Voice Of Post

Whoopi Goldberg forced to stay on 'The View' after Rosie O'Donnell leaves, report says, Rosie O’Donnell’s departure from “The View” derailed negotiations for Whoopi Goldberg to star in an ABC prime-time series, sources tell Page Six.

Insiders say Goldberg was set to leave the daytime show to star in “Delores and Jermaine” — but due to O’Donnell’s exit, ABC execs blocked Goldberg from withdrawing as moderator of “The View.”

“Delores and Jermaine” follows a slacker who moves in with his ex-cop grandmother. “Whoopi had the offer to play Delores, but ABC pulled the offer right before Presidents Day weekend,” a network insider said.

But Goldberg down-played any drama, telling us Tuesday at a Skingraft fashion show: “I’m trying to get on ‘Empire’ and ABC has a show that they want me to do…I’ve always been able to come and go as I choose. It’s been in the contract to allow me to go and make movies if I wanted to or do something if I wanted to.” She added, “But it’s a lot of work to go and do two or three jobs at the same time. I’m getting older, and I don’t want to work that hard. So we’ll see how it all works out.”

Goldberg also said of her “View” gig, “I’m very happy. I’m working. I never put down the fact that I have a really good job, but I also have bosses. They make decisions . . . sometimes you don’t like them and you have to live with them.”

Iran's supreme leader wrote letter to Obama, report says, Iran’s supreme leader reportedly sent a secret letter to President Obama responding to his calls to improve relations between the two countries.

The Wall Street Journal reports Iran’s top political figure Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote to Obama in recent weeks responding to the president raising the possibility of cooperation in fighting the Islamic State terror group if a nuclear deal is secured.

However, the Iranian cleric’s response was “respectful,” but noncommittal, an Iranian diplomat told the journal. A senior White House official declined to confirm the existence of the letter.

U.S. officials told the paper that a letter sent in Obama’s first term outlined 60 years of abuses the supreme leader says the U.S. committed against the people of Iran.

One White House official confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that Obama received the letter in 2009.

The letter signified the thawing of frozen ties between the U.S. and Iran. However, the effort to knock the wall down between the two counties comes at a crossroads as the U.S. set a deadline to yield an agreement in its nuclear negotiations or Washington will take steps to deny the country any possibility of making a nuclear bomb.

Obama has said the breakdown in negotiations could fuel even more instability in the Middle East and undercut U.S. efforts to combat ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria, whom Iran is also waging war against.

Iran and the U.S. have previously failed to reach an agreement in the nuclear discussions. When talks broke down last, Khamenei said he would not approve a “bad deal.”

1 dead, 2 injuried in Melbourne Florida mall shooting, report says, Police in Central Florida responded to a deadly shooting inside a mall Saturday morning.

WESH.com reported that one person was killed and two others injured in the shooting located inside the Melbourne Square Mall's food court. The identity of the victims were not immediately clear, but the station reported that two people were injured before the gunman turned the gun on himself.

The gunman's condition is unknown.

The Melbourne Police Department tweeted around 10:30 a.m. Saturday that officers were "currently working a shooting" and "have control of (the) situation" at the Melbourne Square Mall.

Within half an hour, police tweeted again that the "shooter is contained" and that officers were clearing the mall store by store. Store employees were instructed to exit the mall through their rear entrances.

Police say the mall was temporarily closed.

"Due to the unfortunate incident at the mall this morning we are closed until further notice," mall officials posted on  Facebook. "We are still gathering information as the police conduct their investigation."

Additional information was not immediately available. Messages left by The Associated Press for a police spokesman were not immediately returned.

Mall security referred questions to the mall's administrative offices.

Bonnie and Clyde' crime couple spotted in Florida, report says, The two teenage sweethearts who have blazed a trail of crime across the South, leaving in their path a string of stolen vehicles and pilfered checks, prompting references to the famed "Bonnie and Clyde," have been spotted in Florida, according to a published report on Friday.

Dalton Hayes, 18, and his 13-year-old girlfriend Cheyenne Phillips — who had apparently convinced the boy and his family that she was 19 — were last spotted somewhere in Florida, The Washington Post reported. But Norman Chaffins, the sheriff of Grayson County in Kentucky, where the pair disappeared nearly two weeks ago, did not want to tip off the teens by disclosing the specific town.

They have so far eluded capture and are now believed to be cruising around in a stolen truck with two guns.

"There's going to come a time when we're not going to see him as an 18-year-old kid," Chaffins said.

