According to aides who were present when Trump discussed the issue, but who choose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, Trump said he was sick of Vance and wanted to fire him. “I wanted him to be my attack dog,” said Trump, “but he appears foolish on television. He dropped the college football trophy. He met with Pope Francis and the next day the pope died. Vance is toxic, and I don’t want him to come near me. He just doesn’t look as good on television as I thought he would.”   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

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