President Donald Trump invited the Dodgers to the White House. Many of their fans feared that the team, by accepting, would humiliate themselves and betray the team’s large Latino, Asian and African-American fan base. Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, along with co-owner Magic Johnson, have proposed a solution. Trump has promised that if he can keep the championship trophy, the Commissioner’s Trophy, he will end all seizures and deportations of immigrants.   read more

Even Sen. Rand Paul, one of the most outspoken opponents of the federal 1033 program, which provides military surplus equipment to law enforcement, suddenly stopped talking about demilitarizing the police after labor groups lobbied Congress. Paul and other politicians quit talking about it because groups like the National Sheriffs Association and the Fraternal Order of Police had their members call Congress to say how important it was to use military-type weapons for public safety purposes.   read more

Global warming has taken its toll on Glacier National Park, which by 2030 may lose all of its current glaciers, about 25. Also, water for irrigation downstream is drying up and the trout population has fallen to the point where anglers must catch and release them instead of having them for dinner. U.S. Geological Survey is now frantically documenting what’s left of the park’s namesakes. A program is underway to photograph the ice sheets before they turn to water.   read more

Memories of the massacre have not disappeared, nor have the camps themselves. They have become permanent urban slums that now are attracting another kind of refugee: Syrians fleeing their war-torn country. The influx from Syria has caused the populations of Sabra and Shatila to double in size to a combined 40,000 people in both camps. "More than a million people who have streamed from Syria into Lebanon...are radically reshaping neighborhoods like these,” wrote Anne Barnard.   read more

Some television news networks also were subjected to the intrusion, including the Canadian Broadcasting Network and NBC. Dell, Ferrari, National Geographic and Verizon Wireless were also among those attacked. The hackers left behind a pop-up screen that informed visitors to the websites that read: “You’ve been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army.”   read more

Ayman al Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qaeda, has been the target of U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan at least twice. A total of 76 children and 29 adults have died for the sake of getting al Zawahiri, but he’s still alive. Still, the body count there is less than in the six attempts to kill Qari Hussain, a deputy commander of the Tehrike-Taliban Pakistan. One hundred twenty eight people, including 13 children, died before the CIA was able to kill Hussain.   read more

It turns out that the person who controls your schedule and has the right to make your job—and life—difficult isn’t really your supervisor. Last year’s 5-4 Vance v. Ball State decision (pdf) by the Supreme Court significantly narrowed the definition of what a supervisor is and in doing so made it easier for companies to get away with having employees who harass others.   read more

According to the report, “Until recently, Morgan Stanley controlled over 55 million barrels of oil storage capacity, 100 oil tankers, and 6,000 miles of pipeline....In 2012, Goldman owned 1.5 million metric tons of aluminum worth $3 billion, about 25% of the entire U.S. annual consumption. Goldman also owned warehouses which, in 2014, controlled 85% of the LME aluminum storage business in the United States.”   read more

Forty years after Lyndon Johnson left office, only 20% of college students could identify his position as president of the United States. “By the year 2060, Americans will probably remember as much about the 39th and 40th presidents, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, as they now remember about our 13th president, Millard Fillmore,” Roediger said.   read more

McKinley got his first ambassadorial post in 2007 in Lima, Peru. Shortly after assuming his post, he helped coordinate the U.S. response to the August 2007 earthquake. In September 2010, he was sent to Colombia to serve as ambassador there. McKinley went to Afghanistan in September 2013 as deputy ambassador, a role he continues to serve in as he awaits Senate confirmation.   read more

What’s your life worth? According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), if you fly in a private plane, you’re worth only $1 million. Other agencies have different, mostly higher, valuations on human lives. The Environmental Protection Agency values lives at $3.3 million and the Department of Transportation says a human is worth $9.1 million.   read more

A new study published in the Journal of Sports Economics says crime shoots up when NFL games take place. Total crime increases about 3% when a city hosts a pro football game. With certain crimes, such as larceny and auto theft, the jumps are even higher: 4% and 7%, respectively, according to researchers David E. Kalist and Daniel Y. Lee.   read more

Amazon has already invested in a fleet of small drones to develop a new way of delivering consumer goods to customers. That’s why the online giant hired lobbying powerhouse Akin Gump and paid the firm at least $120,000 to sway the FAA decision. The new rules will impose many restrictions on drones, requiring operators to have a pilot’s license and limit flights to daylight hours, below 400 feet and within sight of the person at the controls.   read more

In 2003, Folmsbee published a novel, Flight of the Feathered Serpent, about two Icelanders who are shipwrecked in 12th century Mexico. Folmsbee was sent to Pakistan in 2006 as director of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, working on counter-terrorism issues. The following year, he was embedded with the U.S. Army’s 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq as a Provincial Reconstruction Team team leader.   read more

Phee served as a desk officer for United Nations (UN) political affairs in the International Organizations Bureau but took a break to do a tour in al-Amarah, Iraq, as “governate coordinator” (a.k.a. senior civilian representative of the Coalition Provisional Authority) of Maysan Province for several months beginning in November 2003. This position was considered so dangerous that she was supplied with twenty bodyguards.   read more

“I was raised with this idea that ultimately you have to do the right thing. It was just simple things like—you can’t take money from people. We are talking about pension plans and retirement funds, things people are relying on at a time when they don’t have another income. I just grew up with a value that a lot of people have—and that is, it’s OK to do well, but you can’t do that at other people’s expense.”   read more

The Parliament on Thursday adopted a nonbinding resolution calling for the dissolution of Google. The vote was merely symbolic because the legislative body lacks the legal authority to force Google to divest portions of its empire. But it demonstrated just how fed up Europeans are with the growing might and invasive capabilities of American technology.   read more