President Donald Trump gleefully announced that, under his direction, U.S. military troops had swooped down on the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento and kidnapped California Governor Gavin Newsom. “We’re charging Newscum with fraud.” When a reporter asked for specifics about the fraud charges, Trump pointed to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi, clearly taken by surprise, said, “We’re looking into it and will let you know the details as soon as we’ve created them.”   read more

The numbers are eye opening: Tokyo has 13.4 million residents, but only 1,697 are homeless. Compare that to New York, where there are 56,000 homeless. "Income inequality is a massive and growing problem in the U.S., while Japan has historically had one of the lowest rates of inequality among developed countries,” wrote Scott Keyes. In Japan, government provides more social services to help the homeless than the U.S. does, and families have a strong sense of duty to relatives in need.   read more

Federal law enforcement has increasingly used a key provision of the Patriot Act to pry into people’s lives without having to tell them. This practice has been justified under the guise of counterterrorism, but government statistics show that less than 1% of all “sneak and peek” actions involve suspected terrorists. Only 51 such requests during 2013 were for terrorism out of 11,129 total requests that year. The biggest reason for the warrants was to investigate drug crimes.   read more

Of the 2,379 Pakistani drone fatalities, only 704 could be identified. Of those, only 295 were identified as members of an armed group inside Pakistan. “Almost 30% are not even linked to a specific group,” Jack Serle reported. “Only 84 are identified as members of al Qaeda – less than 4% of the total number of people killed.” These findings “demonstrate the continuing complete lack of transparency surrounding U.S. drone operations,” said Mustafa Qadri.   read more

State Rep. Stacy Abrams (D) led an effort to register those who've never voted before, mostly minorities, and added about 90,000 people to the rolls. About 40,000 of those registrations have been lost. Georgia’s top election official, Brian Kemp, has been unhelpful with the missing registrations. “We asked the Secretary of State to meet with us. We wanted to understand if we were doing something wrong, or if there was another database... But he refused...” said Abrams.   read more

The wealthy, often criticized for hogging too much of the nation’s wealth, also are disproportionate contributors to global warming. A new study from the Center for Global Development says the richest 2% of Americans are responsible for producing four times as much greenhouse gas emissions per person—53.5 metric tons of CO2 a year—as the bottom 20% of the population, which generates about 12.5 metric tons per person.   read more

After Roger Hoeppner refused to pay $80,000 to the city and come out of his house after 24 deputies showed up, the department sent in its military surplus vehicle, known as the MARV (Marathon County Response Vehicle). Hoeppner agreed to come out once he saw the MARV, and later paid the money he owed. “People may not always understand why, but an armored vehicle is almost a necessity now,” said Sheriff's Captain Greg Bean.   read more

Anti-abortionists have tried in several states to up the stakes in the fight to end women’s right to control their bodies by pushing new laws that would define human life as beginning at conception. After several defeats, they might finally succeed next month in North Dakota. However the wording of the amendment doesn’t mention abortion. Instead, it reads: “The inalienable right to life of every human being at any stage of development must be recognized and protected.”   read more

The U.S. nuclear weapons complex is greatly expanding the production of fissile cores to levels not seen since the end of the Cold War three decades ago. The dramatic increase comes as part of a long-term billion-dollar effort to renew the nuclear arsenal under President Barack Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize largely because of his promise to greatly reduce the nation’s stockpile of these weapons—a promise he has not kept.   read more

After making mortgage payments on her condo for 16 years, she refinanced with a “pick-a-payment” loan through World Savings. The next day, Kilgore realized she’d agreed to a bad loan and tried to get it rescinded, but World Savings wouldn’t agree. Kilgore’s loan was eventually acquired by Wells Fargo and was kicked out of her condo. That meant that Kilgore was unable to receive subsidies to run the oxygen concentrator she needed to breathe because she didn’t have a permanent address.   read more

University of Wisconsin researchers are planning to take newborns from their mothers, keep them isolated for six weeks except for feeding and cleaning, then put them with one other six-week-old and torture the pair with live snakes and intruders. If those newborns were human, people would be going to jail. Instead the subjects are rhesus monkeys, chosen because they’ll act and feel pretty much like a human would when subjected to those stresses.   read more

Clancy moved up to special agent in charge of presidential protection in February 2009 when Barack Obama assumed office. Under his watch, in November 2009, a couple famously crashed a White House dinner honoring Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Clancy offered his resignation to then-Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan because of the security breach, but Sullivan declined to accept it.   read more

The United States looks a little better if you add in the number of senators. Twenty of the 100 senators are women, giving the U.S. 18.6% female representation overall. But adding in upper chambers for all legislatures allows Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Ireland and Bahrain to vault over the United States in the rankings and puts 103 nations ahead of the United States on the list.   read more

Sherri Ybarra isn’t clear on how long she’s been married, figured she’d be able to get a Ph.D. in education in one semester and hasn’t voted in a general election since moving to Idaho 18 years ago. But she has a good chance of being elected the state’s superintendent of schools. Ybarra has also plagiarized material from the website of her competitor and has claimed endorsements from elected officials who are not supporting her.   read more

A woman Chicago police detectives accused of killing her son was jailed for almost two years before being freed because a defense attorney learned the defendant had been in prison at the time of her son’s death. Yesenia Santiago was accused by detectives Carlos Cortez and Roger Sandoval of killing her son Ismael Santana in 2007. They questioned her for 11 hours, feeding her information about the crime, then read Santiago her Miranda rights and videotaped her making a “confession.”   read more

Verma was appointed assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs under Hillary Clinton in 2009. His appointment appeared to violate Obama’s self-imposed ban on putting former lobbyists in the government as Verma had lobbied the State Department on behalf of the U.S.-India Business Council. Nonetheless, he was confirmed in the post and subsequently led negotiations with Congress on Iran sanctions and the New START treaty.   read more

In 2000 Alonzo was named senior vice president of the National Foreign Trade Council, a post she held for seven years. Alonzo jumped at the chance to return to her hometown in 2007 when she was offered the post of vice president for global public policy and corporate affairs for Kraft Foods. She handled issues of tariffs; tax and trade; and sustainability. While at Kraft, Alonzo in 2010 was named chair of the World Cocoa Foundation.   read more