'Sales are next to nothing': Merchants worry crime crisis could cast pall over Baltimore downtown

BALTIMORE –  An epidemic of murder that has gripped Baltimore in the month following the Freddie Gray riots is threatening to undo decades of rebirth in the city's popular downtown -- and in the process, wipe away tens of millions of tourist dollars. 
“Sales are next to nothing,” said Kenneth Robinson, manager of the Fudgery, an iconic candy store tucked in the heart of the Inner Harbor. 
Local merchants were just starting to see business bounce back after last month's riots. But a crime crisis has since gripped Baltimore, with police saying criminals have taken advantage of the situation to wreak havoc on Charm City. 
Nine people were killed and nearly 30 wounded over the holiday weekend, about three weeks after the rioting. With 38 homicides so far in May, Baltimore is seeing its deadliest month since 1999. The number of killings this year is now at 111, compared with 211 for all of 2014. 
Store owners, restaurateurs, pub owners and others in and around the Inner Harbor say the long Memorial Day weekend did help them recover losses associated with the looting and rioting sparked by the April 19 death of 25-year-old Gray in police custody. 
But merchants worry the national attention on Baltimore's crime wave will have many potential visitors scratching the city off their vacation calendar.

Washington DC transit officials bar issue-oriented ads through end of year

Washington D.C. transit officials voted Thursday to suspend all issue-oriented advertising on the city's rail and bus system after the agency was asked to consider an ad featuring an image of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. 
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's (WMATA) board of directors voted to suspend all issue ads until the end of this year while it examines its own policy. The agency did not say the move was made in response to a particular ad.
However, the head of the group behind the Muhammad ad, the American Freedom Defense Initiative's Pamela Geller, confirmed to the Associated Press Thursday that she had submitted the cartoon, which depicts Muhammad raising a sword and saying "you can't draw me," for consideration about two weeks ago.
Muslims generally believe any physical depiction of Muhammad is blasphemous. The cartoon, by artist Bosch Fawstin, was the winner of the group's Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, earlier this month. Two would-be terrorists ambushed security officers outside the event and were killed by local police.
Geller said she submitted the cartoon with the caption "support free speech." She said her group is exploring its legal options and looking at other cities to potentially run the ads.
"Look, this is an end run around the First Amendment," she said in a telephone interview after the board's ruling. She called transit officials "cowards" for not being willing to run the ads and said "rewarding terror with submission is defeat."
This is not the first time an American Freedom Defense Initiative ad has sparked controversy. In 2012 the group took transit agencies in New York and Washington to court to force them to display a different provocative ad which read: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad."
WMATA said in a statement Thursday that officials will be reviewing the agency's ad policy.
"In the coming months, Metro will fully consider the impact that issue-related advertisements have on the community by gathering input from riders, local community groups and advocates. Metro will also carefully examine the legal concerns related to displaying, or discontinuing the display of, issue-related advertisements. Following this internal review and outreach period, the Board of Directors will make a decision about how to move forward with its advertising policy," the agency said in a statement.
Issue ads bring in approximately $2 million dollars annually, so suspending those kinds of ads for the remainder of the year could cost the agency approximately $1 million, spokesman Dan Stessel said. Advertising throughout the bus and train system, including both issue ads and commercial advertisements, brings in approximately $11 million, Stessel said.

