Trump ordered that the term Homo sapiens be changed to Hetero sapiens. In history books and on websites, the airplane from which the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima will no longer be identified as the Enola Gay, but rather the Enola Straight. Trump also ordered billionaire Mark Cuban, who supported Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, to change his name to Mark American. If he does not do so, he will be charged with terrorism.   read more

Judge Carlos Samour, who will preside over the case of accused shooter James Holmes, plans to call 5,000 potential jurors. By comparison, the ongoing trial of George Zimmerman in Florida for the killing of Trayvon Martin required a jury pool of only 500 and the current trial of mobster Whitey Bulger in Massachusetts started with a pool of 858 potential jurors.   read more

Nelson worked for dentist James Knight for 10 years until he fired her in 2010 because of her looks. Knight claimed that she was too attractive to keep around, lest he be tempted to sleep with her and endanger his marriage. The ordeal and court ruling of the “irresistible employee” became a national story on news shows and comedy programs. Nelson asked the court to reconsider its decision, and this week it agreed to do so.   read more

Hackett was named executive director of CRS in July 1993, and was appointed president in 2003. During his tenure, he started a division focusing on outreach to Catholic dioceses, parishes, organizations, and colleges, and laypeople were first appointed to the CRS board of directors. The organization’s budget—which despite the word “Catholic” comes not from the Church but from governments and private donors—nearly doubled under Hackett, who retired in December 2011.   read more

President Barack Obama has nominated one of his top fundraisers to serve as the next ambassador to Denmark. Rufus Gifford, who most recently served as finance chair of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, raised millions for Obama’s two presidential runs, especially among the gay community, where he and his former partner were dubbed “Obama's Gay Gold Mine” in 2008.   read more

“Do not use any electronic device,” Francis says, “such as the telephone, cell or smartphone, BlackBerry, iPhone, PDA computer, the Internet, email, any text or instant message service, any Internet chat room, blog or website such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube or Twitter to communicate to anyone any information about the case.”   read more

What made this legal event noteworthy was the fact that the defendant wasn’t even allowed to attend because prosecutors insisted the information being revealed was so secret that the hearing had to be completely closed. After concluding the hearing, the military revealed only one thing to the media: that it lasted 78 minutes. A Saudi millionaire, Nashiri has been in U.S. custody for 11 years.   read more

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will begin separating out arrests involving Latinos in their annual crime reports, doing for this ethnic group what the FBI has already done for whites, blacks and Asians. Until now, it was impossible to know just how many Latinos were arrested and for what types of crimes because FBI tabulations only revealed numbers by race, which factored in Caucasians, African-Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans or Alaska Natives.   read more

West claims supplier CF Industries sold two 100-ton shipments of agricultural-grade ammonium nitrate to Adair Grain dba West Fertilizer Company prior to the explosion that killed 15 people and flattened part of the town. At the time of the explosion, the second shipment of chemicals was still in a railcar parked just outside Adair’s fertilizer mixing building. Inside that building was 30 tons of the ammonium nitrate not yet sold—which ignited after the building caught fire.   read more

The controversy began after the developers of a mall in Ariel (population: 18,000), located ten miles beyond the Green Line that has divided Israel and its neighbors between 1949 and 1967, offered McDonald’s a spot in the new retail project. The owner of McDonald’s Israel, which has 180 franchises, said no thanks, citing the company’s policy of avoiding the West Bank.   read more

Residents reportedly found about 1,000 pieces of material on their own, according to the Detroit Free Press. Some of them were almost a century old. Also in the dumpster were bank and tax documents with personal information.   read more

For the first time, the federal government has exercised its authority to approve and reject tobacco products, which it had been granted under a 2009 law. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced this week that it had authorized the sale of two new makes of cigarettes, both of them by the Lorillard Tobacco Company. The FDA also rejected four other new tobacco products, but was prevented from releasing any information about them due to the law’s guidelines.   read more

At the Department of Defense, workers were told to “hammer this fact home…leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States,” according to a June 2012 Pentagon document obtained by McClatchy. The zero-tolerance policy demands that employees turn themselves and others in for failing to report observed security breaches. Any person who does otherwise must be reprimanded or have his security clearance revoked by his manager.   read more

Journalists in Louisiana who publish the identity of individuals who possess or have applied for concealed handgun permits can now be fined or thrown in jail. Republican Governor Bobby Jindal signed legislation last week that outlaws the publishing of “any information regarding the identity of any person who applied for or received a concealed handgun permit.”   read more

A new report by the inspector general (I.G.) of the Department of Health and Human Services identified more than 417,000 prescriptions in 2009 alone written by people who aren’t allowed under the law to do so, like massage therapists, athletic trainers, interpreters and others. The cost of the unauthorized prescriptions was $31.6 million, according to the study.   read more

The FBI reported that the city’s violent crime last year dropped 3.6%, while data compiled by the police revealed a 9.3% jump. Similarly, aggravated assaults reportedly declined 4%, according to the FBI, while Denver police said they went up 11% from 2011 to last year. While it’s not unusual for there to be minor differences between local police crime statistics and those held in the federal data base, observers found the Denver discrepancies to be glaring and highly unusual.   read more

Until Congress does redo the criteria, the Republican Party has its dream situation, one in which states can enact whatever voting procedures they want to limit minority voting without serious threat of reprisal from the federal government. This means that Republicans have absolutely no motivation to cooperate in rewriting the criteria for oversight.   read more