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

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) led Republicans this week in an effort to defund Planned Parenthood for a practice he supported and voted for in Congress. In 1993, Congress approved the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act, which authorized the donating of fetal tissue for research, including samples from legal abortion procedures. McConnell, along with other Republicans, voted for that bill and others that allowed fetal tissue research.   read more

The Freedom of the Press Foundation filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco seeking documents under the Freedom of Information Act that document Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) procedures for issuing national security letters to spy on the media. The Justice Department has so far refused to release the information or even respond to the FOIA request the foundation made in March.   read more

The Marine Corps can’t account for $800 million in transactions after proclaiming last year that its books were balanced, something the Marines and other branches of the military have struggled to accomplish. The Defense Department is facing a deadline of 2017 to show Congress that all of its books are up to date and accurate. The Pentagon was originally supposed to have its accounting squared away by 1997, but the deadline has been pushed back several times   read more

The group Airwars says its six-month investigation into the airstrikes found enough evidence to believe at least 57 attacks caused between 459 and 591 civilian deaths and between 48 and 80 allied military fatalities between Aug. 8, 2014 and June 30, 2015. The coalition has looked into only 10 reported incidents of non-IS deaths, admitting just two civilians have died out of more than 5,800 airstrikes that unleashed 18,000 bombs and missiles on Iraq and Syria.   read more

Gallup was named in a class-action lawsuit for violating a law that prohibits making making “any call . . . using any automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice.” Gallup denied having done this, but settled the suit for $12 million. The settlement may now cause Gallup and other polling firms to think twice before calling mobile phone users. Those who use mobile phones exclusively include many young people and Latinos. That group also tends to skew Democratic.   read more

In what may be a first for the agency, the FDA has issued a cybersecurity alert to hospitals using computer-controlled pumps to administer drugs to patients. Certain Hospira pumps contain vulnerabilities that could allow a hacker to adjust the dosage of a drug. With their communications modules used for updating, "you can make the pump do whatever you like,” Rios said. A hacker would need no physical access to the pump.   read more

The New York Times called this “concentration of political donors” “unprecedented in the modern era.” Most of the $388 million in contributions has funneled into super PACs, some of which have collected tens of millions of dollars from a small number of donors in just a matter of days. Republicans have been especially good at this. “Just 130 or so families and their businesses provided more than half the money raised through June by Republican candidates and their super PACs,” wrote the Times.   read more

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling doesn’t override tribal laws because the tribes are not parties to the U.S. Constitution. Tribal members Alray Nelson and Brennen Yonnie may challenge the legality of the Dine Marriage Act in the Navajo Supreme Court. “We can, yes, remove ourselves from our community and go get married like say in a city in San Francisco or in Albuquerque," said Nelson. "But that's not our community. Our songs and those prayers we were both raised with...[are] located here."   read more

If the women make it all the way through Ranger School, they will receive the coveted Ranger tab. However, they will not be permitted to serve with the 75th Ranger Regiment, which performs special operations missions. The women are part of a one-time experiment as the Army attempts to find out which combat jobs may be opened to women. The services may close off certain jobs to women, provided they show why they wouldn’t be suitable for the assignments.   read more

Labor salaries have tripled in China over the past decade, from $4.35 to $12.47 an hour. The average manufacturing wage in the U.S. is $22.32, which is still higher than in China. But when the costs of energy and materials are factored in, Chinese executives have concluded their businesses may be better off in the U.S. American states can provide tax breaks and subsidies and the companies get better prices on natural gas and cotton.   read more

Public health experts urge doctors to ask about gun ownership, in part so they may recommend safety measures if children are in the home or if there is someone mentally ill present. Doctors also ask about household chemicals and swimming pools, but those don’t have the National Rifle Association making contributions to politicians on their behalf.   read more

A report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) shows that 73% of those who die in jail haven’t been convicted of a crime. In addition, 29% of those who die are African-American, more than double their percentage of the U.S. population at large. BJS found that 31.3% of all jail deaths in 2012 were by suicide.   read more

Warafi’s lawyer, citing declarations by President Barack Obama that the Afghan war is over, tried to get him released. The government has an obligation to release all POWs at the end of a conflict. But federal Judge Royce Lamberth rejected Warafi’s argument, saying regardless of what Obama has said publicly, U.S. soldiers are still fighting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. Since the beginning of 2015, three Americans have been killed in Afghanistan.   read more

Georgia farms out the publishing of its laws to Lexis-Nexis, which writes annotations and then assigns the copyright for them back to the state. Lexis-Nexis then charges for access to the laws, something that Malamud says should be available for free to the taxpayers who paid for the laws in the first place.   read more

The Bush administration attempted to exempt the Tongass from the Roadless Rule because it claimed it would harm local economies. The vote fell almost completely along party lines of the presidents who appointed the judges. Of the six who voted to keep the forest roadless, three were appointed by Barack Obama, two by Bill Clinton and one by Jimmy Carter. The five voting to keep the Bush exemption included three appointed by Bush, one appointed by Ronald Reagan and one by Clinton.   read more

A study from the Government Accountability Office has found that hundreds of chemical plants are incorrectly reporting the “Distance of Concern” which defines how large an area may be subject to toxic effects of a chemical release. The GAO report estimated that more than 2,700 of the estimated 6,400 facilities, or 44%, misreported the Distance of Concern.   read more