Imagine that China’s dictator, Xi Jinping, sends one million Chinese troops to invade the United States. Fighting breaks out all over the U.S. as U.S. troops and civilians battle against the Chinese invaders. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, are killed. Meanwhile, China has taken over Florida and declared it an overseas province of China, with Chinese nationals taking over control of the Florida government.   read more

Sargsyan was selected as prime minister in April 2008 and was reappointed in 2012 and 2013. At first he was not a member of any political party, but he later joined the Republican Party of Armenia. In 2011, Sargsyan survived a financial crisis in his country when the inflation rate hit 9.4%, sending thousands of Armenians into poverty. Sargsyan was pushed out as prime minister in April 2014 when a pension reform plan he championed was found to be illegal under Armenian law.   read more

Give Altria, makers of Marlboro cigarettes and other tobacco products, credit for one thing: the company will prohibit its U.S. tobacco growers from hiring children under the age of 16. Human Rights Watch found that tobacco farming exposed children and others working in the fields to nicotine, toxic pesticides and extreme heat. The group said most children interviewed reported nausea, vomiting, headaches, and dizziness, which are signs of acute nicotine poisoning.   read more

The skills needed to operate this deadly weapon are familiar to many young sailors. The controller “looks a lot like a game controller, Xbox, PS4 or whatever.” Klunder added, “Any of you that can do Xbox or PS4, you’ll be good with this.” One advantage of this system to the Navy is cost. Firing a missile costs about $2 million, while the laser can do some of the same jobs for about 59 cents—the cost of electricity.   read more

As if there weren’t already enough insults out there to frustrate a left-handed person (scissors, computer mouses, the whole handwriting thing, etc), it turns out being left-hand dominant costs you earnings too. A new study (pdf) shows people who are right-handed make more money than lefties. The difference averages out to about 10% to 12%.   read more

In May 2000, Ziauddin was appointed ambassador to Italy with concurrent credentialing to Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was also his country’s representative to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Program and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. After that assignment, Ziauddin served as an ambassador-at-large for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina until being named to the Washington post.   read more

Marmei was transferred to his country’s Washington embassy in 2000 as charge d’affaires. While there, he took a familiarization flight in a Blackhawk helicopter assigned to the Maryland National Guard. The craft had an emergency and was forced to land in the infield at Pimlico race track—a half hour before post time.   read more

The Cornucopia Institute says it has uncovered “one of the largest fraud investigations in the history of the organic industry.” Using aerial photography, the institute found 14 factory farms that have produced milk, meat and eggs under the organic label. Photographs showed the cattle and chickens on these farms were confined to “industrial-scale confinement livestock facilities” and cows were not given access to fields for grazing, which is required under federal rules for organic farming.   read more

On page 213 of the spending plan, there is language barring the U.S. Department of Justice from taking actions against states that have approved marijuana for medicinal use. This prohibition would apply to operations by the DEA. But the news is not all good from the halls of Congress. One House member, Republican Andy Harris of Maryland, wants to prohibit the District of Columbia from implementing its new law legalizing recreational medical marijuana.   read more

His father, Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, was Somalia’s prime minister, and then president and was assassinated on October 15, 1969, by his bodyguards in the run-up to a military coup. In 2009, Sharmarke was chosen to be prime minister by President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed as part of a Western-backed unity government.   read more

The Coniglios had fallen behind on their mortgage, prompting the bank to unleash their robocaller—the computer system that routinely (if not maniacally) will call customers multiple times a day about bank debts. In the Coniglios’ case, the calls were relentless … upwards of five a day over a period of four years. The total reached 700. Even after the couple won rulings in court ordering B of A to stop the calls, they just kept coming.   read more

Condé signed a treaty with South Korea, initiating ambassador-level relations between the nations for the first time, the last African nation to do so. Guinea had exchanged ambassadors with North Korea as early as 1960. In 2013, Condé was named Guinea’s ambassador to Italy, serving until early 2014. He then came home briefly to be deputy head of administration, with control over major projects.   read more

While the media poured over the Senate's CIA torture report, the Obama administration was fighting to keep the lid on another torture report.The Justice Dept. probe into the CIA program was conducted by prosecutor John H. Durham, who spent four years delving into the controversy but ultimately recommended to Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. to not file charges against the agency or any of its employees or contractors. Holder followed Durham’s suggestion and refrained from going after the CIA.   read more

The new provision was generated behind closed doors, wasn’t disclosed for public debate, and was a surprise when it was found buried in the spending bill. “The impetus for the measure appears to have been driven by the Republican National Committee, which has aggressively sought ways to shake off its fundraising limitations,” wrote the Post. “[It] will create the opportunity for the wealthiest Americans to buy — and federal officeholders to sell — government influence,” said Wertheimer.   read more

The U.S. is obligated under the International Convention on Torture to investigate any U.S. citizen accused of torturing someone, and the U.N. high commissioner for human rights said he welcomes the prosecution of CIA personnel who either ordered or carried out the torture against detainees. “The convention lets no one off the hook — neither the torturers themselves, nor the policy-makers, nor the public officials who define the policy or give the orders,” said the commissioner.   read more

Dr. Marcus Erikson, who led the study, told the Huffington Post one way to visualize that amount of plastic is to imagine a line of 2-liter plastic bottles running between the earth and the moon … twice. He also said the numbers he and his colleagues produced are on the conservative side. That’s because countries produce 300 million tons of plastic every year, of which 0.1% is discarded in the ocean, according to an estimate from the National Academy of Sciences.   read more

The man known as the “20th hijacker” of the 9/11 terrorist attacks wants to join other conspirators and detainees at Guantánamo Bay. Moussaoui has spent the past nine years at the federal super-maximum prison in Florence, Colorado. There, he claims he has been subjected to assaults, threats of murder, and harassment by guards and even other inmates, including Ramzi Yousef, who organized the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.   read more