He went to school with his homemade clock to show it off to an engineering teacher. But after the clocked beeped, school officials called police thinking he actually had a bomb. He was taken to a juvenile detention center where he was fingerprinted and a mug shot was taken. He was also suspended from school for three days. Critics pointed to Mohamed’s religion as reason why he found himself in handcuffs for a while, saying had he been white, authorities would have reacted differently.   read more

Aspen now gets its power primarily from wind and hydroelectric, joining Burlington, Vermont, and Greensburg, Kansas, as the only other cities to achieve all-renewable energy portfolios. “This means we are powered by the forces of nature, predominately water and wind with a touch of solar and landfill gas,” said Aspen environmental/utilities director David Hornbacher. The movement toward renewables could soon count California as a big example for others to follow.   read more

Recruiters from Oklahoma City have traveled to Puerto Rico and Spain seeking teachers. Other districts are putting up billboards in neighboring states to lure teachers. California alone will need to hire 21,000 new teachers every year over the next five years, but is issuing fewer than 15,000 new teaching credentials a year. “There was a point where we were, frankly, overproducing teachers. Now, if you look at the most recent year, we are not producing enough,” said Joshua Speaks.   read more

Asked if he had any connection with al-Qaeda, Hassan said yes. But it was not the terrorist group he was admitting to being familiar with. In Yemen is a village called Al-Qa’idah. It was this place he was responding to, not al-Qaeda. But the translator didn’t realize the mistake, and the American soldier interrogating Hassan had all he needed. Hassan was shipped to Guantánamo, where he was cleared for release in 2009 but remained until June of this year, when he was released in Oman.   read more

In Alabama, Marcus Underwood, who is black, sued the city of Bessemer, its police chief, Nathaniel Rutledge, and officers Daniel Cecil Partridge and Christopher Asarisi, all of whom are white. Underwood claims police needlessly shot him multiple times, striking him in the jaw, chest, arm, hand and shoulder in June 2014 while he was driving away from a friend’s house. Underwood was also charged with attempted murder and attempting to flee the scene of a crime.   read more

The Illinois Lottery has stopped paying jackpots of more than $25,000 while the state government tries to pass a budget and some winners who still haven’t received their payouts are suing the state. “How the heck can they do this, and they’re still selling tickets?” Rhonda Rasche, who is still waiting for the $50,000 she won in July from a $3 scratch-off ticket, said to the Chicago Tribune. “If I was the one selling raffle tickets and I didn’t pay, I would be sued or in jail or both.”   read more

State Senator Bob Keenan and former state Senator Verdell Jackson, both Republicans, sought an injunction to stop the transfer because of the tribes’ business and cultural connections with Turkey, a U.S. ally and member of NATO. The suit charged that the transfer would give the Turks “access to the uranium deposits and bountiful water sources surrounding the Flathead Reservation for production of yellowcake capable of later conversion to a gaseous state for eventual use in incendiary devices.”   read more

With all that free time, Farrow has also been able to hold a side job—as lobbyist for Puerto Rico and the island nation of Palau, which earned him $820,000 last year. The GSA IG also found the commission agreed to pay Farrow $104,000 per year to work eight hours per week. “Instead, he took the higher salary and worked less than the scheduled amount,” Eric Katz reported at Government Executive. His $143,000 government salary represented nearly 25% of the commission’s annual budget.   read more

“The most radical difference,” Scott Henson wrote, involved a case “where a one-in-a-billion probability was lowered to around one-in-fifty.” The difference “stemmed not from the data entry errors but because … the FBI had changed its methodology for calculating probabilities in mixed DNA samples and moved to a new method which they considered more accurate.” The change could mean that people convicted with mixed DNA evidence might have cause for a new trial.   read more

The Guardian and the Associated Press say they uncovered emails from lobbyists representing egg producers that targeted the sales of Hampton Creek, which produces a mayonnaise that contains no eggs. The egg replacement company was seen as a threat to the $5.5 billion-a-year egg industry, prompting the American Egg Board (AEB) to launch a campaign to keep Hampton Creek from becoming successful.   read more

The Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System (SCL), which runs hospitals and clinics in Kansas, Colorado and Montana, has used a logo including a cross since 1976. It tweaked its logo to add a bit of blue to it. Insurance behemoth Blue Cross then warned the Sisters of Charity to stop using the logo, threatening litigation and to stop its agreements with the nuns’ facilities, causing SCL patients to pay out of pocket or go elsewhere for healthcare.   read more

The reference to “managed retreat” has to do with 31 communities that are threatened by the warming climate. Over the next three years, the commission will decide if the residents of these communities will be “protected in place” or moved away from deteriorating coastal areas. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R) will evidently oversee the project.   read more

“Reasonable people might disagree, as a matter of ordinary usage, as to whether the term ‘family’ should include adult children who live with their parents, or a 17-year-old child who does not, or nieces and nephews who live with their aunts and uncles,” wrote Judge Kethledge. But, he added, there was no ambiguity when it comes to an individual’s husband or wife being a member of their family.   read more

Experts in the developing field of autonomous vehicles say a big challenge ahead is programming self-driving cars to know how to react to cars driven by humans. “The real problem is that the car is too safe,” said Donald Norman, director of the Design Lab at the University of California San Diego, who studies autonomous vehicles. “They have to learn to be aggressive in the right amount, and the right amount depends on the culture.”   read more

The University of Michigan’s annual “Monitoring the Future” study says just less than 6% of full-time college students used pot either every day or at least 20 times in the previous 30 days. That rate was higher than the 5% of respondents who claimed to be heavy cigarette smokers. The study also found 21% college students had used marijuana at least once during the previous month, and 34% said they had used it in the past year.   read more

Donald Trump’s immigrant-bashing message has raised questions about a backlash among Hispanic voters in response to the candidate’s ugly rhetoric. But while Hispanic turnout in elections has been steadily climbing in recent elections, the fact is most of these Americans still don’t cast ballots on Election Day. A new study shows only 47% of Hispanic voters went to the polls during the 2012 election. That means 53% didn’t vote, even though 20% of those who didn’t were registered.   read more