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

Among the changes found in the new study: multivitamin/mineral use declined to 31% from 37%, “and the rates of vitamin C, vitamin E and selenium use decreased, perhaps in response to research findings showing no benefit,” Cohen wrote. Sometimes people do act sensibly when faced with solid evidence. However, he added, “other products continued to be used at the same rate despite major studies demonstrating no benefit over placebo.”   read more

Stretching the rules to take pets into grocery stores, amusement parks and restaurants has become so commonplace that online merchants are selling official-looking service animal certificates and vests for as little as $50. The growing practice is insulting and harmful to those who genuinely require a service animal, said Karen Shirk. "Faking service dogs is one of the worst things anybody can do...[to] take advantage of something that was supposed to make a disabled person's life easier."   read more

The bombing has exacerbated a humanitarian crisis in the Arab world’s poorest country. Publicly, the U.S. has kept its distance from the war, but its alliance with Saudi Arabia, underpinned by tens of billions of dollars in weapons sales, has left U.S. fingerprints on the air campaign. Many strikes are carried out by pilots trained by the U.S. who fly U.S.-made jets. And Yemenis often find the remains of U.S.-made munitions. Graffiti on walls reads: “America is killing the Yemeni people.”   read more

Trump can now open the throttle on policies Obama set as limited but lawful for sparing use, like targeted killings in drone strikes and the use of indefinite detention for terrorism suspects. Even in areas where Obama tried to terminate policies from the Bush era — such as torture and detention of Americans — he fought in court to prevent any ruling that they had been illegal. The absence of a definitive repudiation could make it easier for Trump lawyers to revive the policies.   read more

The price, which is expected to grow, compares with $1 million for a cruise missile. For now, there are no plans to buy projectiles beyond the initial purchase of 90. It's stunning news for a program plagued by growing costs. "Congress is going to want to know how the Navy could get so far down the road without realizing that the price tag on these projectiles is so high," said Loren Thompson, defense analyst at the Lexington Institute.   read more

Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential race has presented some companies with a new challenge: how to find the right balance in their post-election messages to employees and customers. Ben & Jerry's open letter to Trump said: "While we recognize that this is the outcome that many wanted, this is also an outcome that leaves half of our country feeling sadness and shock.” It reached 350,000 people on the company’s Facebook page and feedback has been “overwhelmingly positive.”   read more

Dozens of men who underwent agonizing treatment in secret CIA prisons or at Guantanamo were left with psychological problems that persisted for years, despite U.S. lawyers’ assurances there would be no lasting harm. The shadow of interrogation and mutual suspicion tainted the mission of those treating prisoners. That limited their effectiveness for years to come. Meanwhile, Trump said he will bring back banned interrogation tactics and authorize others that are “much worse.”   read more

The trend reflects growing public demand for independent reviews of misconduct claims after deadly police encounters across the U.S. "Once the consciousness of people has been awakened, their horror and outrage have manifested, as well as their desire to do something about it," said CPA's Grinage. "There's a recognition that to help fix the issues in policing, we need not only to be focused on the few bad apples but to identify problems with the barrel itself," said Nicholas Mitchell.   read more

Trump's talk of a "law and order" approach to crime fighting and his praise for stop-and-frisk police tactics are out of step with a Justice Dept that has advocated community policing and decried strategies it considers unconstitutional or discriminatory. Trump said "we need more stop and frisk, that the Black Lives Matter movement has placed police officers at risk, in ways that are really concerning," said former Justice Dept civil rights official Jonathon Smith.   read more

Civility in politics has been declining for years. But Donald Trump's presidential run took name-calling and mockery — things that voters long said they detested in their candidates — and normalized them into a winning political strategy. Many question whether it is possible to reverse the campaign's damage to political discourse and its ripples out to the way Americans speak to and about each other. "What worries me the most is we're becoming almost numb," Mullen said.   read more

A number of Facebook users reported that their profile page on the social network was topped with a message that referred to them by name — as if they were gone — while linking to a feature that "memorializes" the page of someone who has died. The message said Facebook hoped the users' loved ones would find comfort in seeing posts that others shared about them. Even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's page had the death notice for a short time on Friday.   read more

In 1998, Etoundi Essomba returned to Israel, this time as ambassador. He spent 17 years there, raising his four children with his wife, Esther. During his tenure, Cameroon became an ally of Israel, often voting against anti-Israeli measures at the UN. For its part, Israel trains some of Cameroon’s military and supplies it with weaponry. Etoundi Essomba had been dean of Israel’s diplomatic corps for several years when he left for Washington.   read more

Forty Senate Democrats said the provision amounts to government-sponsored discrimination by permitting religiously affiliated federal contractors to refuse to interview a job candidate whose faith differs from theirs and to fire employees who marry their same-sex partners. The provision would allow contractors "to harm hardworking Americans who deserve to be protected from workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, religious identity..." they said.   read more

"This decision could leave Americans blind about his whereabouts and well-being in the event of a national crisis," said Jeff Mason, White House correspondent for Reuters and the group's president. "Not allowing a pool of journalists to travel with and cover the next president of the United States is unacceptable." Every president and president-elect in recent memory has traveled with a pool of journalists when leaving the White House grounds.   read more

Facebook has long denied that it's a media company, or that it acts remotely like one. Its cheery slogan — to make the world more "open and connected" — seemingly invites a broad range of viewpoints and the free flow of information, rather than censorship. But it could also make clamping down on fake news difficult. At a time when everyone seems entitled, not just to their own opinions, but to their own facts, one person's misleading headline might be another person's heartfelt truth.   read more

Republican state Rep. Dick Marple was sitting outside a polling place with his campaign signs on Election Day when an officer recognized him. Marple was charged with driving without a valid license in December 2014. Authorities had issued a bench warrant for his arrest after he failed to show up for a court hearing in October. Police say Marple drove himself to the police station and was arrested. He also was re-elected to a fifth term.   read more