Boris Johnson has won the race to become the next mayor of London - ending Ken Livingstone’s eight-year reign at City Hall.

The Conservative candidate won with 1,168,738 first and second preference votes, compared with Mr Livingstone’s 1,028,966 on a record turnout.

He paid tribute to Mr Livingstone and appeared to offer him a possible role in his new administration.

Lib Dem Brian Paddick came third and the Greens’ Sian Berry came fourth.

Mr Johnson is expected to stand down as MP for Henley, triggering a by-election.

BBC News

Not only did the city of London vote for a conservative mayor, but the Tories picked up over 300 seats across England and Wales. Perhaps the British have finally had enough with the Socialist and authoritarian policies of the Labour Party that have sunk that country over the last 10 years and stolen more and more of their freedom away.

This seems to be a trend in Europe as of late. For the past five years we’ve been told about how our image abroad is tarnished, yet Germany elected Merkel, a pro-American conservative. France elected Sarkozy, another pro-American conservative. Italy just turned back to Berlusconi and now England is on track to return power to the Tories.

NEW YORK (AP) — Court records show that Rep. Vito Fossella had a blood-alcohol level of more than twice the legal limit when he was arrested on drunken driving charges this week.

Court papers indicate that Fossella’s blood-alcohol level was 0.17 percent when he was arrested early Thursday in Alexandria, Va. The legal limit in Virginia is 0.08 percent.

Fossella will have to serve a mandatory five days in jail if convicted.

The Washington Post

Man, Vito got a raw deal.  When Patrick Kennedy got his DUI and rammed his car into a security barrier he got chauffeured home by the Capitol Police.  I guess it’s different when you’re a Kennedy.

The new Jason oceanographic satellite, an undated and more accurate version of the Poseidon satellite that has monitored the oceans since 1992, says the “persistent Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has turned into its cool phase, telling us to expect moderately lower global temperatures until 2030,” reports the Canada Free Press.Noting the Jason satellite is run by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the newspaper says the PDO is driven by the “huge Aleutian low in the Arctic — but we don’t know what controls the Aleutian low. Nonetheless, 22½-year double sunspot cycles have been identified in South African rain, Indian monsoons, Australian droughts and rains in the United States’ far Southwest … arguing that the sun, not CO2, controls the earth’s temperatures.”

In another finding, the Antarctic deep sea is growing colder, stimulating the circulation of the oceanic water masses, reports Science Daily. Directed by Dr. Eberhard Fahrbach, oceanographer at the Alfred Wegener Institute, 58 scientists from 10 countries aboard the research vessel Polarstern in the Southern Ocean from Feb. 6 to April 16, studying ocean currents, temperature, salt content and trace substances in Antarctic seawater, made this finding.

Last month we pointed out that thus far in the 21st century, there has been no recorded global warming, raising the possibility that the world is entering a period of global cooling.

Carteret County News-Times

Wow, what an inconvenient truth for Al Gore.

This is why I continue to remain a skeptic on this issue. I don’t think anybody on either side of this really knows what the hell is going on.