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

There’s no question it will benefit the health of public housing residents. “We have a responsibility to protect public housing residents from the harmful effects of secondhand smoke, especially the elderly and children who suffer from asthma and other respiratory diseases,” said HUD Secretary Julián Castro. “This proposed rule will help improve the health of more than 760,000 children and help public housing agencies save $153 million every year in healthcare, repairs and preventable fires.”   read more

A number of supervisors working for the Marshals Service have expressed concerns about the agency’s new policy, pointing out it could lead to losing trusted local law enforcement partners, a downside for future operations. Former FBI official Ron Hosko cautioned that the policy could lead to the perception “that you have something to hide when you don’t record." The ACLU is concerned that the Justice Department still does not have a bodycam policy more than a year after the Ferguson protests.   read more

What’s a “natural” food? A fresh apple picked off a tree, sure. What about apple juice? What if it has sugar added? What if the juice has a food-based dye added? What if the tree had been treated with pesticides? The FDA has been loath for years to define the term “natural food.” Now, at the behest of consumers, courts and food processors, the agency may soon lay down some guidelines for use of the label that is slapped on $40 billion worth of food products in the U.S. alone.   read more

BP’s $34.3 billion in penalties, most stemming from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, account for 37% of all penalties paid. Next on the list is drug-maker GlaxoSmithKline, with more than $10 billion in penalties for unsafe drugs, financial irregularities, and illegal marketing practices. “Of the 17 different types of misconduct included in the database, labor and environmental violations are the most common, accounting for a combined 40 percent of the resolved instances,” said POGO.   read more

Female defendants might get more lenient treatment when they conform to the traditional gender roles of housewife and mother, the researchers hypothesized. The study's authors found support for the “evil woman” theory, which suggests that this “chivalry” is reserved for certain groups of women who appear to be docile and in need of protection. The researchers also found women were 46% less likely to be detained before trial than men, with women given 54% lower bond amounts.   read more

In 2008, Wachino served on the OMB transition team for the incoming Obama administration. She joined the administration shortly thereafter as Director of the Children and Adults Health Programs Group in the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services. There, she helped with the initial rollout of the Affordable Care Act services to Medicaid recipients. In 2013, Wachino stepped away from government service to be a Senior Fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago.   read more

In 1989 Kronick co-wrote a paper outlining a proposal for health-care reform not unlike the one the U.S. ended up with 20 years later, including the continued use of private companies combined with government-paid health care for the poor. In 1999, Kronick co-authored an article with his wife about why some cities adopted municipal reform while others didn’t. Kronick in 2006 co-authored a statistical study that found that married people tend to live longer than single or divorced people.   read more

Almost 1,000 members of the military were given cell phones that operate on an older version of Android that needs a security patch for “Stagefright” bugs, a collection of flaws that gives attackers access to everything that flows through the devices. The phones can be compromised via text message sent by hackers or if users visit an infected website. "Devices that do not get upgraded are in great danger — especially government devices,” said cyber-security expert Zuk Avraham.   read more

“[Goodman] met all the objective criteria for the job, including knowledge of Native American culture and work experience in a similar position, but the DSS rejected him,” Courthouse News Service reported. DSS rejected four other Native American candidates and one white applicant before closing the position. Then, the next day, it reopened the position and eventually hired a white recent college graduate whose work experience was primarily in retail and office environments.   read more

One worker, who makes $10.33 an hour, has a second job in a strip club to support herself and her son. When she wrote an op-ed about her two jobs, she was angrily told by a supervisor that she “shouldn’t have said those things” and that “it’s not professional,” according to an unfair labor practice charge she filed. Another Restaurant Associates employee is homeless. Their employer, Restaurant Associates, had revenues last year of nearly $26 billion with profits of about $1.3 billion.   read more

Swartz Taglialatela’s path to running an embassy has not been a traditional one. For one, she didn’t join the State Department right out of college. After leaving Virginia Tech, she became a management analyst at the General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office). She moved over to the State Department in 1979, but did similar work as an audit-qualified inspector and special assistant in the Office of the Inspector General.   read more

Mhura was arrested along with 11 others suspected of plotting the coup in March 2013. His name was later dropped from the list of those charged. He took on the defense of some of those implicated in Malawi’s “Cashgate” scandal in which officials in Banda’s government and others were accused of money laundering. There is some speculation that Mhura’s appointment to Washington was a way to delay the Cashgate trials.   read more

“Particularly notable within the vast trove of phone records are what appear to be at least 14,000 recorded conversations between inmates and attorneys, a strong indication that at least some of the recordings are likely confidential and privileged legal communications — calls that never should have been recorded in the first place,” reported The Intercept. ACLU's David Fathi said the recordings “may be the most massive breach of the attorney-client privilege in modern U.S. history."   read more

On the one hand, people are not drinking as many non-diet sodas, the consumption of which has declined about 25% since the late 1990s, Yet obesity levels have actually ticked upwards. “The trend is very unfortunate and very disappointing,” said Marion Nestle, a professor in the department of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “Everybody was hoping that with the decline in sugar and soda consumption, that we’d start seeing a leveling off of adult obesity.”   read more

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but national security is given as the reason for keeping some inventions a secret. Under the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951, the U.S. government can impose secrecy orders on patent applications if officials decide granting and publishing a patent would compromise national security. Statistics collected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office showed there were 95 new secrecy orders imposed last year. The government also rescinded 36 secrecy orders.   read more

Janice Rivera claimed Gomez held her against her will and pointed his weapon at the three men at the scene, striking one of them with his gun. Criminal charges against Gomez were eventually dismissed. But he was fired by his employer, prompting Gomez to sue the NYPD for false arrest, physical abuse and other claims. While the case was still making its way through the courts, Gomez was deployed to Afghanistan. When Gomez was out of the country his attorney, Trevor Reid, agreed to a settlement.   read more