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

Officials knew they had a problem on their hands three years ago when an 82-year-old nun, Sister Megan Rice, and two other anti-nuclear activists cut through Y-12’s fences and walked through a field of motion detectors to deface the exterior of the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility. They were able to do so because security guards ignored the warnings coming from the sensors—because they’re easily set off by wildlife and the guards assumed it was a false alarm.   read more

Edin Carey Avendano-Hernandez, who was born male in Oaxaca, came to the United States in 2000 and began taking hormones and living as a woman in 2005. In 2006, she was convicted twice of driving while intoxicated and was deported to Mexico in 2007 after serving a year in jail. While in Mexico, Avendano-Hernandez said, she was beaten and raped by police officers. She returned to the United States the following year.   read more

Research by Harvard’s Maya Sen shows that black judges’ decisions are overturned 10% more often than white judges’ decisions, even when accounting for differences in education, political views, experience and competence. "The difference appears not to be driven by black judges voting differently on certain cases."   read more

The reference to “managed retreat” has to do with 31 communities that are threatened by the warming climate. Over the next three years, the commission will decide if the residents of these communities will be “protected in place” or moved away from deteriorating coastal areas. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R) will evidently oversee the project.   read more

Bolivian President Evo Morales kicked the DEA out of his country in 2008. Bolivia’s coca cultivation fell 11% in 2014 over the previous year. The amount of land being used for coca production in Bolivia is now at 20,400 hectares (about 79 square miles), the lowest number since the UN began its surveys in 2003.   read more

The contractor fell almost a year behind schedule, and by then, the building was no longer needed. Six months later, the military canceled the project, which had already used up $2.2 million in taxpayer money. The building now sits half completed, with no stairs to the second floor, electrical wiring or plumbing. U.S. taxpayers may even be on the hook for the balance of the $5 million contract. Before SIGAR found this waste, it uncovered $40 million worth of other unused buildings.   read more

Idaho’s “dry cells,” basically four concrete walls, a ceiling and a floor with a drain, have been called inhumane by human rights advocates.“Research is showing us that in many cases segregation doesn’t work and is causing more harm than good,” said Idaho prison official Kevin Kempf. “Knowing that 97 percent of all inmates will one day walk out of prisons and into our neighborhoods tells me we shouldn’t be adding to their risk of committing more crimes...”   read more

Last month, North Dakota lawmakers made their state the first to allow police to employ drones using so-called non-lethal weapons. The police department in Fargo, the state’s largest city, has no intention of using drones that carry weapons, or to conduct surveillance. Fargo police Lt. Michael Mitchell said his department is “perplexed, because we don’t see many reasons why we would use such technology. It may be something for the long range, but for now we aren’t even looking at it."   read more

On January 16, 2015, Arjun Kumar Karki, a longtime activist in his country, was appointed to be Nepal’s ambassador to the United States. As a student in Nepal, Karki was arrested and tortured for his activism, according to a biography on his Facebook page. In his professional career, Karki has been involved with many non-governmental organizations in Nepal, often several at the same time.   read more

In 2011, Gilmour returned to Washington as the director of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in the State Department’s Africa Bureau. In August 2013, he was moved up to be deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of African Affairs, the position he holds as he awaits confirmation for the Togo post.   read more

Stock value of the top 10 U.S. publicly held coal companies fell by 58% between 2010 and 2014. During this period, cash compensation of executives of these companies went up 8%. The biggest winner was ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who made $33 million last year. Given this setup, it is no wonder Big Oil and Big Coal don’t want to change their ways. It also helps to explain why none of the 30 companies studied have programs that reward investment in renewable energy sources.   read more

More than half of the forest loss occurred in tropical countries, which chopped down or burned 24.5 million acres. Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Uruguay and Paraguay have accelerating rates of deforestation. Cambodia in 2014 had four times as much tree loss as it did in 2001. An increase in the price of rubber has caused more forests to be cleared for its production.   read more

“This massive criminal scheme defrauded investors, including Treasury who became an investor through TARP,” said Christy Romero. While receiving TARP’s help, Shabudin carried out what prosecutors said was a “delay-and-pray” scheme that couldn't prevent UCB from becoming the first bailout-boosted bank to fail during the financial meltdown. “Its dramatic failure cost the federal fund that insures Americans’ deposits more than $675 million,” said the Post.   read more

The radioactivity in the ash was determined to be five times higher than in normal soil and up to 10 times higher than in coal itself because of the way combustion in power plants concentrates radioactivity. “We don’t know how much of these contaminants are released to the environment, and how they might affect human health in areas where coal ash ponds and landfills are leaking. Our study opens the door for future evaluation of this potential risk,” according to Vengosh.   read more

Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics showed that racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented by a combined 24% on average when police department’s demographics are compared with U.S. Census figures for the general public. “In 35 of the 85 jurisdictions where either blacks, Asians or Hispanics make up the single largest racial or ethnic group, their individual presence in the police department is less than half their share of the population,” Mike Maciag wrote at Governing.   read more

Making changes--working to cut carbon in the atmosphere--would cost $190.2 trillion, the report says, but doing nothing would cost $192 trillion. Taking action would be cheaper “due to the rapidly falling costs of renewables, which combined with lower fuel usage from energy efficiency investments actually result in significantly lower long-term fuel bill,” wrote The Guardian. Investing in changes that reduce the impact of climate change could lessen its financial implications for businesses.   read more