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

President Barack Obama has nominated Sylvia Mathews Burwell, who is currently director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), to be Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), replacing Kathleen Sebelius. Burwell was at OMB only about a year, being confirmed by the Senate on April 24, 2013. Her time there was busy, however, and included a government shutdown in October 2013. She also dealt with health policy issues during her tenure, including Medicare and Medicaid.   read more

The open fields of Afghanistan have become lethal for many of that nation’s children due to scores of unexploded ordinance left by U.S. military forces. Dozens of Afghan children have died after wandering into abandoned U.S. firing ranges filled with undetonated artillery shells, rockets and grenades. The U.N. says at least 70 civilians—62 of whom were children—have died since 2012 in and around U.S. or NATO firing ranges or bases.   read more

The British government spent more than $700 million stockpiling Tamiflu, while the U.S. paid $1.3 billion for a massive antiviral reserve. Yet the researchers found few if any benefits and, in fact, discovered negative side effects which were previously dismissed or never acknowledged. All the money spent by governments “have been thrown down the drain,” said lead investigator Carl Heneghan. This is because the drug firm withheld data from regulators, the medical community and the public.   read more

Nearly all of the top 10 most common jobs in America don’t pay well, according to new figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nine of the 10 largest occupations produced an average wage below the U.S. average of $46,440 annually. The lone exception among top jobs was registered nurses, who make an average of $68,910 per year. The average for the rest ranged from $18,880 for food preparation and serving workers to $34,000 for secretaries and administrative assistants   read more

Correctional facilities housed 356,268 inmates with severe mental illness as of 2012. Psychiatric hospitals, on the other hand, housed only 35,000 patients. Mentally ill Americans were routinely thrown together with prisoners until the mid-19th century, when reformer Dorothea Dix began a movement to create state hospitals for the mentally ill. The number of institutionalized mentally ill peaked at about 560,000 in the mid-1960s, but had dropped to 130,000 in 1980.   read more

The plaintiffs allege that Hearst made them work full-time hours while receiving no income. The lead plaintiff, Xuedan Wang, says she was at Harper’s Bazaar between 40 and 55 hours a week while performing a variety of duties that paid workers perform, like handling expense reports and managing other interns. Under Labor Department rules, unpaid interns can’t replace regular employees or do work that provides an “immediate advantage” to the business.   read more

The two highest-paid doctors listed in the Medicare data are being investigated by the government for improper billing. Salomon Melgen, the Florida ophthalmologist, and cardiologist Asad Qamar have both contributed heavily to the political campaigns of Democratic candidates in Florida.   read more

Law enforcement in Baltimore County, Maryland, say they closed 100% of their homicide cases last year—a remarkable feat for any jurisdiction, even one that has only 20 killings a year. North Richmond, an unincorporated stretch of Contra Costa County measuring only 1.5 square miles, recorded 19 homicides last year. Most went unsolved, with charges being filed in only five of the cases.   read more

Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Kurt Opsahl told U.S. News & World Report that the apology “illustrates the failures of the FISC’s one-sided court system,” which acts in response to legal requests from the Executive Branch, but will not accept filings from non-government parties.   read more

Obama’s plan has resulted in thousands of military items being taken off the State Department’s export-control list. Tehran is trying to obtain U.S. military parts for use in F-5 fighter jets and China wants radiation-hardened U.S. microchips for missiles. They might now simply be able to legally purchase them under the Obama initiative. The purpose is to allow U.S. arms firms to compete with foreign weapons merchants. Yet the U.S. already controls 80% of world arms sales.   read more

An investigation revealed that the FDA provides insufficient supervision when it comes to food safety. The agency has allowed possible conflicts of interest to jeopardize food safety evaluations and permitted companies for decades to put hundreds of chemicals in food without requiring FDA approval. Lax oversight has resulted in 275 chemicals to appear in foods due to the "GRAS" law, a loophole that allows chemicals to become part of the food system without being reported to the FDA.   read more

The State Department’s Inspector General (IG) says the agency can’t locate more than $6 billion in contracts, raising the specter of mismanagement by officials. The paperwork went missing during the past six years, during which Hillary Clinton ran the State Department as secretary of state for most of that time. The unaccounted funds represents a “significant financial risk" and “creates conditions conducive to fraud, as corrupt individuals may attempt to conceal evidence.”   read more

When an employee uses a company computer to order food through an online menu, they can open up a cyber door for intruders to slip through and gain access to the local network of servers. Vending machines can provide a backdoor into a secure network. Many machines contain minicomputers that allow the vendor to remotely check on the supplies of soft drinks. But that system can be used by hackers to infiltrate the computers of the company hosting the vending machines.   read more

Legal battles over taxpayer support for religious schools are taking place in both red and blue states. The ACLU is suing Hawaii over the Preschool Open Doors program, where it says tax dollars are being used to send kids to private parochial schools, with no oversight. A similar fight is underway in Georgia, where a state tax credit program results in public money going into scholarships so children can attend religious schools.   read more

Of the 64 teams that qualified for the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) tournament, UConn had the worst graduation rate. The NCAA reported last fall that only 8% of the UConn men’s team completed their programs and received their degrees within a six-year window. If Connecticut’s poor academic record had you rooting for Kentucky in the NCAA final, keep in mind that since 2006, Kentucky has fielded 13 different players who spent only one year at the school.   read more

At least nine states (Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Texas) have recently adopted secrecy laws that prevent the public or inmates from knowing the source of execution drugs. Their justification is that opponents of capital punishment might harass drug makers if their identities were revealed. Delaware, Nevada and Virginia have revealed that they buy their execution drugs from Cardinal Health, based in Dublin, Ohio.   read more