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

The latest ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo is a State Department Africa specialist who has served as the U.S. Special Representative for Somalia since August 2011. James C. Swan previously served as the number two official at the U.S. embassy in Kinshasa, and he is well acquainted with the situation in war-torn central Africa.   read more

These workers, who assist seniors and disabled with everyday living, have been exempt from federal wage laws since 1974. At that time the government categorized home care aides as doing work similar to babysitting, which was Washington’s way of saying they didn’t deserve the same rights as most other types of employees. But with America’s senior population rapidly growing because of aging Baby Boomers, demand for home health care has increased dramatically.   read more

Obama appeared on Telemundo, a Spanish-language network, claiming it was “not an option” to freeze deportations, estimated at more than 1,000 per day, because to do so “would be ignoring the law in a way that would be very difficult to defend legally.” Immigration reform leaders soundly rejected Obama’s remarks.   read more

On Capitol Hill, which was only 1.5 miles from the Washington Navy Yard slaughter, lawmakers don’t plan to introduce new bills or revive those that failed following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December. Many Democrats say they would like to take another try at adopting tougher gun-control measures. But they add that there’s no point in trying right now because support in Congress hasn’t changed, even after 12 people were gunned down on Monday.   read more

“[Liking] is the Internet equivalent of displaying a political sign in one’s front yard, which the Supreme Court has held is substantive speech,” the three-judge panel wrote in their opinion. The case centered on a Hampton sheriff’s deputy, Daniel Ray Carter, who claimed he was fired for liking the campaign Facebook page of his boss’s opponent.   read more

In the Brazilian case, a group of hackers upset over the recent revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) had spied on their country decided to infiltrate a U.S. government website. Only it wasn’t the NSA’s website that got hacked—it was NASA’s (short for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Among the pages hit were those for the Center for Astrobiology and the Office of Planetary Protection.   read more

The surfacing of the report follows the deadly attack at the DC Navy Yard, where contractor Aaron Alexis used his access card to enter a building and kill 12 civilians and injure many more. He was in the employ of The Experts, a Hewlett-Packard IT subcontractor, whose job was to perform maintenance on the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, the department’s in-house system. Alexis had a history of gun-related arrests and mental health issues before the attack.   read more

The largest store of chemical munitions exists at Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado, which has 2,611 tons of mustard gas. Officials there expect to finish dismantling this collection by 2019. Another 523 tons of VX and sarin remain at Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky. The government is still building a facility at the depot for disposing the weapons, which should be destroyed by 2023.   read more

Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives considered a bill last year that would require more transparency and evaluation of all foreign aid programs, including military assistance. But administration officials lobbied the bill’s authors to exempt security assistance from the mandate. The U.S. spends about $25 billion annually on security assistance.   read more

The building in question, located at 650 Fifth Ave. in Manhattan, is owned by the Alavi Foundation and Assa Corp. The U.S. Attorney based in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, argued before a federal judge that Assa Corp. was nothing more than a front for Bank Melli, which was said to be a front for the government of Iran.   read more

Eagan’s ruling is the first to be written on this matter since the secret NSA program was disclosed in June by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Whereas previous secret FISC rulings routinely re-authorized the program with little more than a minor reference to its legal underpinning, Eagan’s opinion was written with its eventual public disclosure in mind.   read more

This situation has existed for decades since the country closed down many large psychiatric hospitals in the 1970s. Community-based care was supposed to take the place of the hospitals, but that didn’t develop as planned. The result: thousands of mentally ill wound up on the streets, where they got into trouble and landed in the only place that could take them: jails. The U.S. Department of Justice says up to 64% of inmates at local jails have mental health problems.   read more

More than half of the 62 shootings took place either at a workplace (20) or a school (12). Forty-four of the killers were white males. Only one shooter was a woman: Jennifer San Marco (Goleta, California, in 2006.) The average age of the killers was 35. The youngest shooter was only 11 years old: Andrew Douglas Golden (Jonesboro, Arkansas, in 1998.)   read more

ATF decided to take this step after realizing the number of legal entities in the gun trade that were not federal firearms licensees had ballooned from about 840 in 2000 to 40,700 in 2012. The reason for the increase, according to ATF, is a growth in the number of trusts.   read more

Some drug-resistant bacteria are becoming widespread, although they haven’t killed a significant number of people yet. One type, known as CRE (carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae), was found in healthcare facilities in 44 states. On the one hand, CRE causes only 600 fatalities each year. But on the other, this type of bacteria has become resistant to nearly all antibiotics on the market, leaving doctors with no real solutions for stopping it.   read more

By far the most popular venue is The Capitol Hill Club, a purely Republican site that plays host to nearly 2,000 fundraising parties per year. A distant second is Johnny’s Half Shell, which entertains 861 bashes annually—two-thirds for Democrats and a third for Republicans. The top 10 venues account for 44% of all DC fundraisers.   read more