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

The court order allows the NSA to gather phone records on a daily basis for three months until July 19. The data is then turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for use in counterterrorism investigations. The order appears to be simply the latest in a program that has gone on for seven years. According to an ACLU analysis of the order, the NSA wants to know “when you’re calling, who calls you, how long you talk, and maybe where you’re calling from.”   read more

Two days after Chrysler’s unusual pushback, the company did announce the recall of 630,000 Jeep SUVs as the result of transmission and restraint system problems. These recalls include 254,000 Compass and Patriot SUVs from 2010 to 2012 to fix a delay in air bag and seatbelt functioning, and 181,000 Wranglers from 2012 and 2013 relating to leaks in transmission cooler lines.   read more

“According to the DoD Office of Security Review, the individual’s name is protected from public release” under federal law, the report says, which also states however that “no precautionary measures were taken to protect special operators from being identified by the Hollywood executive at this event.”   read more

Monsanto said it does not know how it happened. The company tested GM varieties of wheat between 1998 and 2004 in 17 states, including Oregon. But officials said all tested material was destroyed after the program was shut down nine years ago. Currently, no varieties of GM wheat have been approved for commercial farming anywhere in the world. The discovery led the governments of South Korea and Japan to temporarily suspend imports of U.S. wheat.   read more

Logs were placed across the road on April 1, along with a “closed” sign, according to the civil complaint. Cheng says the road closure was “unauthorized” and goes against the doctrine of “love your neighbor.” Cheng accused Father George Belgarde, the Jesuit shrine’s director, of taking “an openly hostile stance toward our temple and our members, and refused to discuss or consider a compromise like his predecessors.” Belgarde became director of the Shrine in 2011.   read more

In 2012, reports of murder, rape, and similar violent crimes increased in the West as well as in major metropolitan areas of the United States. In the Western U.S., violent crime rose 3.3%, according to data released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.   read more

Twenty years after the Cold War, the U.S., Russia, Britain, France, and China are holding onto their nuclear arsenals and even expanding them despite their commitments to non-proliferation. In 2013, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said those nations plan to or are currently deploying new nuclear weapons and delivery systems.   read more

To stem the high number of sex crimes in the armed forces, Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand has introduced legislation that would give military prosecutors, rather than commanders, the power to decide which sexual assault cases to try. However, the U.S. military’s top commanders have told Congress that they object to the idea.   read more

Connecticut could become the first state to require food manufacturers to label products that contain genetically modified organisms. Connecticut will mandate GMO labeling if four other states, at least one of which shares a border with it, passes similar regulations, and if those states include Northeastern ones with at least 20 million people.   read more

After dismissing his legal defender, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army officer accused of killing 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, four years ago, said he did so in order to protect Taliban leaders from the American military. He claimed “defense of others” to explain the killings.   read more

Three conservative Supreme Court judges—Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.—joined liberal Stephen Breyer and swing-vote Anthony Kennedy in deciding it’s okay for police to use DNA tests to identify suspects in custody, rather than just to find those responsible for unsolved crimes.   read more

After the George W. Bush administration launched the 2003 invasion of Iraq, officials promised that with access to its oil the war would pay for itself. However, almost half of Iraq's oil is now bought by Chinese companies, which intend to purchase even more in the near future, including one of Iraq’s largest oil fields, which is owned by Exxon Mobil.   read more

The Department of Health and Human Services plans to fast-track new medications to combat antibiotic resistance and biological agents that terrorists might use. Supporters of speeding up new drugs want new antibiotics immediately tested on severely ill patients, rather than taking the customary and legally approved route of conducting studies.   read more

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found in a review of data from 2010 that Caucasians and African-Americans have similar rates of using marijuana, but blacks are nearly four times as likely as whites to be arrested for its possession.   read more

Workers who smoke cost more to employers. Micah Berman, lead author of a study at the College of Public Health and Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, reported that the “annual excess cost to employ a smoker is $5,816” due to sick leave, lower productivity, and additional healthcare costs.   read more

The Wall Street Journal and other news organizations seeking doctor-specific information will still have to file Freedom of Information Act requests, which will then be reviewed on a case-by-case basis by the Department of Health and Human Services. In 2012, the Obama administration, as part of the Affordable Care Act made some doctor-specific Medicare data available to local community groups, but not to news organizations.   read more