Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) sent messages to all members of Congress terminating their positions, stating “Your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment.” All Democratic and independent members of Congress, as well as two Republicans, found themselves locked out of their offices after everything inside had been confiscated.   read more

“Each year, the U.S. imprisons more than half a million individuals who have never been convicted of a crime, largely because they are unable to post bail," the researchers wrote. “People can end up losing their livelihoods, their homes, and even their children, when forced to wait in jail for their day in court, simply because they cannot afford cash bail," wrote Steinberg. "Most come under tremendous pressure to take a plea bargain – regardless of guilt..."   read more

The proposed policy responds to President Obama's November 2015 directive to key federal agencies to develop and share a "common set of their best practices to mitigate for harmful impacts to natural resources." While acknowledging that economic development, infrastructure, and national security goals are achieved at a price to our natural resources, the president's memorandum expressed his conviction that American ingenuity was up to the task of minimizing and compensating for those impacts.   read more

Hall was sent to Shanghai in 1997 as consular section chief. She returned to Washington in 2000 as a special assistant in the Bureau of Consular Affairs. The next year she became desk officer in the Office of Nordic and Baltic Affairs. She had a stint in 2003 as the consul general in Edinburgh, Scotland, before being named senior Cyprus officer in the Office of the Special Cyprus Coordinator, where she participated in negotiations leading to the U.N. settlement of the Cyprus problem in 2004.   read more

Cluster bombs, used since World War II to kill and maim indiscriminately, were outlawed under a 2008 international treaty. Most of the world’s countries have signed the treaty, but not the U.S. and Russia, where many of the bombs were made. A report released Thursday in Geneva found that the weapons continued to be used with near impunity in the conflicts in Syria and Yemen. In June, a provision to ban the transfer of such munitions to Saudi Arabia was defeated in the House of Representatives.   read more

Fines, fees and restitution mandates are levied on juvenile offenders in every state, a new national survey of these practices has found. The effects are greatest on the poor and racial minorities, creating a two-tiered system of justice. In juvenile systems intended to help wayward youths go straight, the study found, these costs are often counterproductive, drawing young people, especially poor minorities, ever deeper into the maze of criminal courts and straining already-fragile families.   read more

Juanita Stanley, co-owner of Flowertown Bee Farm, described the devastating effect of the aerial spraying. "My bee yard looks like it's been nuked," she said. The farm lost nearly 2.5 million honeybees from 46 hives as a result of the spraying. "My wife called a short time after the flyover and said, 'We have a mass kill,'" hobby beekeeper Andrew Macke reported. "We have thousands and thousands of bees dead all around our pool deck and our driveway, just everywhere."   read more

“This community participated in the institution of slavery,” said Georgetown president DeGioia, addressing a crowd of hundreds of students, faculty members and descendants. “This original evil that shaped the early years of the Republic was present here. We have been able to hide from this truth, bury this truth, ignore and deny this truth. As a community and as individuals, we cannot do our best work if we refuse to take ownership of such a critical part of our history. We must acknowledge it.”   read more

Discriminatory design and decision-making affects all aspects of our lives. Industrial design plays a role by steering human activities. For example, benches designed with prominent arm rests or shallow seats discourage homeless people from sleeping on them. This phenomenon is known as “hostile architecture." As one critic points out, it says a lot about a culture when its solution to homelessness is to put spikes on public surfaces.   read more

The Baltimore report found that officers end up in unnecessarily violent confrontations with mentally disabled people who in many instances haven't even committed crimes. In one of the instances cited, an officer sprayed mace to force a troubled person — said by his father to be unarmed and off his medications — out of an apartment. The report was the first time the Justice Dept. has explicitly found that a police department's policies violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.   read more

Testing with radiation monitors was done at places where the truck likely stopped. Workers washed the material that spilled onto U.S. 191 off the pavement and removed 5 yards to 6 yards of potentially contaminated soil. The company said it isn't aware of any danger to the environment or people. The sludge is a normal byproduct of in-situ uranium mining. The solution is processed into yellowcake, which can be processed further into nuclear fuel.   read more

More people are using marijuana, using it more often and far fewer think it's risky, the survey found. That runs counter to scientific research about pot, said Dr. Compton. "If anything, science has shown an increasing risk that we weren't as aware of years ago," he said. Other research has increasingly linked marijuana use to mental impairment, and early, heavy use by people with certain genes to increased risk of developing psychosis, he noted.   read more

Satchell says whenever the app is open, even running in the background, it turns on microphones in fans' smartphones and records them while scanning for audio signals to pinpoint their location for marketing purposes. "Her phone was present in locations and personal and private situations not generally accessible to the public where the expectation was that her conversations were to remain private," the complaint states.   read more

Researchers found that after the law, there was an increase in the percentage of patients who required additional medical treatment to complete their abortions. Medical interventions rose to 14.3 percent compared to 4.9 percent before law. Such treatment included repeat dosages of the drugs, blood transfusions and surgery. The rate of women reporting at least one side effect also increased to 15.6 percent from 8.4 percent.   read more

The figures should be seen as under-estimates of the total spent. DoD routinely fails to publish records of significant amounts of foreign military assistance and contracts. For instance, the DoD published contracts for small arms and munitions purchases for Iraq and Afghanistan that if fulfilled totaled just $277,795,299. Such shortfalls highlight the lack of accountability and transparency that exists at the very heart of the US government’s weapon procurement and distribution systems.   read more

When a federal court overturned much of N. Carolina’s sweeping 2013 election law last month, saying it had been deliberately designed to discourage African-Americans from voting, the ground rules for this year’s elections in a critical swing state were thrown out too. Critics are accusing some of the boards of staging an end run around the court ruling. Like the law that was struck down, they say, many election plans have been intentionally written to suppress the black vote.   read more

Planning on picking up a flowering plant at your local garden center to attract bees? If you're thinking it hasn't been treated with harmful pesticides, think again. A new report shows that 23% of such plants sold at Home Depot, Lowe's, Ace Hardware, True Value and Walmart have been treated with bee-toxic pesticides. It is one of the contributors to population declines in bees and other pollinators. Bees and other pollinators are essential for everyone.   read more