Occupiers of church closed by Boston Archdiocese years ago fight order to vacate

Members of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Roman Catholic Church, which the Boston Archdiocese closed 11 years ago, say they have no plans to end their longstanding occupation of the church -- even though the archdiocese originally gave them a Friday deadline to leave or else.
Since the announcement was made to close the church in October 2004, congregants have held vigils in shifts, 24 hours a day, seven days a week -- sleeping on the floor and in pews and holding Sunday service, during which the occupants recite prayers, listen to Bible readings and receive consecrated hosts secretly provided by area priests. The gatherings are lay-led services, and the Eucharist is given to the congregation by Eucharistic ministers.
To the Archdiocese of Boston, a dwindling congregation and a shortage of priests, among other factors, marked the church for closure, which the Vatican supported. But congregants say it is the 30 acres of prime, ocean-view Boston real estate the church sits on that has the hierarchy looking to sell -- and claim the archdiocese needs it to pay off clergy sex abuse cases.
"This is all about the money," Jon Rogers, the protesters' leader and a founder of the nonprofit support group, "The Friends of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini," told FoxNews.com, claiming the church was "thriving" with 3,000 registered parishioners when the decision was made to close it nearly 11 years ago.
"Here's the crux of the matter – we are sitting on one of the most valuable of piece of property in Boston," Rogers said Thursday. "And they need the money."
"You don’t get to hurt children and then steal our church to pay off your crimes," he said.
Earlier this month, a state judge ordered the protesters to vacate by as early as Friday. The occupants then filed an appeal and were granted a temporary reprieve, according to Rogers.
"There’s so much information that was submitted and the judge needs time to review it," he said.
The 30 largely undeveloped acres are worth over $4 million, by some estimates.
In an interview last August, Archdiocese spokesman Terry Donilon said the decision to close the church was part of a larger parish closure and cited a decline in Mass attendance and a "dramatic" drop in the number of priests.
Donilon strongly denied the charge that the church was being closed so the property could be sold to pay off prior legal settlements.
"We are not selling churches to pay for the legal fees of the sex abuse cases," he told FoxNews.com in August. The U.S. Catholic Church has paid close to $2.8 billion in legal costs related to clergy sex abuse cases, according to a 2013 report by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
"No plans" have been discussed about what will be done with the property, which sits about a half mile from the Atlantic Ocean, Donilon also said at the time. He called the claim by congregants that the property is to be sold to a condominium developer false. Donilon was not immediately available when contacted Thursday.

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Rogers and others say they believe the sweat equity they've poured into the church over the years makes it theirs, not the archdiocese's. Parishioners have maintained the 55-year-old building over the years, spending thousands of dollars on repairs and renovations, like painting and new woodwork, as well as purchasing a new furnace. The archdiocese still pays for the electricity and heat, as well as the occasional landscaping and snow plowing.
The archdiocese has declined to say what it plans to do if protesters refuse to leave. The rebel occupants say they are prepared to be arrested as trespassers, if necessary.
Rogers said he and the other congregants plan to fight the archdiocese to the very end.
"I have a spiritual belief that right will triumph over wrong," Rogers said. "In this case, we believe we are right."
"I think the higher up the chain we pursue this, the closer to vindication that we get," he said. "We will exhaust every avenue of appeal available to us. That promise hasn’t changed since Day 1."

Not So Funny ISIS Cartoon

Santorum launches 2016 campaign, with focus on 'working families'

Rick Santorum announced his second campaign for the White House on Wednesday, striking a populist tone as he railed against "big government" and "big money." 
The former Republican Pennsylvania senator made his announcement surrounded by factory workers on the floor of a business near his western Pennsylvania hometown, a setting designed to showcase his focus on the working class.
He held up a piece of coal in one hand -- highlighting his family's working roots -- and an American flag in the other. In announcing "I'm running for president," he vowed to get rid of executive orders and regulations that are costing Americans jobs, as well as scrap the "corrupt federal tax code."
While hoping to build off his solid performance in 2012, Santorum begins the race as a heavy underdog facing a crowded field.
The former senator was the Republican runner-up in the 2012 presidential primaries and beat out nominee Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses. He also won 11 state races during the primaries. But Santorum faces a steep challenge this cycle in carving out a political niche for himself – as one of several social conservatives in contention.
As of Wednesday, the RealClearPolitics average of polls showed him ranking 10^th, behind such social conservatives as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson, both declared candidates.

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• Will GOP voters give Rick Santorum a second chance?

The prospective Republican field already includes four sitting senators, four governors, four former governors, two business leaders and a retired neurosurgeon. Santorum becomes the seventh candidate to have formally announced.
He tried Wednesday to position himself as the working-class candidate. In a dig at well-funded competitors, he said: "Working families don't need another president tied to big government or big money."
Santorum claims his experience could pay dividends the second time around. Most of the GOP's recent presidential nominees, Mitt Romney and President Ronald Reagan among them, needed more than one campaign to find success in the nomination race.
"This is a long process," Santorum told reporters recently. "One of the things that I feel very comfortable with -- I've been through this process before." He said it's a "completely wide open race."
Santorum served in the Senate from 1995 to 2007.
He began his political career in 1990 as a long-shot candidate for a House seat. In that race, he knocked seven-term Democratic incumbent Doug Walgren out of office. Santorum would go on to become part of the “Gang of Seven” in Congress made up of a new breed of GOP lawmakers. The group, which included now-House Speaker John Boehner, made headlines by going after House Democrats as well as focusing on the House banking scandal.
Santorum won election to the U.S. Senate in 1994. He was 36.
Six years later, he won re-election to a second term and would go on to chair the Senate Republican Conference -- the third highest-ranking party leadership position in the Senate.
Despite his past political record, Santorum is significantly trailing some of the GOP frontrunners vying for a shot at the White House.
Fox News, which will host the first Republican primary debate in Cleveland in early August, said it would limit participation to candidates who are in the top 10 of an average of national polling.
Three other Republicans also are expected to formally announce their White House campaign plans in the next two weeks: Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former New York Gov. George Pataki.
Democrat Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, is also expected to enter the race this weekend, joining declared Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Pentagon says ‘live anthrax’ inadvertently shipped across US

