Rumors are spreading that the U.S. Supreme Court will vote 5-4 to rule that a U.S. president cannot be prosecuted for anything he does while he is president. Some Democrats are suggesting that Joe Biden bring a gun to his first debate with Donald Trump. If he shoots Trump, he would be immune, but if Trump shoots Biden he would be prosecuted because he is not a sitting president.   read more

Not since the terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia in June 1996 has the U.S. Air Force lost so many personnel in a hostile attack as it did on April 27, when an Afghan pilot opened fire on American service members at Kabul Air Base.   Eight of th...   read more

Arguing the move would stigmatize poor people at the checkout stand, the soft drink industry is opposing a plan by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to ban the use of food stamps to buy “sugar-sweetened beverages.”   Bloomberg says the res...   read more

A longtime Labor Party politician, Kim Christian Beazley has served as Australia’s ambassador to the United States since September 2009.   Beazley was born on December 14, 1948, in Perth, Western Australia. His father, Kim Beazley Sr., served ...   read more

Phyllis M. Powers has come a long way from her days as a medical technologist in the 1970s. Powers was nominated by President Barack Obama in July 2010 to become ambassador to Panama. She was confirmed by the Senate on August 8.   A native of ...   read more

Along with a refinery operated by Valero Energy Corporation, BP’s Texas City, Texas, refining operation has once again polluted the air of local residents, this time with a discharge of 150,000 pounds of pollutants.   The releases by Valero an...   read more

Timothy Roemer, U.S. ambassador to India, has resigned his post and is coming home. Why Roemer is leaving after barely two years is a matter of much speculation.   Sworn in the U.S. ambassador to India on July 23, 2009, Tim Roemer is an exampl...   read more

Teen births declined overall in the United States for 2009, the latest year available according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But a wide disparity exists between states with the highest and lowest rates, which are based on t...   read more

Jestina Clayton is suing the state of Utah for requiring her to get a cosmetology license so she can weave hair—something she claims is unconstitutional.   A refugee from Sierra Leone, Clayton says she was told by a state regulator two years a...   read more

A controversial figure in his own country, Dino Patti Djalal became ambassador of Indonesia to the United States in September 2010, despite calls from human rights groups for President Barack Obama to reject his credentials.   Born on Septembe...   read more

Economic pressures are greater than ever for renters in the United States, as more non-homeowners find the majority of their paychecks going to pay the landlord and utility companies.   Since 1981, the U.S. government has considered that a fam...   read more

Fewer Americans own guns these days, according to a new report that shows a three-decade decline in the percentage of personal and household ownership of pistols and rifles. Using data collected by the federal government, the National Opinion Re...   read more

In the 15 months after President Barack Obama ordered the federal government to decrease the amount of classified information, less than half of all relevant agencies had bothered to establish policies to comply. In fact, in FY 2010, government ...   read more

Food-borne illnesses are costing the United States $14 billion a year in terms of medical care, lost days at work, long-term chronic health problems or deaths, according to a report by the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florid...   read more

In belated appreciation for his “sincere sympathy,” Elvis Presley will be named a citizen of Hungary and have a small park named after him by the Budapest city council.   In January 1957, three months after Hungarians rose up and sought indepe...   read more

Abdoulgassim Khalifa Hafter (a.k.a. Khalifa Hiftar) was a top military officer for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, until the Libyan dictator’s bungled military invasion of Chad in the late 1980s, in which Haftar was taken prisoner and Gaddafi did...   read more

Banks have made a killing off the near-zero interest rate loans provided by the Federal Reserve during the 2008-2009 financial crisis—by taking the money and loaning it back to the U.S. Treasury at rates 12 times higher.   At the request of U....   read more