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

Residents of China have accounted for 90% of the visas issued from DHS in 2014, according to government data. “For rich Chinese, a green card is a ticket out of China -- a way to escape heavy pollution or gain access to improved education options,” wrote CNN’s Sophia Yan. EB-5 has proven popular with scammers and possibly even spies who have used the program to gain entry into the country. The SEC reportedly received more than 100 tips of possible securities fraud connected to the EB-5.   read more

Analysts say many oil companies aren’t interested in expanding their operations in the Gulf of Mexico for the foreseeable future. Indeed, ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron didn’t even bother to show up at the auction. The gulf was the site of the nation’s worst oil spill in 2010, but environmental concerns aren’t the issue. The price of oil has plummeted from more than $100 a barrel last summer to almost $40 today, and many experts believe the market won’t rebound for another year or two.   read more

Testing of the drug showed only modest results in accomplishing the drug’s mission of improving female sexual desire. Its effectiveness rate was between 8% and 13%, while causing such side effects as fainting, dizziness, and low blood pressure. The drug was originally created to act as an anti-depressant, but it was found to be ineffective for that purpose. So it was decided to instead promote it as a cure for decreased female libido.   read more

At least 14 officers have been charged in the past five months with committing murder, homicide, or manslaughter while on duty. This total is higher than the average two-year total of cops charged for on-duty killings. From 2005 to 2011, there were 46 cases of officers charged for on-duty killings of any kind, or 6.5 cases per year on average, which produces a total of 13 cases over two years. If the rate of the past five months is annualized, the total for 2015 would reach 33.   read more

Practical Money Skills, a financial literacy website, says the going rate by the Tooth Fairy these days has declined for the second year in a row. It says the average amount of money left under a child’s pillow in exchange for a tooth is $3.19 so far this year. That amount is down from $3.43 last year and $3.70 in 2013. The most common gift is a one-dollar bill, which is left by 32% of the parents.   read more

The DEA conducted the mass surveillance without court approval, gathering billions of phone records on calls made to more than 100 countries. “Friday’s decision is rare,” Rumold wrote. “EFF is not aware of any other case where discovery has been allowed into a government mass surveillance program. And the order forces the government to answer questions, under oath, about the steps it took to ensure that all illegally collected records have been fully purged from all government systems.”   read more

Since 1965, the U.S. has had a nine-fold increase in the number of scientists, while the NIH budget has expanded four-fold. The rate of new drugs hitting the market has not been as strong, but the number has doubled during this span. But life expectancy gains have remained constant at about two months per year. “There is something wrong in the process, but there are no simple answers,” Bowen said. “It may be a confluence of factors that are causing us not to be getting more bang for our buck.”   read more

The EPA estimates the regulations would cost the industry up to $420 million to implement by 2025. Oil and gas producers, along with Republican members of Congress, criticized the plan, saying it’s too expensive and will cost jobs. But since Chevron Texaco, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell made a combined $61 billion in 2014, the oil companies can probably afford it. Environmentalists say the plan doesn’t go far enough as it applies primarily to new wells, not most existing facilities.   read more

The performance of the body scanners has been so bad that one lawmaker, Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), said TSA should use metal detectors as a backup system to catch threats. “These things weren’t even catching metal,” he said. “If you really want to keep using those, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t, at a minimum we should put a metal detector on the other side,” Johnson told Politico. “Why not go through two? You’ve just gotta use common sense.”   read more

Grammarly, an automated-proofreading company, evaluated the grammar of those backing the 2016 Republican presidential candidates. The analysis was based on the comments posted on the official Facebook pages of each contender. Trump’s supporters, according to Grammarly, had 12.6 grammar errors per hundred words, which put them dead last. Carly Fiorina’s supporters had the fewest grammar mistakes, with 6.3 errors per hundred words.   read more

Trump’s “constant presence on Fox News has likely aided his rise to first place in Republican primary polls,” said Media Matters for America. “New York magazine reported that Rupert Murdoch had asked Fox News head Roger Ailes to have the network ‘back off the Trump coverage,’ which Ailes refused to do.” Fox News, which has been accused of trying to usurp the Republican primary process, “has caused a rift among conservative media figures, including within Fox News,” added Media Matters.   read more

“Under this outdated law, mining companies are able to extract billions of dollars of minerals on America’s public lands essentially for free, often with no liability for environmental cleanup,” said Claire Moser of the Center for American Progress. “The Animas spill disaster highlights the broader need for reform of this 143-year-old law to ensure that taxpayers receive a fair share of publicly-owned resources and that mining companies are responsible for cleanup.”   read more

Of the 25,000 overincome people identified by the report, more than 10,000 were in New York City, where more than 300,000 others are on waiting lists to receive public housing. Forty-five percent of the overqualified tenants nationwide were earning $10,000 to $70,000 a year more than the threshold allowed. “We did not find that...authorities had taken or planned to take sufficient steps to reduce at least the egregious examples of over income families in public housing,” said the report.   read more

The Securities and Exchange Commission went after Citigroup for making false and misleading claims about the funds and fined the corporation $180 million, or about 6% of the amount Citigroup flushed down the financial toilet via those funds. “Advisers at these Citigroup affiliates were supposed to be looking out for investors’ best interests, but falsely assured them they were making safe investments even when the funds were on the brink of disaster,” said SEC's Andrew Ceresney.   read more

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics reported last week that the uninsured rate among all Americans in the first quarter of 2015 fell to 9.2%. The nation hasn’t had that low a rate for uninsured people of all ages since 1972, when the NCHS began keeping track of such data. The 9.2% represented 29 million Americans, 7 million fewer than were uninsured in 2014.   read more

Walker agreed to the stadium deal despite criticism from fiscal hawks. “It is difficult to think of a clearer illustration of a politician’s comically misplaced priorities,” wrote Weissman. Once interest on the bonds is factored in, taxpayers will end up paying closer to $400 million for the stadium. The education cut was Walker’s “most damaging and telling attack on the public sector,” said Bob Peterson. “K-12 public schools were particularly decimated."   read more