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

As with some of his other environmental appointments, President Barack Obama went with a career federal employee to lead the National Park Service. Jonathan B. Jarvis, a trained biologist, has spent the past 30 years working for the agency in a va...   read more

Despite lobbying from the Portuguese-American community to choose someone else, President Barack Obama went with a key campaign fundraiser and organizer for the post of U.S. ambassador to Portugal. Allan J. Katz, a lawyer and lobbyist who helped r...   read more

A career Foreign Service officer who previously served in Mongolia, Jonathan S. Addleton was born into a life of foreign travel, thanks to his religious parents. Addleton assumed his position as U.S. ambassador to Mongolia November 9, 2009.   Ad...   read more

BP, operator of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, is pushing for a single judge in Houston—who has friendly ties with the oil industry—to handle the nearly 100 lawsuits so far filed against the company.   BP’s choice is U.S. District Judge Lyn...   read more

Bureaucratic semantics are threatening the future of the right whale in the Atlantic, according to a lawsuit filed by several environmental organizations against the federal government. The case centers on a 2008 decision by the National Marine Fi...   read more

Despite previous veto threats from the White House, the House of Representatives adopted an amendment to a defense authorization bill that would give the Government Accountability Office the power to audit intelligence agencies. The proposal, auth...   read more

American attorney Peter Erlinder has been arrested in Rwanda for helping defend his client, presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire, against charges that she violated the country’s Genocide Ideology Law.   Ingabire, a Hutu who returned after 16...   read more

There might be some advantages for the United States to use a value added tax (VAT), similar to a sales tax, to reduce other types of taxes, such as those levied on payrolls or corporate profits. Currently, the United States is the only country in...   read more

Robert Kaluza, described as a top employee with BP, refused to testify this week before a federal inquiry into the Deepwater Horizon accident, which could be a sign that the U.S. Department of Justice will pursue a criminal liability case against ...   read more

S. Elizabeth (Liz) Birnbaum, director of the Minerals Management Service (MMS) since July 14, 2009, became the first leading official in the Obama administration to lose her job over the federal government’s response to the Deepwater Horizon oil s...   read more

The final form of the financial regulation bill in Congress is in the hands of a conference committee that must reconcile competing versions of the legislation. Appointed from the Senate to the committee are 12 senators who have received $57 milli...   read more

The bizarreness of this story is best captured in the official title of the lawsuit: United States v. One Polished Diamond Weighing Approximately 68 Carats. Yes, the federal government is suing an inanimate object—granted a very expensive inanimat...   read more

Security forces in Jamaica spent most of this week shooting up a working-class neighborhood in an attempt to capture drug lord Christopher “Dudus” Coke, wanted in the United States on gun and narcotics charges. Acting on a longstanding extradition...   read more

Two days before the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) announced that the Deepwater Horizon accident had easily eclipsed the Exxon Valdez disaster as the nation’s worst-ever oil spill, U.S. Coast Guard representative Edward Stanton downplayed the serio...   read more

Unable to deploy troops in Pakistan, but still in need of ways to transport weapons across it and into Afghanistan, the U.S. government is looking for defense contractors who can take on the task of logistical support through Pakistani territory. ...   read more

If it becomes law, the financial reform legislation in Congress will impose a number of significant changes affecting how Wall Street operates. It would establish a new agency to oversee consumer financial products, create a council to monitor sys...   read more