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

The U.S. government has agreed with its negotiating partners to keep details of a new international trade agreement involving Pacific Rim nations a secret until negotiations are completed.   The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), also known as the...   read more

Environmental group Friends of the Earth (FOE) last week sued the State Department for access to communications between it and lobbyists promoting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, two of whom were prominent fundraisers for the 2008 presidential...   read more

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been paying a defense contractor $11.4 million to monitor social media websites and other Internet communications to find criticisms of the department’s policies and actions.   A government watchdog ...   read more

The vast majority of “small businesses” that won the largest share of federal contracts last year turned out to be large companies, according to the American Small Business League.   Businesses qualify as “small” based on their annual revenue an...   read more

Giant chemical corporation Monsanto has agreed to a tentative settlement requiring it to pay nearly $100 million to settle claims that its factory in Nitro, West Virginia, contaminated the small town and its residents with the toxic chemical dioxi...   read more

Bowing to industry lobbying, the Obama administration has proposed eliminating a program that tests fresh produce for food-borne diseases like the listeria outbreak in cantaloupe that killed 36 people in 2011. The USDA microbiological data program...   read more

The responsibility of major corporations for human rights abuses abroad will be argued on Tuesday in front of the Supreme Court. In the case, Esther Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, Shell is accused of assisting the Nigerian government in torturin...   read more

It seems that the 1% have some pretty enthusiastic fans in the Kansas legislature. Last week, the state House Committee on Taxation approved a bill to raise taxes on the poor and cut them for the rich. Specifically, those making less than $25,000 ...   read more

Even with the advantage of modern technology, replicating the building of Egypt’s great pyramids would prove costly and time-consuming. Back in the days of the pharaohs, it took about 20 years and thousands of slaves to construct the Great Pyramid...   read more

Unlike last year, this year’s set of live action shorts nominees is dominated by comedies, which was good news for me since I am a fan of short comedies.   Tuba Atlantic (Norway) Oskar, a misanthropic farmer who is obsessed with killing seagull...   read more

 With this year’s nominees clocking in at an average of 34 minutes, the Academy might want to rename this category Documentary Mediums rather than Documentary Shorts. Perhaps because of their length, they are a solid bunch.   The Tsunami and the...   read more

A key piece of the federal government’s mortgage-relief strategy is set to expire this year, leaving thousands of Americans at risk of getting hit with a large tax bill.   The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 protected homeowners who...   read more

El Salvador’s former defense minister has become the first foreign military leader ordered to leave the United States for human rights violations.   General Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, who ran the military during El Salvador’s turbulent civil...   read more

I saw 50 of the 63 films entered in the Best Foreign Language Film category and I am happy to report that this was an exceptionally good year. If there was no single masterpiece that stood out, there were a couple dozen good films that I would rec...   read more

I have to recuse myself from giving objective opinions of this year’s animated shorts nominees because one of them, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, is so close to my heart that I’m not a proper judge of the others. First, here’s...   read more

The impoverished Southern African nation of Lesotho, where 40% of the population of about 2 million lives on less than $1.25 per day, has sent a new ambassador to the United States who lived in the U.S. in the 1970s. Eliachim Molapi Sebatane was n...   read more