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

By most standards, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is doing pretty well, making a profit of $313 million in the second quarter of this fiscal year. But a congressional mandate to prefund employees’ health benefits is keeping the post office in the red. Congress in 2006 adopted the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act which forced the USPS—which does not receive money from the federal budget—to prefund its health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years.   read more

The Pentagon paid $5.4 million from 2011 to 2014 to NFL teams for various kinds of military appreciation programs. For example, the New York Jets, whose home field is actually in suburban New Jersey, received $377,000 from the Department of Defense and the New Jersey National Guard to put on military appreciation days highlighting “Hometown Heroes.”   read more

Twitter is seeking to give its users more information about the number of times it is asked to divulge information about its users. Twitter sued, claiming constitutional protections of free speech should allow it to provide actual numbers, instead of a broad range. The government is arguing that those aren’t really rules, they’re more like guidelines. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers appears to be taking the attitude that if it looks like a rule and smells like a rule, it’s a rule.   read more

Clinton has spent decades, both in her own career and as First Lady during Bill Clinton’s presidency, forging strong relationships with financial industry executives. She has maintained these ties despite recent efforts to portray herself as a populist candidate. Of the six most generous donors to her political career, four are Wall Street firms: Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley. A fifth is DLA Piper, a law firm that represents big banks.   read more

A federal appeals court has ruled that law enforcement agencies may access tracking information on cell phones without a warrant. In a 9-2 vote, the court said that mobile phone users should have no expectation of privacy. “Cell users know that they must transmit signals to cell towers within range..." Judge Frank Hull wrote.   read more

How did Lockheed Martin and other huge corporations such as Boeing and General Dynamics qualify for contracts set aside for businesses of that size? At least partly due to the misconception that a small business acquired by a giant corporation may keep its status for several years. That misconception starts at the top.   read more

The United States, alone among developed nations, requires its citizens and permanent residents to file tax returns regardless of where they live or where their income is earned. Such returns became more essential last year, when the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act went into effect. That law requires foreign financial institutions to report account information for U.S. citizens and permanent residents to the U.S. government.   read more

An investigation of Ohio universities by an investigative reporting class at the University of Cincinnati found that many of their fellow students had no idea that a portion of their fees went to subsidizing college athletics. Academic spending per student dropped 24% at Cincinnati from 2005 to 2013. Meanwhile, the school is spending $86 million to renovate its football stadium.   read more

The closure of mental hospitals four decades ago was supposed to have been accompanied by increased funding for community-based care. Most of the money was never appropriated, leaving many of the mentally ill on the streets, where police deal with the symptoms of the problem without being able to provide a cure. Studies have shown that those with mental health issues can be kept out of jails if they’re monitored.   read more

The Pentagon inspector general’s office is about to release a report that some members of the armed services and civilian workers had charges made at casinos and at businesses offering escort services in Atlantic City and Las Vegas. A Pentagon official told Politico that it’s possible the department may not have paid the charges because those issued DoD credit cards pay their monthly bills and then request reimbursement.   read more

Chicago is a diverse city with a population is almost evenly divided between African-Americans (33%), whites (32%) and Latinos (29%). But Chicago’s neighborhoods are highly segregated, according to Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com. His analysis shows that while the city as a whole is diverse, the average resident is much less likely to live in a neighborhood with members of another ethnic group, with only 36% likely to do so.   read more

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) revealed heavy alcohol use within the previous month among full-time employees was most likely to occur among miners, with 17.5% having done so, followed by those in construction, accommodations and food service, arts, entertainment and recreation, and utilities industries. Health care and social assistance workers were least likely to be heavy drinkers, with only 4.4% of those workers doing so in the previous month.   read more

Toktogulov began working for The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones News Service in the region, and he covered the overthrow of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in April 2010. In 2011, Toktogulov began serving as press secretary to Kyrgyzstan’s prime minister, Almazbek Atambayev. When Atambayev won election in October 2011, Toktogulov returned to being his press secretary. He held that job until late 2014, when he was appointed to the Washington position.   read more

The U.S. underwent its first Universal Periodic Review by the UN Human Rights Council in 2010. After the review, the government accepted 171 recommendations. Five years later, the U.S. has followed through on none of those recommendation, according to Human Rights Watch. “At the UN rights review, the U.S. has been strong on process and short on substance,” according to Antonio Ginatta, HRW’s U.S. advocacy director.   read more

A bill introduced by Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona that would allow Customs and Border Protection “access to federal lands for security activities” was passed out of committee this week. The change would allow the Border Patrol to roam on 10 million acres of federal lands and parks in Arizona and California and even construct radio towers in areas where no development is currently allowed.   read more

Financial institutions don't appear to be afraid of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The agency has “a dysfunctional bureaucracy” whose roots go back to congressional decisions, according to James Angel, a Georgetown University professor who specializes in financial regulation. “It will take more than one chair to turn things around,” Angel said.   read more