The Pentagon revealed Wednesday that "live anthrax" was shipped, apparently by accident, from a lab in Utah to as many as nine states over the course of a year. 
Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren assured "there is no known risk to the general public" and said an investigation is under way. But precautions are being taken for potentially exposed workers in labs where the samples were sent. A U.S. official told Fox News that four people in three companies are being treated for "post-exposure" and being prescribed prophylaxis.
All samples are in the process of being collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The material in question was prepared at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, as part of what was described as a "routine" research process. It was then sent out to Defense Department and commercial labs in nine states between March 2014 and March 2015 -- and the shipments were supposed to include only inactive, or dead, anthrax when they were transferred.
"These were supposed to be dead spores anthrax, called AG-1," a defense official said.
But a private lab in Maryland, on May 22, informed the CDC that they thought the samples contained live anthrax. The CDC then informed the Defense Department. According to the Associated Press, the government has confirmed the Maryland lab got live spores, and it is suspected the others did as well, though not yet confirmed.
When asked how many of the states that were sent anthrax received live samples, the defense official said that “out of an abundance of caution, it is safe to assume it’s all live."
Fox News also was told that one sample was sent to a South Korean base to be used in an anthrax detection exercise.
"The Department of Defense is collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in their investigation of the inadvertent transfer of samples containing live Bacillus anthracis, also known as anthrax, from a DoD lab in Dugway Utah, to labs in nine states," Warren said in a statement.
"There is no known risk to the general public, and there are no suspected or confirmed cases of anthrax infection in potentially exposed lab workers," he added. "The DoD lab was working as part of a DoD effort to develop a field-based test to identify biological threats in the environment."
An Army research center, after hearing from the CDC, had notified the eight companies that received samples across the nine states. Each company has locked down the samples.
The states that received the shipments are: Texas, Maryland, Wisconsin, Delaware, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, California and Virginia.
Warren said the DoD has also "stopped the shipment of this material from its labs pending completion of the investigation."

Soccer's embattled governing body made donation to the Clinton Foundation

The Clintons, already under scrutiny for accepting foreign donations to their family foundation and keeping them secret from the Obama administration while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state, have received money from another controversial source: the Federacion Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).
Soccer’s governing body, which donated between $50,001 and $100,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative and partnered with the former president’s foundation on other projects, is entangled in an international corruption investigation spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Justice, which spans countries from Qatar and Russia to Switzerland and the United States.
The DOJ announced charges against nine FIFA officials and five other corporate executives in a 47-count indictment unsealed Wednesday, which includes allegations that over the last two decades, its executives were involved in racketeering, money laundering and wire fraud.

Swiss law enforcement also is looking into allegations related to the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments set to take place in Russia and Qatar respectively, the DOJ said.

The decision to hold the events in Russia and Qatar stunned human rights activists who heavily criticized the choice because of the human-rights records in those countries.

While no officials have been arrested in Qatar, the Swiss government seized documents at FIFA’s headquarters and obtained records from the Swiss bank accounts of executives they believe are involved in a money-laundering scheme.

The Clinton Foundation did not comment on Fox News’ inquiry asking if the donation from FIFA to the foundation will be returned.

Bill Clinton served as the honorary chairman for the U.S. bid committee, which promoted America as the best place to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cup events.
While he failed to secure the deal, his charity won in another respect.

In 2014, the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, set up by the Qatar government to ensure a successful FIFA world cup, awarded the Clinton Foundation between $250,000 and $500,000; the State of Qatar donated between $1 million and $5 million.

The money, according to the Clinton Foundation website, is for “research and development for sustainable infrastructure at the 2022 FIFA World Cup to improve food security in Qatar, the Middle East, and other arid and water-stressed regions throughout the world.”

While the Clintons have not yet commented on the donation from FIFA, Bill Clinton repeatedly has said his foundation has done nothing "knowingly inappropriate" related to accepting foreign donations.

