excessive fines.”

McCullin set out the new bond rules for both minor and major violations, with minor traffic and housing code violations requiring an unsecured bond of $200. The bond for more serious traffic violations, trespassing or marijuana possession will be $300.

Last week, the municipal judge in nearby Velda City, Wesley Bell, canceled more than 5,000 warrants and all of the city’s failure-to-appear charges. Velda City has a population of 1,410.

Judicial practices in Ferguson and the St. Louis County came under the spotlight after the August 2014 death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager shot by Ferguson PD officer Darren Wilson during an altercation.

While the US Department of Justice cleared Wilson of all charges, it issued a 102-page report in March 2015 accusing the city authorities of systemic racism against the town’s African-American community. The report accused Ferguson police and the courts of deliberately targeting black residents for citations, arrests and charge.

Source: RT

Huge grants to low-income students who never graduate

Billions of taxpayer dollars go to college students who never end up with a diploma in their hands, a new report found.

Pell grants–which are given to low-income families and, unlike student loans, do not need to be paid back–are the costliest education initiative in the nation. But little official data exists on whether they are a good investment, according to the education watchdog Hechinger Report.

Education Department Undersecretary Ted Mitchell last month lauded Pell grants as “one of the key levers that we have” to increase college completion rates. But an analysis published Monday by Hechinger revealed that Pell recipient graduation rates are often considerably lower than the overall graduation rate–even six years after a student starts college.

To make matters worse, the government keeps no official tally of what proportion of those who receive the grants end up getting degrees–despite the fact that money spent on Pell grants has quadrupled since 2000.

“There’s two scandals here. We have spent over the last decade one quarter of a trillion dollars on Pell grants, and if you ask the federal government what percentage of those kids graduate from college, they can’t tell you,” said Richard Vedder, director of the non-profit Center for College Affordability and Productivity. “The second scandal is as far as we can estimate, that graduation rate is embarrassingly low.”

Vedder has done research on Pell recipient graduation rates, which concluded that only about 40 percent Pell recipients graduate, significantly lower than the national average of about 60 percent.

Taxpayers paid $31.4 billion on Pell grants in fiscal year 2015, and since 2000, they have poured $300 billion into them, Hechinger reported.

Source: NBC News

Trump widens lead

Republican Donald Trump is pulling away from the pack in the race for the party’s U.S. presidential nomination, widening his lead over his closest rivals in the past week, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Friday.

Republican voters show no signs they are growing weary of the brash real estate mogul, who has dominated political headlines and the 17-strong Republican presidential field with his tough talk about immigration and insults directed at his political rivals. The candidates are vying to be nominated to represent their party in the November 2016 general election.

Nearly 32 percent of Republicans surveyed online said they backed Trump, up from 24 percent a week earlier, the opinion poll found. Trump had nearly double the support of his closest competitor, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who got 16 percent. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was third at 8 percent.

Even when Trump was pitted directly in the poll against just his top two competitors, 44 percent backed him. Bush won about 29 percent of respondents, and Carson 25 percent.

Trump has driven the debate on the campaign trail with a hard-line immigration plan that calls for the deportation of undocumented immigrants, amendment of the Constitution to end automatic citizenship for all people born in the United States, and construction of a wall along the border with Mexico.

Trump’s campaign momentum has paid off with bigger crowds on the campaign trail. On Friday night, he moved a planned rally in Mobile, Alabama, to a football stadium seating more than 40,000.

Separate results found Clinton leading among Democrats, though support for her dipped below 50 percent to 48.5 percent.

Source: Reuters

Getting rid of ‘racist Old Dixie’

The Riviera Beach City Council in South Florida, US, will vote this week on the mayor’s proposal to rename the “racist” Old Dixie Highway after President Obama.

“Each member will vote Yay or Nay to rid this city of a street name that still invokes memories of racism and slavery in the Old South” said Mayor Thomas Masters, a local NBC affiliate reported.

The meeting was held in City Hall Chambers in Riviera Beach.

“We’re in the Dr. Martin Luther King celebrations in the city,” Mr. Masters said in January, The Palm Beach Post reported. “What better way to celebrate his legacy than to get rid of what he died for, which was getting rid of old Dixie.”

The mayor noted at the time that Old Dixie Highway intersects Martin Luther King Boulevard in the city, and “this may be one of the few places in America where you have a Barack Obama intersecting with Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard.”

Source: The Washington Times

Black American rips into illegal immigrants

Chanell Temple, a black woman originally from Huntington Park, delivered a strident, politically incorrect speech against illegal immigration on Monday evening at the local city council meeting.

