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

The Marshall Islands has asked the International Court of Justice to order nations with nuclear weapons to engage in talks to ban the weapons. The action is directed at the U.S., Russia, Britain, France and China, as well as India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea. The Marshall Islands contend the original five nuclear powers promised in 1968 to negotiate a nuclear disarmament treaty, which never came about.   read more

The York City School District developed financial difficulties two years ago, which led to the appointment of a local businessman, David Meckley, as the chief recovery officer. That put him in charge of most of the district’s financial matters. But now Judge Stephen P. Linebaugh turned control of the district to Meckley, who has advocated for converting all eight of the local public schools to charter schools that would be run by a for-profit company, Charter Schools USA.   read more

Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor found immigrants who Americanized their names earned more than those who kept their original names, regardless of what they did for a living. Changing first names to popular ones like John or William resulted in a wage boost of as much as 14%. The research was based on information from 3,353 male immigrants found on Ancestry.com. The immigrants were mostly from Italy, Russia, Poland or the Czech Republic.   read more

The National Security Agency (NSA) took full advantage of the holiday, issuing reports on 12 years of overreaches and mistakes by its employees at 1:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Because the released reports have been heavily censored, it is impossible to tell if any of the admissions by the NSA involved serious wrongdoing.   read more

Texas will not lack for influence in the U.S. House when the new Congress convenes in January. Despite representing a tiny percentage of Americans, white males from the Lone Star state will occupy six of the 21 committee chairmanships. Not bad, considering white Texan men account for only 3.35% of the U.S. population.   read more

Increases in the minimum wage in 21 states that will go into effect in the new year will mean that some Walmart employees in a third of the company’s U.S. stores will get raises. Don’t worry about Walmart though. A memo sent last month to store managers shows that the company will narrow the wage gap among its hourly employees, paying less for more skilled workers.   read more

In 2008, the EPA issued regulations that would allow some areas extra time to comply with a Clean Air Act-mandated reduction in the allowable amounts of ground-level ozone, which is a product of fossil fuel consumption. Ozone is hard on those with respiratory problems and has been linked to nervous system disorders and heart ailments.   read more

Similar to the ethically squishy subprime home loan mess, financial institutions are offering loans to people who put up their cars as collateral at rates ranging from 80% to 500% per year. More than 1.1 million American households used car title loans last year.   read more

The Obama administration sought to expand protections provided under the 1974 Fair Labor Standards Act (pdf) (FLSA), which included an exemption for home care workers who provide “care and fellowship” to their clients. Congress was unwilling to amend the FLSA to provide minimum wages to those workers, so the Labor Department attempted to do it by way of a regulation.   read more

Investigators from the state prosecutor’s office in Azerbaijan raided the Baku offices of Radio Free Europe (RFE), confiscating computers and other items and ordering the office closed. Staff members were held incommunicado during the December 26 raid. Three weeks ago, Khadija Ismayilova, an investigative journalist and contributor to U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, was jailed in Baku.   read more

Maj. Jason Brezler alerted his superior officers to the presence of an Afghan police chief, Sarwar Jan, with ties to the Taliban at Forward Operating Base Delhi. Jan kept an entourage of young male sex slaves, one of whom in August 2012 opened fire on Marines at the base, killing three and wounding one. Brezler and another Marine, Captain Andrew Terrell, had previously expelled Jan from an Afghan village for keeping the sex slaves.   read more

Dinan has worked as an assistant U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., since July 1989, most recently as chief of the criminal division. He specialized in gangs, organized crime and drug trafficking.   read more

Crime data for Denver, the hub of legal pot sales in the state, shows murders, assaults, rapes, burglaries and other violent crimes declined during the first three months of the year, compared with the same period for 2013. Homicides went down from 17 to 8 (a 53% drop), automobile break-ins from 2,317 to 1,477 (down 36%) and sexual assaults from 110 to 95 (down 14%). Overall, violent and property crimes dropped more than 10% from last year to this year during the first quarter.   read more

Jeff Fox wrote in his State of the Net blog that companies routinely reveal passwords in plain text while emailing customers. This can happen when a user forgets a password and asks for it to be sent to him or her. Among those who Fox has caught doing this are AT&T, The New York Times, Macy’s and Princess Cruises. Users often use the same password for more than one account, so exposure on an online shopping service could lead to a hacker accessing a bank account.   read more

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced the number of people killed in passenger vehicles dropped by 3% to 21,132. That total, according to the NHTSA, was the lowest on record going back to 1975. The data for last year also showed a 3.1% decline in overall highway deaths from 2012 and nearly a 25% drop since 2004.   read more

Raji’s appointment to Stockholm initially stirred excitement in India and among the Indian-American community. Because her last name connotes royalty in Sanskrit-related languages, it was thought that she was of Indian heritage. But when it was announced that she’d been born in Tehran, Indian publications had to backtrack. Although Raji has supported Iranian-American cultural projects, she has never corrected media accounts referring to her as Indian-American.   read more