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 the city of Flint, Michigan, prepared to begin drawing its drinking water from the Flint River, an official with the municipal water plant said his superiors were prodding him to move too quickly, an email released by the governor’s office Friday shows. “If water is distributed from this plant in the next couple weeks, it will be against my direction,” Mike Glasgow wrote to officials with the state Department of Environmental Quality.   read more

A coalition of voting rights groups on Friday sued a federal elections official who decided that residents of Alabama, Kansas and Georgia can no longer register to vote using a national form without providing proof of U.S. citizenship. Their complaint contends the action by executive director Brian Newby will hurt voter registration drives and deprive eligible voters of the right to vote in the presidential primary elections.   read more

Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said Friday he plans to take legal action against the Environmental Protection Agency following reports that it didn’t alert the state to river contamination after a massive mine waste spill. Reyes said it’s critical the agency be held responsible for damage from the spill that contaminated rivers in three Western states last year and he will file a notice of claim, the first step toward a lawsuit. He didn’t set a deadline for the action.   read more

Scientists traveled from remote villages in Peru to a large Brazilian city to begin tracking the effects of urbanization on the diversity of bacteria in people’s homes. Researchers found that as people living in the Amazon rainforest become more urbanized, the kinds of bacteria in their homes change from the bugs mostly found in nature to those that typically live on people   read more

A bill headed for President Barack Obama this week includes a provision that would ban U.S. imports of fish caught by slaves in Southeast Asia, gold mined by children in Africa and garments sewn by abused women in Bangladesh, closing a loophole in an 85-year-old tariff law that has failed to keep products of forced and child labor out of America.   read more

The U.S. Air Force said on Thursday it had replaced its acting acquisition chief, Richard Lombardi, after he disclosed that he had failed to report his wife’s Northrop Grumman retirement account on his annual financial disclosure form. Air Force Secretary Deborah James removed Lombardi from his acquisition duties on Feb. 4 and reassigned him to another position after learning of his voluntary disclosure, Karns said. She referred the matter to the Pentagon’s inspector general.   read more

The Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law asked the State Department in September 2015 for records on the “type and amount” of financial aid it provides to Mexico’s immigration agency, the Instituto Nacional de Migración. Center for Human Rights president/attorney Peter Schey said that anecdotal evidence indicates that about 97% of asylum-seekers detained at the Mexico-Guatemala border are deported.   read more

Texas has become the first state to call for a ban on allowing bite mark evidence, which legal experts say is likely to reverberate in courtrooms across the U.S. The Texas Forensic Science Commission formally recommended Friday that judges stop accepting bite mark analysis until the technique is supported by better research. There’s currently no scientific proof that teeth can be definitively matched to human skin.   read more

A conservative Super PAC that parodied a Paul Anka song to mock U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, faces a federal complaint from the ballad’s composer. Club for Growth Action spent $700,000 in September 2014 to air its 30-second commercial, set to the tune of the 1975 song “Times of Your Life.”   read more

Protecting the privacy of citizens is a pillar of Ted Cruz's Republican presidential candidacy, but his campaign is siphoning personal data from supporters. The Cruz mobile app gathers detailed information from its users' phones — tracking their movements and information on friends. It's all fed into a database holding details about nearly every adult in the U.S. Cruz's campaign says the system has the potential to power him to the nomination.   read more

Many teachers provide misinformation about climate change, the survey found. The evidence that human activity is a major cause of recent climate change is overwhelming, but 30% of the 1,500 teachers surveyed said they emphasize that recent global warming “is likely due to natural causes,” while 12% said they did not emphasize human causes. Half of that 12% said they did not discuss any causes at all. Close to a third of the teachers also reported conveying messages that are contradictory.   read more

With fallout from the water emergency expected to send house prices lower, the vacancy rate may continue to rise. "The water crisis didn't cause the root problem in Flint that's contributing to these high vacancy rates, but it's going to exacerbate the issue going forward," said RealtyTrac VP Daren Blomquist. Flint's real estate problems lie in the loss of higher-paying manufacturing jobs in recent decades and a roughly 20 percent decline in its population since 2000.   read more

Requirement for a search warrant applies only to federal agencies and not, as some privacy advocates had hoped, to state and local law enforcement whose use of the equipment has stirred particular concern and scrutiny from local judges. "New Yorkers have very real concerns about the NYPD's adoption of intrusive surveillance technology," said NYCLU's Mariko Hirose. "The NYPD should at minimum obtain warrants before using Stingrays to protect the privacy of innocent people."   read more

The memorial, HM 417, passed the Florida House and Senate by an overwhelming voice vote. It is part of a national movement led by U.S. Term Limits to fight careerism in Washington. Article V gives state legislators a way to make term limits on Congress a reality without needing congressional approval. For the convention to be called, 34 states must pass similar legislation. If the convention proposes an amendment, 38 states must ratify it for it to be added to the U.S. Constitution.   read more

If you are an American taxpayer, it means the burden of making up lost revenue falls more heavily on you. It also creates an uneven playing field for other companies that end up feeling like fools for staying put. For now, rules limiting this type of behavior seem to be a pipe dream. Instead, the corporate runaways are winning — winning no good-American awards, but taking easy money out of the pockets of the U.S. taxpayer.   read more

Computers that control cars of the future can be considered drivers just like humans, the federal government's highway safety agency has decided. The redefinition of "driver" by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is an important break for Google, which is developing self-driving cars that get around without steering wheels, pedals — or even the need for a person to be inside. For Google's design, human control would be limited to a start and stop button.   read more