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

Military veterans suffering from serious mental health problems were left on waiting lists last year instead of receiving immediate assistance through the Department of Veterans Affairs, resulting in multiple suicide attempts.   The news surfa...   read more

It’s bad enough when foreign aid dollars headed for a war zone are siphoned off by government insiders and their wealthy friends before reaching the impoverished people it is meant for. But it’s doubly frustrating when it ends up in the hands of...   read more

Nearly 150 years after the Civil War, Alabama is still paying taxes that originated in response to that conflict. And it’s aggravating historic site lovers across the state.   In an effort to finance care for about 60,000 Confederate veterans,...   read more

Other than a few state university officials, no California government employee made more money last year than Dr. Jeffrey Rohlfing, a prison physician who’s done very little doctoring in recent years.   According to a Los Angeles Times investi...   read more

Things have gotten nasty between two congressional representatives from Florida, and both sides are trying to leverage the situation for political contributions.   It all began when Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz (who also chairs the Democrat...   read more

From food assistance to Medicare, politicians in Washington have discussed various ways to trim the budget deficit. But the most costly federal agency—the Department of Defense—has been treated by conservatives as a sacred cow, with no willingness...   read more

What’s the difference between the price of an airline ticket and the cost of fees an airline charges to fly?   You can easily look up the price of a ticket. But it’s not so simple to calculate fees for regular baggage, oversized baggage, meals...   read more

The collateral damage from the phone-hacking scandal in the United Kingdom that is enveloping Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. keeps piling up. Here is a sampling of the numerical highlights produced so far:   4,000: Estimated number of phone hacki...   read more

Democrats in Wisconsin would like nothing more than to recall Governor Scott Walker, who has been a lightening rod in the state since taking office in January. But how to go about recalling him has Democrats wringing their hands over when to lau...   read more

Regardless of what former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev thinks, hundreds of women in Russia think Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his awesomeness should return to the presidency.   After serving back-to-back terms as president last decade (t...   read more

Having passed on a Harvard professor who helped create the new agency, President Barack Obama has decided to go with a former state attorney general of Ohio to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But it seems no matter who Obama selects...   read more

This may help explain why House Republicans don’t feel compelled to cut a deal with President Barack Obama over raising the debt ceiling: Most of their constituents think not raising the limit won’t harm the economy.   A new poll from the Pew Re...   read more

While lawmakers in Congress argue over funding for America’s next great space telescope, Russia this week launched its Spektr-R radio telescope which is expected to be thousands of times more powerful than the United States’ famed Hubble telesco...   read more

After two and a half years of nominating struggles and partisan roadblocks, President Barack Obama was able to celebrate an important judicial landmark this week: The confirmation of the first-ever openly gay man to the federal bench.   Equally ...   read more

BP has no shortage of leaky or corroded pipes in its Alaskan oil fields.   Over the weekend one of its eight-inch pipelines burst open at the Lisburne Production Centre, spilling thousands of gallons of methanol and oily water. When ProPublica r...   read more

Having adopted a state budget with more than a billion-dollar surplus, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has decided to throw a bone to government employees who lost their collective bargaining rights years ago.   About 24,000 of the more than 28...   read more