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

It’s one thing to make the EPA mad at you. But get the IRS riled up, and you’ve got real trouble. That’s the position in which Volkswagen may find itself in the latest chapter of its emission-testing cheating saga. The automaker certified its diesel-powered cars as being eligible for a clean energy tax credit for buyers in 2009 and 2010 and some 60,000 Volkswagen owners claimed a $1,300 credit on their taxes. Now some senators want the federal government’s money back.   read more

Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland called the new panel “a waste of taxpayer money and Congress’ time, much in the same way that time and money have been squandered by the Select Committee on Benghazi.” Rep. Gwen Moore said, “We know that fetal tissue procurement ... provides life-saving research for diseases like Parkinson’s, ALS... This is just another pathway to deny a woman a right to a safe and legal abortion.” Planned Parenthood officials called the committee addition a “five-ring circus.”   read more

Ohio tried to obtain sodium thiopental from another country but was stopped by the FDA. Nebraska has been looking for drugs in India. Other states have opted for execution methods that were long ago discarded. If lethal injection is not available, Tennessee intends to use the electric chair, while Utah has approved firing squads once again. Oklahoma and Louisiana are considering the use of nitrogen gas, either in a chamber or delivered through a mask.   read more

Sales of full-calorie soda have dropped 25% in the past two decades after a sharp increase from the 1960s to the 1990s. Americans are increasingly turning to other beverages, such as water, to quench their thirst. The sales drop has been fueled by increased concern about obesity, particularly among children. “The drop in soda consumption represents the single largest change in the American diet in the last decade,” wrote the New York Times’ Margot Sanger-Katz.   read more

In 2014, Rubinstein was made the U.S. Special Envoy for Syria, dealing with the opposition to the Assad regime. He replaced Robert Ford, who had taken a harsh approach toward Assad. Rubinstein’s approach with the insurgents was slightly different. Anti-ISIS forces sought his support for battling the extremist group before it took over Mosul. Rubinstein turned them away. Rebel officials started referring to Rubinstein as “the complaint box,” saying he listens to all and never responds.   read more

Unlike many Foreign Service officers, Alsup did not go immediately to work for the State Department after college. She worked for the aerospace division of Ling-Temco-Vought, and she opened a franchised art store in her hometown of St. Petersburg. Alsup went overseas in 2005 for her first assignment to The Gambia. Since 2012, she has served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Accra, Ghana.   read more

“The U.K. and U.S. are both insisting that the wording for any mandate about autonomous weapons should discuss only emerging technologies," said Noel Sharkey. Such a development would undermine the intent of the agreement, and result in autonomous weapons systems becoming a part of modern warfare. “If there is not a pre-emptive ban on the high-level autonomous weapons then once the genie is out of the bottle it will be extremely difficult to get it back in,” said the U.N.'s Christof Heyns.   read more

The United States has lost nearly 60 rural hospitals over the past five years, leaving communities across the country looking for health care services and enduring the fallout from the closures. One rural hospital lobbyist says there are no simple answers for stopping this trend. “If it were just one silver bullet, it would have been easier to attack it legislatively and figure it out,” said chief NRHA lobbyist Maggie Elehwany. “But it’s really death by a thousand different knives.”   read more

U.S. officials using the Global Forecast System (GFS) warned for two days that Joaquin would strike the East Coast around the Mid-Atlantic region. Instead, it remained out at sea—which is what the European Center for Medium-Range Forecasts forecast. “Eventually, the GFS model forecast shifted to the correct solution, but the European model had the correct forecast about 24 hours before the GFS, emerging victorious,” Jason Samenow wrote at The Washington Post.   read more

It’s no contest when comparing the grammar skills of Democrats and Republican. Republican supporters made more than twice as many mistakes as Democratic supporters. For every 100 words written, the average Democratic supporter made 4.2 mistakes, while the average Republican backer made 8.7 errors. Among the candidates, supporters of Democrat Lincoln Chafee had the lowest rate of mistakes (3.1 per 100 words), while those backing Donald Trump had the highest rate of mistakes (12.6).   read more

Scott’s early State Dept. postings included Croatia, Israel, and Switzerland. He stepped away from the diplomatic world for a bit in 1994 as a national security fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. When he returned to active duty with the Foreign Service in 1996, it was as a political counselor at the embassy in Moscow. In 1999, Scott was moved to a similar role at the embassy in Budapest, Hungary.   read more

Oxfam singled out the U.S., Iran, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey for “fueling violence and violations of war in Syria through arms and ammunition transfers to parties to the conflict.” Along with the U.K. and Kuwait, the U.S. also was criticized for its “less than generous” offers “to welcome the most vulnerable refugees.” Oxfam claims the U.S. has resettled only 8% of its “fair share” of refugees. Since 2011, only 1,500 Syrian refugees have been admitted into the country.   read more

There are those—including members of Congress who should know better—who believe those now imprisoned at Guantánamo, some of whom have not been convicted of any crimes, have some kind of powers that would allow them to escape from the most secure facility that the U.S. can devise. Or it might be that they just want to deny President Obama one of his original goals when he took office—to close the expensive Guantánamo camp, which is a focus of anti-American sentiment around the world.   read more

Last year’s total of opioid overdoses was 1,263, up 97 over the total in 2013, according to The Tennessean. Opioids are found in prescription painkillers such as Hydrocodone and Oxycodone, nicknamed “hillbilly heroin.” “It’s an epidemic sweeping across the state, affecting people in both small towns and big cities,” The Tennessean’s Holly Fletcher wrote. The death toll was highest among men and women ages 45 to 55.   read more

The environmental organization says this amount of greenhouse pollution is equivalent to the emissions of 6.8 million cars and is 10 to 40 times as much pollution as the cars were supposed to emit. “What Volkswagen did wasn’t just consumer fraud, it was a crime against our climate and against future generations relying on us for a livable planet,” said Peter Galvin of the Center for Biological Diversity. “This will have a far-reaching effect on our clean air and climate.”   read more

The majority of charter schools still open scored in the bottom 16% on the 2014 Ohio Performance Index, which measures student performance on state assessments. “Ohio has a real quality control problem,” said Alex Medler. “Ohio’s more broken than the Wild West.” Charter schools in that state spend more than twice as much of their revenue on administrative costs than public schools. That leaves less to spend on teachers and students.   read more