The latest headlines from The Most Important News....
The U.S. Senate on Saturday voted to let gays serve openly in the military, giving Barack Obama the chance to fulfill a campaign promise and repeal the 17-year policy known as "don't ask, don't tell."
The U.N. Security Council began an emergency meeting Sunday in hopes of preventing the escalating crisis on the Korean peninsula from spiraling out of control.
The U.S. military is concerned that South Korea's live-fire artillery exercises planned for coming days could spark an uncontrollable clash with the North, but the State Department said the exercises are not meant to be threatening or provocative.
Amid South Korean plans to hold live-fire military drills this week and North Korean threats of retaliation, many residents of Yeonpyeong Island are evacuating, afraid of being caught in the middle.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that the United States is "very ready" to counter Iran should it make a move.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, incoming chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, blasted the Obama administration on Wednesday for giving the Palestinian Authority a “blank check” while pressuring Israel.
10 EU countries are reportedly set to upgrade the status of Palestinian representative offices in their capitals to full blown embassies in the near future, chief Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat declared on Sunday.
The U.S. government is "greatly expanding" its use of private security companies in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The number of deaths in Mexico's vicious four-year drug gang war has soared past 30,000, authorities said on Thursday, with 12,456 fatalities this year alone.
Barack Obama has renewed his call for US senators to ratify an arms control treaty with Russia before the Democratic-led Congress breaks up.
China is believed to be building two 50,000-60,000-ton aircraft carriers at Changxingdao Shipyard, the world's biggest, in Shanghai and is expected to launch one in 2014.
In Greece, clouds of tear gas mingled with smoke in Athens and a former minister was reportedly hurt as police and stone-throwing protesters clashed recently during a demonstration against new austerity measures.
In order to repay maturing bonds and finance the massive budget deficit, the U.S. government will have to borrow 4.2 trillion dollars in 2011.
Regulators shuttered six banks holding a total of $1.23 billion in assets on Friday, including three in Georgia and one each in Arkansas, Minnesota and Florida, as real estate losses drove this year’s bank failures to 157.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois) says that the United States has become a banana republic, where a few elites flourish and everyone else have nothing.
Did extreme income inequality help cause the most recent financial crisis.
China is once again flexing its newfound economic muscle. This time by announcing that it will be raising export tariffs on rare earth metals at the beginning of the year.
A small-town bank in Oklahoma said the Federal Reserve won’t let it keep religious signs and symbols on display.
The Food and Drug Administration has announced that it will ration the late-stage cancer drug Avastin for breast cancer patients.
U.S. drone aircraft launched series of strikes in a Pakistani tribal region on Friday and killed 35 people, local TV channels reported.
U.S. officials say they have no specific and credible information about planned terror attacks on the United States, but they have issued an intelligence bulletin to state and local law enforcement warning terrorists could target large crowds at holiday gatherings.
TSA agents at a Houston airport failed to stop an Iranian-American with a loaded handgun passing through security and boarding a plane, yet they did stop a woman directly behind him who was carrying liquids in her hand luggage.
Construction workers in New York now need permission from the TSA and DHS in order to practice their profession and earn a living.
Former Federal Bureau of Investigation agents are helping local authorities turn thousands of garbage collectors into a spy force that reports to the police.
Computers are starting to be developed that have the capability to read minds.
According to a recent Reuters report, a group of European campaigners has presented a petition to the European Commission with over a million signatures opposing the approval of any more GM crops.
It turns out that much of the data cited to support claims that this is the warmest year on record is based on pure conjecture.
The jet stream is helping to generate record breaking temperatures across parts of Canada's north and bringing cold conditions to countries in Europe.
2010 was one of the craziest years for natural disasters in modern history.
In the UK, a street preacher wrongly arrested for saying homosexuality is a sin has won substantial damages as police chiefs issue new guidelines telling officers to be more thick-skinned.
The European Commission has come under fire for producing more than three million copies of an EU diary for secondary schools which contains no reference to Christmas but includes Jewish, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim festivities.
