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

Russel worked as director of the State Department Office of Japanese Affairs from August 2008 to January 2009. He then took a job with the Obama administration, serving as director for Japan, South Korea and North Korea at the National Security Council from January 2009 to 2011 and as special assistant to the president and senior director for Asian Affairs since then.   read more

According to Elon Musk, Tesla’s co-founder, the company had another five years to pay the government back (while the Energy Department claimed the number was actually nine years). Instead, it fully paid off the debt this month, thanks to a surge in its stock price. "Having accepted taxpayer money, I thought we had an obligation to repay it as soon as we reasonably could," Musk told The Wall Street Journal, “If economics were the only consideration, we would not have done this.”   read more

In what’s being called the “Rear Window” case, Arne Svenson used a telephoto camera to photograph his neighbors from his studio across the way, snapping pictures of the Foster family as they went about their daily lives. Svenson admits he never informed the Fosters about what he was doing.   read more

Two years later, Berashk finally was granted an interview with a U.S. consular officer After waiting nine months for a decision from the U.S. embassy, only to learn Berashk had been turned down, Din filed a lawsuit to force officials to explain why her husband was denied entry into the U.S. The only thing the State Department did was point to a broad 1,000-word provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that excludes applicants for a variety of terrorism-related reasons.   read more

Joining the Central Intelligence Agency in 1997, Sapp was subsequently assigned to the NRO, where she held several senior management positions. In May 2007, Sapp became acquisition and resource director for the under secretary of defense for intelligence. In July 2008, her position was renamed deputy under secretary of defense for portfolio, programs and resources. In April 2009, Sapp became principal deputy director of NRO.   read more

Moure-Eraso also wrote that the “incident site was massively and irreversibly altered under the direction of ATF personnel, who used cranes, bulldozers and other excavation apparatus in an ultimately unsuccessful quest to find a single ignition source for the original fire.” ATF has said it was the fire marshal’s decision to bar CSB from the site.   read more

The investigation by the staffs of Representative Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) and Representative Henry Waxman (D-California) found that the U.S. power grid has been the focus of daily cyber attacks, with one utility reporting it was subject to 10,000 attempts a month. In addition, “More than a dozen utilities reported “daily,” “constant,” or “frequent” attempted cyberattacks ranging from phishing to malware infection to unfriendly probes.”   read more

Senate Bill 1189, introduced by Republican state Senator Joan Huffman, authorizes law enforcement to seize firearms if a Texan is found to be a danger to themselves or others. Suggested by Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit advocacy organization, the new law was recommended in a 2012 report calling for changes to the state’s mental health code, which hasn’t been updated since 1985.   read more

Georgia adopted a new law in March that deems any information about a “person or entity that manufactures, supplies, compounds, or prescribes the drugs, medical supplies or medical equipment” used in executions to be a “confidential state secret.” In addition, three other states — Arkansas, South Dakota and Tennessee — have amended their public records laws to exempt the names of suppliers from disclosure.   read more

A federal prosecutor in New York accused Yudong Zhu, Xing Yang and Ye Li, all of whom are Chinese citizens, of accepting bribes from a Chinese medical imaging company, United Imaging, and SIAT, a Chinese-sponsored research institute. In exchange for the money, the three shared nonpublic information about their NYU work. It is thought that Ye returned to China before she was charged.   read more

Critics have detailed a number of concerns regarding BLM’s latest rules draft. Among them is a provision that allows drillers to not disclose the chemicals they are using until 30 days after they have begun drilling. Another rule allows drillers to withhold trade secrets without being required to explain their reason for doing so. Observers also note that there is no requirement for well operators to collect and disclose air and water quality data prior to fracking.   read more

The U.S. Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations detected a problem with the machine in 2002, the year after it came on the market. They notified the manufacturer, Lafayette Instrument Co. Inc., who advised them how to work around the glitch—by using a manual mode of testing rather than the less effective but easier-to-use automatic mode. However, they apparently did not correct the problem or notify other users of the equipment.   read more

Of the responses to the emails written with Latino aliases, 31.3% were either non-informative, inaccurate or ambiguous, whereas 24.9% of the responses to Greg Walsh and ”Jake Mueller” fell into these categories. However, the report did conclude “that states with stricter voter ID laws did not exhibit greater differences in response to Latinos versus non-Latinos.”   read more

The government classified the shooting as a “workplace violence” incident, and not an act of terror or combat-related. Soldiers wounded in the shooting have been fighting for more than three years to win combat pay and medical benefits, which have been denied due to the technical classification of the assault.   read more

The largest number of the deaths in FY2012 occurred in Arizona near Tucson, which is also the busiest stretch of the Mexican border for illegal crossings. Another dangerous stretch is in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. There, 77 bodies of immigrants were recovered between October 1 and April 30, an average of almost three a week. Last year, more than half of the dead were identified as having come not from Mexico, but from Central America.   read more

The cyber-attacks, in fact, may have been aimed at learning the identities of Chinese intelligence operatives under surveillance in the U.S. by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), The Washington Post reported. Google technicians discovered that its database containing years of information on surveillance operations had been breached. Included were classified court orders approving surveillance of U.S.–based foreign agents, diplomats and terrorists.   read more