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

Giant chemical corporation Monsanto has agreed to a tentative settlement requiring it to pay nearly $100 million to settle claims that its factory in Nitro, West Virginia, contaminated the small town and its residents with the toxic chemical dioxi...   read more

Bowing to industry lobbying, the Obama administration has proposed eliminating a program that tests fresh produce for food-borne diseases like the listeria outbreak in cantaloupe that killed 36 people in 2011. The USDA microbiological data program...   read more

The responsibility of major corporations for human rights abuses abroad will be argued on Tuesday in front of the Supreme Court. In the case, Esther Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, Shell is accused of assisting the Nigerian government in torturin...   read more

It seems that the 1% have some pretty enthusiastic fans in the Kansas legislature. Last week, the state House Committee on Taxation approved a bill to raise taxes on the poor and cut them for the rich. Specifically, those making less than $25,000 ...   read more

Even with the advantage of modern technology, replicating the building of Egypt’s great pyramids would prove costly and time-consuming. Back in the days of the pharaohs, it took about 20 years and thousands of slaves to construct the Great Pyramid...   read more

Unlike last year, this year’s set of live action shorts nominees is dominated by comedies, which was good news for me since I am a fan of short comedies.   Tuba Atlantic (Norway) Oskar, a misanthropic farmer who is obsessed with killing seagull...   read more

 With this year’s nominees clocking in at an average of 34 minutes, the Academy might want to rename this category Documentary Mediums rather than Documentary Shorts. Perhaps because of their length, they are a solid bunch.   The Tsunami and the...   read more

A key piece of the federal government’s mortgage-relief strategy is set to expire this year, leaving thousands of Americans at risk of getting hit with a large tax bill.   The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 protected homeowners who...   read more

El Salvador’s former defense minister has become the first foreign military leader ordered to leave the United States for human rights violations.   General Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, who ran the military during El Salvador’s turbulent civil...   read more

I saw 50 of the 63 films entered in the Best Foreign Language Film category and I am happy to report that this was an exceptionally good year. If there was no single masterpiece that stood out, there were a couple dozen good films that I would rec...   read more

I have to recuse myself from giving objective opinions of this year’s animated shorts nominees because one of them, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, is so close to my heart that I’m not a proper judge of the others. First, here’s...   read more

The impoverished Southern African nation of Lesotho, where 40% of the population of about 2 million lives on less than $1.25 per day, has sent a new ambassador to the United States who lived in the U.S. in the 1970s. Eliachim Molapi Sebatane was n...   read more

Driven in large part by market speculators, the price of gasoline has increased significantly recently—at a time when demand at the pump is down.   In fact, demand for oil and gasoline is down so much that the U.S. has become a net exporter of t...   read more

For the first time since the natural gas drilling procedure became controversial, a state judge has ruled local communities have the right to ban the use of fracking (hydraulic fracturing) within their jurisdictions, even if the state has authoriz...   read more

An examination by Bloomberg showed that a hypothetical investment of $1,000 in Standard & Poor’s stocks in 1961, the year John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as president, and kept in stocks only when Democrats occupied the White House, would be worth...   read more

J.R. Simplot Company is coming under scrutiny from state and federal environmental officials after  two-headed fish were found in waters near the operator’s mine in Idaho.   The deformed trout were discovered in a creek polluted with selenium ru...   read more