A new Gallup poll reveals that 40 percent of Americans believe in creationism.
Korean religious leaders met Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday to exchange views on promoting inter-faith harmony with the Vatican.
In the UK, Christmas has been banned by the Red Cross from its 430 fund-raising shops.
Palestinians vandalized Joshua's Tomb in Samaria's Timnat Heres with Arabic graffiti overnight Thursday.
The UN refugee agency says that thousands of Iraqi Christians are fleeing from central provinces of the country.
The White House on Thursday said the controversial field of synthetic biology, or manipulating the DNA of organisms to forge new life forms, poses limited risks and should be allowed to proceed.
Barack Obama's job approval rating among liberal Democrats has fallen below 80 percent for the first time, a Gallup poll has found.
Lastly, outgoing California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says that he would consider a post in the Obama administration.
The latest headlines from The Most Important News....
House lawmakers approved a bill Wednesday by a vote of 250 to 175 to end the "don't ask, don't tell" law, giving new momentum to an effort backed by President Obama, Pentagon leaders and gay rights activists to end the ban on gays serving openly in the military this year.
The Marine Corps’ top officer is under fire following remarks he made to reporters this week concerning the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
The White House on Thursday said the controversial field of synthetic biology, or manipulating the DNA of organisms to forge new life forms, poses limited risks and should be allowed to proceed.
Palestinian negotiators have for the first time asked European countries to recognize a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip — even without a peace deal with Israel.
A pair of recent and daring bomb attacks, which killed one Iranian nuclear scientist and injured another one, has prompted Iran to threaten to kill American generals.
The Israeli Air Force shot down an unidentified object over the Dimona nuclear plant in the Negev Desert Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces have said.
Major General Gadi Eisenkot, commander of Israel's northern front, has dropped a bombshell by disclosing that the anti-missile systems the defense industry has developed are intended to protect the country's military installations, not its cities and civilian population.
Lebanese military experts have discovered and dismantled two spy cameras planted in the country's mountains by Israel, Lebanon's army said Wednesday.
The explosion of 11 bombs, 10 of them simultaneously, Thursday injured 11 people in Baghdad and one of its suburbs, officials said.
It is being reported that the Obama administration has concluded that North Korea’s new plant to enrich nuclear fuel uses technology that is “significantly more advanced” than what Iran has struggled over two decades to assemble, according to senior administration and intelligence officials.
North Korea appears to be preparing for a third nuclear test as early as next March, a South Korean newspaper has reported, as a US politician travelled to Pyongyang with a message for it to "calm down".
South Korea has just staged its largest-ever air raid drill. The 15-minute nationwide exercise took place Wednesday afternoon, amid a period of heightened tensions with North Korea.
Russia announced Tuesday that its armed forces in the east are on high alert. This comes in light of what it calls an "inadequate situation" on the Korean peninsula as tensions have increased in recent weeks between the North and South.
A possible government shutdown is looming at midnight Saturday as Republicans and Democrats ratchet up a standoff over federal spending.
The bill to temporarily extend tax cuts and jobless benefits is making very slow progress in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) told CNSNews.com recently that the tax bill passed by the Senate on Wednesday violates the U.S. Constitution.
Obama is telling members of Congress that failure to pass the tax-cut legislation could result in the end of his presidency, Rep. Peter DeFazio (Ore.) recently said.
Has America become "the sick man of the globe"?
Are the Chinese trying to take down the U.S. economy?
California Governor Jerry Brown says that the budget situation in his state is much worse than he ever imagined.
Is much of the state of California now in a state of depression?
Since the year 2000, we have lost 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were approximately 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs.
The United States today now employs less people in manufacturing than at any time since 1941. This is even more staggering when you consider there were 132 million Americans in 1940 and we have a good bit over 300 million today.
Full-time employment for 18-to-29-year-olds has dropped 9 percent since 2006, forcing increasing numbers of Americans to work for free in unpaid internships to attain a position at all, according to a Pew Research Center study.
