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

“You'd think the Congress would listen, but they clearly listen to the National Rifle Assn.,” Feinstein said after Reid’s decision. The majority leader’s decision comes one week after Feinstein recounted at a Senate hearing her experience during the City Hall shootings—trying to find the pulse of a dying Milk and putting her finger through a bullet hole.   read more

More than 2,500 “phantom requests” for absentee ballots were sent to the Miami-Dade County elections website prior to the state’s August primary, according to law enforcement officials investigating the case. The fraudulent requests for ballots focused on Democratic voters in the 26th Congressional District and Republicans in Florida House districts 103 and 112.   read more

Ntaganda faced a rebellion within his own rebel group—referred to as M23—from those secretly working with the Rwandan government. The issue of whether or not to turn in Ntaganda to the government contributed to a recent split within M23, which resulted in scores of their members fleeing to Rwanda and being forcibly disarmed. “The Rwandans would have killed him,” Barnabé Kikaya bin Karubi, the DRC’s ambassador to Great Britain, was quoted as saying.   read more

Pew researchers said that those most likely to stop using news sources were better educated, wealthier and older than those who still used them—“in other words, they are people who tend to be most prone to consume and pay for news,” Pew’s The State of the News Media 2013 read. Losses of subscribers and ad revenues have negatively impacted many news organizations in recent years, forcing layoffs and reduced coverage.   read more

A recent Gallup poll also showed that a majority of Americans think the United States made a mistake sending troops to Iraq. In fact, according to Gallup, a majority of Americans have held this opinion since at least the summer of 2005. Another poll, by the Pew Research Center, showed that only about 40% of Americans who fought there believed the reasons for going to war justified the costs, according to NBC News.   read more

Among the many contracts in the works are 36 Lockheed Martin F-16IQ Block 52 fighter jets, 25 Bell attack helicopters armed with Lockheed Martin laser-guided AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, 140 upgraded Abrams main battle tanks built by General Dynamics Land Systems and 160 Guardian armored security vehicles manufactured by Textron Marine and Land Systems.   read more

The governments of Turkey and Iraq don’t get along so well, but that hasn’t stopped Turkish goods and businesses from being invited into the war-torn country. Over the past 10 years, Turkey’s goods and services to Iraq have ballooned by more than 25% a year. In 2012, the total value of the exports reached $10.8 billion. Iraq is now the second biggest importer of Turkish goods (behind Germany). Turkish construction companies are also flourishing in Iraq.   read more

Discretionary spending is that portion of the federal budget that has to be approved by Congress, as opposed to mandatory spending, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest on the national debt. Historically, half of discretionary goes to the military and half goes to such non-military programs as government operations, law enforcement, education, transportation, national parks, research, and welfare assistance.   read more

According to the report, “those born in 1943–51 are wealthier than those born in 1934–42, who are wealthier than those born in 1925–33. This pattern does not hold for the younger among us. People born starting in 1952 no longer find their wealth above the prior cohort.”   read more

NSLs allow the government to demand—without a warrant—that Internet service providers, libraries, banks, etc., hand over people’s confidential records, such as profile information, books checked out, phone numbers dialed, websites visited, and more. They are prone to abuse because they include an indefinite gag order barring the recipients from disclosing to anyone that they have even received an NSL.   read more

“Given these official acknowledgments that the United States has participated in drone strikes, it is neither logical nor plausible for the CIA to maintain that it would reveal anything not already in the public domain to say that the agency ‘at least has an intelligence interest’ in such strikes,” wrote Garland.   read more

Initiated under the George W. Bush administration and expanded during the Obama years, S-Comm checks the fingerprints of arrestees at local jails against FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) databases for immigration problems. Since 2008, S-Comm has identified more than 918,000 possible problem cases—but has also ensnared citizens, as well as immigrants whose infractions are minor.   read more

Although the Arkansas bill bans abortion after external detection of a pulse via abdominal ultrasound, which is generally possible at about 12 weeks of gestation, the North Dakota measure bans abortion after a pulse is “detectable” using “standard medical practice,” which could include intrusive transvaginal ultrasound, a procedure capable of detecting a pulse as early as 6 weeks of gestation.   read more

In fact, the most important restriction on the new gTLDs appears to be their $185,000 “evaluation fee,” which is far out of reach for all but wealthy individuals and large corporations. Online retail giant Amazon (2012 sales: $61 billion) for example, made bids for more than 60 domains, including .amazon, .app, .author, .book, .cloud, .fire, .imdb, .map, and .read.   read more

The problem isn’t a labor shortage―not with unemployment still well above 7%. “In order to induce domestic workers to supply their labor to farm jobs, agricultural wages must rise apace with nonagricultural wages.” As the growing season approaches and farm labor problems become more acute, growers may be left with only a few choices that they haven’t already tried―like a living wage and decent working conditions.   read more

at least 116,000 Iraqi civilians and more than 4,800 coalition troops died between the invasion in March 2003 and the U.S. withdrawal in December 2011. The civilian fatalities included those killed in the fighting and others who became ill as a result of nation’s crippled infrastructure (water, sanitation, electricity). Iraqi civilians area still dying if war-related causes. According to IraqBodyCount.org, that included 345 in January 2013.   read more