March 18 (Bloomberg) — The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report Publisher Marc Faber discusses the 2016 Presidential campaign frontrunners. He speaks on “Bloomberg Markets.” (Source: Bloomberg)

Southern California has, yet again, clinched the dubious distinction of having the country’s worst traffic.

Drivers in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana region spent 81 hours idling on freeways in 2015, the worst cumulative delay of any U.S. metropolitan area, according to a study released Tuesday by the data company Inrix. MORE

Los Angeles leads the nation in hit-and-run vehicle collisions, and two Los Angeles City Council members are vowing to do something about it.

After hitting pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcycles or other vehicles, as many as 20,000 LA motorists flee the scene each year, Councilman Joe Buscaino said in a motion before the government body’s public safety committee. MORE

At a campaign event Monday in Reno, Nevada, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton brought up an old campaign ad where a dog barks after a politician tells a lie. The former secretary of state said the barking dog would be a great way to fact-check Republicans and jokingly demonstrated how it would work.

After President Barack Obama’s nomination of liberal appeals court judge Merrick Garland to replace pro-life Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, the CEO of the Planned Parenthood abortion business was spotted entering the White House.

The picture prompts speculation as to what kind of help Planned Parenthood will give the Obama administration in attempting to get another abortion-supporting judge on the nation’s highest court. A reporter or Politico took a photo of Richards entering the West Wing. Richards is on the right side of the picture in short blonde hair walking along with someone who is presumably another Planned Parenthood official.

SIGN THE PETITION: Do Not Allow a Vote on Merrick Garland SOURCE

Not so long ago I accepted a post for teaching law at one of Britain’s prestigious Universities. On my first hour of arriving I was taken in to meet the Head of Department.

I was told that a student had made a complaint about my appointment, and that the complaint was being investigated. The complaint related to some things I had said in a recent by-election.

I was a little taken aback, not so much because there was a complaint but because it warranted an investigation that would unnecessarily use up taxpayers’ money. MORE

Suspected for years of plotting to dismantle the U.S. electric grid, American officials have confirmed that Iranian military brass have endorsed a nuclear electromagnetic pulse explosion that would attack the country’s power system. MORE

Washington (AFP) – The White House on Tuesday opened the door wide for Americans to visit Cuba, even as tourism remains officially banned on the eve of President Barack Obama’s historic visit to the communist island.

The Obama administration declared that Americans could visit the island freely for “individual people-to-people educational travel,” chipping away at the nation’s five-decade-old embargo on Cuba, which Congress has refused to repeal. MORE

In the case of Syria, Putin’s objectives are two-fold. First, he wants to ensure that Assad, a longtime Russian ally (and buyer of Russian weapons), is not toppled. Last fall, rebel forces were advancing and threatening Assad’s grip on power. No longer. The Russian intervention was ostensibly supposed to attack Islamic State. In fact, some 90% of Russian sorties have been directed not at its strongholds but at more moderate rebel groups backed by the United States. This has enabled Assad to regain part of Aleppo province and to consolidate his hold on an eastern corridor running from Damascus to the Mediterranean Sea. MORE

Putin orders start of Russian forces’ withdrawal from Syria

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday he would start pulling his armed forces out of Syria, five months after he ordered a military intervention that turned the tide of the war in favor of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

This may be a win for the states surrounding California.

California Gov. Jerry Brown joked on Monday that if Republican frontrunner Donald J. Trump wins the 2016 election, the state would have to erect a wall — not on its border with Mexico, but its borders with other states.

“If Trump were ever elected, we’d have to build a wall around California to defend ourselves from the rest of this country,” he said at a dinner held in Sacramento by the California Labor Federation and State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, according to the Sacramento Bee. “By the way that is a joke,” he added. “We don’t like walls, we like bridges.” MORE