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

Gen. Franklin—who is not a judge and did not attend Wilkerson’s trial—has the power to overturn the verdict because he is Wilkerson’s commander. Under the military’s bizarre system of law, Franklin is not required to explain his decision, which is final—it cannot be reviewed or overturned, not even by the secretary of defense or the president.   read more

The court, which decides appeals arising from nine Western states, ruled that border agents must have at least a “reasonable suspicion” of criminal wrongdoing in order to seize electronic devices and perform forensic examinations of them—the first court to apply any restriction to the so-called “border exception” to the Fourth Amendment.   read more

The 14 near misses at 16 reactors detailed by the report that took place in 2012 include an electrical failure that compromised the cooling system and required a manual reactor shutdown at the River Bend Station near St. Francisville, Louisiana (10 mile radius pop.: 41,244); a cooling water leak at the Palisades plant near South Haven, Michigan (pop.: 34,103); and equipment failures at the Byron plant near Rockford, Illinois (pop.: 36,110).   read more

Many people might find it weird that Venezuelans embalmed Hugo Chávez and put him on public display. However Americans have not been immune from preserving the bodies of the deceased. Here are eight examples: two criminals, a hobo, a baseball player, two horses, an elephant and a gorilla.   read more

The Copyright Office had previously exempted cell phones from the rule, but determined that the wide availability of unlocked phones meant an exemption was no longer warranted. Because the Library of Congress is not an Executive Branch agency, but instead is part of Congress, the President lacks the power to order a change in policy. Consumers fought back, however, angry that wireless carriers were given all the power over unlocking cell phones, even those purchased at full price.   read more

As Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) said in response to HSBC’s fine for laundering drug cartel money, “If you’re caught with an ounce of cocaine, the chances are good you go to jail. If you’re caught repeatedly, you can go to jail for life….If you launder nearly a billion dollars in drug money, your company pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night.”   read more

Just the second Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice to be convicted in almost three centuries, Justice Melvin was found guilty of six counts of corruption—including theft of services, criminal conspiracy, and misappropriation of state property—on February 21 for using government employees to work on her 2003 and 2009 campaigns for Supreme Court justice, which is an elected position in Pennsylvania.   read more

Following news last week of underground storage tanks leaking toxic waste, the contractor hired to clean said tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Site has admitted to committing fraud. The company, CH2M Hill Hanford Group Inc. (CHG), admitted that its workers padded their time cards, with the company’s blessing, for years from 1999-2008, thus defrauding the government.   read more

While at Washington Mutual, Jewell joined the board of outdoor products retailer REI, the nation’s largest consumer cooperative, in 1996. In 2000, the board hired her to be REI’s chief operating officer, and in 2005 she succeeded Dennis Madsen as chief executive officer. Jewell has promoted green policies at REI, which uses energy-efficient building materials, buys renewable energy, and offsets the carbon emissions from store-sponsored travel-adventure packages.   read more

Even though flour has only gone from about 3 cents a pound to 52 cents a pound (1,588%), bread has gone from less than 6 cents a loaf to $1.42 a loaf (2,539%). Potatoes, only 1.6 cents a pound a century ago, now average 63 cents a pound (3,919%).   read more

Efforts to determine the health and environmental risks of depleted uranium (DU) weaponry in Iraq have been hampered by the Obama administration. DU, which makes shell and bullet casings harder and more capable of piercing armor, can contaminate the environment and contribute to health problems, including cancer and birth defects. It is estimated that 400 tons of DU ammunition were fired in Iraq, mostly by American units, during the Gulf War and the 2003 invasion.   read more

The heavily-edited video purported to show Vera willing to help O’Keefe smuggle underage girls into the United States to be prostitutes. O’Keefe and associate Hannah Giles, who agreed to a settlement earlier in the year, posted a video of the encounter on the Internet, unaware that Vera had already reported them to the authorities for suggesting he break the law.   read more

For a nation officially devoted to the egalitarian ideals of communism, China has no shortage of lawmakers making themselves extremely rich. The National People’s Congress, China’s mostly ceremonial legislature charged with approving edicts from the Communist Party, currently includes 31 legislators who possess $1 billion or more in personal assets. The U.S. Congress, for comparison’s sake, has zero billionaires.   read more

Weintraub has at times been blunt about the ineffectiveness of the FEC, which is supposed to oversee campaign finance laws, but has been torn by partisan politics. “The notion that we are a fierce investigative agency that people are quaking in their boots about is probably not the case,” she said in May 2011. “Back in ’06 and ’07, they said we were ‘feckless’ and ‘toothless,’ I am not sure what the adjective would be today.”   read more

In January, incomes decreased 3.6%, the largest monthly drop in 20 years. But less money coming in didn’t cause a corresponding drop in consumer spending. Rather, household purchases increased 0.2% in January after a 0.1% gain during the previous month. The savings rate, on the other hand, slipped to 2.4%, the lowest since November 2007.   read more

The researchers discovered that people searching both drugs were more likely to also search for symptoms that indicated the presence of hyperglycemia, such as “high blood sugar” and “blurry vision.” The Food and Drug Administration, which relies on doctors to tell them about drug side effects they notice in patients, has not issued any warnings about taking paroxetine and pravastatin together.   read more