President Donald Trump invited the Dodgers to the White House. Many of their fans feared that the team, by accepting, would humiliate themselves and betray the team’s large Latino, Asian and African-American fan base. Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, along with co-owner Magic Johnson, have proposed a solution. Trump has promised that if he can keep the championship trophy, the Commissioner’s Trophy, he will end all seizures and deportations of immigrants.   read more

After arriving in the U.S. five years ago, Morales became a community leader on immigration issues in Iowa. He applied for asylum, explaining that he would be in danger if he were deported, but the petition was denied by an immigration judge. He sought help from Iowa politicians, including U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R), asking them to help him remain in the U.S. The efforts failed, and he was deported to Mexico on September 2, 2014. On April 5, Morales was shot to death.   read more

Judge Richard Griffin wrote that St. Johns’ ban “implies, without any evidence, that charities would be negligent in failing to conduct timely pickups of donated goods, in maintaining the appearance of the bins, etc.” Charity bins are a form of communication, said the court. “A passer-by who sees a donation bin may be motivated by it to research the charity to decide if he wants to donate [and] will gain new information about the social problem the charity seeks to remedy."   read more

There are some non-organic ingredients allowed in foods labeled organic. These are permitted because they are judged to be not harmful and there are no organic alternatives. Those ingredients are removed from the list after five years unless the National Organic Standards Board votes to retain them. But USDA changed its policy in 2013, allowing such ingredients to remain on the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances unless the board specifically votes to remove them.   read more

The group Women on 20s says Andrew Jackson is the perfect candidate to be replaced on paper money. Although he was a great military leader, Jackson was also a slave trader and responsible for the forced resettlement of Native Americans from the Southeast United States to Oklahoma on the “Trail of Tears.” Coincidentally, he also favored the use of gold and silver over paper money, which makes his presence on U.S. currency somewhat ironic.   read more

First built in the 1960s, Cheyenne Mountain was set up as a critical communications center deep inside Colorado's Rocky Mountains, where it was believed Air Force personnel could survive a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. The Air Force had since largely pulled out of Cheyenne Mountain, believing there was no longer a nuclear threat. Military officials haven't explained why they are now upgrading the complex, for which defense contractor Raytheon won a $700 million contract.   read more

Warrants were issued for Jonathan Bank, former CIA station chief in Islamabad, and John A. Rizzo, formerly the top CIA lawyer who legally authorized drone strikes inside Pakistan. Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad high court said both Americans should be tried for murder in connection with a December 2009 attack that reportedly killed at least three people. The legal move forced Bank to leave the country. He now works in the U.S. military’s intelligence wing.   read more

Tax cheats in the Dallas area who owe less than a $1 million need not worry about the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) knocking on their doors. Five years of budget cuts has forced the Dallas IRS office to forego pursuing individuals who owe between $100,000 and $999,000. “I have to say, sorry, we can’t get that money,” Richard Christian, supervisory revenue officer in the Dallas region, told The Washington Post. “Nobody’s ever going to knock on their door.”   read more

The first-ever murder trial to come out of the nation’s highest-security prison has prompted the judge in the case to assign jurors special anonymous identifiers as a security precaution. After a juror asked if it was safe to be involved with the trial, District Judge Robert Blackburn remarked: “Our security protocol is robust and comprehensive both inside and outside of court.” He added: “Without trying to sound immodest, our security record is impeccable.”   read more

Campbell was not participating in the Zombie Walk, but was taking photographs of the undead while standing in a crosswalk. Pocci, who is deaf, found his car blocked by the zombie walkers. When he began to get rattled by the strange scene in front of him, he blew his horn and tried to drive ahead. That angered the zombies, who jumped on his car and broke his windshield. Becoming even more concerned for his safety and that of his passengers, he inched forward, struck Campbell and ran her over.   read more

The last two officials to run the FDA’s dietary supplement programs previously worked for the NPA, a trade group that has tried very hard to convince Congress not to create tougher standards for supplement makers. Daniel Fabricant was a senior NPA executive before joining the FDA. He has returned to the NPA as CEO. “To have former officials in the supplement industry become the chief regulators of that industry at the FDA is like the fox guarding the hen house,” said Michael Jacobson.   read more

The National Institute on Drug Abuse acknowledged in an April report that “recent animal studies have shown that marijuana can kill certain cancer cells and reduce the size of others. Evidence from one animal study suggests that extracts from whole-plant marijuana can shrink one of the most serious types of brain tumors." The medical marijuana study follows other British research that showed a combination of six purified cannabinoids can kill cancerous cells found in leukemia patients.   read more

Gov. Brown’s order to cut water consumption by 25% will prove to be the proverbial drop in the bucket as 80% of the water in the state goes toward agricultural uses. “It is striking that his executive order refines restrictions to the urban sector that consumes only 20 percent of California’s water and leaves the agricultural sector, which consumes 80 percent of the water, untouched at least for the moment,” said Mark Hertsgaard. “You can’t leave 80 percent of the problem off the table.”   read more

The U.S. Postal Service just unveiled a stamp intended to honor poet Maya Angelou. It ended up quoting another writer’s work. The stamp features the quote: “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” The line was written, not by Angelou, but by Joan Walsh Anglund. USPS officials didn’t discover their mistake until the stamp was already printed and The Washington Post informed them of the error.   read more

From 2008 to 2009, Hale was a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. After Obama took office, Hale was named deputy to Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell and took over as acting envoy in June 2011 when Mitchell stepped down. Hale in 2013 was named ambassador to Lebanon and took over in Beirut on August 1 just as internal fighting in neighboring Syria was going on and the United States considered using military action in the country.   read more

The funding cuts have been pushed by Congressional conservatives who don’t like the idea of the IRS. “We deliberately lowered the IRS’ funding to a level to make you think twice about what you are doing and why,” Rep. Ander Crenshaw told the agency. “You don’t have a single dime to spare on anything frivolous... The IRS should focus on its core mission of...processing returns [and] providing customer service.” Those functions Crenshaw described are exactly those hurt by budget cuts.   read more

The lead plaintiff in the case, Carlo Licata, says Facebook has “secretly amassed the world’s largest privately held database of consumer biometrics data.” She's not the only person worried about the tagging feature. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minnesota) has criticized the practice, saying “your face is a conduit to an incredible amount of information about you.” He added that unlike a password, a face cannot be replaced or changed. “Unless you turn it off, it’s already been used on you."   read more