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

In 2000, Macrae became Associate Administrator for the Office of Performance Review in HRSA, overseeing agency staff around the country. He returned to the Bureau of Primary Care in 2006, this time as its leader, managing a $5 billion budget that supports the health-care safety net for millions of people. He also oversaw the School-Based Health Center Capital Program, which provides funding for equipment for school-based health centers.   read more

Hankins joined the Foreign Service, with his first overseas posting coming as a vice consul in Recife, Brazil, in 1985. Thailand was another early posting. From 1989 to 1991, Hankins worked in Sudan and by 1992 he was consul in Haiti. There he dealt with boat people who had been returned to that country by order of President George H.W. Bush. As consul, he took requests for asylum from those wanting to leave the then-violent country. Few requests were granted.   read more

Deciding it needed to smuggle spy gear into North Korea to monitor its nuclear weapons program, the Pentagon launched a secret operation using the services of a Christian charity. Given that the charity operated in more than 30 countries, the Pentagon felt the operation could be replicated elsewhere around the world, according to a former military official. Rep. Jan Schakowsky said using "people who genuinely do humanitarian work, to turn their efforts into intel collection is unacceptable."   read more

State Senate minority leader Jennifer Shilling said the bill was “a gross abuse of political power. Republicans should be less concerned about covering up Governor Walker’s political scandals and more focused on helping hardworking Wisconsin families." Common Cause's Jay Heck said the new law “exempts from the John Doe process crimes that are committed involving elections, campaign finance and ethics. In other words, the crimes that politicians would be most likely to commit."   read more

The average middle-class family is about to become the average poor family. Half of all wage earners made less than $28,851.21 in 2014, according to statistics from the Social Security Administration. That’s just a bit more than the federal poverty level for a family of five, which is $28,410. The average wage is a bit higher, $44,569.20. The data shows that about 67% of wage earners in the United States made less than that figure.   read more

“People who are considering turning to the Internet for guidance on home gun storage should be aware that the information they find is unlikely to give them all the advice they need,” according to lead researcher Katherine L. Freundlich. Researchers found 87 pages about safe gun storage on the Internet, which included incorrect information, as well as advice that was low in technical quality and readability.   read more

The researchers first asked subjects to rate foods based on their addictive potential. They then studied what characteristics those foods shared. Processed foods were almost all considered worse on the scale than unprocessed ones, according to the study. As might be guessed, chocolate led the list, followed by ice cream, French fries and pizza. The least addictive food is beans with no sauce, followed by broccoli, cucumbers, water and brown rice.   read more

The IRS is the latest federal agency known to use electronic cellphone surveillance equipment. “It’s used by dozens, perhaps hundreds, of local law enforcement, used by the usual suspects at the federal level, and if the IRS is using it, it shows just how far these devices have spread,” said ACLU's Nate Wessler. The U.S. government has essentially placed a net of secrecy over their use and the FBI requires police to sign non-disclosure agreements when being equipped with the devices.   read more

Toddlers shoot themselves or others almost every week in the U.S. In one recent case, a 2-year-old riding in the backseat of a car in South Carolina discovered a gun and shot his grandmother, who was sitting in the front seat. But there have been many other cases, most involving the toddler killing himself (boys are far more likely to do this; only three of the cases involved girl shooters). Not surprisingly, states with lax gun laws appear to have more shootings by toddlers.   read more

The active ingredient in most sunscreens is responsible for killing coral reefs, according to a new study. The chemical oxybenzone is toxic to coral and it's contained in more than 3,500 sunscreen products. Every year, up to 14,000 tons of sunscreen lotion make their way into coral reef around the world. Much of that discharged lotion contains up to 10% of the chemical. It is estimated that 80% of the coral reefs in the Caribbean have already been lost.   read more

During one 6-month period, 415 Biloxi citizens were jailed due to their inability to pay fines. The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, Qumotria Kennedy, made $9,000 a year as an MGM Park cleaner. When she couldn't pay $400 in back traffic fines—which had grown to more than $1,000 after the probation company fees were added—she was jailed for five days. During most of that time she was not allowed to tell her children where she was, and when she didn’t show up for work, she was fired from her job.   read more

One supervisor “humiliates her subordinates in public with a raised voice to ensure that her words are audible to all... She bullies, issues threats, screams, and uses derogatory names. When she is dissatisfied with an employee for any reason, she ceases communications with and sidelines the employee, leaving him or her with little idea of what is going on. She rants and raves upon hearing an opposing opinion or any opinion that is not her own.”   read more

That the law prohibits data gathering, including photos, on public lands makes it even more insidious. “This is like trespass on steroids, Brueckner said. "These laws, they don’t merely prohibit data collection. What they criminalize is data collection for the purpose of submitting the information to the state and federal government, and that’s what’s so bizarre and over the top about these laws. They specifically target activity that is unarguably legitimate.”   read more

The company’s own testing shows what kind of pollutants are being dumped: high levels of boron and mercury. “Companies try everything they can to escape the Clean Water Act, and that seems pretty apparent here,” said attorney Tuholske. “They’re trying to create a loophole to irrigate," revealing "a company trying to avoid its responsibility to protect waters from pollution.” The notice also cites unpermitted discharge being dumped directly into Huntington Creek.   read more

ISIS is selling the oil at a steep discount from the world price of around $50 a barrel. The group extracts between 30,000 and 50,000 barrels a day from Iraq and Syria, which it then sells for $10 to $35 a barrel to smugglers. They, in turn, resell the oil to middlemen, mostly in Turkey. The oil is then taken in small tankers for processing. The group also keeps some oil that it refines for its use. The Islamic State makes at least $40 million a month from oil sales.   read more

The scam involved the National Guard Recruiting Assistance Program, in which uniformed recruiters used “assistants” employed by an outside marketing company to bring in recruits. Assistants got bonuses if someone enlisted and additional bonuses if the recruits made it to boot camp. The fraud came in when recruiters shared information on other recruits to the assistants, who then claimed the bonuses and split them with the recruiters. Individual payments were as high as $8,500.   read more