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

Although the Arkansas bill bans abortion after external detection of a pulse via abdominal ultrasound, which is generally possible at about 12 weeks of gestation, the North Dakota measure bans abortion after a pulse is “detectable” using “standard medical practice,” which could include intrusive transvaginal ultrasound, a procedure capable of detecting a pulse as early as 6 weeks of gestation.   read more

In fact, the most important restriction on the new gTLDs appears to be their $185,000 “evaluation fee,” which is far out of reach for all but wealthy individuals and large corporations. Online retail giant Amazon (2012 sales: $61 billion) for example, made bids for more than 60 domains, including .amazon, .app, .author, .book, .cloud, .fire, .imdb, .map, and .read.   read more

The problem isn’t a labor shortage―not with unemployment still well above 7%. “In order to induce domestic workers to supply their labor to farm jobs, agricultural wages must rise apace with nonagricultural wages.” As the growing season approaches and farm labor problems become more acute, growers may be left with only a few choices that they haven’t already tried―like a living wage and decent working conditions.   read more

at least 116,000 Iraqi civilians and more than 4,800 coalition troops died between the invasion in March 2003 and the U.S. withdrawal in December 2011. The civilian fatalities included those killed in the fighting and others who became ill as a result of nation’s crippled infrastructure (water, sanitation, electricity). Iraqi civilians area still dying if war-related causes. According to IraqBodyCount.org, that included 345 in January 2013.   read more

Many of the “bad neighbors” are concentrated in India, Vietnam and Brazil. In fact, one ISP, BSNL in India, accounted for 7.4% of all spamming addresses in the world. But then there’s Spectranet in Nigeria, labeled the Internet’s most crime-ridden network because 62.5% of its addresses were found to distribute spam.   read more

Another Budget Committee member, Roger Williams (R-Texas), said, “Everybody in America has to balance their family’s budget or their business’ budget, not every ten years, not even every single year, but every single day.” Williams may balance his own debt every day, but he and his car dealership still owe $2.5 million of business loans and lines of credit.   read more

Leaving government after the 2000 election, Burwell was immediately hired by the Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation to work as its chief operating officer and executive director, posts she held from January 2001 until a reorganization in 2006, when she became president of Global Development. Passed over for the CEO position when it became available in 2008, Burwell left the Gates Foundation in late 2011 to become president of the Wal-Mart Foundation, which she led starting in January 2012.   read more

On Friday prison spokesman Navy Capt. Robert Durand denied that the hunger strike was widespread, but did acknowledge that 14 prisoners were “hunger strikers” and that at least five are being force fed through tubes. The hunger strike began on February 6 after guards confiscated detainees’ letters, photographs and legal mail, during which copies of the Koran were roughly handled during searches.   read more

Known as the “Democracy is for People Amendment,” the new law would bar all corporate entities from spending their general treasury funds in elections. It would do this by codifying in law that the right to vote belongs solely to people. Sanders and Deutch admit that getting the amendment adopted will not be easy. Such a change would require the House and Senate each to approve it by a two-thirds vote, and it would have to be ratified by three-fourths of the states.   read more

The IRS says 984,400 people did not file a federal tax return four years ago, leaving the agency with $917.4 million in unpaid refunds. Many of the cases involve people who made too little money to be required to file a tax return, but who had federal taxes withheld from their paychecks and are owed a refund. Lower-income individuals and families with children also may be owed funds as a result of the Earned Income Tax Credit.   read more

When WikiLeaks published State Department cables, Pyatt became embroiled in controversy because of a May 4, 2007, cable he sent recommending that K.V. Rajan, a secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs and a member of the Prime Minister's National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) visit Washington DC in order to help “feed” U.S. government views on Iran into the Indian system.   read more

Fifty-seven years ago, the minimum wage was officially $1/hour. But its “real value” based on 2013 dollars would have been $8.39. When the same thing conversion is made for the current wage of $7.25, its real value is only $7.80. “Because there have been some extended periods between these adjustments while inflation generally has increased, the real value (purchasing power) of the minimum wage has decreased substantially over time,” the report states.   read more

American combat units officially left Iraq at the end of 2011, but the U.S. war effort in the country is still going strong, only now it’s the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) taking the lead. When American military units were still fighting in Iraq, U.S. Special Forces worked closely with elite Iraqi antiterrorism units to thwart al-Qaeda affiliates, such al-Qaeda in Iraq. With these American commandos largely gone, CIA agents have stepped in to help Iraq’s Counterterrorism Service.   read more

“On the rare occasions when embarrassing study results are released, data are manipulated to make them unintelligible,” Coughlin said in his testimony to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs’ Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Coughlin’s research focused on the relationship between exposure to burn pits and cases of asthma and bronchitis among Afghanistan and Iraq veterans, including those who fought in the 1991 Gulf War.   read more

The study, coauthored by Cathy J. Cohen of the University of Chicago and Jon C. Rogowski of Washington University in St. Louis, found that 72.9% of black youth (aged 18-29) were asked for ID, compared with 60.8% of young Latinos and 50.8% of young whites. In the 2012 presidential elections, 93% of black voters voted for Barack Obama, as id 71% of Latino voters and 60% of voters aged 18-29.   read more

According to a new report from the Congressional Research Service, immigration to the U.S. has nearly matched the peak period of 1905-1915. As of 2010, foreign-born residents comprised 12.9% of the U.S. population, which is close to the key year of 1910 when it was 14.8%. Of the 1.1 million people who became legal permanent residents in FY2011, almost 65% did so on the basis of family ties. Another 16% were refugees or those seeking asylum.   read more