Americans were responsible for 613, or 77%, of the 794 recorded African lions killed for trophies in 2013. About 50% of those lions killed by Americans were wild, while the remaining ones were bred in captivity and shot in “canned hunts.” The African lion population has dropped significantly since 1980, when there were 75,000. Today, their numbers are between 20,000 and 32,000. Officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have proposed listing the species as threatened.   read more

The breach resulted in three million gallons of orange-colored waste spilling into the Animas River. The rate of the leak out of the mine was calculated at 1,200 gallons per minute. As of Sunday, discolored water had traveled 100 miles reaching municipalities in New Mexico. Testing of water collected at sample stations along the Animas showed increased levels of arsenic, lead, aluminumr and other potentially toxic heavy metals. Two Colorado counties have declared states of emergency.   read more

If you watched the Republican presidential debate on Thursday, you learned one thing: The GOP is a man’s world. The last time a majority of women voted for a Republican presidential candidate was 1988…seven elections ago. The 10 candidates on the stage seemingly tried to outdo each other on taking away women’s abortion rights. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker repeated his view that abortion bans should have no exception for the health of the mother.   read more

Roosevelt was a particular target of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who believed she was a Communist sympathizer. He amassed a 3,000-page file on Roosevelt, most of which has been released. However there are still 12 pages of the file, dealing with Roosevelt’s trips to the Soviet Union in 1957 and 1958, which the FBI has not made available.   read more

Not once did the moderators ask the candidates about plots by white supremacists and other right-wing threats. The recent shooting of parishioners of a predominantly black Charleston church never came up. In the 10 years that followed Sept. 11, right-wing extremists carried out an average of 337 attacks annually in the U.S., with 254 people killed, according to ThinkProgress. American Muslims, on the other hand, are responsible for 20 plots in 13 years that resulted in 50 deaths.   read more

The SEC had dragged its heels because of stiff opposition from corporations. It’s possible that some executives don’t want to reveal the ratio between their pay and those working under them because the gaps in many cases will be huge. One think tank reported that CEOs were paid 300 times more than their employees in 2013. The ratio 50 years ago was only 20 to 1. “We have middle-class Americans who have gone years without seeing a pay raise, while CEO pay is soaring,” said Sen. Robert Menendez   read more

Civil liberties groups have said the CISA bill could weaken privacy protections for Americans. DHS reported that CISA would allow tech companies to share the data they’d collected on their users with the government. “CISA’s vague language and expansive definitions will give the government new ways to collect and use the personal information and communications of innocent Americans, all without a warrant or any review by an independent court or overseer,” wrote ACLU's Nathaniel Turner.   read more

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) led Republicans this week in an effort to defund Planned Parenthood for a practice he supported and voted for in Congress. In 1993, Congress approved the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act, which authorized the donating of fetal tissue for research, including samples from legal abortion procedures. McConnell, along with other Republicans, voted for that bill and others that allowed fetal tissue research.   read more

In what may be a first for the agency, the FDA has issued a cybersecurity alert to hospitals using computer-controlled pumps to administer drugs to patients. Certain Hospira pumps contain vulnerabilities that could allow a hacker to adjust the dosage of a drug. With their communications modules used for updating, "you can make the pump do whatever you like,” Rios said. A hacker would need no physical access to the pump.   read more

Public health experts urge doctors to ask about gun ownership, in part so they may recommend safety measures if children are in the home or if there is someone mentally ill present. Doctors also ask about household chemicals and swimming pools, but those don’t have the National Rifle Association making contributions to politicians on their behalf.   read more

A study from the Government Accountability Office has found that hundreds of chemical plants are incorrectly reporting the “Distance of Concern” which defines how large an area may be subject to toxic effects of a chemical release. The GAO report estimated that more than 2,700 of the estimated 6,400 facilities, or 44%, misreported the Distance of Concern.   read more

The new standard could get in the way of the Obama administration’s interrogations of detainees that still involve the use of psychologists, such as the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, which has been sent overseas to interrogate terror suspects or those associated with them. The administration also uses psychologists at the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where they oversee voluntary interrogations requested by a detainee.   read more

"Most users really have no idea how much information Facebook collects about them or how Facebook is able to infer from even a post...what their political orientation might be,” said EPIC's Rotenberg. “Facebook knows everything you’ve said, everything you’ve posted, everything you’ve clicked on.” Said Rand Paul strategist Vincent Harris: “Think about how powerful this is. It’s a fundraising tool [and] a persuasion tool... Facebook is actually everything. And this is what scares people.”   read more

A test pilot who flew an F-35 said 17 dogfights demonstrated that the plane could not compete with the F-16, which was introduced in the 1970s and is the plane the F-35 is supposed to replace. The F-35 program, which will cost more than $1 trillion if fully produced, has had other serious problems exposed: vulnerability to lightning strikes, and an inaccurate and unstable software system   read more

The Senate may be about to take up cybersecurity legislation and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) wants to make sure his colleagues put the subject in the proper context. To do that, Wyden wants a memo produced by the George W. Bush administration on the subject to be made public. So far, Wyden has been unsuccessful in getting the memo released before the Senate considers the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA).   read more

Obama’s own State Dept. reported that U.S. diplomats were prevented from observing the elections, saying it was “troubled” that opposition party observers were kept out. And Obama’s national security advisor, Susan E. Rice, told reporters that the result of the election was not credible. “The prime minister of Ethiopia was just elected with 100 percent of the vote, which I think suggests...some concern for the integrity of the electoral process,” she said.   read more