President Donald Trump gleefully announced that, under his direction, U.S. military troops had swooped down on the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento and kidnapped California Governor Gavin Newsom. “We’re charging Newscum with fraud.” When a reporter asked for specifics about the fraud charges, Trump pointed to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi, clearly taken by surprise, said, “We’re looking into it and will let you know the details as soon as we’ve created them.”   read more

Investigators also determined that 363 children died in mass killings—defined as those involving at least four victims in a single incident—comprising nearly one-third of all victims. Their average age was 8 years old and about three-quarters of them were killed by someone they knew: more than a third by a blood parent and about four in ten by stepparents, parents’ lovers or other family members.   read more

Some states, like Nevada and New Mexico, decided to withdraw their recognition of Utah’s permit because it does not require live-fire training. “Residents of other states should be aware that people who have a Utah concealed-weapon permit may not have actually fired a weapon,” GVPCU chairwoman Dee Rowland told the Times. “I think that would be quite shocking to members of the public.”   read more

“This isn’t the NSA asking for information,” Senator Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts) told The Washington Post. “It’s your neighborhood police department requesting your mobile phone data.” Markey found that information provided to police includes other records as well, like GPS location data, website addresses and search terms entered into cellphone browsers.   read more

The U.S. government believes the law will strengthen Japan, thereby countering the military rise of China, according to the Associated Press. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said, “We welcome progress on strengthening policies, practices and procedures related to the protection of classified information.” It will ultimately make Japan a “more effective alliance partner,” U.S. chargé d’affaires Kurt Tong said in a recent speech.   read more

Bank tellers—whose median income is $24,100 ($11.59 per hour)—collect $105 million in food stamps, $250 million via the earned income tax credit and $534 million from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, according to the report. Meanwhile, median chief executive pay at American banks averages about $552,000, according to SNL Financial.   read more

Although the IRS has processes to prevent such fraud, TIGTA identified 767,071 e-filed 2011 individual tax returns with refunds possibly based on falsely reported income and withholding. Of the 285,670 EINs used on these tax returns, 277,624 were stolen EINs used on 752,656 tax returns with refunds totaling more than $2.2 billion, while 8,046 were falsely obtained EINs used on 14,415 tax returns with refunds of more than $50 million.   read more

After Bruce Simmons died on August 16, 2012, his wife, Gigi Simmons, had to borrow money to cover funeral costs because his life insurance benefits had not yet arrived, according to the lawsuit. When a funeral director contacted Bristol-Myers Squibb on her behalf, he was told “that there was a $6,000,000 policy on Mr. Simmons’ life.”   read more

The research showed that federal drug offenders convicted at trial in 2012 received sentences that averaged 16 years—triple the average of five years and four months for those who accepted a plea bargain. As a result of options facing them, 97% of defendants in these cases pleaded guilty. Consequently, federal drug trials are almost becoming a thing of the past.   read more

Among the 18 chemicals were 11 perfluorinated compounds, an herbicide, two solvents, caffeine, an antibacterial compound, a metal and an antidepressant. None are currently regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act, which means utilities don’t have to limit their levels or even monitor for them. PFOS may cause attention disorders in children and thyroid disease in men. It was used in Scotchgard until 3M phased it out more than a decade ago.   read more

The United States’ largest oil companies, as well as dozens of other major corporations, have seemingly decided climate change is for real, and it’s time to prepare for it. But this position does not sit well with many in the Republican Party who refuse to acknowledge climate change and insist on fighting any federal policies addressing it.   read more

In January 2002, the ALA came out forcefully against the threat to privacy as posed by the Patriot Act, drafting and releasing a resolution regarding the law’s infringement on the rights of library users. It is unknown whether any public libraries have been forced to share users’ data with the NSA—because these institutions are prohibited by the government from saying so.   read more

The federal complaint says that families of the 58 out of 63 babies born to the diplomats and their spouses between 2004 and 2013 received the benefits. While the Russian diplomats and their spouses were defrauding Medicaid, they were spending tens of thousands of dollars on luxury goods and vacations, including jewelry, watches, clothes and shoes, at Jimmy Choo, Tiffany & Company and Bloomingdale’s.”   read more

The 36-year-old mayor opened his first dispensary in 2007, four years before being elected to the Sebastopol Planning Commission. He was elected to the city council in 2011 and was picked by his fellow council members as vice mayor. Jacob was instrumental in writing Sebastopol’s medical marijuana ordinance, said to be a model for other cities in the state.   read more

Tsunis is the chairman and CEO of Chartwell Hotels, which owns, develops and manages Hilton, Marriott and Intercontinental hotels in Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, and manages his family’s portfolio of real estate holdings. Because of his business’s presence in northern Pennsylvania, Tsunis told the National Herald that he has taken advantage of the growth of natural gas fracking by “providing a lot of the picks and shovels for the Marcellus Shale.”   read more

After months of stories exposing one controversial NSA program after another, perhaps the biggest shocker yet has come to light: that the agency is hauling in five billion cell phone records a day, and that it can track any such device in the world. “Analysts can find cellphones anywhere in the world, retrace their movements and expose hidden relationships among the people using them," reported The Washington Post.   read more

Renewable energy has been touted as the future direction for fulfilling U.S. power needs. But those operating the grids that carry and deliver electricity to homes and businesses have serious concerns over how to incorporate solar, wind and other “green” energy sources in the coming years. Experts at Caltech said that incorporating green energy will be “one of the greatest technological challenges industrialized societies have undertaken.”   read more