According to aides who were present when Trump discussed the issue, but who choose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, Trump said he was sick of Vance and wanted to fire him. “I wanted him to be my attack dog,” said Trump, “but he appears foolish on television. He dropped the college football trophy. He met with Pope Francis and the next day the pope died. Vance is toxic, and I don’t want him to come near me. He just doesn’t look as good on television as I thought he would.”   read more

The Central Austin Neighborhood Association and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois filed suit two years ago claiming the city violated the Illinois Civil Rights Act by not providing consistent emergency response service to all Chicago neighborhoods. The groups claimed that this problem has persisted for two decades.   read more

Bultemeier, a Department of Defense employee assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Niger, was shot to death in the capital city of Niamey as he left a restaurant with colleagues in December 2000. Armed with a handgun and an AK-47 assault rifle, Cheibani and an accomplice accosted the group. Bultemeier was shot by Cheibani, and again by the accomplice, after Cheibani demanded the keys to his U.S. Embassy SUV   read more

Of the 52 measures that cleared both houses this year, just 44 are considered “substantive,” with the other eight being commemorative or ceremonial—like naming a subsection of federal tax code after former Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and naming a bridge across the Mississippi River between Illinois and Missouri after baseball legend Stan Musial.   read more

Iulia Filip of Courthouse News Service described the district’s shape as looking “something like a mutant salamander.” “Congressional District 2’s tortured shape further contorts the districts around it,” the complaint states. “Congressional District 6 surrounds Congressional District 2 on three sides, appearing to shoot Congressional District 2 out of its cragged jaws like a crooked tongue.”   read more

DuPont, along with Huntsman International, Kronos Worldwide and Millennium Inorganic Chemicals allegedly worked together to set the price of titanium dioxide, a key ingredient of white paint, paper, plastics and cosmetics. The four companies control 90% of the titanium dioxide market in the country.   read more

Levinson disappeared on March 9, 2007, while working as a private investigator looking into cigarette smuggling on the Iranian resort island of Kish. On November 27, his captivity hit 2,455 days, one more than journalist Terry Anderson, who was held by Hezbollah in Lebanon until 1991. U.S. officials suspect that Iranian intelligence services are holding Levinson. His family last received photos of him in April 2011.   read more

advances in coal mining technology have both increased productivity and—since the late 1990s— and clouds of “disease-causing dust” in mines, making them no more safe for workers when it comes to black lung than they were for their fathers and grandfathers.   read more

The Obama administration has decided to limit the scope of big-money campaign operations that until now have enjoyed tax exemptions while doling out enormous sums in recent elections. New regulations crafted by the Department of the Treasury would prevent prominent nonprofit groups like Crossroads GPS, created to support Republicans, and the Democratic-allied League of Conservation Voters from claiming some of their activities as part of their work as “social welfare” organizations.   read more

Two years after 9/11, the U.S. government tried to flip members of al-Qaeda held in Guantanamo and turn them into agents for the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA operated the secret program in a special wing of Guantanamo named “Penny Lane.” Participants lived in cottages equipped with plush beds, private kitchens, patios, showers and televisions. They were also provided with money and pornography as long as they agreed to serve as CIA spies once released from the prison.   read more

The United Nations is close to adopting a resolution that calls for the end of excessive government surveillance and reaffirms the “human right to privacy.” The resolution was introduced by representatives of Germany and Brazil, following revelations of NSA spying on those countries, as well as on the phone calls of their two leaders, respectively, Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Dilma Rousseff. The resolution was amended under pressure from U.S. officials.   read more

The National Security Agency (NSA) has collected information on the online pornography habits and other sexual activity of individuals considered potential threats or problems to U.S. security. The spy agency considered discrediting half a dozen Muslims with details of porn websites they visited. None of the targeted individuals were accused of being involved in terror plots, according to the document.   read more

Ninety corporations have been identified as the biggest producers of greenhouse gas emissions over the last two centuries, with oil giants Chevron and ExxonMobil topping the list. Fifty-six of the 90 polluters were oil and gas businesses, 37 were coal companies, and seven were cement producers. Together those companies bear responsibility for 914 billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution. Half of those industrial emissions were released only during the last three decades.   read more

The Pentagon has decided to launch its own costly bio-defense drug program, despite a similar effort already underway at another federal agency and despite the recommendations of a panel of experts to avoid taking such action. Defense officials are financing the construction by diverting monies from other military equipment designed to combat chemical or biological weapons.   read more

The United States may be belching 50% more methane gas into the atmosphere than what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated, according to a new academic study. In oil-producing areas, like the south-central U.S., methane emissions may be nearly three times higher than EPA figures, university researchers found. “It will be important to resolve that discrepancy in order to fully understand the impact of these industries on methane emissions,” said lead author Scot Miller.   read more

Here’s the task facing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA): It has about 2,000 employees devoted to inspecting 8 million workplaces throughout the United States. Two thousand inspectors for 8 million locations means 4,000 workplaces per OSHA specialist. No wonder more than 4,300 people lost their lives at work in 2012.   read more

While Republicans in the U.S. House continue to hold up immigration reform, a strong majority of Americans—including a majority of GOP voters—say illegal immigrants should have a way to become citizens. A survey conducted by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute found 63% of respondents support a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants, who number 11.7 million in the United States.   read more