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President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Wednesday to cancel the student loan debt of disabled veterans. “Today I’m proud to announce that I am taking executive action to ensure that our wounded warriors are not saddled with mountains of student debt,” Trump said in a speech at the AMVETS National Convention in Kentucky. More than 25,000 disabled veterans will have their student debt forgiven, the president said.

(CNN)Fires are raging at a record rate in Brazil's Amazon rainforest, and scientists warn that it could strike a devastating blow to the fight against climate change. The fires are burning at the highest rate since the country's space research center, the National Institute for Space Research (known by the abbreviation INPE), began tracking them in 2013, the center said Tuesday. There have been 72,843 fires in Brazil this year, with more than half in the Amazon region, INPE said. That's more than an 80% increase compared with the same period last year. The Amazon is often referred to as...

People in the education policy and funding worlds don’t like Sandra Stotsky. For years she has been a robust critic of too many things educators, ed school professors, school administrators, and philanthropists have hailed and implemented. She doesn’t spare people’s feelings and she won’t relax her standards. Stotsky’s new book, The Roots of Low Achievement: Where to Begin Altering Them, is certain to arouse education establishment ire. For example: Starting in the 1970s and continuing here and there today, self-esteem has been identified as a key to academic improvement, especially for poor and minority students. Stotsky’s judgment is, “Not only...

Following these rules will show respect for the office of the president. Address the president as “Mr President” or “Madam President.” Should you have the opportunity to speak directly with the president, do not call them by their first or last name. The title of “Mr.” or “Madam” will show your respect for the office while you carry on a conversation with the president.

Despite putting Africa at the bottom of his foreign policy priorities, US President Donald Trump remains widely popular on the continent Every year, a leader of public opinion polls, Gallup Poll asks the world to judge America’s foreign policy. In 135 countries, they ask, “Do you agree or disagree with the way the United States is exercising its leadership?” Most reacted poorly to US President Donald Trump taking over the 76 square metre Oval Office. The global approval rating for US foreign policy stands at 31% — 3% points below China, and on a par with Russia. This has never...

Even before The New York Times launched its "All Slavery, All the Time" project, no one could accuse that paper of skimping on its race coverage, particularly stories about black males killed by white(ish) police officers.Here's one you haven't heard about. I happened upon it by sheer accident.Antwon Rose II was a 17-year-old boy shot by an East Pittsburgh police officer in June 2018 after he bolted from a jitney car that had been stopped by the officer. The Times published about a half-dozen stories on Antwon Rose -- or as the Times calls him, "Antwon, who was unarmed."After the officer was...

We’ve touched on this subject a few times recently, but there’s another layer to the upcoming Supreme Court case of R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that’s worth considering. It has to do with the battle over the chosen use of pronouns in court filings. The Associated Press picked up on this yesterday and the story highlights the different approaches being taken by the two sides. As you may recall, the case revolves around Aimee Stephens, a male funeral director employed at the funeral home who came in one day and announced to...

A 15-year-old gamer who makes threats on the Internet. A 38-year-old schizophrenic with a pistol. These two are among several people arrested in the wake of two mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, thanks to heightened scrutiny by citizens who want to prevent the next tragedy. But is it also a product of the prior shootings and the media coverage they receive?CBS News reports on the former, but not so much on the latter: It’s tough not to sympathize with both sides of the arrest shown in this clip. The mother protests that her 15-year-old is “just a...

The race to find a Democratic challenger to President Donald Trump is under way. Former Vice President Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are contenders in a ring with a little more than 20 contenders. The US Presidential elections are more than a year away and Africa will be looking keenly at who is inaugurated in 2021. The emergence of Donald Trump raised fundamental questions about likely changes in America’s role in the world, including Africa. Fears over Republican Trump were heightened by his silence throughout the campaign on matters relating to the continent, focusing heavily on China and Russia. Policy...

The new international docking adapter, or IDA, was launched to the station last month aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship. The lab's robot arm pulled the docking mechanism out of the Dragon's trunk section earlier this week and positioned it directly atop a tunnel-like pressurized mating adaptor extending from Harmony's upper port. Working with electrical cables that were routed three years ago during two earlier spacewalks, Hague and Morgan connected the IDA to station power, allowing astronaut Christina Koch, working inside Harmony, to send commands driving internal hooks to close. After flight controllers confirmed the $22.5 million IDA was firmly...

