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

The Department of Environmental Quality in North Carolina handed Duke Energy a sweet deal in recently reducing a $25 million fine over the company’s coal ash pollution to $7 million. Part of the deal granted Duke amnesty for coal ash dumps at its 14 plants. Environmentalists were outraged at the deal.   read more

U.S. Border Patrol destroyed videotapes sought in a suit that charges immigrants are kept in cold, dirty and inhumane cells for extended lengths of time. The Border Patrol was ordered to allow inspections of their Tucson Sector facilities and retain videotapes made there. But some tapes were destroyed despite the order. The judge sanctioned the agency.   read more

Statistically, there is a mass shooting in the United States every week. Since November 2012, there have been 993 mass shooting events in the country. The tragedy at Umpqua Community College on Oct. 1 was No. 994. In 2015 alone, there have been 294 mass shootings, which is defined as four or more people killed or injured by gunfire.   read more

Timothy Korb, an attorney with the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which helps protect federal whistleblowers, told of the board’s own backlog of cases and foot dragging. Korb was ordered suspended 21 days without pay and stripped of some duties. A judge sided with Korb and the MSPB backed down before the suspension took effect.   read more

Alabama enacted a voter identification law in 2011 and allowed it to take effect after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. Now it is closing eight of 10 driver license bureaus in counties with the highest percentages of African-American citizens.   read more

Somalia has finalized its ratification of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The U.S. is now the world’s only country that has not done ratified this human rights treaty, which promotes and respects the human rights of children. Barack Obama backs the treaty but has not sent it to the U.S. Senate because conservatives oppose it.   read more

At the recent state dinner held in honor of Chinese President Xi Jinping many diners paid $1 million to be on the guest list. The dinner was packed with big-money donors to political campaigns and organizations. The total contributions made since 2007 by that evening’s dinner guests amounted to nearly $19 million.   read more

The percentage of those working or looking for work is at 62.4%, the lowest since October 1977. The index peaked in 1997 at 67.2%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Participation is even lower among those in their prime earning years, from 25 to 34. That number is now at 80.6%, down from 84% in early 2008.   read more

Eric Seth Rubin was nominated Sept. 15, 2015, to be U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria. He joined the Foreign Service in 1985 and showed expertise on Eastern Europe. In 2008 he became deputy chief of the Moscow mission. In 2011, he came back to the U.S. to serve at the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, where he was at the time of his nomination.   read more

Victims of domestic violence are often reluctant to call police for help, and a new survey indicates why: most are afraid police won’t believe them or that calling them will make things worse. The survey, involving more than 600 respondents and published by the National Domestic Violence Hotline, found more than half agreed with a statement that reaching out to law enforcement “would make things worse.”   read more

Rise for Youth, which consists of civil rights, religious and fiscal-reform activists, wants Virginia schools to stop using the justice system to handle minor misbehavior, and hopes to reduce the number of kids being sent to youth prisons in the state, which is the nation's leader in juvenile arrests and incarceration.   read more

Families of 9/11 victims trying to sue Saudi Arabia for its involvement in the 2001 terror attacks have lost their case again in federal court. For the second time, a federal judge rejected the plaintiffs’ longstanding claim that the Saudi government and a Saudi charity, the Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia & Herzegovina, should be able to face civil charges that they supported the terrorists who carried out the attacks.   read more

PG&E said the water drained when workers doing routine maintenance removed some brush and materials from a clogged outlet valve. California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) requires that a minimum amount of water be released from the dam to keep fish alive in Hamilton Branch. There are also logging interests downstream. There wasn’t a lot of water in the reservoir before it went dry (maybe 170 acre feet), but folks were fishing in it the week before.   read more

Feinberg worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign and transition team. After the election, Emanuel brought her into the White House as his senior advisor. She left government service in 2010 to be Bloomberg’s Director of Communications and Business Strategy. The following year, Feinberg decamped for Facebook as its director of corporate and strategic communications. She returned to the Obama administration in 2013 as chief of staff to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.   read more

Even patients who are receiving hospice care and are near death are reported to have received the maximum amount of therapy. Between 2010 and 2013, about 110,000 patients died within five days of receiving ultrahigh therapy. If after such therapy “a large number of people are ending up in a hospice, that’s not a good outcome,” said professor Brant Fries, and “if you have lots of people who are dying, it doesn’t make any sense why you’re giving them rehab.”   read more

Since 2006, nearly 500 women have been charged with endangering their unborn children. Women who may have taken a sleeping pill a few days before giving birth have been swept up by the law, as have those who have falsely tested positive for drugs. “If hospitals are not informing their patients about what their drug-testing policies are, particularly when those results are used to involve law enforcement in their patients’ lives, that is an unconstitutional act,” said advocate Sara Ainsworth.   read more