It turns out that most Americans that are driven into bankruptcy by medical bills actually have health insurance.
U.S. housing prices declined once again in October.
Mortgage interest rates rose sharply again this week, touching the 5 percent threshold and presenting more bad news for borrowers.
There is a "bloodbath" going on in the municipal bond market right now.
The dollar may drop 11 percent versus the euro next year as investors shun U.S. assets and drive bonds lower, according to Citigroup.
Ireland’s parliament approved a multi-billion euro EU/IMF bailout package on Wednesday in the face of opposition threats to renegotiate the deal to force losses on some senior bondholders in Irish banks.
Up to 1,000 people were arrested in Moscow recently as nationalist youths rampaged throughout the city for the second time this week, shouting racist slogans and calling for the death of immigrants.
It is being reported that Asian buyers are rapidly accumulating gigantic amounts of gold and silver.
While recent statistics show that China's gold imports have risen dramatically this year, despite China itself being the world's largest gold producer with mine production still rising to, anecdotal evidence suggests that this may just be the tip of the iceberg as Chinese people are, apparently, rushing to buy gold as an inflation hedge.
Attorneys for 20 states fighting the new federal health care law told a judge Thursday it will expand the government's powers in dangerous and unintended ways.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli recently told CNSNews.com that the federal government will be able to “order” individuals to purchase any product or service if the individual mandate in health care law is determined to be constitutional by the Supreme Court.
Britain's high court today granted bail to Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who is wanted in Sweden for questioning over allegations of rape.
YouTube now allows users to flag content that allegedly supports terrorism.
It turns out that the technology used by the new full body security scanners going into airports across the United States has the ability to tear human DNA apart.
A gunman opened fire during a Florida Panhandle school board meeting Tuesday, police said.
The Obama Administration's effort to obtain your location from cell phone towers without a warrant was rebuffed Wednesday by a federal court.
The U.S. Border Patrol says that one of its agents has been killed in southern Arizona.
It is being reported that Stephen Harper and Barack Obama may sign an agreement next month to move Canada and the United States toward a continental security perimeter and a more transparent border.
A pair of nine-month old twin girls died within minutes of being given a measles vaccine at a private clinic in Ghaziabad, India.
This week emergency vehicles with Arabic logos were spotted in north Texas. 20 of the yellow emergency vehicles were being hauled by 10 larger trucks.
A U.S. army doctor faces up to three and a half years in jail after he was found guilty by a court martial yesterday of willfully missing a flight when deployed to Afghanistan because he doubts Barack Obama's right to be president.
Contentious Internet traffic rules facing a vote next week are likely to be adopted without radically veering from a proposal unveiled earlier in the month, telecommunications policy analysts said on Wednesday.
While Americans are busy battling cap-and-trade legislation at the national and international levels, global warming alarmists are quietly building regional systems between state and local governments, private industry, and even foreign governments that basically achieve the same effect — higher energy prices for consumers and more money for governments.
The prime minister of Kosovo is the capo of a shady underworld organization responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and even human organs across Eastern Europe, according to a European inquiry on organized crime reviewed by The Guardian.
China has launched "Red" Twitter, identical to the US micro-blogging website, except that its messages are designed to promote revolutionary spirit.
Lastly, Jon Bon Jovi has been appointed to a position at the White House by Barack Obama. The singer is to be part of a new committee "mobilizing citizens, non-profits, businesses and government to work more effectively together".
The latest headlines from The Most Important News....
A federal judge in Virginia has struck down the Obama administration's requirement that all Americans buy health insurance, a key provision in the landmark health care bill that Obama signed in March.
Top Democrats are predicting that Obama's tax deal with the Republicans will have smooth sailing in the Senate.
Moody's warned Monday that it could move a step closer to cutting the U.S. Aaa rating if President Obama's tax and unemployment benefit package becomes law.
