President Donald Trump invited the Dodgers to the White House. Many of their fans feared that the team, by accepting, would humiliate themselves and betray the team’s large Latino, Asian and African-American fan base. Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, along with co-owner Magic Johnson, have proposed a solution. Trump has promised that if he can keep the championship trophy, the Commissioner’s Trophy, he will end all seizures and deportations of immigrants.   read more

Cheryl MacKenzie, who led the investigation, said another such blowout is not out of the question. “Although there have been regulatory improvements since the accident, the effective management of safety critical elements has yet to be established,” MacKenzie said. “This results in potential safety gaps in U.S. offshore operations and leaves open the possibility of another similar catastrophic accident.”   read more

The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a plan last week that would cut carbon emissions from electricity production by 30% over the next 15 years. The proposal drew howls of protest from those who said it would raise electric rates and kill jobs. However, 10 states have already cut their plant emissions by that much and there have been few economic consequences.   read more

In 2009, Julián ran again for mayor, and this time he won. At 35, he was the youngest mayor of a Top-50 U.S. city. He focused on education during his tenure, establishing a program to give college guidance to San Antonio high school students and championing a sales-tax increase to fund a pre-kindergarten school program. Castro also helped push through an ordinance banning discrimination against members of the LGBT community. He was re-elected twice, in 2011 and 2013, by huge margins.   read more

Lawyers with OSC say they stopped the VA recently from taking disciplinary actions against three VA whistleblowers. One case involved an employee who hadn’t been disciplined during 20 years of service, but was now facing a 30-day suspension without pay for reporting on the use of patient restraints in violation of VA rules and procedures.   read more

Anderson moved to New York as the Irish ambassador to the United Nations, serving until taking the Washington post. Anderson is a frequent lecturer at U.S. universities. Since becoming ambassador to the United States, Anderson has pushed for immigration reform. There are as many as 50,000 undocumented Irish in the U.S.   read more

In November, a delegation from 9/11 Families United For Justice Against Terrorism met with Goodlatte aide Zachary Somers. Somers acted bored and dismissive, and then said his boss objected to the legislation. When members of the group later met with Goodlatte himself, the Congressman asked one survivor, who spoke of her father’s last words, “Weren’t you compensated for that?” The survivor, an adult child of a victim, had not been paid a settlement.   read more

In terms of total profits of U.S. subsidiaries held overseas, the leaders are Netherlands at $127 billion, Bermuda with $94 billion and Ireland at $87 billion. U.S. companies have hidden so much of their profits in foreign bank accounts that the sums in question are more than the entire gross domestic products of some of these tax-haven nations.   read more

According to a report from the Internal Revenue Service, 32,902 people whose “expanded income” exceeded $200,000 paid no income tax for 2011, the most recent year for which such figures are available. The most common reasons filers escaped having to pay tax was having their income come from tax-exempt sources, such as municipal bonds, or having sufficient medical and dental expenses to offset their income.   read more

Other findings were that Babauta pressured an employee to allow him to live rent-free in a cottage on the employee’s property, that he had an underling prepare a PowerPoint presentation for his daughter’s homework and that he had an employee pick up his girlfriend at the airport. OIA employees also told investigators that Babouta felt uncomfortable with older staffers, asking them when they would quit, and, upon his arrival, asking an employee, “how do I get rid of the old people?”   read more

John P. Carlin was confirmed as head of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) by the U.S. Senate on April 1, 2014. He had filled the post in an acting capacity since March 8, 2013, when then-National Security Division head Jill Monaco moved to the White House as assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism..   read more

Aas was born May 25, 1955. He is from the Tøyen neighborhood in Oslo and is the son of a construction worker. He was initially ticketed for vocational school, but was able to talk his way into a more academic setting. Aas joined the foreign ministry in 1983. In 2008, Aas won his first posting as an ambassador, to Afghanistan. Much of his work there involved seeing that Norway’s funding for school construction was put to good use.   read more

The House of Representatives passed an amendment that would stop enforcement of federal marijuana laws against therapeutic use in states where it’s legal.The DEA appears to be trying to get in its last licks before the proposal is approved by the Senate. DEA agents in Massachusetts have been coming to the offices and homes of doctors affiliated with marijuana dispensaries.   read more

Wheeler, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, developed an impressive reputation for his medical knowledge and skills—and for consistently standing in the way of patients winning their cases against their employers. In its letter dated June 2, the Labor Department noted how the media investigation found Wheeler “had never once, in more than 3,400 X-ray readings, interpreted an X-ray as positive for complicated pneumoconiosis [or black lung].”   read more

“Let’s be frank,” the man who has ruled Belarus for 20 years was quoted as saying. “Serfdom” was exactly what he wanted, adding: “You can’t quit and you can’t get a different job.” Belarus is a signatory of the 1957 Abolition of Forced Labor. But this probably doesn’t mean much to Lukashenko, a former Communist Party member who ran collective farms in the Soviet Union.   read more

In 2006, Lukashenko was reelected president with the announced support of 82.6% of voters. The campaign of his opponent, Aleksandr Milinkevich, was so severely restricted by the government that he was reduced to surreptitiously distributing fliers that gave a phone number where he could be reached for an hour. Lukashenko was reelected again in December 2010. After the election was over, he had five of the nine candidates who ran against him arrested.   read more

In 1998 she was made chairperson of that Malta’s housing authority, serving in that post for 10 years. She also became active in politics with the Nationalist Party, running in a district election under its auspices. In 2009, Micallef, with much fanfare, switched her political allegiance to the Labour Party at the behest of its leader Joseph Muscat, in an effort to woo Nationalist voters. Muscat, for whom Micallef served as an advisor for several years, is now Malta’s prime minister.   read more