What happens when a political party is hijacked by fanatics, ideologues, and hysterics who don't care whether they win or lose an election? They lose elections. That's where the Democrats are headed because they'd rather be "right" than clever. And when it comes to the issue of race, Democrats think they have a corner on "right." They've got a small problem, though. In order to appeal to the fanatics, ideologues, and hysterics to tap them for money and support, they have to at least give lip service to their warped views on race. And that includes calling you and me...

FBI Director Christopher Wray’s FBI is fighting like hell to keep the thousands of outstanding text messages between FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page under wraps until after the 2020 election. Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch has been in court this summer fighting to get their hands on 13,000 pages of Strzok-Page documents. The FBI wants over 2 years to “process” the Strzok-Page docs. The Court in late July ordered parties to negotiate a solution to getting key docs more quickly, Judicial Watch said. The FBI is protecting itself on illegal abuses. “Wray FBI wants to stall until well...

Says president should 'care more,' 'sleep less' CNN host Chris Cuomo's Tuesday closing monologue on Cuomo Prime Time criticized President Donald Trump for not aging enough in office and urged Trump to "care more" and sleep less. Cuomo's comments came after Trump stated Tuesday that "nothing keeps me up at night" in response to a question about Chinese military strength. Cuomo compared these words to former president Barack Obama's admission to ABC's Barbara Walters in 2008 that "there are a lot of things that keep me up at night." "A leader feels the pain of those they lead," Cuomo said,...

Facebook is proven to have systemic bias against conservatives by several third party groups and makes minor changes to improve the issue.

Washington – Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced coordinated actions to bring additional financial pressure upon those who manufacture, sell, or distribute synthetic opioids or their precursor chemicals. OFAC identified Chinese national Fujing Zheng (Zheng) and the Zheng Drug Trafficking Organization (DTO) as significant foreign narcotics traffickers pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Kingpin Act). OFAC also designated one additional Chinese national, Guanghua Zheng, for his support to the Zheng DTO’s drug trafficking activities, as well as one Chinese entity, Qinsheng Pharmaceutical Co....

I know we’ve been waiting a long time for the Department of Justice’s inspector general on the alleged FISA abuses that occurred under the Obama administration. It was supposed to be released this summer. Now, it’s due out in early September. The contents might not send anyone from the Obama DOJ to jail, but it will reaffirm what we have been saying for quite some time: that the FBI was allegedly spying on Trump officials, that the meddling of the most concern was really coming from the J. Edgar Hoover Building, and that the Trump dossier was known to be...

The Trump administration implemented new policies on Wednesday in an effort to end the "catch-and-release" of family units entering the country illegally or applying for asylum. In the past, the Department of Homeland Security has only been able to detain and process families together for 20-days. After that, they've been released into the United States and become unlikely to show up for immigration court dates months or years later. That practice is changing and DHS will now hold family units together, without separating children from parents, until their immigration hearing and full processing. "Large numbers of alien families are entering illegally across...

Oldline Protestant denominations make for a competitive peer group, but the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is on track to claim the top spot for fastest declining major U.S.-based church last year. Total membership declined from 411,140 in 2017 to 382,248 (-7%) while average worship attendance declined from 139,936 to 124,437 (-11%) according to numbers reported for 2018. Baptisms dropped from 4,344 to 3,782 (-13%) while the number of other additions (including transfers in) declined from 7,441 to 6,969 (-6.4%). At the current rate, the denomination will shrink by another 50 percent within a decade. This annual rate of decline...

Microsoft founder Bill Gates is refusing to respond to mounting questions surrounding the flight he took with Jeffrey Epstein on his "Lolita Express" private jet - shortly after the convicted pedophile was released from prison for sexually abusing a minor.Gates has continued to keep a low profile in the week following the bombshell revelation - that he flew with Epstein on the infamous plane - when his name was revealed in the flight logs.Victims have alleged that the plane was set up with a bed and used by Epstein and his guests to rape underage girls.