State and National News

Updated at 5:20 p.m. ET.

Air Algerie says an MD-83 en route from the capital of Burkina Faso to Algiers with 116 passengers and crew aboard has likely crashed in Mali.

Mali's president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, was quoted by Reuters as saying wreckage from the airplane had been spotted in the country's north between Aguelhoc and Kidal, but he gave no other details. That is a considerable distance from where the airline itself said the crash might have occurred: in Tilemsi, Mali, about 70 miles from Gao.

The Baton Rouge Metro Council heard hours of public comment Wednesday on an anti-discrimination ordinance. But the meeting time expired before the council could vote. 

"Foreclosure, foreclosure, foreclosure."

Real estate broker John Susani drives down a Paterson, N.J., street where every third house seems to be abandoned or boarded up. During the boom years, money flooded into Paterson.

"The banking industry allowed everyone to be a homeowner; they gave mortgages to people [just because they were] breathing," Susani says.

In some cases, he says, home prices jumped as much as 50 percent. The homes on these streets aren't worth nearly that much anymore.

Jews are leaving France and moving to Israel in unprecedented numbers this year.

With the departures expected to surpass 5,000, France could pull ahead of the U.S. for Jewish emigration to Israel, known as aliya. Usually, making aliya is a cause for celebration. But in France this year, it's tinged with bitterness.

Kansas's Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is locked in an unexpectedly tough re-election battle for doing exactly what he said he would do — cut taxes.

Citing mounting evidence that those tax cuts are creating a budget crisis – not stimulating the Kansas economy as promised — some in the state's moderate Republican establishment recently did the unthinkable: endorse a Democrat for governor.

That's not only endangering Brownback's re-election hopes, it's also tarnishing his plans to turn one of the reddest of red states into a national model.