President Donald Trump invited the Dodgers to the White House. Many of their fans feared that the team, by accepting, would humiliate themselves and betray the team’s large Latino, Asian and African-American fan base. Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, along with co-owner Magic Johnson, have proposed a solution. Trump has promised that if he can keep the championship trophy, the Commissioner’s Trophy, he will end all seizures and deportations of immigrants.   read more

California’s ongoing budget debacle has produced a new kind of profiteer: IOU buyers. Once the state government began its new fiscal year on July 1 without a budget, officials offered IOUs for everything from tax refunds to payments for vendors. A...   read more

President Obama has nominated a Republican, Jim Leach, to serve as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. If confirmed by the Senate, former Congressman Leach will become the fifth Republican to serve in the Obama administration, j...   read more

On July 24 the federal minimum wage will increase to $7.25 an hour, but this will be no cause for celebration, writes Jonathan Tasini, executive director of the Labor Research Association. For Tasini, the minimum wage is a “scandal” that “masks po...   read more

Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs) are being accused of exploiting loopholes in federal contracting rules to receive billions of dollars from the federal government, according to lawmakers and federal inspectors. Current regulations allow ANCs to r...   read more

Mounir Said Hanna, a 55-year-old administrator at a vocational school in southern Egypt, was sentenced to three years in prison and fined 100,000 Egyptian pounds ($18,000 in U.S. dollars) for writing poems deemed insulting to President Hosni Mubar...   read more

Watching the rising rates of unemployment and foreclosures, it’s hard to imagine the economic downturn is even close to being over. But for one group of Americans, the leaders of large banks, the economy is starting to look rosy again.   Followi...   read more

Whales swimming in the Gulf of Mexico may become collateral damage from military exercises conducted by the U.S. Navy, which has asked for permission to ”incidentally harass” the mammals. The National Marine Fisheries Service is reviewing the Navy...   read more

Even though President Barack Obama has pledged to end no-bid contracting, the Defense Department is still awarding projects—paid for with stimulus funds—to businesses that haven’t had to compete for the work. The awarding of no-bid work to small c...   read more

A blogger in China helping to expose the cover up of a local woman’s rape was arrested this week in mid-sentence while posting to Twitter. “I have been arrested by Mawei police, SOS,” wrote amoiist, who also goes by the names Peter Guo and Guo Bof...   read more

After serving in Iraq, public affairs specialist Gina Gray figured her new assignment handling media requests for Arlington National Cemetery would be a lot safer and easier. She thought wrong. Soon after taking over as the public affairs director...   read more

After five and a half years of waiting in immigration detention, Jamaican-born immigrant Errol Barrington Scarlett has finally been granted a bond hearing by a federal judge in Buffalo, New York. The defendants, the Department of Homeland Security...   read more

Two longtime California politicians have been selected to lead the government’s investigation into the causes of the economic crisis that struck the nation last year. Chairing the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission will be Phil Angelides, former ...   read more

A ban on building roads in National Forests was disregarded by the Obama administration this week when Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack approved a plan to open up to logging a stretch of forest on Revillagigedo Island in Tongass National Forest i...   read more

Where are you when we need you, Steven McQueen? The star of the 1958 film, The Blob, knew what to do about that gelatinous, man-eating monster, but officials in Alaska are stumped over what exactly is floating off the state’s coast in the Chukchi ...   read more

Fulfilling his promise of appointing Republicans to his administration, President Obama has turned to Republican Congressman John M. McHugh to serve as Secretary of the Army. McHugh represents New York’s 23rd Congressional District, which includes...   read more

The U.S. Naval Academy reportedly graduated its first pregnant midshipman in May, even though school policy dictates women are not supposed to marry or begin families before completing their studies. Normally, pregnant midshipmen are allowed to ta...   read more