Zelenskyy explained, “I told him that if he gave us the weapons we need and stopped supporting Putin, we would let him build Trump-branded hotels and other Trump-branded buildings in Ukraine’s ten largest cities, as well as Trump golf courses in the countryside. He was quite excited.”   read more

Oil company Syncrude Canada has been found guilty by a Canadian court of killing 1,600 ducks two years ago by allowing the birds to land on a toxic pond filled with oilsands waste in April 2008. A judge determined Syncrude was liable for the death...   read more

Dissent is back in style within the State Department, now that the Obama administration is in charge. During the Bush years, very few diplomats were willing to speak out against U.S. foreign policy, for fear of retribution. But under Secretary of ...   read more

Xe Services, the new name for the controversial security firm Blackwater, is not hurting for business these days with the U.S. government. Despite getting thrown out of Iraq, and facing criminal and civil cases for its involvement in a deadly fire...   read more

As far as the U.S. Army is concerned, no one in a position of command should be held accountable for the mistakes that resulted in one of the deadliest battles of the Afghanistan war.   In July 2008, a platoon of soldiers manning an outpost nea...   read more

Bedridden and on oxygen, Lona Varner of El Reno, Oklahoma, was zapped by police using Taser guns after she acted in an “aggressive” manner in her bed. Officers showed up at Varner’s residence after her grandson, Lonnie Tinsley, called 911 seeking ...   read more

Being born in one’s state is not a requirement to serve as governor, which is a good thing for California, Arizona and Idaho because of their history of electing outsiders. In fact, fewer than half of all states have elected the majority of their ...   read more

In an attempt to keep the world’s largest hot desert from getting any larger, African leaders want to build a wall of trees across the continent to stop the Sahara from encroaching into Central Africa. The “Great Green Wall” would be nine miles wi...   read more

This week was one of the toughest yet for the eight-year war in Afghanistan. On the same day the White House announced the removal of General Stanley McChrystal as the top American commander, news filtered out that June was already the worst month...   read more

BP’s oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico prompted the federal government to call for a moratorium on all offshore drilling—and yet the company is still moving ahead, with regulators’ blessings, to tap a potentially huge undersea petroleum reserve o...   read more

Maywood, a small working-class town in Los Angeles County that’s been no stranger to controversy, has outdone its stormy past. Facing a significant budget gap and loss of insurance, Maywood’s city council has decided to lay off all 100 of its empl...   read more

The housing market outdid even pessimists’ worst predictions for May, when only 300,000 homes were sold nationwide. The drop was attributed to the federal tax credit for home buyers, which had helped boost sales, expiring in April. Without it, pot...   read more

To help make their graduates more attractive in a highly-competitive job market, and protect their own reputations, law schools across the country are inflating their grading systems. Schools taking this approach include Loyola Law School in Los A...   read more

Unhappy that a blogger got a hold of an iPhone prototype, Apple convinced a special police unit to raid the home of a journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area.   Officers from California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT) in San Ma...   read more

In throwing out the Obama administration’s moratorium on offshore oil drilling, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman of Louisiana said halting production would negatively impact the industry and local economy. The ban also might have impacted Feldma...   read more

With millions of gallons of oil polluting the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration is attempting to leverage the current disaster to revive the “Superfund” tax on oil and chemical companies to help clean up toxic sites around the country.   ...   read more

Alhurra, the U.S. government’s answer to the popular Middle East network Al Jazeera, has cost American taxpayers $700 million since its inception during the Bush administration. But Alhurra has failed to grab enough viewers in the region to make i...   read more