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

“I would like to be buried in Arlington Cemetery,” she wrote. “Even if there are no ashes left, I would like an empty urn placed at Arlington.” The problem was that the Army never considered the women — who carried weapons, wore uniforms and had access to classified intelligence — to be the same as active-duty male troops. “They gave the ultimate sacrifice, and then when the war was over, they were told, ‘Thank you for your service, the cockpits go back to the men now,'” said Rep. McSally.   read more

Declaring a “moral obligation” to heal the wounds of a secret war, President Barack Obama on Tuesday pledged help to clear away the 80 million unexploded bombs the U.S. dropped on Laos a generation ago — more than 10 for every one of the country’s 7 million people. Obama announced the U.S. would double its spending on bomb-clearing efforts to $90 million over three years.   read more

A coalition of New York-based advocates on Tuesday launched a national campaign to press large retailers, restaurant chains and other companies to end on-call and last-minute scheduling, which allows companies to assign shifts to workers with only a few hours’ notice. They say three in five American workers — about 75 million people — are paid hourly, with recent job growth mainly in low-wage jobs, often part-time and subject to last-minute scheduling practices.   read more

In a federal class action, two mothers — one of them a consultant in the $1 billion NFL concussion litigation — trace their adult sons’ deaths to brain injuries they suffered playing Pop Warner youth football. Kimberly Archie and Jo Cornell sued Pop Warner Little Scholars and two other organizations, claiming they failed to protect children from head trauma while playing tackle football and misled parents about safety policies, coaches training and helmet standards.   read more

Albuquerque hauls in more than $1 million a year by seizing cars, sometimes from innocent people, in defiance of state law and public outrage, claims a mother who wants the city’s program declared unconstitutional. The city even writes into its budget ahead of time the money it expects to make from selling seized cars.   read more

Mines are closing and the coal industry is facing a run of bankruptcies and other bad news, but a company backed by a $90 million investment is defying conventional wisdom by preparing to open two new mines in Appalachia, the hardest-hit coal region. This coal won’t be used for electricity but for steel manufacturing. Metallurgical coal prices are up lately due to a mix of international market factors.   read more

“This is opening up a whole new can of worms — we have seen problems with security contractors on the battlefield since 9/11, and there’s been an improvement in oversight in that area, but that came after a decade of problems,” said law professor Laura A. Dickinson. “With drones, this is a new area where we already do not have a lot of transparency and with contractors operating drones there’s no clearly defined regime of oversight and accountability.”   read more

This election cycle, it seems that many CEOs have chosen to be less public about whom they are supporting in the presidential race. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich canceled an event at his home for Donald Trump after it was reported to be causing a firestorm among Intel employees. Some executives privately say they worry they could see reprisals against their business or industry if they were to actively campaign for one candidate or another.   read more

Borrowers wrestling with college debt often complain about the companies that manage their student loans. Now federal regulators have stepped up pressure on loan servicers to treat their borrowers better. Just this week, Wells Fargo, the second largest lender of private student loans, agreed to pay a $3.6 million civil penalty to settle allegations that the bank used illegal loan servicing practices that resulted in higher costs and fees for some borrowers.   read more

It is a growing national problem. The number of homes on the market in the U.S. has fallen for the last 14 months. The inventory of homes for sale is the lowest it has been since modern records started being kept in 1982. Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire Facebook CEO, found a place he liked near San Francisco’s Mission District in 2012 and paid the owner at least twice what it was worth. People of much more modest means are now echoing his tactics, even if they cannot extend his lavish terms.   read more

She began work at the Afghanistan desk on July 30, 2001, while the Taliban were still in power. Less than two and a half months later, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. Beginning in 2003, Pasi served as deputy principal officer and acting consul general at the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt, Germany. From 2006 to 2009, she was the deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires at the embassy in Dhaka, Bangladesh.   read more

The NSO Group sells surveillance tools that can capture all smartphone activity, such as a user’s location and personal contacts. They can even turn the phone into a secret recording device. Last month, its spyware tried to gain access to the iPhone of a human-rights activist in the UAE. A second target was a Mexican journalist who wrote about corruption in the Mexican government. “There’s no check on this ... governments can essentially use them however they want," said Bill Marczak.   read more

“I’m a Republican, but I also realize, by any objective analysis, the sea level is rising,” said Tybee mayor Jason Buelterman. Local leaders say they cannot tackle this problem alone. Yet Congress has largely ignored their pleas, and has even tried to block plans by the military to head off future problems at the numerous bases imperiled by a rising sea. A Republican congressman from Colorado, Ken Buck, recently called one military proposal part of a “radical climate change agenda."   read more

Thousands of earthquakes have hit Oklahoma in recent years. Seismologists say the quakes are caused by high-pressure injection of wastewater from oil and gas wells, both conventional ones and those that are hydraulically fractured, or fracked. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which oversees oil and gas activity, announced that it had ordered the shutdown of wastewater wells across 725 square miles in the area hit by the quake. About three dozen wells are affected.   read more

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory and other GOP state officials hoped the Supreme Court would grant a stay that would keep their law in place. The split meant a loss for the state's appeal. Voters thus will not have to show one of several qualifying photo IDs when casting ballots in the presidential battleground state. It also means early voting also reverts back to 17 days, to begin Oct. 20. The now defunct rules would have reduced the number of early voting days to 10.   read more

Among the new FDA rules is a ban on the charitable donation of tobacco products. Van Trees runs Support the Troops, a nonprofit organization that sends care packages to bases in locations such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Cigars are the second-most-requested item in those packages, behind coffee and ahead of toothpaste and tube socks. "It means the world to these guys who love to sit by the fire and smoke some sticks," Van Trees said. "This is going to put a huge hole in what we do for them."   read more