North Korea warned Monday that U.S.-South Korean cooperation could bring a nuclear war to the region, as the South began artillery drills amid lingering tension nearly three weeks after the North's deadly shelling of a South Korean island.
The former chief of US intelligence has warned that South Korea has lost its patience with provocations by North Korea and "will be taking military action."
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan raised hackles in Korea on Saturday by saying Tokyo will consider dispatching troops there to rescue Japanese citizens in case of an emergency.
North Korea said over the weekend that it is prepared for escalation of inter-Korean tension into "all-out war."
Russia delivered at least 1,800 shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles to Venezuela in 2009, U.N. arms control data show, despite vigorous U.S. efforts to stop President Hugo Chavez's stridently anti-American government from acquiring the weapons.
The 10-year Treasury note yield—seen as the benchmark both for government securities and lending rates—reached six-month highs Monday before pulling back, and the trend appears solidly skewed to the upside.
U.S. Treasuries last week suffered their biggest two-day sell-off since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.
The federal budget deficit rose to $150.4 billion last month, the largest November gap on record.
Bloomberg is reporting that the Federal Reserve gave more support to the world’s biggest financial companies, including Barclays Plc, Citigroup Inc. and Royal Bank of Scotland Plc, than the direct loans it disclosed this month in response to congressional mandates.
Today, there are over 6 million Americans that have been unemployed for half a year or longer.
In a futile attempt to stave off the inevitable one last time, Mayor Bing’s latest plan is to cutoff city services including road repairs, police patrols, street lights, and garbage collection in 20% of Detroit.
Strapped for cash, a growing number of municipalities in the U.S. have begun charging for responding to accidents — services that have long been covered by taxpayers.
Barack Obama signed a sweeping overhaul of child nutrition standards Monday, enacting a law meant to encourage better eating habits in part by giving the federal government more authority to set standards for food sold in vending machines and elsewhere on school grounds.
It turns out that two agonizing years for the U.S. economy have been some of the best years on record for Wall Street.
The New York Times has just published an article entitled "A Secretive Banking Elite Rules Trading in Derivatives".
Does the Federal Reserve now spend even more money than the U.S. Congress does?
The European Central Bank is considering requesting an increase in its capital from euro zone member states.
Is the municipal bond market about to crash?
Millions of older Americans are working later in life due to the recession, according to a new survey by the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank.
10.8 million, or 22.5 percent, of all residential properties with mortgages in the United States were in negative equity at the end of the third quarter of 2010.
J.D. Butler was on his death bed when JPMorgan Chase invaded his home, according to his daughter, who said the intrusion left the waterfront home in shambles.
John Williams of Shadow Stats says that we could see the first signs of hyperinflation in 2011.
More than half of all UK households are struggling to repay credit cards and loans, a Bank of England survey suggested today.
A very serious shortage of rare earth elements is looming on the horizon.
According to an absolutely stunning new poll, 40 percent of all U.S. doctors plan to bail out of the profession over the next three years.
Standard and Poor’s has replaced the New York Times with the growing Internet movie retailer Netflix on the S&P 500, the economic index made up of the economy’s most powerful publicly traded companies.
More than 500 suspected Taliban fighters detained by U.S. forces have been released from custody at the urging of Afghan government officials, angering both American troops and some Afghans who oppose the policy on the grounds that many of those released return to the battlefield to kill NATO soldiers and Afghan civilians.
War-torn Afghanistan lacks basic national infrastructure, yet on Sunday the government unveiled plans for a $100 million electronic identification system with cards to be issued to all Afghans within five years.
Texas Congressman Ron Paul has raised the hopes of his supporters by suggesting that a 2012 presidential run is still a distinct possibility.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has organized a private conference call with fellow committee members for Monday night in which he could announce whether he plans to seek a second term.
Close on the heels of the news that Indian Ambassador Meera Shankar was subjected to a ‘pat-down’ search, another incident of a top Indian diplomat being subjected to a pat-down search at Houston Airport has come to light.