Temple, who now lives in the Hawthorne area of Los Angeles, was protesting the council’s recent decision to appoint two illegal aliens to city commissions. She told Breitbart News she had not intended to speak at the meeting, but was offended when someone compared illegal aliens to slaves. She added that she supports Donald Trump “a hundred percent.”

The Huntington Park City Council is being paid with taxpayers’ money to do a job within rules and regulations. According to your board behind you, it says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” I want to paraphrase that and say: Where there is no law, the people perish.

In the U.S. we have one rule of law. I also want to talk about the Fourteenth Amendment, which was added to the Constitution in regards to blacks being given birthright citizenship because blacks helped build this country, including the White House—twice.

(Interjection: Right on!)

Please do not tarnish the name of black slaves by comparing them to your plight. There’s no comparison. None.

Black slaves did not break into this country, okay. They were brought here against their will. Also, black slaves are not immigrants. Immigrants are people with a choice, they come here by choice. Black slaves didn’t have choice.

That’s offensive to me because I’m a descendant of a black slave. And trust me, Ancestry.com works and I can trace my people back from when they landed here on the boat. I know the village where my people came from in Africa, OK? So please, do not try to get away with using that. That’s very offensive.

This country has been good to illegal immigrants. You have been given jobs, houses, tax money, free tax money, welfare, Social Security, they open up business for you guys, et cetera.

None—I don’t know of any illegal aliens who have been hung from a tree. I don’t know of any of them illegal aliens who have dogs been sicced on. So that’s very offensive for you to sit up here and allow these people to say that and get away with it. Things that people are going to feel sorry for. That’s very offensive, OK? Do the right thing.

My people get three strikes. I have a nephew in jail now–22 years!–for something he didn’t do.

My people commit a crime, they go to jail. You people commit a crime, they get amnesty. It is wrong…

(Cheers, applause)

And we’re not going to have it. We’re not going to have a set of laws for you people and a set of laws for us.

And if you can’t follow the law, talking about “perish,” your job needs to perish.

You get paid with taxpayers’ money and you are misappropriating taxpayers’ money when you pick up your check.

(Cheers, applause)

In an interview Tuesday morning, Temple explained further:

I grew up in the Huntington Park area. I was raised in that area. I live in Hawthorne now. That area over there has been a Latino area for decades, for a long time. They witnessed racial tension in that area. My mother was a property owner over in that area.

What I said last night was not my intention. What kind of disturbed me is when someone got up and talked about slavery. There is no comparison. They need to stop pretending like they are being mistreated. They have pushed and disturbed the community. They have 95% of the jobs and they still act like they are mistreated.

Yes I am black, but I’m an American. They are getting away with murder. I was in Sacramento recently, and I protested about Kate Steinle. Then they get a get-out-of-jail-free card, and my nephew is in jail. They release them–30,000, if not more–every year. They put them right back on the street and it’s not right.

The black community–we’re tired of them citing civil rights because of people like Al Sharpton. They are being treated better than American citizens with our tax money.

I’m just tired. I lost my job. I was told I did not speak Spanish and I was terminated from my job. Even now it’s difficult to get a job. They told me I was fired for not being able to speak Spanish. I applied to McDonald’s and they told me that they don’t hire blacks–and it was a black owner. I filed with EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). I have my documentation. I was denied a job….But they didn’t do anything. They are putting illegal immigrants before blacks. I applied for three jobs with the County of L.A. and they didn’t give me a job, and when I filed a complaint they called me a racist. I ended up homeless.

We have a rule of law. Why can’t they obey the law? Little do they know they are making us [Americans] closer. We are standing as Americans, as all races and colors. They want to throw out the race card. We are tired of being abused, and it’s got to stop.

Our politicians are giving them the power in the fight against us–the people using our tax money, writing these laws and using them against us….

Yes, black lives matter, but if we had jobs we wouldn’t be put in these situations to be attacked. A lot of parental rights have been restricted and are being taken away. There’s a lot in the black neighborhood that needs to be worked on. We need to get our house in order first and we need to get jobs back to get back on track.

We have no recourse. We are not being represented. Now we’re in the shadows, we are being buried in the shadows.

Source: Breitbart

‘Mandela’s’ granddaughter stabbed to death

The granddaughter of black actor Morgan Freeman was stabbed to death on a Manhattan sidewalk early Sunday during what law-enforcement sources and witnesses described as an “exorcism” at the hands of her ranting boyfriend.

