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

While at the UN, Friday was a strong advocate for remediation of the effects of global climate change for Grenada and other island nations. In 2009, Friday went to the World Bank, where he was a specialist in international climate policy. Given his experience working on climate change, it’s perhaps not surprising that Friday is one of the few diplomats who rides his bicycle to work in Washington.   read more

Ruben Maye Nsue Mangue presented his credentials as Equatorial Guinea’s ambassador to the United States to President Barack Obama on September 17, 2013. Equatorial Guinea has a reputation as having one of the world’s worst human rights record, one which Nsue has spent much of his career defending.   read more

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees cases in Alabama, Florida and Georgia, on Wednesday rejected what has become a routine practice by law enforcement: tracking a suspect’s location via their cell phone. These violations of privacy, according to critics, have gone on without police having to establish probable cause of criminal activity by individuals.   read more

Chicago Transit Authority surveillance cameras had recorded Martin in the act of using a gun to threaten subway riders in order to steal their cell phones. Using NeoFace, law enforcement compared the image of Martin’s face to the police department’s database of nearly 5 million criminal booking photos.   read more

In the case of the Minuteman III missile, which has served as the backbone of the nation’s land-based nuclear deterrent since the 1970s, GAO auditors found the administration left out all future funding for replacing these weapons, saying the program was “not yet defined.” As for a new bomber, the Air Force said those costs were “too sensitive” to include in the report.   read more

Presumably in response to the attacks, the U.S. hit suspected militants on June 11 and 12 in two different locations, Miramshah and Dande Darpa Khel. The latter was the site of a notorious U.S. drone strike on September 8, 2008 that killed 23 people, including eight children, as well as other strikes since then. The latest airstrikes reportedly killed a total of 16 people in North Waziristan.   read more

It isn’t enough to eat fruits and vegetables to maintain a healthy lifestyle. You have to make sure they’re “powerhouse” fruits and veggies (or PFVs). The highest scoring PFV was watercress, at 100, followed by Chinese cabbage (92), chard (89.3), beet green (87.1), spinach (86.4), chicory (73.4) and leaf lettuce (70.7).   read more

As of June 10, the date of the most recent shooting at Reynolds High School in Oregon, there were 37 recorded gunfire incidents at schools in the U.S., according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a pro-gun-control group. That averages to a shooting every 4.4 days. A little more than half of the incidents have taken place on college campuses (20), with the other 17 occurring at secondary schools.   read more

Cantor was the only Republican member of Congress who was Jewish, and had been the only Republican Jewish member of the House of Representatives since the retirement of Ben Gilman of New York in 2003. There are still 33 Jews in Congress; 12 in the Senate and 21 others in the House. However, they’re all Democrats or independents who caucus with them.   read more

The flights mark the first use of UAS above land by a company. Previously, the FAA had granted approval for commercial drones to fly only over Arctic waters for surveillance purposes. BP is using AeroVironment’s Puma AE drones to perform aerial surveys. The flights, which began on June 8, are intended to support the company’s efforts to maintain roads and pipelines that transport oil.   read more

It has been two decades since the cartographers at National Geographic had to make so many changes to its world map. In the early 1990s, the dissolution of the Soviet Union resulted in many lines being redrawn. This time, it was the retreat of the Arctic ice sheet that had mapmakers putting in overtime. This doesn’t come as a surprise to scientists who have recorded a 12% reduction in the ice sheet since the late 1970s.   read more

What started out as sideline entertainment has evolved into a competitive and physically punishing sport that now causes more catastrophic injuries in young women than any other sport in high school or college. And unlike sports such as football, many of those injuries are coming in practice. That cheerleading is not classified as a sport by many schools might account for that.   read more

The VA healthcare system has struggled to keep up with demand from two different veterans’ populations: Afghanistan and Iraq vets who are requiring more medical and other help than their predecessors; and Vietnam veterans seeking more assistance than before, including those diagnosed with ailments related to Agent Orange.   read more

The U.S. has 7.1 million millionaires, with China a distant second at 2.4 million. Together, that’s 9.5 million out of 16.3 million millionaires on the planet. China accounts for 19% of the world’s total population and the U.S. only 4.4%. The worldwide total of millionaires went up significantly from only two years ago, when there were 13.7 million.   read more

Three years ago, Scott said: “I believe the federal government ought to do their job. You know, secure our borders. Come up with an immigration policy that Americans understand and people who want to come to this country understand. But with regard to in-state tuition for illegal immigrants I completely oppose it.” That’s not all that Scott was opposed to. Last year he vetoed a bill that would have permitted young undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses.   read more

In Scialabba v. Cuellar de Osorio (pdf), a split court ruled 5-4 that children of immigrants cannot be given special priority by the immigration system just because they “age out” (meaning they turn 21 by the time bureaucrats get around to processing their parents’ visa application).   read more