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 State Department says that even though personnel are warned to stay off the streets in certain border areas, they can “walk across the border and be in a Walmart or a Dairy Queen,” Gregory Starr, State’s assistant secretary at the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, said Wednesday at a hearing.   read more

“After expanding by a record 1.7 million barrels a day in 2014, the latest price rout could stop U.S. growth in its tracks,” the agency reported. The reason for the decline is the fall in price caused by a huge surplus of oil.   read more

The past few months have seen dramatic coverage of shootings, including those in South Carolina and Louisiana, which prompted some to call for tighter background checks and other gun safety measures. In August, the FBI received reports of 1.7 million background checks required of gun purchasers at federally licensed dealers, which was the highest number recorded in any August since gun checks began in 1998. Likewise, July broke the record for that month, with 1.6 million requests.   read more

The hearing, labeled a “show trial” by Democrats, featured two “abortion survivors” who lived after their mothers attempted to terminate their pregnancies. Republicans did not invite anyone from the Center for Medical Progress, the antiabortion group that made and edited the undercover videos that sparked the hearings. Furthermore, GOP lawmakers—after making critical remarks about Planned Parenthood—admitted they had not seen the controversial videos in their full, unedited form.   read more

With all that free time, Farrow has also been able to hold a side job—as lobbyist for Puerto Rico and the island nation of Palau, which earned him $820,000 last year. The GSA IG also found the commission agreed to pay Farrow $104,000 per year to work eight hours per week. “Instead, he took the higher salary and worked less than the scheduled amount,” Eric Katz reported at Government Executive. His $143,000 government salary represented nearly 25% of the commission’s annual budget.   read more

A five-year federal pilot program to determine levels of contamination around eight other nuclear facilities in the United States was cancelled this week because, apparently, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is already doing such a fine job of oversight. . Nuclear sites to be studied included active and decommissioned plants in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan and New Jersey. A nuclear fuel fabrication plant in Tennessee was also on the list.   read more

In 2010, Melville returned to the United States to become executive director of the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs and International Organization Affairs, providing support to 79 U.S. missions under those umbrellas. Melville returned to Berlin in August 2012 as deputy chief of mission, serving for a time in 2013 as chargé d’affaires.   read more

"Land dries up. Trees die. Crops cannot take root," wrote Flesher. Such spills rarely result in penalties for oil and gas companies. This does little to encourage the industry to take action to prevent accidents. “It’s almost a coddling relationship,” said PRBRC's Jill Morrison. “The industry looks at spills as a cost of doing business.” Meanwhile, the victims—farmers, ranchers, landowners—spin their wheels in court while their land, water and livestock deteriorate.   read more

U.S. attorneys have been instructed to not settle unless they identify those responsible for wrongdoing. “Corporations can only commit crimes through flesh-and-blood people,” said deputy AG Sally Yates. “It’s only fair that the people who are responsible for committing those crimes be held accountable. The public needs to have confidence that there is one system of justice and it applies equally regardless of whether that crime occurs on a street corner or in a boardroom.”   read more

The Guttmacher Institute said 491 counties where Planned Parenthood clinics are located, 103 of them only have Planned Parenthood to serve low-income patients. The organization makes up 10% of the nation’s publicly funded family planning clinics, but serves 36% of the patients who go to them. “In many communities, there are not other health care providers that would be equipped to fill the void created by the prohibition of funding" for a qualified, trusted provider,” said Clare Coleman.   read more

It's said detention causes permanent harm to the physical and mental health of young children. Compounding the suffering is a policy that breaks up the families once they are rounded up. The detention itself, and the separating of parents from their children and each other, has been acknowledged as a tool employed by the U.S. government to deter others from entering the country illegally in the future. It is a practice that judges in immigration legal cases have demanded be stopped.   read more

Johnson has said the focus should be on those who pose a “demonstrable risk to national security” or who have been “convicted of specifically enumerated crimes.” Yet the TRAC report said that of the 7,993 people detained in April, two-thirds of them had not been convicted of a crime. The manpower and expense of pursuing undocumented immigrants as a means of crime prevention may actually be misplaced. Studies have shown that, in fact, immigrants are associated with lower, not higher, crime rates.   read more

These changes would include making buildings more efficient, investing in public transportation, deploying high-efficiency lighting and installing solar panels. “There is now increasing evidence that emissions can decrease while economies continue to grow,” said researcher Schultz. “Becoming more sustainable and putting the world — specifically cities — on a low carbon trajectory is actually feasible and good economics.” The $17 trillion savings could be more if indirect benefits are considered.   read more

The Justice Deptartment sought text messages sent between individuals suspected of illegal gun and drug activity. They were sent using Apple’s iMessage system. Apple said it couldn’t comply with the request as the iMessage system is encrypted. “The conflicts with Apple and Microsoft reflect heightened corporate resistance, in the post-Edward J. Snowden era, by American technology companies intent on demonstrating that they are trying to protect customer information,” wrote the Times.   read more

“The most radical difference,” Scott Henson wrote, involved a case “where a one-in-a-billion probability was lowered to around one-in-fifty.” The difference “stemmed not from the data entry errors but because … the FBI had changed its methodology for calculating probabilities in mixed DNA samples and moved to a new method which they considered more accurate.” The change could mean that people convicted with mixed DNA evidence might have cause for a new trial.   read more

The AEC found NUMEC lost 185 pounds of uranium due to inefficiencies in the refinement process. The FBI looked into the missing uranium but, like the AEC, closed its investigation after meeting with NUMEC director Zalman Shapiro but without consulting the CIA, “even though the agencies knew the CIA was interested in him,” Ryan wrote. He also reported that two CIA employees who worked during the height of the investigations have said diversion of uranium occurred.   read more