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

After eight years of complaints, Brazil is now threatening to impose stiff trade sanctions against the United States over U.S. subsidizing of cotton production. Brazil has appealed to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which first ruled that the ...   read more

After U.S. forces pushed the Taliban out of the southern Afghanistan town of Marja, Afghan officials installed Abdul Zahir Aryan to serve as the local representative of the government. Zahir’s job is to demonstrate to locals that siding with Kabul...   read more

It is possible to get criminals out of prison and keep them from returning to a life of crime, argue reformers calling for changes in prison sentencing. A new report from The Sentencing Project cites statistics from four states where lawmakers and...   read more

From banks to email programs, website developers need to create more complex security questions so users avoid the danger of identity theft. Researchers at the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh found that current schemes used...   read more

Disabled people trapped within their bodies now can communicate with the outside world via the first commercially available brain-operated computer. The Intendix, developed by Guger Technologies, allows those suffering from locked-in syndrome or s...   read more

Susan McBride, a civil servant in Detroit, won a $100,000 settlement from the city after officials failed to accommodate her allergy to perfume. McBride complained to superiors about a coworker’s perfume, claiming the smell made it difficult for h...   read more

Two Americans who claim they were tortured in Iraq have been allowed to move forward with their lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel say they were detained and interrogated in 2006 while working f...   read more

With HIV/AIDS infections reaching epidemic proportions, the District of Columbia has become the first city in the United States to distribute female condoms. The city plans to make 500,000 available in beauty salons, convenience stores and high sc...   read more

Washington has not put its money where its mouth is when it comes to isolating Iran. Multiple presidential administrations have decried the policies of the Tehran government, especially its efforts to develop nuclear weapons, but the U.S. governme...   read more

United Kingdom-based defense contractor BAE Systems has pled guilty in U.S. federal court to charges of defrauding the government and trying to cover up its illegal activities. The company has agreed to pay $400 million, one of the largest crimina...   read more

In recent years there has been a growing movement to grant veterans special treatment within the American legal system. In January 2008 this resulted in the first veterans' court in Buffalo, NY. Since then, 22 other cities and counties have also b...   read more

For five decades the federal government has stuck with the same definition for what constitutes poverty. But the Department of Commerce under President Barack Obama has decided to use a new set of variables to compliment the existing method that d...   read more

Twenty three years after the federal government targeted it as the nation’s underground dump for nuclear waste, Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is headed for closure. President Barack Obama followed through on his campaign promise to shut down the controv...   read more

Even when awarding contracts to companies without competitive bidding, federal agencies are supposed to follow certain rules and guidelines. But that has not been the case at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which gave out $3.4 billion i...   read more

Switzerland is big on animal rights, so much so that voters today cast their ballots on whether the government should provide lawyers to animals that have been abused. Backers of the measure, which received 144,000 signatures to get on the ballot,...   read more

In compliance with the reform legislation adopted last year by Congress, the Federal Reserve board is proposing new rules to limit credit card issuers from unloading “unreasonable” late payments on consumers and hiking interest rates. Fed official...   read more