Rumors are spreading that the U.S. Supreme Court will vote 5-4 to rule that a U.S. president cannot be prosecuted for anything he does while he is president. Some Democrats are suggesting that Joe Biden bring a gun to his first debate with Donald Trump. If he shoots Trump, he would be immune, but if Trump shoots Biden he would be prosecuted because he is not a sitting president.   read more

MacNaughton traveled to Washington with his boss and then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. MacNaughton has recounted, as a young functionary, having lunch with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In 2005, MacNaughton became president of Strategy Corp., a government relations firm. He also served as board chairman of Comcare, a home care provider, and Aereus Technologies, a startup in Ontario. MacNaughton remained at Strategy until being appointed ambassador.   read more

Walker quotes civil rights leaders and employs soaring rhetoric to call for a more just and equitable society. So it seemed discordant to some critics when, this month, Walker joined the board of Pepsi, which makes the bulk of its money by selling sugary drinks and fatty snacks. What’s more, there is a well-established link between obesity and economic inequality. His new Pepsi connection raised the question: Would Walker’s day job and his new board duties be working at cross-purposes?   read more

Most telling was that 76% of the voters said they watched at least one of the presidential debates when they aired. But a third of those who watched were simultaneously engaged online, whether it was to check what was being said about the debate on Twitter or to see what fact checkers were saying. The takeaway is that candidates will need to increasingly tailor approaches to the internet for what were once staples of television. “Television is not going to cut it alone,” Blizzard said.   read more

Carter saw a memo showing that a Pentagon consultant recommended that the Air Force chop up and melt down a fleet of C-123 aircraft that had once sprayed the toxic herbicide Agent Orange across Vietnam. It seemed he’d uncovered a government-sanctioned plan to destroy evidence of any connection between the aircraft, Agent Orange and U.S. soldiers' illnesses. And the cover-up looked like it had been set in motion by one man: Alvin L. Young.   read more

The Democratic party and voters sued to block the new law, saying it violated the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act because it hurt minorities' ability to cast ballots. The legislation was enacted by the Republican-dominated Arizona Legislature and signed by GOP Gov. Doug Ducey. Judge Thomas dissented, writing that "Arizona has criminalized one of the most popular and effective methods by which minority voters cast their ballots."   read more

in 2002 Agius served as diplomatic counselor to then-President Guide de Marco. In 2004, he went to Vienna as Malta’s deputy head of mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the UN organizations there and the International Atomic Energy Agency. In 2007, he was named special envoy in Slovenia. The following year, he assumed his first ambassadorial post, in Belgium. He held ambassadorships to Luxembourg in 2009 and subsequently to NATO.   read more

Two studies of U.S. news coverage suggest that this is a presidential campaign with little substance — unless groping women, tax returns and email servers are your idea of major issues. The coverage has become a referendum on Trump and Hillary Clinton's fitness for office, said Tyndall. But he suggests the broadcasters should be making more of an effort to strike out on their own. The MRC report said the newscasts have spent 785 minutes on Trump coverage, 478 minutes on Clinton.   read more

PEER says the draft omits mention of potentially dangerous concentrations of radioactive contaminants that would be allowed in water deemed safe to drink. PEER believes the undisclosed concentrations far exceed what is known to be safe. PEER says the EPA is stonewalling on producing the requested documents, frustrating its efforts to educate the public about the proposed policy changes in an "arbitrary and capricious" violation of federal law.   read more

New privacy rules may make it easier to escape at least some online tracking. Several consumer-advocacy groups hailed the action, while saying it should go further. "I think the new FCC rules are a step in the right direction," said Mark Bartholomew, a law professor at the University of Buffalo who studies advertises law and privacy. "But ultimately I think people will go ahead and let themselves be tracked."   read more

A recent study of a half-million driver trips found that when traffic slows due to congestion, many drivers pick up their smartphones to text or use apps. "You look at urban areas where the traffic slows way down and the first thing that half the drivers do, or more than half, is pull out their iPhones and their iPads," Gordon said. "You start talking to your friends, you check your email, maybe you send a text and that's a huge problem." Traffic deaths spiked 10.4% this year.   read more

Young came home in 2003 to serve as senior watch officer in the State Department Operations Center. The following year, he began a stint as foreign policy adviser to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut). In 2005, he was made desk officer for Italy and San Marino in the State Department’s Bureau of European Affairs, then in 2007 was sent to Paris as political counselor in the embassy there.   read more

Of the economic divide, the report says that "at the current rate of change, and given the widening economic gender gap since last year, it will not be closed for another 170 years." The widest gap between the sexes, according to the survey, is in political empowerment. No country has fully closed its overall gender gap, but those in the top five, which includes Rwanda, have closed more than 80% of theirs. The U.S. placed 45th in the index, down from 28th in 2015. Yemen comes in last.   read more

The amendment goes into effect on Dec. 1 unless Congress steps in to stop it. Google and civil liberties groups have argued that it grants the government overly broad powers to hack into computers across the country, with potentially unintended consequences. Civil liberties advocates said the change would magnify the Justice Dept's investigatory powers because of the interconnected nature of the internet and increasingly large number of internet-connected devices.   read more

The Dept. of Energy wants to clear away two football fields of desert in New Mexico to store containers of radioactive waste coming from around the country. Designed to withstand the force of tornadoes and seismic events, they would store packaged waste on an open concrete pad covering more than 2 acres. Despite assurances of the robustness of the concrete containers, critics of the plan said Thursday they are asking for the department's request to be withdrawn or rejected by state regulators.   read more

Fully 57% of all Americans, and nearly two-thirds of independents, agreed that “politics and elections are controlled by people with money and by big corporations,” so it does not matter if they vote. At 66%, young people are among the most likely to feel pessimistic about the worth of their vote. “This goes along with a lot of what we know about millennials, that they distrust institutions in general,” Jones said. “But it doesn’t bode well for civic participation going forward.”   read more

Science teacher Susan German says she engages her class with hands-on projects. In one, her students had to build a water treatment facility. They tested their designs and made adjustments for any leaks, but German says it's not just the science she's trying to teach. "While they're acting like scientists and engineers, it's the bigger, broader thinking skills that I'm after, because regardless of what you want to do in this world, critical thinking skills are important," she said.   read more