According to aides who were present when Trump discussed the issue, but who choose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, Trump said he was sick of Vance and wanted to fire him. “I wanted him to be my attack dog,” said Trump, “but he appears foolish on television. He dropped the college football trophy. He met with Pope Francis and the next day the pope died. Vance is toxic, and I don’t want him to come near me. He just doesn’t look as good on television as I thought he would.”   read more

“Hicks was the first prisoner to be convicted by a Guantánamo military commission, by virtue of his guilty plea, and he’s now the first to have his conviction vacated,” said McClatchy. “I was subjected to five and a half years of physical and psychological torture that I will now live with always,” said Hicks. He claims to have been subjected to waterboarding, beatings, and forced drugging. Threatened with being sent to Egypt to be tortured, he agreed to the condition for release—plead guilty.   read more

The apples will now be sold in stores—without any labeling informing consumers that the apples’ DNA has been altered. The USDA decided to commercialize them despite receiving 73,000 comments in opposition. Apple industry officials and food-safety advocates criticized the decision. Some believe it could hurt the “wholesome image of the fruit that reputedly ‘keeps the doctor away,’” as well as damage exporting of apples to countries that reject genetically modified foods.   read more

L.A. Police Chief Charlie Beck has called on toy-gun makers to stop producing weapons that closely resemble deadly firearms that an officer can easily mistake for a threat. Slate's Peters says that in some cases the police officers involved in the shootings may be responsible for the deaths: “Jamar Nicholson was shot in the back. He wasn’t even holding the fake gun. Tamir Rice wasn’t pointing a gun at Officer Timothy Loehmann when Loehmann shot and killed him."   read more

State Attorney Alvarez said that “terrifying” threats and false evidence were fabricated by Protess’s students at his direction. Private investigator Ciolino has admitted that a videotape was made featuring an actor posing as a witness who claimed to have seen Simon commit the murders. Additionally, Simon’s estranged wife was persuaded to falsely testify that she witnessed the killings. All of this was used against Simon to coerce him into confessing to the crime, he claims.   read more

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who often is mentioned as a potential Republican candidate for president, frequently discusses his evangelical faith in public and has gone so far as to imply that he talks to God. But when asked to show proof of that, his office said it could not provide it. “While it's on the record that the governor is communicating with higher powers like billionaire and political kingmaker Sheldon Adelson, that's where the paper trail ends,” wrote the Foundation.   read more

This year’s five Oscar nominees for Best Animated Feature have something unusual in common: in none of them is the young protagonist raised by his or her birth mother. The target audience for all of the nominees (even the more sophisticated Princess Kaguya) is children.   read more

With the encouragement of U.S. defense contractors, the Obama administration has, for the first time, decided to allow the export of armed drones to countries other than the United Kingdom. The foreign governments next in line to acquire weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles weren't identified. But it was reported that “allied nations from Italy to Turkey to the Persian Gulf region” have wanted to get their hands on drones that can attack targets.   read more

If the previous six years is any indication, it is unlikely any executives of financial institutions will be charged. The Obama administration has consistently opted for civil, not criminal, punishment of major banks for their alleged wrongdoing. Huge settlements have been reached between Holder’s department and Wall Street firms but there have been no admissions of guilt or executives facing criminal charges. Holder said that his prosecutors haven’t found any smoking guns.   read more

Burger King and Canadian doughnut company Tim Hortons have merged. The upshot for Burger King is it is no longer a U.S.-based business. By renouncing its U.S. citizenship, Burger King stands to avoid paying between $400 million and $1.2 billion in U.S. taxes over the next four years. But moving to Canada won’t mean it is pulling its lucrative franchises from the U.S., where it currently has 7,155 restaurants. It will still make more than $8 billion annually in sales from American consumers.   read more

A breakthrough in treating hepatitis C costs almost 300 times more in the U.S. than it does in India, a disparity made all the more outrageous by the fact that the U.S. government helped fund the research for the drug. The cost to produce it is in the range of $68 to $136. “In other words, the U.S. price-cost markup is roughly 1,000-to-1!” said Jeffrey Sachs. Sovaldi was developed with grants from the National Institutes of Health and support from the Department of Veterans Affairs.   read more

The incidents have reminded some of Ferguson, Missouri, last summer, when a white officer shot and killed an unarmed African American, Michael Brown. However in the Pasco case, a special investigative unit, the county coroner and the FBI are looking into the shooting. Pasco’s population is 56% Hispanic, but only 14 of the 68 officers are Hispanic. The city council has one Latino member, and the five-member school board has no Latinos.   read more

Federal authorities are racing against time. The remaining suspects in the shooting of four African Americans are currently in their 80s and 90s. The murders took place on July 25, 1946 at the Moore’s Ford Bridge, where two black couples were forced out of a car, tied up and shot 60 times by a white mob. A new report by the Equal Justice Initiative says the state of Georgia had more lynchings, 586, from 1877 to 1950 than any other state.   read more

The agency’s diversity statistics show blacks made up only 4.7% of the special agents in 2012, down from 5.6% in 1997. FBI Director Comey says he has been trying to hire more persons of color for the FBI. He also has been requiring all new agents and analysts to study how the Bureau treated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover worked to destroy King’s credibility to help damage the civil rights movement.   read more

Benefits for those with the lowest levels of income, such as unemployed single mothers with children, have been reduced by about 30%. Many of these cuts went into effect as part of President Clinton’s effort to “end welfare as we know it.” “Most observers would think that the government should support those who have the lowest incomes the most,” wrote Moffitt. “But that is not the case.” The assumption is, he added: “If you’re not working, the interpretation is that you’re not trying.”   read more

Big corporations, those with 500 or more workers, employ 51.6% of U.S. workers according to the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. That number has gone up since 2004, when 49.1% of Americans worked for large companies. The numbers for 2012 showed about 60 million Americans work for “large enterprises,” while 20.4 million count on mom-and-pop businesses, or what the Census Bureau calls “very small enterprises,” with 20 or fewer workers.   read more

An analysis of mercury in tuna over the past half century revealed the heavy metal’s levels have increased 3.8% annually. The data reflects the increasing level of mercury in ocean fish, reaching the level—0.3 parts per million—the EPA considers unsafe for human consumption because of the neurotoxin’s effect on the brain and nervous system. Children can be born with elevated amounts of mercury in their blood, which can result in a “significant” I.Q. deficit, according to the report.   read more