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

On September 12, 1983, he stole $7.2 million from a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut, while working as an armored car driver. At the time, he told a fellow coworker that he pulled the heist because he was tired of working for other people. Later, the FBI learned Gerena was part a Puerto Rican separatist group called Los Macheteros, which needed money to finance its revolutionary activities.   read more

Knight was appointed to his first ambassadorship by President Barack Obama in 2009, serving as ambassador to the West African nation of Benin from September 2009 to December 2012, when he was appointed assistant chief of mission at the embassy in Baghdad.   read more

This tactic has resulted in laws that prevent the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) from mandating background checks for those purchasing older guns, and that prohibit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from researching gun violence. When Congress adopted restrictions for credit card companies, it included a provision allowing gun owners to bring their weapons into national parks.   read more

Babies born in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington between one week and 16 weeks after the nuclear meltdown began in March 2011 were found to be 28% more likely to suffer from congenital hypothyroidism (CH) than children born in those states during the same period one year earlier.   read more

Ebel was released on parole in late January without serving any additional time for assaulting a prison guard in 2008. The extra time was supposed to be added to the eight-year term he was already serving. However, because Judge David M. Thorson, at a June 2008 hearing, did not specify this, prison officials treated the sentence as if the two terms were applied concurrently.   read more

The Department of Defense has been ordered by a federal judge to release information on American soldiers killed last decade while wearing body armor. U.S. District Judge Richard Roberts ruled (pdf) that the Pentagon failed to demonstrate that Charles’ request for records would “shock” troops’ families. He also ordered the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner to release 89 records to the plaintiff.   read more

About 2.3 million pounds of asbestos was shipped to the U.S. last year, all of it from Brazil, the third largest producer of the mineral after Russia and China. The dangers posed by asbestos have caused more than 50 countries to ban the substance, which is used in building materials, insulation, automobile brakes and other products. But the U.S. government has not prohibited asbestos, preferring instead to regulate its use by businesses.   read more

“The U.N. Arms Trade Treaty that passed in the General Assembly today would require the United States to implement gun-control legislation as required by the treaty, which could supersede the laws our elected officials have already put into place,” Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) said in a statement. Actually, the treaty does no such thing.   read more

A different section of the U.S. Code that forbids the use of WMDs by U.S. nationals outside the U.S. also includes “any explosive, incendiary, or poison gas—(i) bomb, (ii) grenade, (iii) rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces, (iv) missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce, (v) mine, or (vi) [similar] device.”   read more

Batteries gave out sooner than expected, locations of parolees were off by miles, and many sex offenders figured out ways to tamper with or jam the GPS systems. At the urging of corrections attorneys, this information was sealed by a judge, reportedly to avoid “erod[ing] public trust” and to ensure that offenders continued to believe that they were constantly being tracked by a flawless system.   read more

At the VA center in Winston-Salem, 37,000 claims folders were stored on top of file cabinets due to the office running out of space. The IG reported that the weight of the combined folders exceeded the load-bearing capacity of the building itself. Employees had to use ladders and step stools to reach some files. This situation produced at least one work-place injury when a worker was hurt trying to retrieve a file.   read more

In terms of lawmakers’ social media topics, the study came up with seven categories. The most frequent is “position taking” (41% of Tweets and 39% of Facebook posts). The fifth category is “media,” in which the congressional Tweeter may hype himself (“I’m quoted in a Portsmouth Daily Times news report…,” said one Tweet cited in the report). The sixth category is “personal” (“Great meeting with the pres. of my alma mater. Go Cardinal!” said another).   read more

Another problem discovered was that the Army hasn’t kept track of the thousands of personal smart phones and tablets used by soldiers that access military networks. The IG investigation discovered that more than 14,000 such devices were in use without authorization, leaving them more vulnerable to data leakage and cyber-attacks.   read more

PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Association of Manufacturers predicted in a 2011 report (pdf) that fracking could help add one million manufacturing American jobs by 2025. These gains have not materialized yet, and in some cases, businesses that use natural gas are continuing to lay off workers. For example, the glassmaker Libbey benefited financially from lower gas prices, but decided to cut its work force and relocate some operations to Mexico.   read more

Federal regulators hired more than 70 attorneys following the 2010 explosion to establish the Litigation Backlog Project and reduce the backlog of contested mine safety citations, which had grown to 16,600. Two of the Backlog project’s five offices are now slated for closure, which will result in 30 lawyers being laid off by June 1.   read more

State Senator Eric Adams (D-Brooklyn), a former NYPD captain, said the stop-and-frisk policy was implemented to “instill fear” among young black and Hispanic men. Adams accused Police Commissioner Ray Kelly of admitting to this during a July 2010 meeting. It has been reported that during the past decade the NYPD has stopped around five million people, of whom almost 90% are Latino or black.   read more