According to aides who were present when Trump discussed the issue, but who choose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, Trump said he was sick of Vance and wanted to fire him. “I wanted him to be my attack dog,” said Trump, “but he appears foolish on television. He dropped the college football trophy. He met with Pope Francis and the next day the pope died. Vance is toxic, and I don’t want him to come near me. He just doesn’t look as good on television as I thought he would.”   read more

Characterized as the most important changes for coal miner safety in 45 years, the regulations require companies to provide workers with new technology that warns when the coal dust around them reaches harmful levels. The rules also call for reducing the amount of disease-causing dust in mines. “This is a historical day for coal miners in this country,” said Joe Main. “We’re issuing a new rule that’s going to change your lives.”   read more

The U.S. Senate still requires disclosure of campaign contributions on paper that later get digitized. The system is so out of date that if senators or candidates e-file their campaign finance reports, they get into trouble. The problem resides in the Senate’s “byzantine” filing requirements. Paper copies of reports must be sent to the Senate secretary, who sends them to the FEC, which gives them to a contractor to digitize. The data is then posted weeks past the filing deadline.   read more

College students with private loans whose co-signer, often a parent or grandparent, dies or declares bankruptcy are often being forced to repay the entire remaining balance immediately. Individuals caught in this situation include those in good standing who have kept up on their loan repayments, leaving federal regulators puzzled about why lenders are putting these people at risk of defaulting.   read more

Nashiri was held at several secret CIA prisons before being shipped to Guantánamo Bay, where he has been detained since 2006. His lawyers contend that he was tortured at the clandestine facilities, including being subjected to waterboarding and threats involving a gun and a power drill while CIA officials sought information from him about future terrorist plots. This information, if turned over to the military court, would not be released to the public, according to Pohl’s order.   read more

A total of 2,800 employees who were disciplined for all types of misconduct collectively received $2.8 million in bonuses, extra paid time off or raises between October 2010 and December 2012, the inspector general found. The IRS doesn’t take into account if a worker has paid his or her taxes, or whether they have gotten into trouble, when administering bonuses and other awards.   read more

Recidivism among prisoners is still quite common in the United States, with 67.8% winding up back behind bars within three years of being released. A new study from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the first such federal survey in nearly 20 years, revealed an even higher recidivism rate within five years of inmates being let out: 76.9%.   read more

Thomas Cushman, a sociology professor at Wellesley College, told Reuters he was concerned that the financial advantages of having Chinese students at a U.S. university could lead to pulling of punches and self-censorship when it comes to discussing topics deemed sensitive to China.   read more

The Obama administration has been ordered by a panel of federal judges to release its legal justification for assassinating Americans suspected of terrorist ties. ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer called the decision “a resounding rejection of the government’s effort to use secrecy, and selective disclosure, as a means of manipulating public opinion about the targeted killing program.”   read more

Utility companies fear the growth of mom-and-pop solar operations will eventually eat into their profits. So lawmakers in Oklahoma have decided to help utility companies charge higher rates to those who generate electricity through wind and solar power. Legislation—which passed in spite of opposition from solar advocates and environmental groups—represents a reversal in state law that’s been on the books since 1977, when legislators prohibited utilities from charging extra to solar users.   read more

Only two nations in the world use dolphins for military purposes—the U.S. and Russia—and this summer the two sides may wind up nose. Twenty U.S. dolphins will spend up to two weeks participating in NATO military exercises scheduled for the Black Sea. They will reportedly be testing a new anti-radar system designed to disrupt enemy sonar, and may even try out a new kind of armor. But they may also encounter Russia’s new military dolphins, recently acquired during its annexation of Ukraine.   read more

The U.S. Postal Service has been selling off many of its post office buildings to help reduce its budgetary problems. But USPS officials failed to abide by federal regulations governing the preservation of historic public property while carrying out sales of important structures and art. The Postal Service “did not know how many historic properties it owned or what it cost to preserve them,” and failed to make notification when sales include art dating back to the New Deal.   read more

Six states share a border with Colorado, which legalized recreational marijuana use, and one of those states, Nebraska, wants Colorado to help cover the costs of prosecuting Nebraskans caught bringing pot home, where it is not legal. “I don't know what it will take to get someone to stand up and do something to try to get some of our money back,” said sheriff Adam Hayward. But Nebraska’s attorney general, Jon Bruning, has been non-committal about suing Colorado to recover costs.   read more

The class-action lawsuit, with 64,613 plaintiffs, targets Google, Apple, Intel and Adobe for secretly agreeing not to poach each other’s engineers and to share salary information in an effort to control salaries. The collusion reportedly began in 2005, when Apple’s Steve Jobs approached Google’s top executive, Eric Schmidt, about working together to hold down salaries. After getting Google on board, Jobs “strong-armed” Adobe into joining the secret pact, according to court documents.   read more

The Highway Trust Fund’s Highway Account, which finances maintenance and construction projects at the state level, currently has about $8.4 billion in it. But the U.S. Department of Transportation warns that demand for this funding is outpacing money available. As a result, the fund may go bankrupt by August. Without a new funding plan, the Transportation Department would have to stop reimbursing states for highway projects.   read more

The new opportunities have existed only since December, when Mexico’s Congress approved a landmark bill that relaxed the 75-year-old grip over oil and gas development by Pemex, the state oil monopoly. The legislation paves the way for foreign companies to cut deals with the Mexican government to develop new oil fields. One such field is the Eagle Ford Shale Play, which straddles the Texas-Mexico border, running for hundreds of miles deep beneath the earth.   read more

The FDA wants to classify companies that distribute spent grain to farms as animal feed manufacturers. Breweries regularly sell or give their spent grain, which is left over from the beer-making process, to dairy farms, which feed it to cows. Breweries would have two choices: Pass this cost onto consumers in the form of higher beer prices, or stop selling the spent grain to farms and just dump it in landfills, which would be less environmentally friendly.   read more