When Pope John Paul II visited Damascus in May 2001, Bashar used his welcoming speech to denounce the Jews, saying, “They tried to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Muhammad.”   read more

As more people store data, Microsoft said the government exploits that trend "as a means of expanding its power to conduct secret investigations." Microsoft chief Brad Smith said: "We appreciate there are times when secrecy around a government warrant is needed. But based on the many secrecy orders we have received, we question whether these orders are grounded in specific facts that truly demand secrecy. To the contrary, it appears that the issuance of secrecy orders has become too routine."   read more

Leopold sought the agency's investigative files, its correspondence and the CIA talking points to uncover how spies spun the squabble to the public. Boasberg rebuffed the request in a scathing, 24-page opinion. The reporter filed four complaints alone related to the CIA's entanglement with Senate investigators, seeking access to the declassified torture report summary, the Panetta review, and the case discussed in this opinion. Boasberg so far has dismissed three of them.   read more

Her criminal case was transferred to three different prosecuting attorneys. It was dropped after several months of litigation, on the condition that Plucinski sign a letter to "apologize for speaking out of turn during a public meeting." Plucinski says her jailing has made her hesitant to stand up against big oil, which has backing of government officials who have chilled her right to "engage in free speech and public discourse."   read more

An international debate is now emerging over whether it is possible to limit the evolution of weapons that make killing decisions without human involvement. “I would argue that [the in-development U.S. missile] LRASM is intended primarily to threaten China and Russia and is only likely to be used in the opening shots of a nuclear war that would quite likely destroy our civilization and kill a large fraction, or most, or nearly all human beings,” said physicist Mark Gubrud.   read more

Sounding the alarm over the current deal, national privacy watchdogs from France, Germany and other EU member states say they worry that U.S. companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon could misuse data, including information from search engine queries and social media posts. They also say they fear that U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies might gain access to European citizens’ personal information without sufficient safeguards in place.   read more

The report gives validation to complaints made for years by African-American residents here who have said they were unfairly targeted by officers without justification on a regular basis. In a city where whites, blacks and Hispanics each make up about one-third of the population, 74% of the 404 people shot by Chicago police between 2008 and 2015 were black. Black people were targeted in 72% of thousands of investigative street stops that did not lead to arrests during a recent summer.   read more

Critics have blasted Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach as incompetent after errors were discovered in Spanish-language voter guides that could have caused voters to miss registration deadlines. English guides gave voters 21 days to register, while Spanish ones gave 15 days. The Spanish version also omitted passports as an acceptable form of voter ID. Critics say the errors are another example of Kobach--an advocate of photo ID laws--enacting policies that disenfranchise minority voters.   read more

In what became known as the Battle of Blair Mountain, 5,000 coal miners marched to liberate fellow miners living under martial law in West Virginia in late August 1921. That scene, the biggest labor war in U.S. history, was removed from the National Register of Historic Places under pressure from coal mining interests, "without any indicia of reasoned decision-making," a federal judge ruled.   read more

Education Department reviewers found in 2013 that a major for-profit college chain had systematically raised students' tuitions without properly telling them. As a result, the U.S. government demanded a refund — but only for the handful of students whose records had led to the discovery. Though the company's schools had more than 100,000 students, reviewers never investigated further. A new report has concluded that flaws in the government's oversight of student aid were routine.   read more

The notion of using Medicaid to steer people away from jails and into services that offer housing, job training and mental-health or substance-abuse treatment comes at a crucial time for the criminal-justice reform movement. Incarceration numbers are making headlines. States are legalizing marijuana, and police departments hammered over questionable shootings are trying to reconnect with the public they serve. Instead of booking people into jail, police try to enlist them in social services.   read more

Under the president's instructions, the U.S. should not withhold or censor government files merely because they might be embarrassing. USAID cited privacy exemptions in 82 requests last year, and that was the exception cited most often. In one newly released USAID message, one government official's friend suggested FOIA should be tightened up: "AP didn't get this through FOIA, did they? If so, maybe it's time to hire some new redactors. They got a bit too much of an inside view."   read more

Aviation accounts for about 5% of global carbon emissions, with U.S.-owned airliners emitting about 30% of all aircraft pollution worldwide. While carbon emissions from land-based sources are largely in decline, pollution from airplanes is projected to triple by 2050 without stricter limits. "The evidence becomes clearer every day that airplanes significantly accelerate climate disruption," said FOE's Marcie Keever. "The Obama administration must act immediately..."   read more

More than 8,500 megawatts of wind power capacity was built last year, almost double the 2014 tally. More than 3,600 megawatts of that construction - enough to power about 100,000 homes - was built in Texas, which now counts almost a quarter of the country's wind energy. The surge followed a rush by wind developers to get projects under construction before the end of 2014 out of fear Congress would not renew the tax credit, an uncertainty that has hung over the industry for nearly 20 years.   read more

Goldman is the last major bank to settle with the government. Deals with other banks contained some of these concessions, but Goldman appears to have negotiated an even sweeter deal. “They appear to have grossly inflated the settlement amount for PR purposes to mislead the public, while in the fine print, enabling Goldman Sachs to pay 50 to 75% less,” said Dennis Kelleher. “[These settlements] are carefully crafted more to conceal than reveal to the American public what really happened here...”   read more

The tribal community of San Ildefonso Pueblo sits in the shadow of Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb. The tribe is on the front lines of a battle to rein in contamination left behind by decades of bomb-making and nuclear research. Groundwater sampling shows increasing chromium concentrations at the edges of the plume, indicating it's migrating through an area considered sacred by the tribe. It's only about a half-mile from the closest drinking water well.   read more

Dozens of TSA employees in recent years have been reassigned, demoted, investigated or fired for reporting lapses or misconduct by senior managers, charges later upheld by whistle-blower protection agencies. OSC said 87 complaints were received last year from workers at the TSA claiming retaliation, discrimination and other prohibited hiring practices. OSC took the cases of two of the top women at TSA, Sharlene Mata and Heather Chuck, to begin a full investigation of their retaliation claims.   read more