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

Machen claimed the omitted information uncovered so far was “minimal in quantity” and had, in most cases, already been provided to the defense through other means. But some defense attorneys were upset at the news and wondered just how big a problem the district has on its hands. They also questioned why prosecutors, as opposed to defense attorneys, are the ones who are deciding whether or not the missing data would have had an impact on the cases.   read more

“Those sentenced to death are almost three times as likely to see their death sentence overturned on appeal and to be resentenced to a lesser penalty than they are to be executed,” wrote the authors. “Regardless of one’s view of the death penalty in principle, these numbers raise questions about how the death penalty is applied in practice. The wide differences across states in the odds of carrying out a death sentence are potentially troubling from an equal protection standpoint."   read more

Defense officials have met privately with members of Congress to inform them about the huge loss. “We have to assume it’s completely compromised and gone,” said a legislative aide. The Shiite Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, “have taken over many Yemeni military bases in the northern part of the country, including some in Sana’a that were home to U.S.-trained counter-terrorism units. Other bases have been overrun by fighters from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” wrote the Post.   read more

Inside S&P 500 companies, women of color make up 0.4% of CEOs, according to ThinkProgress. If you’re a Latina woman, there’s no one who looks like you in the top job—no S&P 500 company has a Latina chief executive. White women do much better than women of color; they make up 4.4% of CEOs. That’s still not saying much—they’re 31% of the workforce in general. Women of color hold just 3.1% of all board seats for S&P 500 companies, and 3.9% of all executive positions.   read more

Iberdrola, Spain’s largest electricity provider but hardly a name familiar to most Americans, has raked in more than $2 billion—billion with a “b”—from the U.S. Treasury by investing in American power plants and renewable forms of energy, such as wind farms, according to a report from Good Jobs First. The funds come via a provision in the 2009 Recovery Act that allows companies to take cash payments in lieu of tax credits for some investments.   read more

Schock, 33, has been accused of spending taxpayer funds on redesigning his office with a “Downton Abbey” theme, claiming reimbursement for more miles than his car had been driven, paying for a personal photographer out of congressional office funds and other misspending. Prior to his downfall, Schock was known by some as the nation’s “fittest congressman” after he posed shirtless for Men’s Health. Back in 1792, John Brown of Kentucky resigned from the House in 1792 at the age of 35.   read more

Researchers examined data from nearly 3,500 volunteers, all in their 30s, whose development has been closely watched since they were babies. They found those who were breastfed for a year or more had IQ test scores that were 3.76 points higher than those who were breast-fed for less than one month. Furthermore, those who were breastfed the longest remained in school longer and had monthly salaries that were about a third higher.   read more

A radiation isotope identifier is used by U.S. Customs to determine if there are nuclear materials on trains and trucks coming into the U.S. But out of 222 rail shipments requiring such examination that went through six ports, 160 of the shipments, or 72% of the total, were not checked. Customs agents “may have failed to require examinations of rail shipments that were at a higher risk to contain...weapons of mass destruction [and] potential instruments of terrorism" from entering the U.S.   read more

Lawmakers have yet to embrace legislation that would allow service members to opt out of arbitration because the financial industry, which contributes millions to members of Congress, has lobbied hard to prevent new laws from being adopted. Some believe that if members of the armed forces get relief from onerous arbitration clauses, members of the general public will realize that they too are getting the short end of the stick when it comes to dealing with big corporations.   read more

The three-inch-long minnow went from being nearly extinct in 1993, when biologists documented fewer than a thousand of the chubs, to about 140,000 today. Paul Henson, Oregon supervisor for the FWS, called the fish’s recovery “a significant milestone, not only for conservation in Oregon but for conservation in the whole country. The chub illustrates that you can recover species and get them off the list." The agency intends to continue monitoring the Oregon chub for the next nine years.   read more

The tax-free bonds were first used to make it easier for cities and counties to finance important infrastructure projects, roads or bridges. But once franchise owners started threatening to leave communities if taxpayers didn’t build them new sporting venues, lawmakers began using the special bonds to finance some of the enormous costs associated with stadium projects. In some cases, the bonds have been proposed to absorb nearly 50% of a new stadium price tag.   read more

Milke is suing the former detective who handled her case—as well as other law enforcement officials—claiming they wrongly helped put her away for the 1989 killing of her son, Christopher. The actual killers of Milke’s son, Jim Styers and Roger Scott, were friends of Milke. They were tried and convicted and are on death row for shooting the little boy execution-style in the desert. Arizona prosecutors were still hoping to retry Milke, who was being monitored with an electronic ankle bracelet.   read more

The incident baffled investigators because the deadly bacterium managed to travel from an ultra-secure research lab to the hospital, in a separate building five minutes away. The CDC reported that “it's unlikely there is any threat to the general population” from the bioterror bacterium. But one outside review claimed that “too few tests were done...to detect what can be an elusive bacterium.” It can hide in the human body for years and can produce a disease that has a 50% fatality rate.   read more

“The C.I.A.’s contribution to Qaeda’s bottom line,” Rosenberg wrote, “was just another in a long list of examples of how the United States, largely because of poor oversight and loose financial controls, has sometimes inadvertently financed the very militants it is fighting.” The CIA contribution to the ransom payment was discovered in letters written to Osama bin Laden and obtained by the Navy SEALs who stormed his compound in 2011 and killed the al Qaeda leader.   read more

The endorsement is “a major coup for the Kraft Foods Group,” said the Times, despite Kraft being "a frequent target of advocates for better children’s nutrition, who contend that many of its products [have] too much fat, sodium, sugar...and preservatives.” Said Andy Bellatti: “You would think an organization that has come under fire for so many years for its relations with food companies might pick something other than a highly processed cheese product for its first endorsement."   read more

The U.S. was responsible for one-third of all defense exports and “was the main beneficiary of growth,” IHS reported. Saudi Arabia surpassed India to become the largest defense market for U.S. weapons makers, as the oil sheikdom increased its defense imports 54% from 2013 to 2014. This year is expected to be another strong year for Saudi imports, rising another 52% to $9.8 billion. “One out of every seven dollars spent on defense imports in 2015 will be spent by Saudi Arabia,” reported IHS.   read more