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

Beginning in 2007, he served as chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Rosenberg left again for the private sector in 2008, defending white-collar criminals as a partner at Hogan Lovells. Rosenberg returned in 2013 to work for James Comey again, this time as chief of staff and counselor to the FBI director. Unlike his predecessor, as leader of the DEA, Rosenberg is expected to focus more on heroin and harder drugs and less on enforcement of marijuana laws.   read more

Castillo joined the Commerce Department in 2008 as special advisor to Christopher Padilla, the under secretary for the U. S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration. In 2010, Castillo was named national deputy director of Minority Business Development Agency, and was moved up to the directorship in 2014.   read more

The prosecutor in the case, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, had previously opposed rehabilitation over prison for another Somali-American, Abdullahi Yusuf, who also wanted to join IS. Luger appears to have had a change of heart however, and hopes to fight the recruitment of young people by IS with programs such as mentoring and job counseling. The federal government estimates that between 150 and 180 Americans have tried to leave the country and join up with groups fighting in Syria.   read more

If researchers are correct and older, larger trees die off as a result of climate change, the trees’ demise will cause there to be even more carbon in the atmosphere. “It’s the big trees that store the most carbon,” McDowell said, noting that the tall trees are also those that do the most photosynthesis, pulling more carbon out of the atmosphere than small trees. In addition, the loss of bigger trees could affect animal species that rely on them for their habitats.   read more

In March, a child found a gun belonging to a member of House Speaker John Boehner’s police detail in a bathroom at the Capitol. Another gun, this one belonging to a member of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s detail, was discovered by a worker in a bathroom at the Congressional Visitors’ Center. So now, officers will be required to take an online class in the proper protocol for handling weapons in situations such as when nature calls.   read more

Neffenger went on to serve as the Coast Guard’s director of strategic management and doctrine and by 2010 he was the Coast Guard’s deputy commandant for operations and deputy national incident commander and worked on much of that service’s response to the April 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. In May 2014, he was made vice commandant of the Coast Guard, that service’s No. 2-ranking officer, a post he held until his nomination as TSA director.   read more

Some of Moyer’s research has been directed at improving statistics related to measures of volume and prices, productivity and uses of intermediate purchases by industry. Moyer became BEA’s acting director in May 2014 when the previous director, J. Steven Landefeld, stepped down. If Landefeld’s tenure is any predictor, Moyer might be at BEA for a while; Landefeld led the agency for 19 years.   read more

“For more than five years, traders in ‘The Cartel’ used a private electronic chat room to manipulate the spot market’s exchange rate between euros and dollars using coded language to conceal their collusion,” said Attorney General Lynch. In one conversation, a Barclays employee said: “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.” Lynch said the currency manipulation “inflated the banks’ profits while harming countless consumers, investors and institutions...including the banks’ own customers.”   read more

Warren claims the GAO, along with the Labor and State departments, have documented “significant and persistent problems with labor abuses in countries with which we have FTAs.” However, the report notes that the U.S. seldom tries to enforce fair labor provisions. Warren has also objected to the lack of transparency about the exact provisions of the TPP: “We’re being asked to grease the skids for a deal that’s basically done but is being held in secret until after this vote."   read more

The FTC and attorneys general from all 50 states have accused the managers of four related cancer charities of spending millions of dollars in donations on themselves instead of helping cancer patients. Only 3% of the monies raised by the four charities went to help patients. The FTC and AGs have described the charitable operations as “sham charities” that “operated as personal fiefdoms characterized by rampant nepotism, flagrant conflicts of interest, and excessive insider compensation.”   read more

In a 3-2 decision, Chief Justice Margaret Workman said the plaintiffs were entitled to seek damages even though they themselves behaved illegally or immorally. Interestingly, “the majority noted that most, if not all, of the plaintiffs admitted their abuse of controlled substances occurred before they sought help at Mountain Medical Center,” according to the AP. Justice Allen Loughry, who dissented along with Justice Menis Ketchum, wrote: “There are no even remotely innocent victims here.”   read more

Polos spent 24 years with the DEA, recently as assistant special agent-in-charge of a joint task force on illegal narcotics. Glover is a telecommunications specialist who has spent 17 years with the DEA. But neither revealed on a national-security form that they owned and operated the Twins Plus Go-Go Lounge which featured “scantily clad and sometimes topless women.” Had they told superiors about the strip club, they likely would have lost their security clearance and, thus, their jobs.   read more

WTO ruled that American regulations that require the meat industry to use country of origin labels (COOL) represent a violation of NAFTA. “This is just the latest example of how multinational companies use the global trade system to attack basic protections for U.S. consumers,” said Wenonah Hauter. “The meat industry has been trying – and failing – for years to get rid of COOL through the U.S. system, so it had to use unaccountable, unelected trade officials at the WTO to do its dirty work.”   read more

The EEOC lawsuit is directed at True Oil LLC, based in Wyoming and owned by brothers Hank and Dave True, and its associated companies. One alleged violation involved a male clerk who had only one year of accounting experience, plus 11 years as a store manager with some bookkeeping experience, being paid $21 an hour. Hired at the same time as that man was a woman who had 17 years of accounting experience yet was never paid more than $16.93 an hour.   read more

The money never would have been spent had the Corps heeded the requests of then-Maj. Gen. Richard P. Mills, who said the headquarters wasn’t needed and that commanders could make do with other facilities. The building wasn’t even seen as something that would have been nice to have. “We certainly needed many things in those early days,” Marine Maj. Gen. Larry Nicholson said, “but we were very pleased with [current headquarters].” Neither Mills nor Nicholson got their way, however.   read more

The subcommittee, led by Rep. John Culberson, voted to eliminate funding for the National Institute of Justice and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, two of DOJ’s most important research and statistics agencies. Experts said the plan was a terrible idea and would cripple the Justice Department’s research efforts. “During a period of national attention to police-community relations and prison reform, Congress should strengthen, not destroy, [these agencies]," said criminologist Richard Rosenfeld.   read more