Los Angeles might seem to be the nation's capital for gridlock, but according to Inrix, a provider of traffic data and information, the City Of Angels doesn't have the worst traffic in the United States.
Inrix says that the city of Honolulu wins that dubious honor, with drivers wasting 58 hours a year on average on congested roads.
The Inrix study shows that drivers in other major cities are still spending a fair number of hours stuck in traffic, too. While Los Angeles ranked a close second to Honolulu, those in San Francisco spent almost 48 additional hours in the car because of traffic.
The news wasn't all bad, though. Inrix says overall congestion was down 30 percent in 2011 from the year before, and notes that of the 100 cities it surveyed, 70 of them logged lower rates of congestion year over year.
These cities had the worst traffic in 2011, according to Inrix, which lists the average hours wasted per driver after each city:
10) Chicago – 32.8 hours
9) Boston - 35 hours
8) Austin – 30 hours
7) Seattle – 33 hours
6) Washington, D.C. – 45 hours
5) Bridgeport, CT – 42 hours
4) New York – 57 hours
3) San Francisco – 48 hours
2) Los Angeles – 56 hours
1) Honolulu – 58 hours
The study also finds that, nationally, the worst morning commute occurs on Tuesday, while the worst evening commute is on Friday.
Inrix also says some of the worst traffic corridors in the country include the 405 freeway in Los Angeles, from the 105 to Getty Center; a 16-mile stretch of the Long Island Expressway in New York; and three miles of the Penn Lincoln Parkway in Pittsburgh.
A Muslim Brotherhood official said on Friday the group's candidate in the first free presidential election in Egypt would enter a run-off vote next month with the last prime minister to serve Hosni Mubarak before he was ousted in a popular uprising.
The vote marks the final step in a messy and often bloody transition to democracy, overseen by a military council that has pledged to hand over power to a new president by July 1.
"It is clear that the run-off will be between (the Brotherhood's) Mohamed Mursi and Ahmed Shafiq," the official told Reuters. The group's governing body was meeting to determine campaign strategy for the run-off, scheduled for June 16 and 17, he said.
Official results are not due to be announced until next week, but representatives of the candidates are allowed to watch the count enabling them to compile their own tally.
The Brotherhood official said that with votes counted from about 12,800 of the roughly 13,100 polling stations, Mursi had 25 percent, Shafiq 23 percent, a rival Islamist Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh 20 percent and leftist Hamdeen Sabahy 19 percent. (Reporting by Marwa Awad; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Louise Ireland)
Iran’s Basij Press is claiming that a version of the Gospel of Barnabas, found in 2000, will prove that Islam is the final and righteous religion and the revelation will cause the collapse worldwide of Christianity.
Turkey confiscated a leather-bound text, written on animal hide, in an anti-smuggling operation in 2000. Turkish authorities believe the text could be an authentic version of the Gospel of Barnabas, one of Jesus’ apostles and an associate of the apostle Paul.
This version of the Barnabas Gospel was written in the 5th or 6th century and it predicted the coming of the Prophet Mohammad and the religion of Islam, the Basij Press claims.
The Christian world, it says, denies the existence of such a gospel.
However, religious scholars have said another version of the Barnabas Gospel, discovered a century ago, was written less than 500 years ago, which would post-date Mohammad.
In Chapter 41 of the Barnabas Gospel, Basij claims, is this statement: “God has hidden himself as Archangel Michael ran them (Adam and Eve) out of heaven, (and) when Adam turned, he noticed that at top of the gateway to heaven, it was written ‘La elah ela Allah, Mohamad rasool Allah,’” meaning Allah is the only God and Mohammad his prophet.
The Turkish army has taken possession of the Barnabas Gospel because the “Zionists” and the governments of the West are trying to suppress its contents, Basij Press claims.
According to the Barnabas Gospel in Turkey’s hands, Basij Press says, Jesus was never crucified and that not only is He not the son of God, but that He himself predicted the coming of the Prophet Mohammad. The book even predicts the coming of the last Islamic messiah, the report says.
