Chicago is the poster city for violent crime to President Trump, but he’s got some mean streets right in his Florida backyard.
The city of West Palm Beach, which sits just across the Intracoastal Waterway from Trump’s palatial Mar-a-Lago Resort — aka the Winter White House — on exclusive Palm Beach, had a violent crime rate in 2015 that was equal to that of the Windy City, according to federal crime records.
There were 23 homicides in a city of just 104,919 residents. And the rate of violent crime, which also includes rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults, was 9 for every 1,000 residents — the same as the far bigger Chicago, records show.
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President Donald Trump hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Mar-a-Lago Resort in West Palm Beach, Florida on Feb. 11, 2017. Joe Raedle / Getty Images
Norma McCorvey, known as “Jane Roe,” the anonymous plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, the US Supreme Court case that established a constitutional right to abortion, died on Saturday, a priest close to her family said. Multiple media sources said she was 69.
McCorvey died at 12:07 p.m. ET in the Houston area with her daughter, Melissa, and several grandchildren present, the Rev. Frank Pavone said on Facebook.
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Pavone did not give the cause of death but said McCorvey had been a heavy smoker and had respiratory problems. She’d been in and out of assisted living facilities over the past year.
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McCorvey once supported the pro-choice movement but switched sides in 1995. She converted to Christianity, joined anti-abortion activists and started an outreach group called Roe No More.
Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian-born cleric serving a life sentence for plotting the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center and other terror attacks in New York, has died, a prison spokesman said Saturday.
Abdel-Rahman died Saturday morning from natural causes at age 78, said Greg Norton, spokesman with the federal correctional complex in Butner, North Carolina. He had battled diabetes and coronary heart disease, Norton said.
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The February 1993 attack on the Manhattan landmark left six people dead and injured more than 1,000 others. Abdel-Rahman was linked to the attack after other suspects were found to have frequented the New Jersey mosque where he preached.
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The bombing would presage the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center eight years later.
Rahman denied involvement in the earlier attack in which a bomb exploded in a parking garage under 2 World Trade Center.
A top aide to President Trump’s housing secretary nominee, Ben Carson, was fired and led out of the department’s headquarters by security on Wednesday after writings critical of Mr. Trump surfaced in his vetting, according to two people briefed on the matter.
Shermichael Singleton, who was one of the few black conservatives in the Trump administration, had been working at the Department of Housing and Urban Development since Jan. 23 as a senior adviser. He was preparing a cross-country tour for Mr. Carson, who is expected to be confirmed by the Senate this month.
But according to the two people briefed, Mr. Singleton’s background check had not been completed. As it was being finished this week, Mr. Trump’s advisers turned up public writings by Mr. Singleton that appeared during the later stages of the campaign in which he was deeply critical of the candidate.
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Ben Carson, right, greeted Shermichael Singleton, a top aide, before the start of his confirmation hearing to be secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development last month.Credit Al Drago/The New York Times
Retired Navy Vice Adm. Robert Harward has turned down an offer to become President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, a White House official said on Thursday.
“It’s purely a personal issue,” Harward told The Associated Press on Thursday evening. “I’m in a unique position finally after being in the military for 40 years to enjoy some personal time.”
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said, “He is a great man who has served his country with distinction. Any discussion was subject to him overcoming family and financial concerns [which] he could not do.”
Trump is searching for a replacement for retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who resigned on Monday over phone calls with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, communications that reportedly involved discussions of sanctions leveled against the country during the Obama administration.
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Vice Adm. Robert Harward in 2011. Sgt. Shawn Coolman / U.S. Marine Corps/AP
ISIS has claimed responsibility for a deadly car bomb explosion Thursday in southwestern Baghdad, according to a statement released by ISIS-affiliated Amaq News Agency.
The blast killed 51 people and wounded at least as many others, Gen. Saad Maan, spokesman for Baghdad’s Operations Command, said in a statement.
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The attack targeted a busy car market in the predominately Shiite al-Bayaa district of the Iraqi capital, a security official told CNN.
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Even before the ISIS statement began circulating among supporters on social media, the US State Department blamed the terror group for the massacre.
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“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the horrible terrorist attacks carried out by ISIS targeting a car dealership in Baghdad, Iraq, today,” said Mark Toner, the department’s acting spokesman. “We extend our deepest condolences to the victims’ families and friends, and wish a full and quick recovery to those injured.”
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A burned-out car sits at the site of a deadly bombing Thursday in Baghdad.
Charles M. Blow (column, nytimes.com, Feb. 9) describes Donald Trump’s constant need “to grind the opposition underfoot.” As mental health professionals, we share Mr. Blow’s concern.
Silence from the country’s mental health organizations has been due to a self-imposed dictum about evaluating public figures (the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 Goldwater Rule). But this silence has resulted in a failure to lend our expertise to worried journalists and members of Congress at this critical time. We fear that too much is at stake to be silent any longer.
Mr. Trump’s speech and actions demonstrate an inability to tolerate views different from his own, leading to rage reactions. His words and behavior suggest a profound inability to empathize. Individuals with these traits distort reality to suit their psychological state, attacking facts and those who convey them (journalists, scientists).
Congressional Republicans, who craved unified control of the government to secure their aggressive conservative agenda, have instead found themselves on a legislative elliptical trainer, gliding toward nowhere.
After moving to start rolling back the Affordable Care Act just days after President Trump was sworn in last month, Republican lawmakers and Mr. Trump have yet to deliver on any of the sweeping legislation they promised. Efforts to come up with a replacement for the health care law have been stymied by disagreements among Republicans about how to proceed. The same is true for a proposed overhaul of the tax code.
The large infrastructure bill that both Democrats and Mr. Trump were eager to pursue has barely been mentioned, other than a very general hearing to discuss well-documented needs for infrastructure improvements. Even a simple emergency spending bill that the Trump administration promised weeks ago — which was expected to include a proposal for his wall on the Mexican border — has not materialized, leaving appropriators idle and checking Twitter.
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Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, left, and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, during a news conference on Wednesday where they discussed plans to replace the Affordable Care Act.Credit Al Drago/The New York Times .
Israel successfully launched into space Wednesday a new nanosatellite, the first for Israeli academia, that will conduct scientific missions for Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
BGUSAT is the result of a five-year joint project between BGU, Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. (IAI) and Israel’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Space.
The satellite, 10x10x30 centimeters (4x4x12 inches) — a little larger than a milk carton — and weighing just five kilograms (11 lbs), is outfitted with innovative cameras that can photograph a large array of weather phenomena and a guidance system that allows operators to choose the areas to research through a dedicated ground station at BGU. Researchers will be able to position the satellite to take a variety of pictures from different angles.
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Installing the satellite dish that will receive the data transmitted from BGUSAT and send it to the ground station at Ben-Gurion University’s Earth and Planetary Image Facility, March 2016. (Dani Machlis/BGU)
The sudden death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s half-brother was murder, South Korean officials announced Wednesday.
Kim Jong Nam died Monday soon after becoming ill at Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) before an outbound flight to Macau.
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Lee Cheol Woo, chairman of South Korea’s National Assembly Intelligence Committee, told a press briefing Wednesday that Kim had been poisoned, and the suspects were “presumed to be two Asian females.”
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It’s not clear how he obtained that information or how Kim was poisoned.
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South Korea’s Unification Ministry told CNN they were working with Malaysian authorities to get additional information.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
President Donald Trump hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Mar-a-Lago Resort in West Palm Beach, Florida on Feb. 11, 2017. Joe Raedle / Getty Images
Norma McCorvey
A burned-out car sits at the site of a deadly bombing Thursday in Baghdad.
James' World 2 