Lawyer Who Was Said to Have Dirt on Clinton Had Closer Ties to Kremlin Than She Let On  —  MOSCOW — The Russian lawyer who met with Trump campaign officials in Trump Tower in June 2016 on the premise that she would deliver damaging information about Hillary Clinton has long insisted …

For Many, Life in Trump's Orbit Ends in a Crash Landing  —  WASHINGTON — Another day, another casualty.  Or two.  —  By the time the sun set Thursday, Dr. Ronny L. Jackson was a failed cabinet nominee whose life had been picked apart for public consumption, and Michael D. Cohen was back in court facing possible criminal prosecution.

North and South Korea Set Bold Goals: A Final Peace and No Nuclear Arms  —  SEOUL, South Korea — The leaders of North and South Korea agreed on Friday to work to remove all nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula and, within the year, pursue talks with the United States to declare …

House Chaplain Was Asked to Resign.  He Still Doesn't Know Why.  —  The chaplain of the House said on Thursday that he was blindsided when Speaker Paul D. Ryan asked him to resign two weeks ago, a request that he complied with but was never given a reason for.

Claims by Joy Reid's Cybersecurity Expert Fall Apart … MSNBC host Joy Reid claims that recently unearthed homophobic articles attributed to her are fakes.  And she says a cybersecurity consultant has proof that her old blog has been hacked.  —  But that consultant, Jonathan Nichols, had trouble producing the promised evidence.

NBC News faces skepticism in remedying in-house sexual harassment … NBC News Chairman Andy Lack had barely slept.  Late the night before, he had walked from the art deco headquarters of NBC Universal in Midtown Manhattan to the Upper East Side to fire his most famous employee and longtime friend, “Today” show co-host Matt Lauer.

Fox & Friends Hurriedly Shuts Down Interview as Trump Rants About Mueller  —  Anchors grew visibly uncomfortable as they listened to the president undermine his own legal defense.  —  In what is surely a first for a news network, the hosts of Donald Trump's favorite variety show, Fox & Friends …

Tenney's red-meat rhetoric alarms House Republicans  —  Rep. Claudia Tenney learned last week that she'd been outraised by her Democratic opponent for the second quarter in a row, a sign that her hold on a moderate upstate New York district is in peril.  —  But if GOP leaders thought …

Despite So Much Winning, The Right Feels Like It's Losing  —  Diamond and Silk caused a spectacle on Capitol Hill on Thursday.  —  “Facebook along with other social media sites have taken aggressive actions to silence conservative voices such as ourselves,” the pro-Trump social media stars charged.

Is Comey telling the truth about his memos?  —  As he presses on with his bookselling tour, fired FBI Director James Comey is leaving a trail of confusing statements about how he handled the memos he wrote after conversations with President Trump, including the memo he leaked for the purpose …

Dear President Macron: Le Bromance with Trump Won't End Well  —  Just ask congressional Republicans.  —  Right before France's President Emmanuel Macron flew back to Paris from Washington on Wednesday, he popped out of a conference room at George Washington University to personally greet a final set of visitors.

Trump offers more praise for rapper Kanye West, cites other African Americans who've said to give him a chance  —  President Trump on Friday said that rapper Kanye West had “performed a great service to the Black Community,” continuing a series of friendly tweets between the two that began earlier …

What Do We Do With These Men?  —  The bad men are plotting their comebacks.  —  In recent days, Page Six reported that the former CBS anchor Charlie Rose, accused by employees of acts ranging from groping to walking around naked in their presence, is shopping a return to television.  His new project?

Feds seized more than a dozen of Michael Cohen's phones  —  Manhattan federal prosecutors seized as many as 16 cell phones when the FBI raided the home, office and hotel room of President Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen.  —  Prosecutor Thomas McKay made the astonishing revelation …

BREAKING: Brooklyn Friends of the NRA to hold dinner at Dyker K of C tonight  —  They're back.  —  This paper has learned exclusively that the Brooklyn Friends of the NRA, whose event featuring a gun auction was booted from two Brooklyn venues over the past couple of months after local residents …

Coal extracted a steep price, now gas is taking WV down same path … It was a warm Monday afternoon in late February.  Thousands of teachers, public school employees and supporters rallied on the steps of West Virginia's Capitol building, on the banks of the Kanawha River in Charleston.

Prime Minister to travel to the United States  —  The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today announced that he will travel to the United States from May 16 to 18, 2018.  —  During the visit - which includes stops in New York and Boston - the Prime Minister will highlight …

F.B.I. Letter Casts Further Doubt on White House's Rob Porter Timeline  —  WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. first gave the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, a file containing spousal abuse allegations against Rob Porter in March 2017, according to a detailed new timeline the bureau has given …

Will Cohen Flip?  Tenuous Finances May Provide Crucial Clues  —  Taxes, loans, and collapsing medallion values take their toll  —  Does he have compromising information on Trump he can trade?  —  In the two weeks since federal agents seized the files of Michael Cohen …

ADL regrets calling group that targets anti-Israel students Islamophobic and racist  —  WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Anti-Defamation League said it regretted using “overly broad language” to describe the Canary Mission, a group that posts blacklists of what it says are anti-Israel students on campuses.

Relative's DNA from genealogy websites cracked East Area Rapist case, DA's office says  —  Sacramento investigators tracked down East Area Rapist suspect Joseph James DeAngelo using genealogical websites that contained genetic information from a relative, the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office confirmed Thursday.

Likely coldest April since 1895 - U.S. farmers delay planting crops  —  Farmers are suffering as the cold, wet spring has put a stunning halt to agriculture.  Ice Age Farmer Report - 19 Apr 2018  —  Soil temperatures are below normal, and not conducive to planting yet.

800,000 people are about to flee New York and California because of taxes, say economists  — 800,000 people will leave New York and California over the next three years due to the new tax bill, conservative economists Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore said in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

National Income and Product Accounts  —  Gross Domestic Product: First Quarter 2018 (Advance Estimate)  —  Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in the first quarter of 2018  —  (table 1), according to the “advance” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.