Trump said, “We need people to be afraid. Right now many Americans are surprised when protestors are killed, but they’ll get used to it.” Trump did add one suggestion: “Try not to kill white people. That gets too much attention. Stick to protestors of other colors.”   read more

"The history of voter disqualification has disturbing features," Appel wrote in his dissent. "In southern states after reconstruction, voter disqualification on the grounds of being convicted of infamous crimes was used as a tool to prevent African Americans from voting.'" Voting restrictions for ex-felons has a disproportionate effect on black citizens throughout the U.S., including Iowa, where Appel says African-American disenfranchisement is "more than triple the national rate."   read more

Most Americans can sense the increase anecdotally given the ubiquity of smartphones. People stare at screens while waiting in line for fast food, riding in elevators or walking down the street. Retail outlets post signs pleading that phones be turned off. People check messages in bed before falling asleep, and reach for the devices upon waking up. An estimated 81% of American adults use a smartphone regularly. "I feel like I would be lost without it," Girao said. "My whole life is on it."   read more

Dos Santos took his first ambassadorial post in 1996 as his country’s permanent representative to the United Nations. While there, he was named secretary general of a convention to ban landmines, an issue close to his heart because of the millions of mines planted in Mozambique during the civil war. He also worked to stop small arms proliferation, another vital issue in his country.   read more

The White House is to disclose the casualties with numbers indicating an estimated 100 civilians have been inadvertently killed by 500 drone strikes since 2009. Reprieve claims Obama's previous drone statements have been proven false even by the U.S. government's own internal documents. "But more importantly, it has to be asked what bare numbers will mean if they omit even basic details such as the names of those killed and the areas, even the countries, they live in," said Reprieve.   read more

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders joined other Vermont leaders Friday to celebrate the state's newly implemented law requiring labels on genetically modified food. Sanders sharply criticized the compromise bill in Congress that called for less stringent regulations. "Perhaps most shockingly...this bill imposes no penalties whatsoever for violating the labeling requirement, making the legislation essentially meaningless," Sanders said.   read more

The car's cameras failed to distinguish the white side of a turning tractor-trailer from a brightly lit sky and didn't automatically activate its brakes. The technology relies on multiple cameras, radar, laser and computers to sense objects and determine if they are in the car's way. Systems like Tesla's "aren't sophisticated enough to overcome blindness from bright or low contrast light," said Harley. He noted that more deaths can be expected as the autonomous technology is refined.   read more

Politicians in Iceland, Australia, Britain and Scotland have received such missives. Sir Roger Gale appealed to the speaker of the British House of Commons on Tuesday to block Trump's campaign appeals. "Members of Parliament are being bombarded with electronic communications from Team Trump on behalf of somebody called Donald Trump," said Gale. "I am all in favor of free speech, but I do not see why colleagues on either side of the House should be subjected to intemperate spam."   read more

Hockey was made treasurer.but ran into trouble when he presented his first budget. It called for cuts to family payments, punitive measures for unemployed young people, a Medicare co-payment, removal of caps on university fees, and $80 billion (Australian) in long-term cuts to health and education funding. He also announced an unpopular increase in fuel taxes. He defended the increase, saying “the poorest people either don’t have cars or actually don’t drive very far in many cases.”   read more

President Barack Obama signed into law Thursday measures to give the public greater access to government documents and records under the nearly half-century-old Freedom of Information Act. The new law will require federal agencies to consider releasing records under a “presumption of openness” standard, instead of presuming that the information is secret. Supporters say the shift will make it harder for agencies to withhold information.   read more

Federal regulators quietly gave the green light to more than 1,200 oil company fracking operations in the Gulf of Mexico between 2010 and 2014, according to documents environmentalists obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. At least 630 wells were fracked along the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama during that four-year period, and more than 76 billion gallons in fracking waste were dumped into the Gulf in 2014 alone, the documents show.   read more

Portland’s police chief resigned Monday, two months after he shot a friend during a hunting trip and allegedly told sheriff’s deputies that the friend had shot himself. Police Chief Larry O’Dea was on a camping trip in Harney County on April 21 when he shot his friend, Robert Dempsey, in the lower back. O’Dea, Dempsey and two other retired Portland police officers were reportedly shooting ground squirrels.   read more

North Carolina lawmakers took steps Thursday to set aside a half-million dollars for the legal defense of a law limiting protections for LGBT people as a judge sought to streamline a cluster of lawsuits it has inspired. Republicans showed no appetite to change the provision requiring transgender people to use restrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificate in schools, universities and many other public buildings.   read more

U.S. Customs and Border Protection found that employees acted properly when they fired guns in four incidents dating back to 2012 — including two that left two people dead. The reviews are the board’s first under its mandate to review uses of lethal force and other serious incidents once federal, state and local prosecutors decline to pursue criminal charges. It has opened investigations into 14 other cases.   read more

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) paid Romania “millions of dollars” to host secret prisons, a rights lawyer said Wednesday as the European Court of Human Rights heard accusations that Romania allowed the agency to torture terrorism suspects in a secret renditions program under President George W. Bush.   read more

BancorpSouth deliberately avoided building branches in minority neighborhoods in Memphis, Tennessee from at least 2011 to 2013. The bank also denied more loans to African Americans and other minorities when compared to neighborhoods with smaller minority populations, the Justice Department and CFPB said Wednesday, and minorities who were approved for loans were given higher interest rates when compared to non-minorities.   read more

The city of Cleveland agreed Wednesday to allow protests closer to the site of the Republican National Convention, approving rule changes that increases the amount of space demonstrators can occupy and allows for longer events. A federal judge ruled last week that Cleveland’s regulations on protests and marches during the convention infringed on the right of free expression and ordered city officials and the ACLU to negotiate new rules.   read more