Imagine that China’s dictator, Xi Jinping, sends one million Chinese troops to invade the United States. Fighting breaks out all over the U.S. as U.S. troops and civilians battle against the Chinese invaders. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, are killed. Meanwhile, China has taken over Florida and declared it an overseas province of China, with Chinese nationals taking over control of the Florida government.   read more

Early in his Washington tenure, Mader was the IRS security specialist during a time when the agency came under fire because its employees were found to be looking at tax returns of celebrities and others they had no business viewing. He subsequently became a key figure in a fundamental IRS reorganization. That change resulted in the removal of several layers of management and caused the agency to move from a regionally based organization to one with customer-oriented divisions.   read more

Bodde returned to Nepal as ambassador in 2012. While there, he worked to build relationships with Nepal’s young people. While Bodde’s confirmation to the Nepal post was fairly routine, his next hearings might be more difficult. Republicans who now control the Senate may take the opportunity to bring up the 2012 attack on the Benghazi consulate in which a previous U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans died.   read more

Luli-Faber is from Shkodër, Albania, and was educated at the University of Tirana in her home country. In the mid-1990s, she studied for her master’s degree at the Norwegian School of Management in Oslo, but completed it at the Marin Barleti University in Albania. From 1995 to 2000, Luli-Faber worked for Deloitte & Touche in Tirana and in Prague.   read more

“I have nothing to say about that right now,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. But University of Washington women’s soccer coach Amy Griffin has identified more than 60 soccer players, particularly goalies, who played on crumb rubber turf and have been diagnosed with various forms of cancer. The Washington State Department of Health is now conducting its own study of the playing fields.The EPA in 2008 declared the crumb rubber fields to be safe.   read more

The states with the highest death rates also have higher speed limits. All have top speed limits of at least 70 mph and some, like Montana, have top limits of 80 mph. For a time in the 1990s, Montana had no top speed limit, merely requiring motorists to drive in a “reasonable and prudent manner.” The researchers also found that states with poorer and less-educated populations had higher road death rates than those having populations with higher incomes and more education.   read more

While suicides were up in big cities by 7%, rural counties had a 20% increase. Isolation, lower incomes, health and family problems all contribute to the increased suicide rate in rural areas. “Rather than say, ‘I need help,’ they keep working and they get overwhelmed. They can start to think they are a burden on their family and lose hope,” said Selby-Nelson. Those in rural areas have easier access to the most popular suicide method—firearms. Fifty-one percent of rural households own a gun.   read more

Cobert took over when Director Katherine Archuleta quit under fire because of two massive data breaches involving 22 million people, including federal employees and those on whom background checks had been done. (Cobert was one of those whose personal data was stolen.) In 2013 as OMB's deputy director, she urged changes in federal hiring practices, including considering the hiring of younger employees for shorter terms and putting hiring in the hands of the line departments.   read more

Ebert-Gray was brought home in 2009 to serve as Director of the Office of Overseas Employment. There, she coordinated such things as the hiring of local staff, setting pay scales within the prevailing pay structure for that location. Since 2011, she has been a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Administration. Ebert-Gray has been working in logistics management, particularly the handover of facilities in Iraq from the Department of Defense to the State Department.   read more

“The never-ending cases of corporate wrongdoing, seen most recently in the Volkswagen emissions scandal, make it essential for policymakers, advocates, journalists, and the general public to have access to systematic information across agencies,” said Philip Mattera. BP paid the largest penalty, totaling $25.4 billion, for the Deepwater Horizon disaster that polluted large parts of the Gulf coast. Toyota had a unique standing as it also received more than $1 billion in government subsidies.   read more

There seems to be a disconnect between Americans’ perception of crime rates and the actual amount of crime in the United States. A new Gallup poll showed 70% of respondents believe crime has gone up since last year, when 63% said crime had risen from 2013 levels. But government data has shown a downward trend in crime rates from the mid-1990s to the current decade. Americans’ perceptions of crime “are not always on par with reality," said Gallup's Justin McCarthy.   read more

Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas released 1,500 patients several years ago and put them on buses bound for other states. Patients were given names of homeless shelters or advised to dial 911 when they reached their destinations in California. San Francisco said it spent $500,000 to service the needs of 24 people who ended up there and the city filed a class action suit against Nevada.   read more

Researchers looked at the effects of people staying indoors and exposed to indoor pollution. Two dozen participants spent six eight-hour workdays in an environmentally controlled office space for the study. Some days they were exposed to conventional office building environments, which tend to have high concentrations of VOCs. Other days they remained in green office buildings with low VOC concentrations. “The results were striking,” wrote Reynard Loki.   read more

The record was 18,967 days on Oct. 28, which stretched back to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963. The previous mark was 18,966 days from George Washington’s inauguration on April 30, 1789 to William Henry Harrison’s death by pneumonia on April 4, 1841. Eight presidents died in office during a span of 122 years, which included three by assassination—Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield and William McKinley— during one 36-year stretch.   read more

“There are few things in this job that literally make my jaw drop,” said Sen. McCaskill. “But of all the examples of wasteful projects in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Pentagon began...this genuinely shocked me." A similar natural gas station was built in Pakistan for only $500,000. But this one ballooned from $3 million to $43 million. Are there any cars there running on natural gas? Not really, according to Sopko, who investigated the project despite efforts by the Pentagon to thwart him.   read more

Scientist Lundgren made the accusation as part of his whistleblower case. He said his bosses at USDA began to “impede or deter his research and resultant publications” more than a year ago. He also has said the agency tried to keep him from speaking about his findings for political reasons and interfered with his ability to review the research of other scientists. Lundgren said he was suspended by the agency, harassed and put through "utter hell."   read more

The Bureau never bothered to verify Davis’ stated intentions for the horses or follow up on where the horses were going. The IG also found that the Bureau continued to sell horses to Davis for at least three years—spending $140,000 on their delivery—even after receiving information alleging that Davis was sending the animals out of the country to be killed. The inspector general’s office referred Davis’ case for prosecution, but federal and state officials declined to take action.   read more