American journalism is in “grave peril,” FCC Commissioner Michael Copps says, and to bolster “traditional media,” he said the Federal Communications Commission should conduct a “public value test” of every commercial broadcast station at relicensing time.
Will "the Espionage Act" end up making criminals of us all?
There are numerous reports circulating that Canada and the U.S. are secretly negotiating a security and trade deal which could be signed as early as January 2011.
The swine flu virus that swept the world last year causing a global health emergency has returned to claim the lives of 10 adults in the UK in the past six weeks.
A remarkable study published in the Cochrane Libary found no evidence of benefit for influenza vaccinations.
A father of two was recently harassed and investigated by Child Protective Services and police for feeding his daughters organic food, refusing to make them drink fluoride-poisoned tap water and not having them injected with mercury-laden vaccines.
A new report published in the journal Health Affairs says the U.S. has dropped to 49th place in overall life expectancy among the nations of the world.
It might sound like science fiction, but some scientists say that growing new organs from scratch has already become reality.
Back in October, UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee published a report suggesting a fresh look at the 2005 UN Declaration against all human cloning, as well as encouraging a change in cloning terminology to sanitize the production of cloned human embryos to make it more acceptable.
While there have been a few high temperature records in the desert southwest and western Oregon, the majority of weather records in the USA this week have been for cold, snowfall, or rainfall.
It is being projected that extreme cold temperatures could kill 35,000 people in the UK this winter.
Israel's water crisis is rapidly getting worse.
If you look at the values and the historical record, you will see that the Founding Fathers never intended guns to go unregulated, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer contended on Sunday.
Henry Kissinger is heard saying the genocide of Soviet Jews would not be an American problem on newly released tapes chronicling President Nixon’s obsession with disparaging Jews and other minorities.
German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has said his country is willing to discuss greater harmonisation of eurozone tax policy, adding that the next decade is likely to see Europe take significant steps towards closer political union.
In 2010, U.S. airlines have raked in more than $4.3 billion in bag and change fees.
A deer hunter in the U.S. has posted a video of something that looks like it is straight out of a science fiction movie.
The giant inflatable roof above the Minneapolis Metrodome collapsed the other day under the weight of a massive snowstorm that swept across the upper Midwest.
A 3-month-old girl was found hanging upside down in her car seat after being involved in a police chase that left the driver of the car dead, Texas police said Monday.
Lastly, researchers from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona in Spain have just finished testing a method for imprinting microscopic bar codes on mouse embryos — a procedure they plan to test soon on humans.
The latest headlines from The Most Important News....
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have passed a resolution rejecting Barack Obama's tax cut deal with the Republicans.
The tax cut deal looks like it will go before the U.S. Senate either on Thursday or on Friday.
The fate of House legislation to freeze the budgets of most Cabinet departments and fund the war in Afghanistan for another year is now in the hands of the Senate, where it faces uncertain prospects.
More than 50 percent of Americans say they are worse off now than they were two years ago when Barack Obama took office, and two-thirds believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, a new Bloomberg National Poll shows.
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the DREAM Act, but Senate Democrats conceded Thursday that they don't have the votes to pass it.
Protesters enraged by a Parliament vote to triple university tuition rates attacked a car carrying Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of York, Thursday night.
Two Russian military jets entered airspace over the Sea of Japan (East Sea) during a US-Japanese joint military exercise there this week, a Japanese government official said Wednesday.
Insurgents in Afghanistan have constructed more homemade bombs in the past six months than at any other time during the nine-year war.
Former Iranian diplomat Mohammed Reza Heydari says that he regularly saw North Korean technicians at Tehran airport between 2002 and 2007.
The government of Canada is set to announce a landmark security and trade deal with the United States, designed to create a perimeter around North America and allow people and goods to flow more freely across the border.
Texas congressman Ron Paul, who has long wanted to get rid of the Federal Reserve, has been named chairman of the House panel that oversees the central banking system.
A majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the nation’s independent central bank, saying the U.S. Federal Reserve should either be brought under tighter political control or abolished outright, a new poll shows.
