The State Dept's Kirby said someone had censored the video intentionally. He described such action as unacceptable. "Deliberately removing a portion of the video was not and is not in keeping with the State Dept's commitment to transparency and public accountability," he said. A video editor received a call from a State Dept public affairs official who made "a specific request ... to excise that portion of the briefing. We do not know who made the request to edit the video or why it was made."   read more

The survey found that nearly 4 in 10 respondents mistakenly expect to turn to Medicare, which doesn't pay for long-term care. Jeanie Powell, 58, said she was confident she could afford long-term care until a year ago when she learned her insurance policy would cover only $1,000 per month. "It won't even put a dent in the cost," she said. She bought her policy in the 1990s, before she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Her health continues to deteriorate.   read more

Members of the House committee blasted the disparities and Rep. Chu called for an examination of the "alarming" differences and youngsters' abilities to access to lawyers in different places. "If justice is being served, it should be served evenly across the country," said Rep. Gutierrez. "Our asylum system is failing under the weight of its caseload combined with the fact that Congress robbed it of resources for decades." U.S. Immigration Services had no explanation for the disparities.   read more

The patients affected say they’ve been doubly injured — first by poor service or care and then by the disclosure of information they considered private. The shock of exposure can be effective, prompting patients to back off. “I posted a negative review” on Yelp, a client of a dentist wrote. “After that, she posted a response with details that included my personal dental information. … I removed my review to protect my medical privacy.”   read more

Trump has called for closing mosques and banning Muslims. “People coming to his rallies are cheering what he says,” Baig said. “We are beyond a state of shock.” Emir Alrashid of the Lighthouse Mosque sees parallels with a once-targeted group. “We’re going through the same struggles the Japanese did about their loyalty to the country after Pearl Harbor,” he said. “Just because you share an ethnic group or religion, you shouldn’t have to pass a loyalty oath to be considered a loyal American.”   read more

Free the Nipple wastes no time in stating its position: "Plaintiffs challenge a sexist ordinance that is based on antiquated social mores; justification for the ordinance is rooted in outdated nineteenth century puritanical values and discrimination, nothing more." The group says the ordinance also criminalizes revealing clothing. It calls it "one of the most restrictive public nudity ordinances in the nation." Female toplessness has been legalized in parts of 30 states, including Colorado.   read more

Smith apologized for letting students and teachers at two schools continue using the drinking sources after tests showed unsafe levels of lead. When tests came back positive for lead, officials took steps to repair or replace plumbing, but they didn't warn people not to drink the water. "Portland Public Schools regrets not having notified families and staff as soon as the tests indicated that there were elevated levels of lead," Smith wrote in an email to all families.   read more

The death rate in the United States rose last year for the first time in a decade, preliminary federal data show, a rare increase that was driven in part by more people dying from drug overdoses, suicide and Alzheimer’s disease. “We are not accustomed to seeing death rates increase on a national scale,” said Andrew Fenelon, a researcher at the CDC who did not work on the paper. “We’ve seen increases in mortality for some groups, but it is quite rare to see it for the whole population.”   read more

More serious to Connell was the issue of the government unilaterally redacting al Baluchi's medical records, which he said has deprived the defense of key information about his treatment in government facilities. In a case so closely tied to allegations and evidence of torture used against the detainees during time they spend in CIA custody, this information could be invaluable to building a defense. In at least five cases, an entire page was totally covered in black ink to hide its contents.   read more

The Pentagon refers to undisclosed files to challenge AP's findings. But the response fails to counter AP's investigation. It also criticizes a separate examination by the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders. The group's president, retired Col. Don Christensen, fired back at the Pentagon: "The Defense Department repeatedly accused Protect Our Defenders of misunderstanding the military justice process. Yet they are the ones who mischaracterized this process to Congress in the first place."   read more

One died in her multimillion-dollar apartment. Another left $1.3 million to charity. A third was an opera costume designer. All three donated their bodies to medical science, and eventually served as cadavers for first-year medical students. All three had signed forms that promised cremation and the disposal of their ashes by the medical school “in an appropriate and dignified manner.” So how did their dissected corpses end up instead in mass graves for the unclaimed and indigent?   read more

The report found that many rape victims suffering from trauma were unfairly discharged for a “personality disorder” or other mental health condition that makes them ineligible for benefits. The consequences are far-reaching, impacting employment, child custody, health care, disability payments, burial rights – virtually all aspects of life. Such a discharge “has been correlated with high rates of suicide, homelessness, and imprisonment."   read more

The new law set off a debate over whether it was really needed to protect officers, or whether it was an effort to dilute the basic meaning of hate crimes and to undermine the movement protesting the use of force by the police. “Hate crimes law is based upon a history of discrimination against certain groups of people, and a bill like this just tries to water down that reality, because there is not a history of discrimination against police...” said NAACP's Ernest Johnson.   read more

The new regulations require advisers who charge commissions to sign a promise that they will act in the client's best interests, earn "reasonable" compensation and disclose information about fees and conflicts of interest. At stake are about $4.5 trillion in 401(k) accounts and more than $7 trillion in IRAs. Some brokers rip off investors by pushing them toward higher-cost investments like variable annuities or riskier options such as real estate investment trusts.   read more

Judge Marsha Berzon said that the Bureau of Land Management conducted no surveys to determine whether sage grouse were present at the project's proposed site during the winter months and relied on data from surveys conducted at lower elevations.. "A fundamental flaw infects this reasoning," Berzon said. "The inaccurate information and unsupported assumption materially impeded informed decision-making and public participation."   read more

The Texas candidate who claimed that President Obama was a gay prostitute and believes dinosaurs walked the Earth with humans lost her primary Tuesday. Among Bruner's posts was that Democrats killed John F. Kennedy, that climate change is a hoax concocted by Karl Marx, and that Obama's health care overhaul was an orchestrated plot to wipe 200 million people from the U.S. population. She also wrote that the flood from Noah's Ark destroyed the dinosaurs — not a meteor as "concocted" by atheists.   read more