"We're going to see him as someone who's stolen three vehicles with two handguns in them, and the outcome is not going to be good for either one of them if they don't turn themselves in."

Hayes and Phillips vanished Jan. 3 from their small hometown in western Kentucky, the sheriff said. Since then, authorities believe the two have traveled to South Carolina and Georgia.

Hayes' mother urged the young couple to surrender and "face the consequences."

"I pretty much cry myself to sleep every night worrying about where they are and if a police officer or any random individual tries to pull them over and isn't so nice and hurts them," Tammy Martin said.

The couple had been dating for about three months. The girl portrayed herself as being 19, and the family, including Martin's son, believed her, she said.

Cheyenne "would go in and write checks, and she would come out with cigarettes and stuff, so I didn't have any reason not to believe she wasn't 19. Because normally you can't buy cigarettes when you're 13 years old," Martin said.

By the time her son realized she was a mere 13, "he was already done in love with her," Martin said.

When he hit the road, Hayes was running away from trouble back home. He faces burglary and theft charges in his home county, stemming from an arrest late last year, according to Grayson County court records.

He was planning to be at the local judicial center on Jan. 5 to find out if a grand jury had indicted him on the charges, his mother said. His case did not come up, but by that time the teens were gone.

The sheriff said the couple's behavior is "becoming increasingly brazen and dangerous."

"They're going on people's property," he said. "They're forging checks to get money. ... They could have stopped in Kentucky, but they didn't."

Since they have no source of money, he added, "they're going to get desperate."

Twice, the teens were able to evade law officers in Kentucky, the sheriff said. They crashed the first truck they stole and hid in the woods. Then they later stole another truck nearby, Chaffins said.

Chaffins said he believes Hayes — who had run-ins with the law as a juvenile — is calling the shots as the teens try to stay ahead of police.

The two were spotted Monday at a Wal-Mart in South Carolina, where the teens are thought to have passed two stolen checks, said Manning, South Carolina, Police Chief Blair Shaffer. They were seen in a vehicle that apparently was stolen from Kentucky, he said.

Authorities believe they then headed to Georgia and stole a pickup truck from the driveway of a man's home in Henry County, about 30 miles southeast of Atlanta. The homeowner awoke Wednesday to find his vehicle was gone, along with two handguns he kept inside, Henry County police Lt. Joey Smith said Friday.

Hours later, another truck the couple is suspected of having stolen in another state was found nearby. It had been crashed through a fence and abandoned behind a vacant building on neighboring property, Smith said.

Martin said her son texted her a few days after their disappearance to say the couple was in Mississippi. They were spotted soon after that in Kentucky, she said.

"He was just trying to throw me off," she said. "I'm sure he thought that I would call the police and tell them where he was."

Chaffins said the situation is getting more serious as time passes, he said.

"This is not a game to us," Chaffins said. "Our biggest fear is that Dalton is not going to stop for the police. He's going to run every time they approach him."

Belgium terror suspects had police uniforms, report says, The two terror suspects killed in a Belgium raid Thursday had police uniforms at their hideout, along with a cache of assault rifles, knives and explosives, Sky News reported.

The raid in Verviers, in which a third suspect was arrested, was one of 10 across the country that authorities say preempted an imminent terror attack against police targets, at a time when Europe is on edge following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in France.

Fake IDs were found among the weapons cache, which included AK-47s.

Sky News also reported that more than 25 people were being held in Belgium, France and Germany amid fears of another terror attack. In Belgium alone, 13 people were in custody, five of whom were later charged with "participating in the activities of a terrorist group."

Belgian federal magistrate Eric Van der Sypt said the terrorists' goal was to kill police on the street or in their offices.

The magistrate added that some of the terror suspects had recently returned from Syria, where they had been training and fighting with the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, or ISIL.

Also on Friday, President Obama met with British Prime Minister David Cameron at the White House in their first meeting since the Charlie Hebdo attacks and their aftermath claimed the lives of 17 victims last week. Obama argued that a resurgent fear of terrorism across Europe and the United States should not lead countries to overreact and shed privacy protections, even as Cameron pressed for more government access to encrypted communications used by U.S. companies.

In the wake of last week's attacks, Cameron has redoubled efforts to get more access to online information, while the French government plans to present new anti-terrorism measures next week that would allow for more phone-tapping and other surveillance.

"As technology develops, as the world moves on, we should try to avoid the safe havens that could otherwise be created for terrorists to talk to each other," Cameron said in a joint news conference with Obama.