The majority of voters did not vote for Donald Trump for president; the majority of voters did not vote for Republican candidates for the Senate; and fewer than 51% of voters cast their ballots for Republican candidates for the House of Representatives. The Republican Party now controls the White House, both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, no matter how that came to be. I believe it is worth bearing in mind that a majority of U.S. citizens did not support the Republican winners.   read more

This year’s five Oscar nominees for Best Animated Feature have something unusual in common: in none of them is the young protagonist raised by his or her birth mother. The target audience for all of the nominees (even the more sophisticated Princess Kaguya) is children.   read more

With the encouragement of U.S. defense contractors, the Obama administration has, for the first time, decided to allow the export of armed drones to countries other than the United Kingdom. The foreign governments next in line to acquire weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles weren't identified. But it was reported that “allied nations from Italy to Turkey to the Persian Gulf region” have wanted to get their hands on drones that can attack targets.   read more

If the previous six years is any indication, it is unlikely any executives of financial institutions will be charged. The Obama administration has consistently opted for civil, not criminal, punishment of major banks for their alleged wrongdoing. Huge settlements have been reached between Holder’s department and Wall Street firms but there have been no admissions of guilt or executives facing criminal charges. Holder said that his prosecutors haven’t found any smoking guns.   read more

Burger King and Canadian doughnut company Tim Hortons have merged. The upshot for Burger King is it is no longer a U.S.-based business. By renouncing its U.S. citizenship, Burger King stands to avoid paying between $400 million and $1.2 billion in U.S. taxes over the next four years. But moving to Canada won’t mean it is pulling its lucrative franchises from the U.S., where it currently has 7,155 restaurants. It will still make more than $8 billion annually in sales from American consumers.   read more

A breakthrough in treating hepatitis C costs almost 300 times more in the U.S. than it does in India, a disparity made all the more outrageous by the fact that the U.S. government helped fund the research for the drug. The cost to produce it is in the range of $68 to $136. “In other words, the U.S. price-cost markup is roughly 1,000-to-1!” said Jeffrey Sachs. Sovaldi was developed with grants from the National Institutes of Health and support from the Department of Veterans Affairs.   read more

The incidents have reminded some of Ferguson, Missouri, last summer, when a white officer shot and killed an unarmed African American, Michael Brown. However in the Pasco case, a special investigative unit, the county coroner and the FBI are looking into the shooting. Pasco’s population is 56% Hispanic, but only 14 of the 68 officers are Hispanic. The city council has one Latino member, and the five-member school board has no Latinos.   read more

Federal authorities are racing against time. The remaining suspects in the shooting of four African Americans are currently in their 80s and 90s. The murders took place on July 25, 1946 at the Moore’s Ford Bridge, where two black couples were forced out of a car, tied up and shot 60 times by a white mob. A new report by the Equal Justice Initiative says the state of Georgia had more lynchings, 586, from 1877 to 1950 than any other state.   read more

The agency’s diversity statistics show blacks made up only 4.7% of the special agents in 2012, down from 5.6% in 1997. FBI Director Comey says he has been trying to hire more persons of color for the FBI. He also has been requiring all new agents and analysts to study how the Bureau treated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover worked to destroy King’s credibility to help damage the civil rights movement.   read more

Benefits for those with the lowest levels of income, such as unemployed single mothers with children, have been reduced by about 30%. Many of these cuts went into effect as part of President Clinton’s effort to “end welfare as we know it.” “Most observers would think that the government should support those who have the lowest incomes the most,” wrote Moffitt. “But that is not the case.” The assumption is, he added: “If you’re not working, the interpretation is that you’re not trying.”   read more

Big corporations, those with 500 or more workers, employ 51.6% of U.S. workers according to the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. That number has gone up since 2004, when 49.1% of Americans worked for large companies. The numbers for 2012 showed about 60 million Americans work for “large enterprises,” while 20.4 million count on mom-and-pop businesses, or what the Census Bureau calls “very small enterprises,” with 20 or fewer workers.   read more

An analysis of mercury in tuna over the past half century revealed the heavy metal’s levels have increased 3.8% annually. The data reflects the increasing level of mercury in ocean fish, reaching the level—0.3 parts per million—the EPA considers unsafe for human consumption because of the neurotoxin’s effect on the brain and nervous system. Children can be born with elevated amounts of mercury in their blood, which can result in a “significant” I.Q. deficit, according to the report.   read more

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq said U.S. and coalition strikes have killed 6,000 ISIS fighters. “That no civilians could be among that figure strikes observers and even military officials as all but impossible,” wrote Yousef. Particularly with 2,300 strikes delivering 8,200 missiles. “Not only does it reinforce the view that the lives of ordinary Iraqis and Syrians...do not matter, it flies in the face of the military’s own recommendations," wrote Gregory and Edney-Browne.   read more

SIGAR found serious mechanical problems with the costly incinerators. One operating base received them from the contractor two years late and requiring $1 million in repairs. The inspectors also found the incinerators too expensive to use—some cost a million dollars a year to operate. So commanders decided to continue to use the burn pits to dispose of the 440 tons of waste produced each day, despite the health risks of doing so—and despite being told by Congress to stop the practice.   read more

The CIA never explained why it was funding the project. But Robock became suspicious after two CIA consultants contacted him inquiring about the possibility of another country gaining control of the weather. “They said: ‘We are working for the CIA and we’d like to know if some other country was controlling our climate, would we be able to detect it?’ I think they were also thinking in the back of their minds: ‘If we wanted to control somebody else’s climate could they detect it?’”   read more

Two bills would allow the operators of most chemical storage tanks to avoid tougher new standards that were created following the 2014 spill into the Elk River by a facility operated by Freedom Industries. In the Senate, lawmakers are reviewing a plan to eliminate drinking water protections for the Kanwaha River, into which the Elk River flows. The same measure would also get rid of the DEP’s policy of enforcing the state’s drinking water standards on all rivers and streams across the state,   read more

The remark got Rushaid arrested and subsequently tried by the state security court for “acts harmful to the country’s relations with a friendly nation.” He was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Rushaid’s attorney called the verdict the “death for freedom of expression. The government is to blame.” Another Brotherhood member said the purpose of the security court is to try “the most heinous crimes against the country, not for...[expressing] an opinion on Facebook."   read more