In an attempt to end the war caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. President Donald Trump has offered to return Alaska to Russia in exchange for Russia pulling its troops from Eastern Ukraine. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin said he would agree to the proposal if Trump also returned Fort Ross and the Russian River in California, Russia sold Fort Ross to Mexican citizen John Sutter in 1841.   read more

The farmers took no action to incorporate Monsanto seeds into their crops, which became contaminated through the natural travel of the genetically-modified seeds from neighboring farms. This contamination occurs either from accidental seed-mixing or cross-pollination during harvest. The burden has been on the farmers to protect their crops by conducting genetic testing, establishing buffer zones, or simply giving up on planting the crop anymore.   read more

These days, the trees and shrubs surrounding the famed Massachusetts lake are producing leaves 18 days earlier during the spring than when Thoreau made his observation in the 1840s, according to biologists at Boston University who compared Thoreau’s unpublished notes on leaf-out times with five recent springs.   read more

For the first time, a federal judge has ruled that the government must make a correction in the application of its no-fly anti-terrorism policy, and take a former Stanford grad student off the list she was mistakenly put on nine years ago. The government has steadfastly refused, since the no-fly list was conjured up after the September 11, 2001, attacks, to say who is on the list, how they got there or how they can get off it.   read more

Each corrective ad will be prefaced by a statement that a federal court concluded that the companies “deliberately deceived the American public.” The statements will also say that smoking kills more people than homicides, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes and alcohol combined, that “secondhand smoke kills over 38,000 Americans a year,” that the industry “intentionally designed cigarettes to make them more addictive,” and that nicotine “changes the brain,” making it harder to quit.   read more

The lawsuit alleges that HMA set and enforced unrealistically high ER-to-hospital admission goals, paying bonuses to doctors with high admission rates and terminating physicians, as well as hospital CEOs and ER medical directors, who did not meet their targets. It further states that Newsome was personally involved in running the scheme.   read more

Prior to the 2012 election, Republicans tried to eliminate the choice of “None of these candidates,” which has been printed on Nevada ballots since 1975. The GOP figured voters unhappy with Obama, but not entirely sold on Romney, would be more likely to support the GOP’s candidate if the “none” option was removed.   read more

Known as TECS, CBP uses it to screen people at border checkpoints, such as comparing names against terrorist watch-lists. ICE relies on it to manage case files for investigations into money laundering, online pornography and other criminal actions. But the technology behind TECS is said to be obsolete.   read more

The online review website Yelp has been ordered by a court in Virginia to reveal the identities of individuals who posted negative reviews of a carpet cleaning company that questioned whether the reviewers were really customers. Hadeed Carpet Cleaning succeeded because Virginia law authorizes the revealing of anonymous Internet users’ real identity as long as those seeking the information can pass a six-step legal test.   read more

The anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List wanted to put up a billboard criticizing Democratic U.S. Representative Steven Driehaus for supporting the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or Obamacare). They wanted to “shame” Driehaus for his decision, contending that a vote for Obamacare amounted to a vote for taxpayer-funded abortions. However, the ACA states abortions must be paid for through non-ACA accounts. In addition, previously passed federal law prohibits taxpayer money from funding abortions.   read more

The Obama administration quietly sent a small team of soldiers, described as trainers and advisers, to Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, three months ago. Senior defense officials said they plan to expand the number of advisers later this year. Elite Special Operations teams already make occasional forays into the country to conduct hostage rescues and counter-terrorism raids. There are also regular U.S. drone flights over Somali territory to conduct surveillance and occasional air strikes.   read more

The focus on the pope, Mandela and Prince George demonstrated the rise of “celebrity journalism” in news coverage, Andrew Tyndall, the report’s publisher, told Inter Press Service. He added that “a minor celebrity like Oscar Pistorius (the South African track star accused of murdering his girlfriend) attracted more coverage (51 minutes) than all the rest of sub-Saharan Africa in the [11] months before Mandela’s death.”   read more

In Oklahoma, the Department of Corrections (DOC) has had to handle a 368% population rise in state prisons, from 7,000 in 1983 to more than 26,000 today. During this period, the state’s overall population only grew by 25%. But what’s not kept going up is the DOC’s budget for correctional officers, who number 300 fewer than a decade ago.   read more

Passed by Congress in 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) requires that all imported fish be accompanied by proof that the technology used to catch them does not kill or seriously injure marine mammals in excess of U.S. standards. Congress intended to protect dolphins and whales, American consumers concerned about them, and U.S. fishers’ whose costs are higher because they have to use mammal-safe technology.   read more

Ma’Lik Richmond, one of two teens convicted in the August 2012 rape of a 16-year-old girl in Steubenville, Ohio, was released last week after 10 months of incarceration. Deric Lostutter, 26, is the computer hacker who blew the lid off the cover-up by focusing the attention of the online collective known as “Anonymous” on the rape case. He now faces up to ten years in prison for his role in obtaining tweets and social media posts that exposed details of the rape   read more

About 20% of fracking materials injected into the ground come back up as wastewater. On land, that dubious product is slammed back into the ground in a separate wastewater well. At sea, a lot of that wastewater is dumped back into the ocean. A new regulation published Thursday by the EPA merely requires the oil companies to self-report what they have only recently been discovered doing in sensitive waters   read more

Just under 1% (0.96%) of all individual tax returns were audited in 2013. The rate marked the second consecutive yearly decline, and the lowest level in eight years. IRS efforts to answer calls from taxpayers also declined last year. Budget cuts may be impacting the IRS’s mission. It has lost $1 billion in annual funding and 8,000 employees over the past three years.   read more