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

Ramon Fonseca, who started the firm with Jurgen Mossack, said their law firm has only a handful of American clients, most of them members of Panama's burgeoning expat retirement community. It's not out of any anti-Americanism or fear of the IRS. "My partner is German, and I lived in Europe, and our focus has always been the European and Latin American market," said Fonseca. "He loves the U.S. a lot, and I do, too. [But] as a policy we prefer not to have American clients."   read more

Agents in the Big Bend Sector, a sprawling part of West Texas that includes Big Bend National Park, used guns five times during the 2015 fiscal year that ended in September. Only agents in San Diego reported using guns more often — six times. In the sector of El Centro, California, a span of desert in eastern California, agents reported 68 instances of force during the same period, though none reported firing their weapons. CBP released the use-of-force data by sectors for the first time.   read more

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said the topless women undermined the family-friendly nature of the square the city wanted to promote. On Thursday, several performers in superhero costumes came to the council chambers to defend their profession. Abdel Amine Elkhezzani, a Spider-Man performer in Times Square, said he would lose most of his business if he had to stay in a certain zone. “We go up to people and interact with them and entertain them and kind of convince them to take pictures with us,” he said,   read more

Five polling places in Phoenix still had voters in line after midnight during Arizona's botched presidential primary two weeks ago. Votes were still being cast past 10 p.m. in 20 locations, and one location in Phoenix saw its last voter just two minutes before 1 a.m. Maricopa County cut the number of polling places from 200 in 2012 to just 60 this year. The Justice Department launched an inquiry into the wait times and whether they violated voting rights laws.   read more

The project will require massive groundwater pumping of lakes and streams--more than 4 billion gallons of water removed from the area over 22 years. Fisheries will be significantly affected and natural streams may dry up and take decades to recover, if at all, in violation of Montana water quality laws, according to the complaint. "Adverse impacts to the local and regional environment...are predicted to last for hundreds of years," the complaint states.   read more

Tommy Davis, who lost three family members in the 2010 tragedy, yelled to Blankenship as he exited the courthouse. "Hey Don, this is Tom...It's been six years — six years I missed my son, my brother, my nephew. How come you never came to apologize to me personally? How come you never asked to see me?" He later said, "All he gets is a year... There need to be stricter, more harsh penalties for people like that who put greed and money over human life."   read more

"My two worlds are one again," he told reporters after the Army agreed to his requests. But the Army insisted that Singh's commanders submit quarterly evaluations on the impact - if any - that the officer's hair and attire has on "unit cohesion and morale, good order and discipline, health and safety and individual and unit readiness." Singh said, "The U.S. was the only country that gave (my father) political asylum. I was and still am extremely grateful for that..."   read more

The babysitter lost all vision in her eye when the child she was watching, who was 4 years and 9 months old at the time, hit it with a toy rubber dolphin he threw. "Children under the age of five have a limited capacity to appreciate how their actions can cause harm to themselves or others and have an inadequate internal ability to control impulses that may lead to injuries," the 8-page ruling states.   read more

A terrorist hoping to buy an anti-aircraft weapon in recent years needed to look no further than Facebook, which has been hosting sprawling online arms bazaars to sell military weapons coveted by terrorists and militants. Among the weapons displayed have been heavy machine guns on mounts that are designed for anti-aircraft roles, and more sophisticated and menacing systems, including guided anti-tank missiles and an early generation of shoulder-fired heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles.   read more

The U.S. ranks third in the world in financial secrecy, behind Switzerland and Hong Kong but ahead of notorious tax havens such as the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg, according to the Tax Justice Network. "It is no secret that U.S. banks, particularly in Miami, are awash in undeclared Latin American money," wrote Cotorceanu. "How ironic — no, how perverse — that the USA, which has been so sanctimonious in its condemnation of Swiss banks, has become the banking secrecy jurisdiction du jour."   read more

The group said it found fragments of two U.S.-made bombs at the market, linking the U.S. for the first time to the airstrikes, which were believed to be the deadliest coalition bombings during Yemen’s yearlong civil war. The high death toll, along with images of children killed in the blasts, ignited international outrage. The debate in the U.S. over the airstrikes has been much more muted, in part because the Obama administration has provided few details about its role.   read more

A federal court has ruled that the lending arm of the World Bank has absolute immunity and thus cannot be sued in the U.S. Fishing communities sued IFC over destruction of their livelihoods and property and health threats caused by a IFC-funded coal-fired power plant in India. The IFC argued that it is not subject to the authority of U.S. courts, no matter how harmful or illegal its actions may have been. The court found IFC is entitled to absolute immunity based on previous decisions.   read more

The rules wiped out Pfizer's financial incentives and rationale for the merger. It was Pfizer's third, and most expensive, failed attempt at an inversion, leaving analysts to speculate Pfizer will drop the strategy for good. The merger would have moved Pfizer's address on paper to Ireland, where it would have paid hundreds of millions of dollars less in annual U.S. corporate taxes. Pfizer had $23.3 billion available at the end of 2015, when it posted a profit of $9.1 billion.   read more

The report said global warming will make the air dirtier, water more contaminated and food more tainted. It warned of diseases spread by ticks and mosquitoes and thousands of heat wave deaths. Not to mention climate change's effects people's mental health. The government isn't doing enough, said UW public health dean Howard Frumkin: "There is a vast disconnect between the magnitude of the problem, as outlined by this report, and the response of government health agencies."   read more

Since the start of the 21st century, 21 countries, including the U.S., have already fully decoupled their economic growth from carbon emissions. While GDP went up, carbon pollution went down. Between 2000 and 2014, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions dropped 16% in the U.S. industrial sector, while economic activity increased 9%. “It’s really exciting, and it suggests that countries can sever the historic link between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions,” said Nate Aden.   read more

The action was hailed as the latest move to address income inequality in the nation. The issue of paid parental leave is gaining momentum across the country much like the debate over a higher minimum wage. Paid leave has become a topic in the presidential campaign as companies, especially in Silicon Valley, start offering better benefits. The U.S. lags other countries in providing parental leave and is the only major industrialized nation that doesn't require paid leave.   read more