In an attempt to end the war caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. President Donald Trump has offered to return Alaska to Russia in exchange for Russia pulling its troops from Eastern Ukraine. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin said he would agree to the proposal if Trump also returned Fort Ross and the Russian River in California, Russia sold Fort Ross to Mexican citizen John Sutter in 1841.   read more

Navajos are getting by on seven gallons of water a day while the average Californian in 2011 used 362 gallons a day. Puerto Ricans are enduring one of the worst droughts in their island’s history, forcing the government to ration water for the first time since the 1990s. For about 160,000 residents and businesses there, water is shut off for two days, then turned on for a day, then off again. About 185,000 others have water every other day and 10,000 more are on 12-hour rationing.   read more

The sentences are a relic of the “War on Drugs,” in which legislators wanting to appear to be tough on crime enacted sentencing laws that disproportionately affected black and Hispanic defendants. "The drug war has been a war on people of color,” said Michael Collins. One of the more prominent prisoners whose sentence was commuted was Katrina Smith, whose son, Demaryius Thomas, plays for the Denver Broncos. She has been locked up since he was 11.   read more

In the last four presidential elections 40 states plus D.C. have voted for the same party’s candidate in every one of those contests. Only four states have moved from solidly one party to the other. "The nation’s electoral maps are the most static they have been in history,” said Dr. Eric Ostermeier. In 2012, only two states switched their support from the previous presidential election: North Carolina and Indiana.   read more

Obama will travel Thursday to El Reno, a medium-security prison in Oklahoma. He’ll be accompanied by outgoing Bureau of Prisons chief Charles E. Samuels Jr. Obama will use the visit to draw attention to his plan for changing federal sentencing laws, particularly those that have resulted in black and Hispanic defendants being sentenced to decades behind bars for nonviolent offenses. There’s also talk that he might work to restore voting rights to felons who have served their time.   read more

Stolen information on so many millions of Americans will allow the hackers to determine who works for U.S. intelligence agencies and where they are in the world, said Paul Rosenzweig. “Short of real-time intelligence of U.S. activities, this is the intelligence equivalent of the discovery of the nuclear bomb,” he said. The data breach “really suggests that we should take the entire government offline” and offer “complete amnesty to anyone who is approached by the Chinese and comes forward.”   read more

Big Water has been pushing lawmakers to stop more parks from banning sales of disposable water. Those involved in its $13-billion public relations and lobbying campaign include “the titans" of the bottled water industry. Finally the lobbyists found a friend in Congress, Rep.Keith Rothfus, who introduced an 11th-hour amendment into the appropriations bill, recently passed by the House, which prohibits the Park Service from using taxpayer money to eliminate disposable plastic bottles in parks.   read more

The chores included cleaning toilets, showers, windows and floors; doing laundry, clerical and landscape work; plus preparing and serving meals for GEO law enforcement events. A lawsuit filed by nine current and former detainees at the 1,500-bed Aurora Detention Facility also says they were told to clean prison cells without receiving any compensation. Those who refused were threatened with being placed in solitary confinement, according to the complaint.   read more

In 2000, the NAACP voted to implement a boycott of the state to raise awareness of the flag still flying above the capitol building. It has insisted on maintaining the boycott until the flag was removed. It was finally brought down on July 10, a day after state Governor Nikki Haley signed a measure ordering its removal. During its annual convention in Philadelphia on Saturday—the day after the flag came down—the NAACP’s board adopted a resolution ending the boycott.   read more

The CDC reported that Americans have consistently not eaten enough fruits and vegetables based on data collected over a three-year period (2007-2010). During this span about half of the U.S. population consumed under one cup of fruit and under 1.5 cups of vegetables a day. CDC officials also found that 76% of Americans did not meet recommendations for fruit intake, and 87% did not meet them for vegetables. Californians lead the nation in eating enough fruits and vegetables.   read more

With all that cash, Right to Rise has been able to block out key spots for TV commercials and digital advertising. And since they had plenty of time before Bush declared, they were able to work with the former Florida governor to record interviews that will later be used in commercials. The upshot is that even though Right to Rise and the Bush campaign can no longer coordinate their efforts, the Super PAC can run on autopilot.   read more

Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature will still be in charge of the election maps, but they could come out giving Democrats a chance to win a few more congressional seats in the 2016 election. In Wisconsin, in 2012, the first year the new districts were used, Republicans captured 60 of 99 legislative races, even though a majority of the votes cast in the election were for Democrats.   read more

CMS has been secretive about the audits and their results, which have yet to be released. Also not released is the reason why CMS opted not to extrapolate the results of the audits to recover the overcharges from the five companies, which were estimated at $13.5 billion in 2010. The agency moved to do that in 2008, but backed off after the insurance industry weighed in. Now, Congress is getting involved.   read more

The suit claims that the stores are not forced to be vigilant about sales to minors and to straw purchasers—those who buy guns for others who aren’t allowed to. The stores are immune from lawsuits for the results of their gun sales thanks to a law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, pushed through Congress in October 2005 at the behest of the gun industry. So the plaintiffs are going after the cities where the stores are located.   read more

The Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors voted to “not do new business for a period of five years with Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS. As Yves Smith pointed out, it’s only common sense “to stay away from known crooks.”   read more

Roof was arrested in March in Columbia, South Carolina, on a narcotics charge. That normally would have prevented Roof from buying the gun the following month. However, Columbia is split between two counties and the county initially contacted by the FBI investigator through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System had no record of Roof’s arrest. The law says that retailers may release a gun if there is no response on the investigation within three days.   read more

The investigation showed that the APA ensured that its ethics policy did not conflict with the standards the Defense Department was using to permit torture of terror suspects. “Notably, APA officials made their decisions based on these motives, and in collaboration with DoD officials, without serious regard for the concerns raised that harsh and abusive techniques were occurring, and that they might occur in the future,” according to the report.   read more