The family, its foundation, its donors and the State Department have been harshly criticized in recent weeks, in part driven by the newly released book "Clinton Cash" by Peter Schweizer, which alleges donations to the foundation and up to $50 million in speaking and appearance fees awarded to Bill Clinton impacted Hillary Clinton’s decisions as secretary of state.

In response, Bill Clinton told NBC in a recent interview, "I don’t think there is anything sinister about trying to get wealthy people and countries that are seriously involved in development to spend their money wisely in a way that helps poor people and lifts them up.”

Jeff Bechdel, the communications director for the America Rising PAC, which is dedicated to ensuring Hillary Clinton does not win the presidency in 2016, said it should surprise no one that the Clinton Foundation accepted donations from FIFA and the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee “because the Clintons are synonymous with corruption.”

“If they’re willing to accept money from human rights violators, what’s stopping them from accepting money from FIFA, which is being accused of bribery, money laundering, and fraud?” Bechdel said. “When it comes to money, the Clintons are willing to deal with just about anybody.”

US military pilots complain hands tied in ‘frustrating’ fight against ISIS

U.S. military pilots carrying out the air war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are voicing growing discontent over what they say are heavy-handed rules of engagement hindering them from striking targets.
They blame a bureaucracy that does not allow for quick decision-making. One Navy F-18 pilot who has flown missions against ISIS voiced his frustration to Fox News, saying: "There were times I had groups of ISIS fighters in my sights, but couldn't get clearance to engage.”
He added, “They probably killed innocent people and spread evil because of my inability to kill them. It was frustrating."
Sources close to the air war against ISIS told Fox News that strike missions take, on average, just under an hour, from a pilot requesting permission to strike an ISIS target to a weapon leaving the wing.
A spokesman for the U.S. Air Force’s Central Command pushed back: “We refute the idea that close air support strikes take 'an hour on average'. Depending on the how complex the target environment is, a strike could take place in less than 10 minutes or it could take much longer.
"As our leaders have said, this is a long-term fight, and we will not alienate civilians, the Iraqi government or our coalition partners by striking targets indiscriminately."
A former U.S. Air Force general who led air campaigns over Iraq and Afghanistan also said today's pilots are being "micromanaged," and the process for ordering strikes is slow -- squandering valuable minutes and making it possible for the enemy to escape.
“You're talking about hours in some cases, which by that time the particular tactical target left the area and or the aircraft has run out of fuel. These are excessive procedures that are handing our adversary an advantage,” said retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, a former director of the Combined Air Operations Center in Afghanistan in 2001.
Deptula also contrasted the current air campaign against ISIS with past air campaigns.

The U.S.-led airstrikes over Iraq during the first Gulf War averaged 1,125 strike sorties per day, according to Deptula. He said the Kosovo campaign averaged 135 strikes per day. In 2003, the famous “shock and awe” campaign over Iraq saw 800 strikes per day.
According to the U.S.-led coalition to defeat ISIS, U.S. military aircraft carry out 80 percent of the strikes against ISIS and average 14 per day.
Deptula blames the White House for the bottleneck.
“The ultimate guidance rests in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” he said. “We have been applying air power like a rain shower or a drizzle -- for it to be effective, it needs to be applied like a thunderstorm.”
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., recently complained that 75 percent of pilots are returning without dropping any ordnance, due to delays in decision-making up the chain of command.
A senior defense official at the Pentagon pushed back on the comparisons between the air war against ISIS and past air campaigns.
“The Gulf War and Kosovo are not reasonable comparisons. In those instances, we were fighting conventional forces. Today, we are supporting a fight against terrorists who blend into the civilian population,” he said. “Our threshold for civilian casualties and collateral damage is low. We don’t want to own this fight. We have reliable partners on the ground.”
McCain, speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, also called for “forward air controllers,” as well as special forces and “more of those kind of raids that were so successful into Syria.”
Another former U.S. Air Force general agreed. “We need to get somebody to find the targets and [U.S.] airpower will blow them up ... period,” said retired Gen. Charles F. Wald, former deputy commander of United States European Command
In a letter to Secretary of Defense Ash Carter Wednesday, Rep. Duncan Hunter asked the secretary to consider arming the Sunnis tribes in Anbar directly in order to defeat ISIS. Like McCain, Hunter also wants to “immediately embed special operators and ground-air controllers to support ground operations against IS[IS].”
But a defense official pushed back on Hunter’s plan to bypass Baghdad and arm the Sunni tribes directly,  telling Fox News,  “[the plan] doesn’t take into account the presence of Iran inside Iraq right now… there could be unintended consequences and restore a sectarian war.”