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 Massachusetts State Police won Investigative Reporters and Editors' Golden Padlock Award because they “habitually go to extraordinary lengths to thwart public records requests, protect law enforcement officers and public officials who violate the law and block efforts to scrutinize how the department performs its duties.”   read more

Nationwide, abortions are down 12% since 2010, but in Michigan and Louisiana, both states that have enacted abortion restrictions, the number of such procedures has increased significantly. The increases—up 18.5% in Michigan and 12% in Louisiana—are at least partly because those states adjoin others where abortions are even more tightly restricted.   read more

The Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) agreement being negotiated by the Obama administration with representatives from 23 other nations, mostly in Europe and South America, but also including Japan, South Korea, Australia and Israel, has provisions that could allow personal data to be stored in other countries. Unlike the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which deals mostly with goods, TiSA is intended to regulate services, such as the Internet. This concerns privacy advocates.   read more

In the past, the payments came directly to farmers in the form of subsidies. Now, they’re coming as payments for crop insurance, which can protect farmers if the price drops below a preset amount, making it very difficult to lose money by farming cotton. Although switching to wheat would use less water, government policies encourage farmers to keep growing cotton.   read more

In general, the U.S. income tax system is progressive: that is, the more you make, the greater percentage you pay. When it comes to the super-rich however, that’s not true. Those 1,360 who made more than $62 million in a year paid a smaller tax rate than those who make $13 million. The average tax rate for the richest 0.001% was 17.6%.   read more

When P. Donald Jiron announced his retirement as deputy chief financial officer for the Weather Service, his supervisor asked him to remain as a consultant for a time. Jiron agreed, but demanded what became a $3,600 monthly raise, as well as a housing allowance that ended up costing the agency more than $50,000. The supervisor agreed, and Jiron began his new career as a consultant doing the same thing he had as a government employee.   read more

Twitter is no longer allowing the Sunlight Foundation to collect deleted tweets from politicians. The Sunlight Foundation created Politwoops to help keep politicians honest about what they say on Twitter, even when what they say is no longer there.   read more

In the wake of the January 2010 earthquake that hit near Port au Prince, Haiti, millions of Americans pitched in and donated to relief funds, much of it to the American Red Cross (ARC). Now, a report says that little of the $488 million sent to that organization has actually gone into rebuilding the country. Its claim that it built houses for more than 130,000 Haitians was a slight exaggeration; it actually built six houses.   read more

At the Sandia National Laboratory, officials had included classified nuclear weapon design information on a server able to be accessed by the public for years. They even gave PowerPoint demonstrations from 2003 to 2011 that exposed the information to outside groups and handed out computer disks with the demo.   read more

A complaint filed on behalf of several Samoans, some of whom live there and others who live in the United States proper, pointed out that those born in American Samoa are considered U.S. nationals, but not citizens. That means that even when they move to Hawaii or another state, they’re not entitled to vote, hold office or enjoy certain other rights reserved for citizens. Their U.S. passports have a restriction that labels them as U.S. nationals.   read more

Reporters Without Borders has awarded Eritrea last place on its World Press Freedom Index for seven straight years. Of the 223 journalists imprisoned around the world, 23 are in Eritrea. The only press allowed in Eritrea is that which is controlled by the government and even then the journalists are not safe. Thirteen employees of an education ministry radio station were imprisoned for five years without being told why.   read more

YouTube has released statistics on its top 10 how-to searches. The top search isn’t on how to tie a tie or change a tire. It’s on how to kiss. There are plenty of answers—pages and pages of them. Some of the videos break it down further: How to French kiss; how to kiss softly; and how to make out are among the topics. It’s slightly possible that some of the videos are designed less to educate than to titillate.   read more

Ludmila Savchuk, who once worked for the organization that produced the hoaxes, revealed that workers have a quota to write a certain number of items, sometimes involving hoaxes, other times articles describing how terrible conditions are in the European Union. Ukraine is also a target. Other articles praise Russian leaders. A Louisiana chemical hoax was one in a wave of similar attacks last year. Phony news reports tried to scare people of Atlanta into thinking there was an Ebola outbreak.   read more

From federal flood insurance to sand replenishment, the government has poured (or promised to pour) hundreds of billions of tax dollars into helping home and business owners enjoy beachfront property. In Florida alone, the National Flood Insurance Program has guaranteed to cover $484 billion in property. Taxpayers also subsidize beach nourishment, or the placement of new sand on eroded beaches. The federal government spent $787 million from 1995 to 2002 on beach replenishment,   read more

What a person does for a living can tell you a lot about their political persuasions. Who knew flight attendants swing Democratic, while pilots like the GOP? Or that the Democratic Party can count on carpenters for support, but not plumbers? Perhaps it’s a throwback to President Richard Nixon’s White House Plumbers, who searched for leaks to the press.   read more

Alameda is the first county in the nation to make drug manufacturers pay at least a part of the cost of encouraging people to do the right thing and giving them a means to do it. That means setting up collection points, publicizing the locations and disposing of the drugs.   read more