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

More Americans are being legally prevented from suing businesses, and instead are forced into arbitration hearings that prevent individuals from banding together to fight those with deep pockets. These restrictions are often buried in the fine print of contracts, and must be accepted by consumers if they want their phone or new job. Some judges call arbitration clauses a “get out of jail free card” for corporations because they result in plaintiff giving up his or her right to a day in court.   read more

The lawsuit says Austin judges often make no meaningful effort to find out how much defendants can pay and don’t consider how much money they make and how many family members depend on them. The court waived debt in just 11 of more than 600,000 cases from 2011 to 2015. During the same period, the court jailed more than 2,000 people. One woman who was five months pregnant was ordered to perform 30 hours of community service every month foe a year.   read more

The researchers found certain crimes tend to go up when daylight saving ends each year, as it did last Sunday. “Most street crime occurs in the evening around common commuting hours of 5 to 8 p.m., and more ambient light during typical high-crime hours makes it easier for victims and passers-by to see potential threats and later identify wrongdoers,” they wrote. Their research showed that robberies declined about 7% when daylight saving time goes into effect.   read more

Under chairman Lee Raymond, Exxon worked in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty. It merged with Mobil in 1999 and began to fund climate-change denial efforts. For more than a decade it financed conservative groups that publicly attacked the scientific consensus that climate change is a real threat to the planet. Environmental groups compare the obfuscation practiced by ExxonMobil on climate change to the tobacco industry’s cover-up of its own data that showed the dangers of smoking.   read more

As the U.S. presence in Afghanistan continues, so does the reduction in the U.S. government’s ability to monitor the contractors. DynCorp, which has made more than $6 billion there since 2009, was found to have overbilled the government. Both DynCorp and Fluor are being investigated for human trafficking in their recruitment of workers. Defense budget expert Todd Harrison estimates that the 5,500 troops heading there in 2017 will cost about $20 billion, with much of that going to contractors.   read more

In the 2013-14 election cycle, candidates for 19 states’ highest courts received $34.5 million in contributions. About a third, $10.1 million, came from special interest groups. Twenty-one of the 23 seats up for grabs were won by the candidate on whose behalf the most money was spent. “The result is heightened secrecy and less accountability,” said the report. “Outside spenders frequently take advantage of weak disclosure laws to shield their donors from public scrutiny."   read more

The largest retirement nest egg is held by former Yum Brands CEO and current executive chairman David Novak. The executive of the company that owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut has $234 million in retirement savings. Most of the employees of his fast food chains have none. The retirement assets of the 100 CEOs with the most put away come to $4.9 billion. That total equals the amount of 41% of American families, more than 116 million people.   read more

More than half of the donors first identified as participants in what was called the “Fat Cat Hotel” two decades ago have contributed to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. “Of the 66 original ‘Fat Cats’ still living, 34 have donated a total of $1.15 million to Hillary Clinton’s campaign or the super PACs supporting her since January 2013,” Liz Essley Whyte wrote. Most of the 34 individuals gave Hillary’s campaign $2,700, the maximum allowed under federal law during the primaries.   read more

There is a deep rural-urban divide when it comes non-discrimination protections for LGBT people,” said Ineke Mushovic. “Vast geographic stretches in this country—mostly in rural areas—lack LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination laws. Advocates have done impressive work extending local protections, but an LGBT person in a state that lacks statewide protections is fifty times more likely to be covered by local laws if he or she lives in an urban rather than a rural area.”   read more

“People whose best-self concepts were activated felt better and were more resilient to stress, more resistant to disease and burnout, better at creative problem solving and performance under pressure, and formed stronger long-term relationships with their employer,” researchers Daniel M. Cable, Francesca Gino, Jooa Julia Lee and Bradley R. Staats wrote. The researchers also concluded that when employers remind their workers about their “best selves,” they’re less likely to burn out or quit.   read more

In 2002, she and another prosecutor used the federal racketeering laws (RICO) to convict 15 pimps who targeted children aged 12 to 17. One of her most prominent was the successful prosecution of pro wrestler Harrison Norris Jr., aka “Hardbody Harrison,” who kept eight women as sex slaves in his Georgia home, forcing them into prostitution. She also has worked with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in the development of a database for tracking human trafficking prosecutions.   read more

In Algiers, his task included trying to convince Muslim religious leaders to publicly condemn acts of terrorism. From his post there, he also warned that the U.S. had intercepted a letter from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu al-Zarqawi that outlined Al-Qaeda’s plans to turn Iraq into their base for overthrowing moderate regimes in the region and establish a caliphate. In Cairo, Sievers found himself having to do such things as deny the existence of a plot by the U.S. against the Egyptian government.   read more

Her early assignments included posts in the Czech Republic and Denmark. She returned to Washington in 2002 as Director for South and Central Asian Affairs on the National Security Council staff. She moved again to South Asia two years later as the Deputy Chief of Mission in Kathmandu, Nepal. Her tour there coincided with the last part of the Maoist battle against the Nepalese government that ended in 2006 and left more than 13,000 dead.   read more

The survey also asked people what they think CEOs and workers should be paid. For CEOs, it was $200,000 and for workers it was $30,000, giving a wage gap of 7 to 1. “The actual wage gap between a CEO and the average unskilled worker is about 830 to 1," wrote Leopold. "Yet Americans believe it should be only 7 to 1. Perhaps the biggest reason we are so misinformed is that it is not in the interests of our political parties for us to see the truth."   read more

People on Kili say their home has become uninhabitable because global warming has created more frequent “king tides” and severe storms that are swamping their island. "It’s getting to the point where people are tired of having water in their living rooms and trying to deal with the waves and the water coming over the island," said Bikini Officer Jack Niedenthal. Bikini refugees want to come to the U.S. and call it home, but they need the U.S. government to pay for their second relocation.   read more

Ramon Ochoa probably isn’t laughing now. Ochoa, who had previously served about six years for firearms possession by a felon, got into trouble with his probation officer, which resulted in Ochoa being back inside a Fresno courtroom. Standing before Judge Lawrence O’Neill, Ochoa received a one-year sentence for violating his probation after he mouthed off at the staff of the halfway house. Ochoa’s mouth got him into more hot water when he laughed at O’Neill’s sentence and said...   read more