What’s happening in Flint, Michigan, is unconscionable.
A city of 99,000 people — 56 percent African-American, 40 percent living below the poverty line — has spent nearly two years with poisoned water.
Nearly two years of boil orders, foul smells and false reassurances that the water was safe to drink.
Nearly two years of having residents’ concerns dismissed and belittled by the state government.
Now, thousands of kids may have been exposed to harmful levels of lead, which can irreparably harm brain development and cause learning and behavioral problems. The rate of lead poisoning among children has nearly doubled since Flint approved a state-appointed emergency manager’s plan to switch their water source. And even now that the state is finally launching a belated response, Flint’s undocumented immigrant community is reportedly afraid to get the help they need.
.
This Jan. 21, 2016 photo shows the water tower at the Flint, Mich., water plant.
Politico CEO Jim VandeHei and chief White House correspondent Mike Allen will leave the news organization they helped launch nine years ago and built into a politics and policy juggernaut.
VandeHei told staff Wednesday that he was departing after the election and that Allen, chief operating officer Kim Kingsley, chief revenue officer Roy Schwartz and executive vice president Danielle Jones would also be “seeking their own new adventures” late this year, confirming an earlier HuffPost report on the shake-up.
Staffers said VandeHei and Politico owner Robert Allbritton have clashed over spending and budgets. A possible split was the talk of the newsroom Thursday, just four days before the Iowa caucuses.
Ammon Bundy, leader of the month-long militant occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns, Oregon, was arrested Tuesday in a highway confrontation with law enforcement that killed one of his followers and wounded another, according to the FBI.
Bundy and four followers, including his brother, Ryan, were arrested during a traffic stop in which shots were fired, the FBI said in a statement. Killed was Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, who had acted as spokesman for the armed group of occupiers, according to the Bundy Ranch.
The FBI said the shootings happened when agents, along with Oregon state troopers, “began an enforcement action” on Highway 395 to arrest people involved in the armed occupation on charges of conspiracy to impede federal officials from discharging their duties.
.
Rick Bowmer/Associated Press
Ammon Bundy was arrested on Tuesday night following reports of a shots fired on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
.
.
Click link below for story, video and social media:
Bill O’Reilly wants Donald Trump to be the bigger man in his ongoing feud with Fox News, but Trump is promising an “eye for an eye” instead.
The “O’Reilly Factor” host was trying to convince the GOP frontrunner to join Thursday night’s debate in Iowa despite his dislike for Megyn Kelly, the Fox News host who will be one of the event’s moderators.
O’Reilly even tried appealing to Trump’s Christian faith, something the candidate has spoken of frequently in an effort to woo evangelical voters.
“In your Christian faith, there is a very significant tenet and that’s the tenet of forgiveness,” O’Reilly said.
.
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Denmark‘s parliament passed measures on Tuesday aimed at deterring refugees from seeking asylum, including confiscating valuables to pay for their stay, despite protests from international human rights organizations.
The measures, which also include extending family reunification among refugees from one year to three years, are the latest sign that the Nordic welcome for refugees is waning as large numbers flee war in Africa and Middle East for a better life in Europe.
The “jewelry bill” is the latest attempt by Denmark‘s minority center-right government to curb immigration to a country that took in a record 20,000 refugees last year.
.
Ernst van Norde/Polfoto/Associated Press
Denmark passed a new law on Tuesday that deters refugees from seeking asylum. Above, refugees and migrants rest on the highway in southern Denmark on Sept. 9, 2015.
A magnitude-7.1 earthquake knocked items off shelves and walls in south-central Alaska and jolted the nerves of residents in this earthquake-prone region. But there were no immediate reports of injuries.
The earthquake struck about 1:30 a.m. Alaska time and was centered 53 miles west of Anchor Point in the Kenai Peninsula, which is about 160 miles southwest of Anchorage, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
About two hours later, a magnitude-4.3 aftershock hit the Cook Inlet, the agency said.
The earthquake was widely felt by residents of Anchorage. But the Anchorage and Valdez police departments said they have not received any reports of injury or significant damage.
.
Items fallen from the shelves litter the aisles inside a Safeway grocery store following a magnitude 6.8 earthquake on the Kenai Peninsula, Jan. 24, 2016, in south-central Alaska.
Sara, a recent graduate of Stanford University, is a survivor. During her freshman year at the school, she says, a male student she was dating turned violent after she refused to have sex with him. He choked her and threatened to kill her, whispering in her ear that no one would care if she died, she says.
Sara reported the attack to Stanford administrators, who then spoke with Robert, the alleged assailant. University administrators told Sara that he didn’t contest her story.
The school imposed a no-contact order on Robert, meaning he had to keep his distance from Sara or face punishment. Sara says she was told to focus on her recovery. She agreed to the plan, and says she asked the school to notify her if other victims of his ever came forward. It is not clear if anyone at the university agreed to her request, though Sara says she was under the impression the school would let her know about any future allegations against Robert.
.
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
As the election of 2008 approached, America was in crisis. And as we would soon learn, that crisis would not go to waste. Years after Bill Clinton disingenuously claimed that the era of big government was over, Obama won his party’s nomination by promising its furious revenge.
For constitutional conservatives, the Republican contest functioned less like a primary and more like an abandonment. Politically orphaned by their party, conservatives were forced to either stay home or hold their noses and vote for a progressive Republican.
There was a silver lining, however. Rising out of the ashes of that electoral defeat came the Tea Party. The media struggled to explain it away as racist, xenophobic, and jingoistic. But the truth is, the Tea Party did not arise because Barack Obama defeated his opposition. It arose because there was no opposition.
President Vladimir Putin probably approved a plan by Russia’s FSB security service to kill a former agent-turned-Kremlin critic who died after drinking tea laced with radioactive poison, a British judge said Thursday in a strongly worded report that led Moscow to accuse Britain of souring bilateral relations.
Judge Robert Owen, who led a public inquiry into the 2006 killing of Alexander Litvinenko, said he was certain that two Russian men had given Litvinenko tea containing a fatal dose of polonium-210 during a meeting at a London hotel.
He said there was a “strong probability” that Russia’s FSB, successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB spy agency, directed the killing and that the operation was “probably approved” by Putin, then as now the president of Russia.
.
Natasja Weitsz via Getty Images This 2006 file photo shows Alexander Litvinenko just days before his death by poisoning.
Islamic militants stormed a university in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people and triggering an hours-long gunbattle with security forces in an attack that echoed a horrifying assault by the Taliban a little over a year ago on a nearby army-run school.
The attack began shortly after classes started at the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, a town 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside Peshawar, said Deputy Commissioner Tahir Zafar. The school may have been targeted because it is named for a late secular icon.
The attackers climbed over the back walls of the university and shot at a security guard before making their way to the administration building and the male students’ dorms, police official Saeed Khan Wazir said.
.
ASSOCIATED PRESS Pakistani troops enter the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda town, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016.
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.
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Items fallen from the shelves litter the aisles inside a Safeway grocery store following a magnitude 6.8 earthquake on the Kenai Peninsula, Jan. 24, 2016, in south-central Alaska.
Donald Trump
James' World 2 