President Donald Trump gleefully announced that, under his direction, U.S. military troops had swooped down on the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento and kidnapped California Governor Gavin Newsom. “We’re charging Newscum with fraud.” When a reporter asked for specifics about the fraud charges, Trump pointed to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi, clearly taken by surprise, said, “We’re looking into it and will let you know the details as soon as we’ve created them.”   read more

It is commonly assumed in the United States that federal law prevents children from working like adults. For the most part this is true. But not when it comes to farming.   Ever since the Great Depression when the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1...   read more

It’s no wonder that during the thick of the Iraq war American soldiers repeatedly purchased their own body armor to protect themselves from insurgent attacks, given the news that the Department of Defense failed to properly test more than five m...   read more

Nearly 10 years after the Anthrax scare that killed five people, postal worker Patrick O’Donnell still has unresolved issues stemming from the horrible incident.   One day in October 2001, after he had been on the job for 12 years, he became i...   read more

To hear Pentagon officials tell the story, the recent agreement to deal with the federal debt by cutting military spending is a potentially catastrophic threat to U.S. security. But if you read between the lines, it doesn’t look so bad after all...   read more

If something is repeated enough times by enough people, it can take on the status of fact. That is until the truth is revealed.   For the controversial drilling practice of hydraulic fracturing, better known as “fracking,” in which chemically-la...   read more

A year after the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a new requirement for universities and medical schools to put up websites disclosing any financial arrangements between corporations and NIH-funded researchers, the Obama administrat...   read more

With the Department of Defense expected to have fewer resources next year, the U.S. Army has announced plans to eliminate more than 8,700 civilian jobs by the end of September 2012.   Army officials have instructed various commands to figure o...   read more

A retired diplomat experienced in handling tough overseas assignments, Ryan Crocker has returned to Afghanistan, where he helped reopen the U.S. embassy following the U.S. invasion in 2001. He was sworn in on July 25, 2011. This is the sixth Isl...   read more

America’s elite Navy SEALs have again borne the worst of the Afghanistan war for the U.S. military, losing 17 commandoes on Saturday in the single deadliest day since the conflict began almost ten years ago.   The SEALs were among 31 who died wh...   read more

In the Yiddish language, a kvetch is a person who is a chronic complainer. Sometimes an accomplished kvetch can end up helping others. Fed up with what it says was incessant complaints, Northwest Airlines gave a rabbi the boot fr...   read more

The U.S. government has been ordered by a judge in Guatemala to return a six-year-old girl kidnapped from her family four years ago and adopted by an American couple.   Loyda Rodriguez Morales, the mother of Anyelí Liseth Hernández Rodríguez, ...   read more

Career diplomat Aminata Djibrilla Maiga Touré became Niger’s ambassador to the United States in March 2006. When a military junta staged a coup in February 2010, Touré was named foreign minister. However, she is still officially her nation’s amb...   read more

There’s a new challenger for the title “America’s Meanest Bank” after Bank of America chose to robo-call a widow in Hawaii to demand its mortgage payment, calling early, often and even every 15 minutes during the wake for the husband.   Debora...   read more

The bank that played a major role inflating the house bubble, and consequently helped cripple Wall Street in 2008, has become the state bank of Kentucky.   Name the financial transaction and JPMorgan Chase is now in charge of it: deposits, pay...   read more

For only $500, soldiers in Afghanistan came up with an ingenious way to help detect roadside bombs and reduce the threat of casualties.   The money was spent on a remote-controlled toy truck (Traxxis Stampede) that a soldier’s brother, Ernie F...   read more

A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, with prior experience serving in Africa, Jeanine E. Jackson was confirmed as ambassador to Malawi on June 30, 2011.   Jackson is a native of Sheridan, Wyoming, who earned a bachelor’s degree in ar...   read more