U.S. mortgage rates have risen to a five month high.
Investors heavily sold Treasuries for a second consecutive day on Wednesday, sending interest rates higher in response to the tentative deal to extend Bush-era tax cuts even as the Federal Reserve was trying aggressively to keep borrowing costs low.
Despite the surprise success of Thursday's 30-year bond auction, analysts think the outlook for Treasurys is anything but bullish—prices will continue to decline, pushing interest rates higher.
The United States had been the leading consumer of energy on the globe for about 100 years, but this past summer China took over the number one spot.
Property tax collections, which are pegged to the appraised value of local real estate, are imploding all over the United States.
It is being reported that at least one Swiss bank is refusing to hand over physical gold to clients.
The Trends Research Institute Director Gerald Celente says the American Empire is collapsing and the banks have committed the greatest bank robbery in the history of the world.
Since the last wave of ObamaCare waivers was released a few weeks ago, the number of unions and companies that have received ObamaCare waivers has doubled to 222.
Indian Ambassador to the United States, Meera Shankar was recently pulled out of a security line at Jackson-Evers International Airport in Mississippi, taken into what has become known as a TSA “glass cage”, and forced to undergo an enhanced pat-down in full public view.
Wal-Mart is installing machines that require customers to swipe their driver’s license and even give a breathalyzer test before they can choose between more than 50 varieties of wine.
In Cancun, Mexico, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is under pressure to overturn the UN ban on chemtrails.
The World Bank plans to encourage carbon trading in developing countries.
More than 1,000 dissenting scientists from around the globe have now challenged man-made global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice President Al Gore.
Master Card Worldwide, a global payments company, today said it has developed a payment solution for 'Aadhaar', the Unique Identification (UID) number. The solution will enable Aadhaar holders to perform payment transactions using UID numbers with biometric authentication, Master Card Worldwide said in a statement.
A new billboard sponsored by several Wisconsin and Michigan residents has appeared for the first time this week in Milwaukee on I-94 at the Ryan Road exit. The design depicts a pair of sinister eyes that lurk beneath big letters declaring “Big Brother is Watching You!” And just beneath the eyes are words that state "electronic harassment = torture."
Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of presidential candidate John Edwards, died this week following a six-year chemical assault on her body from cancer doctors. Ravaged by the effects of toxic poisons known as “chemotherapy,” Elizabeth even cursed the chemotherapy drugs before she died, saying, “Damn these drugs.”
Prescription drugs kill approximately 200,000 Americans every year.
According to a new report, the rate of miscarriage among pregnant women during the 2009 H1N1/swine flu pandemic soared by over 700 percent compared to previous years, pointing directly to the vaccine as the culprit.
An unsecured engine door panel fell off a passenger plane and damaged a wing as it was taking off from Southampton Airport, a report has revealed.
In the UK, hundreds of criminals are to be given four days a year off from prison work so that they can celebrate pagan festivals.
The Middle East is in the grip of an almost Biblical drought which has brought the region's three major religions together to pray for rain.
Ann Stanczyk had a Black Friday she'll never forget - the 49-year-old Queens woman says that she was humiliated and beaten by two NYPD cops in a dispute over dog droppings.
A two-month drought is plaguing China's major wheat production areas, according to local agricultural and drought relief authorities.
A Louisiana committee on Tuesday rejected calls by conservatives to include references to the debate over evolution and the religious-based concepts of intelligent design or creationism in state-approved biology textbooks.
As U.S. politicians continue to debate whether to let gays serve openly in the American military, the Canadian Forces have issued a new policy detailing how the organization should accommodate transsexual and transvestite troops specifically.
U.S. scientists have used stem cell technology to create mice from two fathers, an advance that they say could help preserve endangered species and even help same-sex couples have their own genetic children one day.
Lastly, a New Hampshire couple has pulled their son out of his local high school after the teen was assigned a book that refers to Jesus Christ as a "wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist."
