Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) sent messages to all members of Congress terminating their positions, stating “Your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment.” All Democratic and independent members of Congress, as well as two Republicans, found themselves locked out of their offices after everything inside had been confiscated.   read more

Morrissey was allowed to enter into a work-release program, which permits him to continue his duties as a public official. He is allowed to drive his own car between the jail house and his legislative office. And if he doesn’t show up at the jail? “We understand that the legislature can run late into the night; but we will know where he is,” Henrico County Sheriff Michael Wade told the Dispatch. A monitoring device has been secured to Morrissey’s ankle.   read more

Last year, 3.93 million births were recorded in the country. That total represented a slight drop from 2012 but a much more significant one compared to 2007. The fertility rate has fallen 9% since then--an “all-time low,” according to the CDC. The agency also reported that birth rates reached record lows in 2013 among women under age 30. A demographic breakdown revealed that the number of births has dropped for whites, Hispanics and blacks since 2007.   read more

For the first time since 2009, Congress has moved to protect large swaths of undeveloped land throughout the Western United States. By folding several bills into a defense authorization plan, environmentalists were able to push through protection for national parks, wilderness areas and untamed rivers. More than 1 million acres of public lands will be set aside. However, part of the price for the conservation package was the approval of measures benefiting various industry interests.   read more

Signed into law by Governor John Kasich, the new program comes with $10 million in state funding, but school districts that don’t comply with the parochial mandate won’t see a dime of it. Schools cannot work with only a business and a nonprofit, the Ohio Department of Education says. If religion isn’t included, the mentoring program at a school won’t receive funding. “The faith-based organization is clearly at the heart of the vision of the governor,” said the department's Buddy Harris.   read more

A state law gives TransCanada the option until January 22, 2015 of using the power of eminent domain to gain right-of-way access to the lands of Nebraskans who oppose the pipeline that would run from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico carrying toxic tar sands oil for export. The law, the Nebraska Major Oil Pipeline Siting Act, is currently under legal challenge. A lower state court nullified the act, and now the Nebraska Supreme Court is reviewing the decision by a Lancaster County district judge.   read more

The new defense authorization bill requires the military to add a mental health professional to boards that determine discharge status. The legislation was inspired by Army veteran Kristofer Goldsmith, who served in Iraq and was discharged for “Misconduct: Serious Offense” after he attempted to commit suicide. Two months later, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. The discharge status made Goldsmith ineligible for GI Bill benefits and veterans medical care.   read more

Police mounted a camera on top of a utility pole near Vargas’ home and pointed it at his front door. They collected six weeks of footage, all without a warrant. Vargas was recorded shooting beer bottles in his backyard. Because he is an undocumented immigrant and thus prohibited from possessing firearms, police used the video to obtain a warrant to search the inside of Vargas’ house. He was then arrested for possessing guns and drugs.   read more

When Democrats controlled Congress in 2010, they tried to rein in some banking activities again under the Dodd-Frank law. The wide-ranging bill included a provision, the swaps push-out rule, which forced banks to relocate their risky derivatives trades to parts of their businesses that aren’t backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC). The four biggest U.S. banks, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank and Wells Fargo, have been working to get rid of this provision ever since.   read more

According to Victoria Bekiempis of Newsweek, “In New York City, some 90 percent of tenants in housing court don’t have attorneys. Approximately 90 percent of landlords do.” The New York Legal Assistance Group found that 96% of those people they’re able to represent either get to stay in their homes or at least are able to stave off eviction long enough to make other arrangements.   read more

More than 300 Brazilians came to the School of the Americas, located at Fort Benning, Georgia, where instructors “recommended interrogation techniques like torture, execution, blackmail and arresting the relatives of those being questioned,” according to a Pentagon manual released in 1996. Among their victims was Dilma Rousseff, who was a political activist in the 1960s and is now Brazil’s president.   read more

The report also showed that opioids are most often used in more rural areas. The states with the highest average prevalence of opioid use are Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Kentucky. more people in those regions suffer from diseases such as obesity and diabetes, two conditions that can result in needing pain medication.   read more

Sargsyan was selected as prime minister in April 2008 and was reappointed in 2012 and 2013. At first he was not a member of any political party, but he later joined the Republican Party of Armenia. In 2011, Sargsyan survived a financial crisis in his country when the inflation rate hit 9.4%, sending thousands of Armenians into poverty. Sargsyan was pushed out as prime minister in April 2014 when a pension reform plan he championed was found to be illegal under Armenian law.   read more

Give Altria, makers of Marlboro cigarettes and other tobacco products, credit for one thing: the company will prohibit its U.S. tobacco growers from hiring children under the age of 16. Human Rights Watch found that tobacco farming exposed children and others working in the fields to nicotine, toxic pesticides and extreme heat. The group said most children interviewed reported nausea, vomiting, headaches, and dizziness, which are signs of acute nicotine poisoning.   read more

The skills needed to operate this deadly weapon are familiar to many young sailors. The controller “looks a lot like a game controller, Xbox, PS4 or whatever.” Klunder added, “Any of you that can do Xbox or PS4, you’ll be good with this.” One advantage of this system to the Navy is cost. Firing a missile costs about $2 million, while the laser can do some of the same jobs for about 59 cents—the cost of electricity.   read more

As if there weren’t already enough insults out there to frustrate a left-handed person (scissors, computer mouses, the whole handwriting thing, etc), it turns out being left-hand dominant costs you earnings too. A new study (pdf) shows people who are right-handed make more money than lefties. The difference averages out to about 10% to 12%.   read more

In May 2000, Ziauddin was appointed ambassador to Italy with concurrent credentialing to Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was also his country’s representative to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Program and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. After that assignment, Ziauddin served as an ambassador-at-large for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina until being named to the Washington post.   read more