“The discovery of the original Barnabas Bible will now undermine the Christian Church and its authority and will revolutionize the religion in the world,” the Basij report says. “The most significant fact, though, is that this Bible has predicted the coming of Prophet Mohammad and in itself has verified the religion of Islam, and this alone will unbalance the powers of the world and create instability in the Christian world.”
The Basij report concludes that the discovery is so immense that it will affect the world’s politics and that the world powers are aware of the coming effects of this event.
Turkey plans to put the Bible on public display. Though Turkish authorities believe this could be an authentic version of the Gospel of Barnabas, others believe it only goes back to the 16th century and is a fake because it would have been written centuries after Mohammad’s life.
“The Iranian regime is committed to stamping out Christianity by any means necessary, whether that means executing Christian converts, burning Bibles or raiding underground churches,” said Erick Stakelbeck, host of the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “Stakelbeck on Terror” show and a close observer of Iranian affairs. “In promoting the so-called Barnabas Bible – which was likely written sometime in the 16th century and is not accepted by any mainstream Christian denomination – the regime is once again attempting to discredit the Christian faith. Record numbers of young Iranians are leaving Islam and embracing Christ, and the mullahs see Christianity as a growing threat to their authority.”
The Holy See was directly involved in the disappearance of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi in 1983, according to a contentious accusation by the Catholic Church's leading exorcist. The Rev. Gabriele Amorth claimed that the girl's kidnapping was a "crime of a sexual nature."
"Parties were organized, with a Vatican gendarme acting as the 'recruiter' of the girls," Amorth told La Stampa, according to a translation by The Telegraph. "The network involved diplomatic personnel from a foreign embassy to the Holy See. I believe Emanuela ended up a victim of this circle."
Amorth, who was appointed by Pope John Paul II and has carried out more than 70,000 exorcisms, is no stranger to controversial public statements; according to The Sun, the exorcist has called Harry Potter the "work of the devil," and has claimed "the devil was at work in the Vatican" when discussing the Catholic Church's sex scandals.
Clues to the missing girl's whereabouts had pointed in several directions, including toward a Turkish gunman who attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II, The Telegraph reports.
On May 14, one rumor led Italian police to exhume the grave of Enrico De Pedis, a member of Rome's Magliana mob who was killed in 1990, the Associated Press reports. A one-time girlfriend previously said De Pedis committed the kidnapping, and an anonymous call to a television show in 2005 suggested clues on Orlandi's fate lay in the dead mobster's tomb in Basilica of Sant’Apollinaire. A set of bones not belonging to De Pedis were found, but the identity of the remains has yet to be released.
The Vatican insists it has done everything in its power to help solve the mystery of the missing girl.
I don’t mean that as a criticism. Hollywood’s been trying for 90 years to get the tone of the novel right and pretty clearly they’re never going to nail it — even Coppola’s treatment couldn’t produce a film worthy of the source — so why not stop trying and go crazy with the Cheez Whiz? Visual Cheez Whiz is, after all, what a Baz Luhrmann movie is all about. You don’t go to see this because you’re interested in an elegy for the Jazz Age. You see it because you’re 16 and Leo’s in it and Peter Parker’s his sidekick and there’s a romance and the art deco looks slick and, well, there’s just a lot of Cheez Whiz onscreen. And that soundtrack.
Exit question: Is America ready for a story about a man with a shadowy past and invented identity who saw his wildest dreams come true, only to have it all come crashing down around him?
Actor Michael McKean was hit by a car while walking along a New York City street on Tuesday, suffering a broken leg, the New York Post reports.
Harriet Sternberg, his manager, told the Post McKean was being checked out at St. Luke's Hospital.
“He has sustained multiple injures and we are trying to find out the extent of other injuries,” the Post quoted her as saying.
McKean, 64, played the lead singer for the band Spinal Tap in the movie "This is Spinal Tap" among numerous other roles.
He was to have performed on Broadway in Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man” on Tuesday night, the New York Daily News reported.
“It’s the first time he will have ever missed a curtain in his entire life,” Sternberg told the Daily News. “He’s never missed stage, screens in film or television. His understudy has never gone on in 40-plus years.”
