According to aides who were present when Trump discussed the issue, but who choose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, Trump said he was sick of Vance and wanted to fire him. “I wanted him to be my attack dog,” said Trump, “but he appears foolish on television. He dropped the college football trophy. He met with Pope Francis and the next day the pope died. Vance is toxic, and I don’t want him to come near me. He just doesn’t look as good on television as I thought he would.”   read more

New Jersey is joining the states of Texas, New Mexico and West Virginia and Harris County, Texas, in suing Volkswagen. The U.S. Justice Department filed its own lawsuit accusing VW of violating clean air laws and seeking up to $46 billion on Jan. 4. VW faces more than 500 civil lawsuits that have been consolidated before a federal judge in California, who has retained a former FBI director as a settlement adviser. The automaker also faces investigations by 48 U.S. state attorneys.   read more

“These social network tools provide individuals with tremendous reach,” said Horvitz. “People can share ideas with only a few jumps to a large portion of the world’s population and with even fewer steps to the entire population of a nation.” It is a startling notion that reaching someone on the other side of the world takes only a small group of social connections. On the other hand, the result could also be evidence of psychological distance: that we were actually five “worlds apart.”   read more

Morrell was born in 1933 in the town of Utica to Lena Pierce, who named her Eva May. Social welfare officials took the baby away because Pierce, then 13, was herself a ward of the state. Eva May was adopted by a family on Long Island and grew up as Betty Morrell, an only child. She was in her early 30s when she started looking for information about her birth family. She had been told her birth mother had died during childbirth and was shocked when she learned she was still alive.   read more

Robert M. Gates, then defense secretary, appealed to President Obama to reconsider the release of the photographs, warning that it could provoke attacks against U.S. troops in the war zones. Obama changed his mind and obtained legislation from Congress permitting the defense secretary to exempt the photos from disclosure. Current Pentagon chief Ash Carter extended it again in November, but decided that the 198 photos could be made public.   read more

The promises of the industry are potentially far-reaching and attracting notice on Wall Street. As more states legalize marijuana sales, analysts are weighing the stock market benefits of new businesses as cannabis goes corporate. Funds are considering the ethics of investing in marijuana. Parents are even debating whether to allow their children to buy the stocks. Lucrative legal side businesses are spinning off, like climate systems for growers and child-resistant marijuana bags.   read more

Talks focused on letting UK agencies, such as MI5, serve orders on U.S. firms demanding data for “live intercepts” in inquiries involving UK citizens. UK agencies might also be able to ask U.S. companies to turn over stored data, such as emails. Rep. Adam Schiff said Congress should monitor any privacy and civil liberties issues, "including making sure these British orders do not cover U.S. persons or individuals within the U.S., do not permit bulk collection, and have due process protections."   read more

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, offered his support for the crosses in a legal brief, filed in response to a sheriff's office that received a complaint about images of a Christian cross displayed on its patrol vehicles. "In addition to its religious significance, the cross has a long history in America and elsewhere as a symbol of service and sacrifice," Abbott wrote. His office wouldn't say if he also supported the display of other religious symbols on patrol cars.   read more

The metals may have included cadmium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel and zinc. Tests done after the spill also found arsenic and lead in the wastewater. The EPA said most of the metals consisted of small particles and came from Cement Creek, a tributary that carried the water from the mine to the Animas. An EPA-led cleanup crew inadvertently triggered the spill on Aug. 5 while doing preliminary cleanup work at the inactive Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado.   read more

"Any way you look at it, this data is very alarming," said lead study author Patrick Krill, finding it reveals "an unsustainable professional culture that's harming too many people." Lawyers in their first 10 years of practice were the most prone to problem drinking at 29%. Researchers also found that lawyers find it difficult to overcome the stigma of alcoholism to admit that they need help.   read more

High-ranking officials in Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's administration were aware of a surge in Legionnaires' disease potentially linked to Flint's water long before the governor reported the increase to the public last month, internal emails show. When he disclosed the spike in Legionnaires' cases on Jan. 13, Snyder said he had learned about it just a couple of days earlier. But emails show Snyder's own office was aware of the outbreak since last March.   read more

"I've heard nothing but horror stories on the appointments system," said Ken Thibodeau, a Vietnam-era vet who gets VA treatment for diabetes and blindness. He said he's been waiting nearly six months for an appointment for a new prosthetic leg. "It is intolerable that investigations continue to uncover these unacceptable practices at the VA," said Sen. Michael Bennett. Rep. Doug Lamborn said he will call for a congressional hearing into the new report. "We have been deceived," he said.   read more

The legislation "would defang the Justice Department," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful Democrat in the House. "Federal prosecutors would be unable to prosecute fraud committed by big banks under FIRREA. This bill on the floor today says you cannot charge banks. The only investigation you can do of banks is if somebody does damage to the bank. Can you imagine that - with all the mortgage fraud that went on in our country?"   read more

"The way this was done in secret, unilaterally, without consultation, without public review and comment, without any of the normal processes and procedures that would be used for a dramatic change in policy like this, makes it all the more shocking and brazen and wrong," said ACLU's Kubic. He added that the EAC's executive director should be someone who believes in extending and guaranteeing the right to vote — not creating hindrances.   read more

Almost every top official in the remote Texas city was arrested Thursday under a detailed federal indictment that accuses them of taking bribes from contractors and sending city workers to help an illegal gambling operator nicknamed "Mr. T." Once billed as the "Spinach Capital of the World," Crystal City's logo features a cartoon of Popeye, and a spinach festival with a cook-off and a beauty pageant draws tens of thousands of people each year. But in recent months, the town has been in turmoil.   read more

NOAA's report assigned a "climate vulnerability score" to 82 Northeastern fish and shellfish species. It listed types of scallop and quahog and the Atlantic salmon as the most vulnerable in the region, as well as eastern oysters, a $175 million fishery in 2014. Also, certain types of herring, a vital part of the ocean's food web and commercially important as bait, were found to be highly vulnerable to climate change.   read more

Rakoff, who normally sits on the federal district court in Manhattan, said the statute was clear and downplayed concern that hospitals might seek classifications they do not deserve. The law "simply increases the number of situations in which hospitals can be treated as rural for some purposes and urban for others, but there is nothing 'absurd' about such a measured approach," he wrote. "An agency may not rewrite clear statutory terms to suit its own sense of how the statute should operate."   read more