Freeman played the part of Nelson Mandela in the movie Invictus. It is a 2009 biographical sports drama film on how rugby was used to brainwash white voters to accept black rule.

The black killer of Freeman’s granddaughter yelled: “Get out, devils! I cast you out, devils! In the name of Jesus Christ, I cast you out!” while he plunged a hunting knife into 33-year-old E’Dena Hines’ chest, according to George Hudacko, who witnessed the 3 a.m. attack from his apartment window in Washington Heights.

Hines, an actress who had appeared on Broadway and on red carpets at Freeman’s side, was stabbed 16 times, officials said.

“The girl was making a lot of noise, screaming,” Hudacko said, adding. “I called 911 — I was begging them to come.”

Hines — whose grandmother Jeanette Adair Bradshaw was Freeman’s first wife — was attacked on West 162 Street near St. Nicholas Avenue, a few buildings from where she lived, cops and sources said.

Her live-in boyfriend, Lamar Davenport, 30, was in the throes of a drug-induced psychosis when he came after her, police sources said.

“Jesus Christ is born!” he shouted maniacly over her body.

A friend who’d had dinner with Davenport and Hines just hours earlier described her as “ecstatic,” the Daily Beast reported.

By 3 a.m., Davenport was so crazed that he continued his attack even as Hines lay lifeless on the sidewalk, one police source said.

When cops wrestled him off her, he “was still making a stabbing motion with his arm, but he had nothing in his fist — the knife was jutting out of her chest,” the police source said.

Davenport — an actor and rapper wannabe whose nickname is “Lyric” — abuses cocaine, pot and booze, and has two young children, according to law-enforcement sources. Hines was not their mother

Davenport was taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital for a psychological evaluation, sources said. Davenport has been charged with murder.

Freeman, 78, issued a statement soon after the attack.

“The world will never know her artistry and talent and how much she had to offer,” the Oscar winner said. “Her star will continue to shine bright in our hearts, thoughts and prayers. May she rest in peace.”

Hines was Freeman’s granddaughter because her mother had been adopted by the star.

He was so close to Hines that in 2012, he had to squash reports that they were lovers.

Source: NYP

The Donald towers in crucial state of Iowa

When Republican Scott Walker arrives Monday at Iowa’s state fair, he’ll land in an unfamiliar position: he won’t be the front-runner in the state that holds the first presidential nominating contest.

Like most every other candidate in the historically crowded field, the Wisconsin governor’s standing in state and national polls has been hurt by the summer surge of billionaire Donald Trump, the party’s front-runner.

No state is more critical to Walker’s future than Iowa, where media expectations about his candidacy have grown to the point that anything short of a win in the Feb. 1 caucuses is likely to be viewed as a serious momentum killer.

The governor, who has enjoyed a consistent lead all year in Iowa, dropped to third in the most recent CNN poll.

He was backed by just 9 percent of likely caucus participants, below Trump at 22 percent and Carson at 14 percent.

It’s a dramatic fall for a guy who led in a Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll with 17 percent as recently as late May. That was approaching the level of support—roughly 20 percent—that most party insiders agree could win the caucuses in a 17-candidate field.

Walker is the man with the most to lose from Trump’s Iowa rise because he’s counting on a win in the state to provide momentum in subsequent contests where Trump and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush are almost certain to be better financed.

Walker hasn’t just lost his standing in Iowa polls. After the first Republican presidential debate on Aug. 6, he’s also lost traction in national polls.

Source: Bloomberg

US owes Cuba millions says Castro

Fidel Castro, the leader of the Cuban Revolution, marked his 89th birthday with an essay in which he states the USA owes Cuba a huge debt for decades of embargo, and claims he “would not stop struggling for peace… and well-being” of every person on Earth.

In his brief essay, published in Granma, Cuba’s official government newspaper on Thursday, Castro repeats his claims that the United States owes his country “millions of dollars” for damages inflicted on the Cuban economy by the US embargo.

“Cuba is owed compensation equivalent to damages, which have reached many millions of dollars, as our country has denounced throughout our interventions in the United Nations, with irrefutable arguments and facts,” Castro wrote.

In his composition, entitled Reality and Dreams, Fidel Castro recalls the history of the twentieth century, pointing out that the United States profited more than any other nation from the cruelties of World War II. He also condemns the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“The United States, whose territory and industries remained removed from the war, became the country with the greatest wealth and the best weaponry on Earth, in a world torn apart, full of death, the wounded and hungry,” wrote the former Cuban leader.

Source: RT