President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed outrage to aides because there have been no violent mass street demonstrations against his statements and policies. He believes he needs violent demonstrations against him in order to declare a national state of emergency that would allow him to do anything he wants.   read more

The Sierra Club—at 120 years old one of the oldest and most trusted environmental groups in the U.S.—has admitted that from 2007 to 2010 it accepted donations totaling $25 million from the natural gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of...   read more

For the first time ever, the United States has indicted a Switzerland bank, its oldest in fact, on charges of conspiring to help Americans hide more than $1.2 billion from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).   The action is part of an IRS plan t...   read more

A Republican running for an open seat in the California Assembly has received unusually large donations from defense contractors, possibly because of her congressman-husband who holds a powerful position in Washington.   Outraged by Los Angeles ...   read more

Claudio Bisogniero, who has been posted to the U.S. on two previous occasions, officially took the reins as Italy’s ambassador to the U.S. on February 6, just in time to coordinate the visit to Washington of Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, who...   read more

Score one for the hackers in the ongoing war between them and government and corporate officials. The online group “Anonymous,” which engages in collaborative, international hacktivism, often to retaliate against anti-digital sharing campaigns by ...   read more

In yet another case of Islamophobic terrorism hysteria, Québec, Canada, provincial police arrested a Montréal telecommunications sales manager, searched his home and detained him for more than a day, all because he sent a text message encouraging ...   read more

For decades now, Republican candidates for office have had a hard time finding rock music they can use for rallies and advertisements without earning the ire of songwriters and performers. Four years ago, Jackson Browne sued Republican presidentia...   read more

More than 30 years after another American president allowed a fallen Persian Gulf dictator to enter the U.S., President Barack Obama has allowed the ex-ruler of Yemen to visit New York City for medical reasons, provoking protests from those oppose...   read more

A new academic study of 58,000 federal criminal cases has found significant disparities in sentencing for blacks and whites arrested for the same crimes. The research led to the conclusion that African-Americans’ jail time was almost 60% longer th...   read more

The protein-rich jack mackerel is a fish in high demand, which has led to overfishing by multiple countries and risks of the species disappearing.   Over a period of 20 years, the stocks of jack mackerel have dropped from about 30 million metric...   read more

The North African nation of Tunisia, where the recent wave of Arab revolutions began in December 2010, will soon have a new Ambassador from the United States. President Barack Obama on December 14, 2011, nominated career diplomat Jacob “Jake” Wall...   read more

President Barack Obama recently welcomed the new ambassador from the United Kingdom, a forty-year veteran of the British Diplomatic Service who served in Washington, DC, during most of the Clinton era.   Peter Westmacott has a personal connectio...   read more

While many experts have predicted that President Barack Obama will ultimately out-fundraise his Republican opponent in the 2012 presidential race, GOP front-runner Mitt Romney isn’t doing badly for himself.   Romney’s super PAC, Restore Our Futu...   read more

Texas has become the latest state to require companies to disclose the types of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”).   Adopted by the state legislature last year, the new rule has been heralded by environmentalists and industry a...   read more

Council for Educational Travel, USA (Cetusa), a sponsor of international exchange students to the U.S., has been banned by the State Department after students in Pennsylvania last year protested their working conditions.   The State Department’s...   read more

Unless you’re an alligator or an enormous snake, the southernmost part of the Florida Everglades is not the place to live for the rest of the animal kingdom.   Pythons and anacondas have been growing in numbers in Everglades National Park, and b...   read more