Zelenskyy explained, “I told him that if he gave us the weapons we need and stopped supporting Putin, we would let him build Trump-branded hotels and other Trump-branded buildings in Ukraine’s ten largest cities, as well as Trump golf courses in the countryside. He was quite excited.”   read more

"This was a criminal, fraud operation masquerading as a fake U.S. embassy," said the U.S. State Dept. It was not clear how many people were defrauded by the fake embassy, which charged $6,000 for its services. Those running the operation were able to bribe corrupt officials "to look the other way," the State Dept said. The fake embassy featured an American flag and photo of President Barack Obama. The fake consular officers were Turkish.   read more

In 2008, Zackios took over as chairman of the Nitijela’s Committee on Public Accounts. He lost that seat in 2012 after an election in which he won a majority of the vote from constituents in the Marshall Islands, but lost when votes from islanders in the United States were counted. In 2013, Zackios was made regional director of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, the principal technical and scientific organization in the region. He held that post until taking the Washington assignment.   read more

AFL-CIO chief Trumka called Puzder “a man whose business record is defined by fighting against working people.” Indeed, Puzder welcomes increased automation because machines are “always polite ... they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall or an age, sex or race discrimination case.” Puzder's company runs TV ads that often feature women wearing next to nothing. “I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis," he said. "I think it’s very American.”   read more

These findings reveal the spiraling and often unseen effects of mass deportations, a point that is no longer purely academic as Donald Trump weighs whether to make good on his campaign promise to deport millions of unauthorized immigrants. Previous research suggests that Hispanic households, like black ones, were disproportionately victimized by subprime lending schemes. But the fact that foreclosure rates among Hispanics surpassed those among blacks points to something else going on.   read more

With the full power of the presidency just weeks away, Trump’s decision to single out Jones for ridicule has drawn condemnation from historians and White House veterans. “When you attack a man for living an ordinary life in an ordinary job, it is bullying,” said Nicolle Wallace, who was communications director for President George W. Bush and a top strategist to other Republicans. “It is cyberbullying. This is a strategy to bully somebody who dissents. That’s what is dark and disturbing.”   read more

When interest rates go up, crime goes up. When interest rates go down, crime goes down. This has been so at least since 1953. Rarely does social science research yield such a high statistical association and strong relationship between two phenomena, particularly when they are not intuitively related. Nobody would suggest that high interest rates directly cause crime. But there is a wealth of evidence on the causes of crime that demystifies this seemingly baffling relationship.   read more

"The state of health apps is even worse than we thought," said Dr. James Madara, chief executive of the American Medical Association. Perhaps most concerning was what happened when doctor reviewers entered information that should have drawn warnings from the app — like selecting "yes" when the app asked if the user was feeling suicidal, or entering extremely abnormal levels for blood sugar levels. "The vast majority of apps do not have any kind of response," said lead study author Singh.   read more

The choice of Scott Pruitt signals Trump’s determination to dismantle President Obama’s efforts to counter climate change — and much of the EPA itself. Pruitt has been a key architect of the legal battle against Obama’s climate change policies. Trump has criticized the established science of human-caused global warming as a hoax, vowed to “cancel” the multi-nation Paris accord fighting climate change, and attacked Obama’s signature global warming policy, the Clean Power Plan, as a “war on coal.”   read more

Amid growing security tensions in the West, governments, intelligence agencies and advocacy groups want Google, Microsoft and other tech firms to take further steps to curb hate speech, as well as to clamp down on how terrorists circulate information online. But freedom of expression advocates have warned that such demands may limit people’s ability to communicate across the internet, and they have cautioned that the line between hate speech and legitimate political discussion can be blurry.   read more

That finding puts respondents in the United States in contrast with citizens of many countries and at odds with international law, which prohibits torture under any circumstances. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump endorsed waterboarding, claiming that “it works.” Only Israelis, Palestinians and Nigerians seemed to endorse torture as enthusiastically as Americans. Forty percent of Americans also accepted the killing of humanitarian workers in a conflict zone as being part of war.   read more

The Trump International Hotel has come under scrutiny by government ethics experts who worry that foreign governments, special interest groups and others will book rooms and events there to curry favor with the president-elect. About 100 foreign diplomats from around the world used the hotel for a reception just a week after the election. Since the election, government ethics experts have called for the Trump Organization to sell its interest in the hotel.   read more

Since 2003, state law has mandated that pregnant women be provided information when mulling an abortion. The Texas Department of State Health Services issued the new edition of "A Woman's Right to Know" on Monday. The new edition of the booklet contains a section titled "Breast Cancer Risk," despite numerous, peer-reviewed studies that have refuted links between abortion and breast cancer. The booklet also says women who terminate pregnancies can become suicidal and infertile.   read more

While there have been clear successes, other areas have seen little change or even gotten worse. "The data speak for themselves," said CDC chief Dr. Tom Frieden,. "If you look for the goal we set for ourselves, and look at what happened, we didn't achieve it." Despite the mixed grades, some experts applauded CDC efforts, saying the agency had only limited abilities to prevent illness or stop people from doing things that hurt their own health.   read more

Trump mystified many with his praise for Putin. But what seemed inexplicable when Trump first expressed his admiration for the Russian leader seems, in retrospect, to have been a shrewd dog whistle to a small but highly motivated part of his base. AltRight's Spencer claimed that “an understanding” between Trump and Putin might bring together Slavic and American Caucasians and eventually “foretell a unified white world.”   read more

The lawsuit is the latest salvo in a continuing dispute led by civil rights groups over transparency in how the NYPD holds officers accountable for misconduct. The lawsuit calls for release of disciplinary actions taken against police officers. “There is no excuse for New York City to be taking steps backwards on police transparency,” said CUPR's Monifa Bandele. “It leaves communities most impacted by police abuses and misconduct at further risk and without accountability from the NYPD.”   read more

The multi-billion-dollar project, the biggest in Taiwan's history, is seeking investors. And a representative of Donald Trump took a meeting. “She had authorization documents issued by the Trump company,” confirmed the Taoyuan mayor on Nov. 18. The meeting went largely unnoticed outside Taiwan until Friday, when president-elect Trump received a congratulatory phone call from the Taiwan’s president. Now, the perception of a possible business conflict in Taiwan further complicates the situation.   read more