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

Under a controversial plan proposed by President José Mujica, Uruguay would create a state monopoly over the production and sale of marijuana, making it the first government in the world to sell the drug directly to citizens. Supporters say the radical move would reduce drug-related crime, decrease health risks among users and be more effective than the U.S.-touted war on drugs, which is wearing thin in countries other than the United States.   read more

The Department of Defense has lifted a 26-year-old ban on New Zealand warships entering U.S. bases. The prohibition came in response to a New Zealand law adopted in the 1986 that denied the docking of any American warship carrying nuclear weapons. New Zealand has sent troops to support the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and ten New Zealand soldiers have been killed there, including five last month.   read more

President Obama has nominated an international development expert to be the next ambassador to the central African nation of Burundi, one of the world’s poorest countries. Dawn M. Liberi, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, has specialized in sub-Saharan Africa for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), although she the past few years she has been posted to the hot spots of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.   read more

Nearly half (48%) of all mail is now of the junk variety. With Americans disposing much of it into the garbage, and thus landfills and recycling centers, local governments are trying to prevent the Postal Service from delivering unwanted mail. Meanwhile, the newspaper industry is also opposing the Postal Service’s push to lower the cost of sending junk mail…because it will mean less junk advertising fliers and inserts in Sunday papers and a potential loss of $1 billion a year in revenue.   read more

Among the other Ig Nobel prizes this year were awards for a joint Dutch-American study that discovered that chimpanzees can identify other chimpanzees individually from seeing photographs of their rear ends; a French paper that advised doctors who perform colonoscopies how to minimize the chance that their patients will explode; and a Dutch study titled “Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller: Posture-Modulated Estimation.”   read more

In January 2008, Negodić was appointed head of Bosnia’s mission to the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium. During her tenure, Bosnia signed the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the EU on June 16, 2008, which set Bosnia on the road toward EU membership. She returned to London in December 2008 to serve as ambassador to the UK until 2012.   read more

In early 2010, Razāns was nominated to be foreign minister, but withdrew his name in April, the day before Latvia’s parliament was set to approve the appointment, citing “personal family problems.” It was rumored that Latvian President Valdim Zatlers objected to his nomination. Instead, Razāns served as political director and undersecretary of state at the Foreign Affairs Ministry from February 2010 to July 2012.   read more

Citing cost concerns, Senate Republicans this week blocked legislation designed to create a Veterans Job Corps that would have spent $1 billion over five years to put unemployed veterans back to work. The Veterans Job Corps Act of 2012, loosely based on the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps, would have put ex-soldiers to work preserving and restoring federal, state and local lands and find them jobs in firefighting and police work.   read more

The Americans, 22 Central Intelligence Agency spies and one Air Force officer (Lt. Col. Joseph Romano), were convicted last year of helping abduct Abu Omar (Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr) from Milan in February 2003. The cleric was transferred to U.S. military bases in Italy and Germany and eventually shipped to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.   read more

Richard H. Perkins, a reliability and risk engineer with the NRC’s division of risk analysis, said superiors blacked out critical portions of a report he helped author that detailed which nuclear plants face the risk of flooding from swollen rivers or reservoirs. Perkins’ assertions were backed up by another anonymous NRC risk engineer who warned that the three reactors at the Oconee Nuclear Station near Seneca, South Carolina, could face a Fukushima-like episode should a nearby dam fail.   read more

Hicks and others noticed that a safety relief valve had lifted, causing a leakage of coolant. Following federal regulations, he says he ordered the reactor shut down to avoid an accident similar to the 1979 Three Mile Island incident in Middletown, Pennsylvania. Hicks reported what he had done to his superiors, including FPL executive vice president Manoochehr Nazar, who ordered Hicks to restart the reactor. Hicks refused.   read more

By the time the film had been uploaded to YouTube, the title had been changed to The Innocence of Muslims and Garcia, playing the mother of a 12-year-old girl who is to marry the prophet, is seen uttering the lines: “Is your Muhammad a child molester? Our daughter is but a child, and he’s 55 years old.” Garcia says she never said the name Mohammed while shooting the video.   read more

Some of the programs are what are known as “submerged policies” that get little attention, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit; the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction; and Child and Dependent Care Tax Credits. However even in the case of high-profile programs, many beneficiaries were unaware that they were using a government program. For example, 45% of Americans enrolled in Social Security replied that they did not benefit from a government program, as did 41% who qualified for Medicare.   read more

In order to avoid disclosure, Americans for Prosperity, which was founded by billionaire David Koch, and Crossroads GPS, which was formed by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, reorganized as nonprofit social welfare organizations, which are not allowed to concentrate on political advocacy a(but do so anyway), but do not have to reveal the names of their donors. The new ruling eliminates the need for this charade.   read more

Scientists who worked on the study addressed Tester’s complaint directly, arguing that no one had actually done long-term studies of GMOs. Antoniou said the findings highlighted the “need to test all GM crops in two-year lifelong studies.” Genetic engineering has come under fire from critics for years or what they perceive is industry bias in scientific studies and the lack of long-term studies.   read more

Their data revealed that children and teenagers with the highest levels of BPA had a 2.6 times greater chance of being obese than those with the lowest levels. Trasande said aluminum cans containing BPA are an especially important problem that needs to be addressed, adding “the majority of BPA exposure” comes from these types of containers.   read more