Betsy DeVos is hardly a household name, but the Michigan billionaire and conservative activist has quietly helped change the education landscape in many states, spending millions of dollars in a successful push to expand voucher programs that give families taxpayer dollars to pay for private and religious schools.

Now DeVos is poised to spread her preference for vouchers nationwide. President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday named her as his nominee for education secretary, a pick that suggests he aims to follow through with campaign promises to expand the movement toward “school choice” — including vouchers and charter schools — in an effort to break up a public education system that he has called “a government-run monopoly.”

Senior Hamas official Mahmoudud Zahar has suggested that US President-elect Donald Trump is secretly a Jew.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera earlier this month, translated by MEMRI,  Zahar said that "Trump loves the Jews, and not only because he likes the Jewish religion. I do not rule out the possibility that he is a Jew.

See full interview  Here
 

Baltimore is prepared for the upcoming snow season, city officials announced Monday.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said the city has a $6.3 million snow removal budget to go along with more than 300 essential personnel, 280 pieces of city and contractor equipment and 18,100 tons of salt.

"I hope I am not tempting fate by declaring that the city of Baltimore is fully prepared for the winter season ahead, since I have what, only a week and a half? I say that will be someone else's problem," Rawlings-Blake said.

Rawlings-Blake's last day on the job is Dec. 6. Her remarks about tempting fate relate back to her very first days on the job in February 2010, at the helm when snomaggeden dumped 45 inches of snow on Baltimore.

BALTIMORE - Baltimore City is offering free and reduced parking this holiday season.

Parking meters in all nine Main Streets will offer two-hour free parking from Friday, November 25 to Sunday, November 27.

Those streets are: Belair-Edison Main Street, East Monument Street Main Street, Federal Hill Main Street, Fell's Point Main Street, Hamilton-Lauraville Main Street, Highlandtown Main Street, Pennysylvania Avenue Main Street, Pigtown Main Street, Waverly Main Street.

In addition, Caroline Street Garage in Fells Point and Eden & Fleet Garage will offer $1 flat discounted rate from 5 P.M. on weeknights and all day on weekends startiung November 28 through December 24.

Sabra Dipping Co. is recalling some hummus products and spreads because of possible Listeria contamination, the US Food and Drug Administration said Saturday.

The products were manufactured before November 8 at a plant where Listeria monocytogenes have been found, but the bacteria has not been found in products that have been tested, the FDA said. The products were distributed to retail outlets in the United States and Canada.

Consumers are urged to discard any product with a "Best Before" date through January 23, 2017. That date can be found on the lid of each package.

A list of the products recalled can be found on the FDA or Sabra websites.

The thought that Mitt Romney would ever join the cabinet of Donald Trump — given their fuming hostility, mutual contempt and venomous rhetorical exchanges — might be the most absurd notion yet of a crazy political year.

But the possibility that Trump and the man he labeled a “choke artist” could find common cause in the new administration was nonetheless a hot topic ahead of their meeting Saturday at the president-elect’s Bedminster, New Jersey, golf retreat.

The 2012 Republican nominee, who once warned in a CNN interview that a Trump presidency would mean “trickle down racism” and “trickle down bigotry,” instead sat down with Trump and discussed the job of secretary of state, an appointment that would make Hillary Clinton’s decision to serve in the same post under her 2008 primary rival Barack Obama seem routine by comparison.