Trump said, “We need people to be afraid. Right now many Americans are surprised when protestors are killed, but they’ll get used to it.” Trump did add one suggestion: “Try not to kill white people. That gets too much attention. Stick to protestors of other colors.”   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

In one area of Montana the distance to get to a polling place is so far that three tribes have filed a lawsuit to have voting offices set up within closer proximity to voters. In another example, the Alaskan village of Kasigluk is separated by a river that has no bridge, and voters on one side have no more than a couple hours to vote before the ballot equipment is removed and packed onto a boat for shipment to the other side, where voting hours are also be curtailed.   read more

Thousands of federal government employees are armed with handguns and even semiautomatic and automatic weapons as part of their jobs for agencies that are not traditional law enforcement operations. These gun-toting civil servants include those performing missions that involve Social Security, delivering the mail, predicting the weather, and overseeing railroad pensions. Others authorized to carry firearms conduct audits for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.   read more

The testing revealed that the technologies were better at recognizing photos of older individuals than younger ones, “suggesting that we become steadily easier to recognize using facial recognition software, and more distinguishable from our contemporaries, as we age.” Such software is used to root out duplicates in official documents such as driver’s licenses and passports, access control, social media tagging and criminal investigations.   read more

The webpage for Janssen’s Duragesic (fentanyl) drug says that the medication “is a strong prescription pain medication for moderate to severe chronic pain that can provide long-lasting relief from persistent pain.” It makes no mention on the page about use being recommended for or restricted to cancer patients.   read more

When Colorado legalized recreational marijuana, critics of the idea warned it would lead to more crime throughout the state. But the impact has been just the opposite so far in the state’s largest city, which has seen violent crime go down. 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.   read more