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

About 73% of all the water associated with the United States’ oil demand comes from international sources. That’s considerably more than the worldwide total, in which 56% of the oil sector’s water needs come from countries outside of where demand for that oil originates, according to ThinkProgress. Water requirement related to U.S. oil needs is more than three times as much as that of China, where 22% of its oil sector’s water needs come from international sources.   read more

The surveys found that self-induced abortions were more common among women who had difficulty finding or getting to clinics that perform the procedure.The news comes in the wake of Texas’ new law that forced the closure of most of the states’ abortion clinics, which went from 41 in number three years ago to 17 today. Still more are likely to close, bringing the total down to 10 clinics unless the U.S. Supreme Court, which has agreed to review the law, overturns it.   read more

All five are from Yemen, but the ongoing war there made it impossible for the U.S. to send them back home. Instead, the Obama administration convinced the United Arab Emirates to take the men. The notorious military facility in Cuba still has 107 detainees, 48 of which have been approved for transfer. Seventeen more “proposed transfers of lower-level detainees are in the bureaucratic pipeline,” according to The New York Times.   read more

A new study by Harvard law professor Richard J. Lazarus found Sotomayor has not been assigned a major case in her six terms on the court. Roberts Jr. is, as The Washington Post put it, “a stickler for evenly distributing the workload of the Supreme Court, but he plays favorites among his eight colleagues when assigning the court’s most important decisions.” In particular, Roberts plays favorites with Roberts, assigning more key cases to himself than any other justice.   read more

A hotter world could wind up being a less populated one. Research says this century is likely to experience more days of 80°F or higher than the 20th century, and that the increase won’t bode well for “coital frequency.” "Extreme heat leads to a sizeable fall in births,” reported the researchers. "It could affect hormone levels and sex drives. Alternatively, high temperatures may adversely affect reproductive health or semen quality on the male side, or ovulation on the female side.”   read more

The delay is “nearly without precedent over the last half-century,” according to Eric Ostermeier at Smart Politics. The 220-day vacancy will be “more than twice as long as the average vacancy among the 219 to occur in the chamber since 1965 and the second longest of the 123 vacancies to fall outside of an election year.” It will not be the longest vacancy since the 1960s, however. That distinction still belongs to Illinois’ 6th district, which went 447 days without a congressman.   read more

Some former inmates have pay-to-stay bills totaling tens of thousands of dollars. David Mahoney owes $21,000 for his stay in the Marion, Ohio, jail on drug charges. He’s now out of jail and is clean, but has a huge bill staring him in the face. “People that end up in jail are usually down on their luck anyway," he said. "They’re going through some trials and tribulations in life. Why focus on the people who are already struggling?”   read more

Disorders associated with marijuana use, including addiction, car accidents and emergency room visits, went up, from 1.5% to 2.9%. Young users were a particular concern of researchers. “When examined by age, young adults were at highest risk for marijuana use disorder in both surveys” said the study. "Clearly, concerns about this age group continue, with prevention and intervention...critically needed.” Nearly three of 10 marijuana users manifested a marijuana use disorder in 2012-2013.   read more

One of the more unusual explanations was filed by Representative Jeff Landry (R-Louisiana), who missed two votes in 2011 because, he said, he “completely lost track of time.” Representative Raúl Grijalva (D-Arizona) once missed a vote because he was arrested at an immigration rally on the National Mall. The congressman who has missed the most votes—22% of them—is Bobby Rush (D-Illinois), who was undergoing cancer treatment.   read more

More than 300 veterans are awaiting execution on America's death rows, according to a new study. Veterans make up nearly 10% of the death row population in the U.S. Some fought in wars from Southeast Asia to Afghanistan, the Christian Science Monitor noted, before coming home and killing civilians in a “troubling contradiction to the traditionally valorous picture of returning soldiers.”   read more

Statistics show the gender pay gap ranges from 1.3% between women and men in the real estate industry to 5.4% in mining, quarrying, and oil and gas, even when controlled for factors such as job and tenure. Overall, the average woman will make just 79% of what a man does, according to a two-year survey of about 1.4 million full-time employees.   read more

Political campaigns are spending more money on online advertising, both because more Americans are turning to the Internet for entertainment and news and because it can be more cost effective than running television ads. But the shift to digital makes it more difficult to know who is behind the messages. Online campaign ads can be tracked only on campaign finance reports. In some cases, candidates or super PACs list whom they hired to place online ads, and little or nothing else.   read more

So far in the 2010s Democratic gubernatorial candidates have a winning percentage of 37%, according to Smart Politics. That rate is the lowest since the turn of the 20th century, Eric Ostermeier concluded after examining the results of nearly 1,900 gubernatorial elections since 1900. Democrats have won only 34 of the 92 gubernatorial elections since 2010, or 37%, while Republicans have won 56 races.   read more

The NFL franchise has been fighting a losing battle over the past two years with federal officials, including the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which cancelled the team’s trademark use of Redskins on grounds that it disparaged Native Americans. In its appeal to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, the team cited numerous other trademarks that have not been cancelled despite their own provocative, if not offensive nature.   read more

The Red Cross says “close to a hundred” hospital attacks have occurred since March. “The neutrality of health care facilities and staff is not being respected. Health facilities are deliberately attacked and surgical and medical supplies are also being blocked from reaching hospitals in areas under siege,” said ICRC's Kedir Awol Omar. Amnesty International has criticized the U.S. and other states for fueling the conflict while doing little to stop human rights violations.   read more

One space law attorney believes that the U.S. is on shaky ground by giving any citizen or company permission to own space property. “It would be like you asking me for a piece of pie, and me saying, go over to my neighbor’s house and take a piece of their pie, and then come back and thank me for it,” said attorney Michael Listner, founder of Space Law and Policy Solutions. The bill also makes it illegal for mining companies to take ownership of any aliens it crosses paths with.   read more