Behind a modest desk with a view of Beit Jala sits a nameless Shin Bet security service officer who is very pleased with himself. He has just saved the Jewish people in Israel from yet another grave security risk by preventing a 47-year-old woman, for five weeks now, from going abroad for urgent medical tests.
Or perhaps this isn't a story about just one officer, but rather about a committee of three. What matters is that Khalida Jarrar, a resident of Al-Bireh, has not gone to Amman for diagnostic brain tests that cannot be done in the West Bank due to lack of the necessary medical equipment.
It has been one of the great murder mysteries of the garden: what is killing off the honeybees? Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.
It was more like Normandy than Puerto Rico. Boarding planes in the middle of the night, hundreds of FBI agents, analysts and examiners flew into Puerto Rico before dawn Wednesday and took down about 130 local police and law enforcement personnel on corruption charges, in what the Justice Department called an “unprecedented” bust.
The federal pipeline safety agency doesn't keep copies of natural gas emergency plans in its offices. That makes them essentially invisible to the public and industry watchdogs. The Associated Press discovered the situation when it filed a Freedom of Information Act request for copies of every emergency plan for every natural gas and oil transmission pipeline in the U.S.
The wife of Joe Miller, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, drew unemployment after working as his clerk in 2002 when he was a federal magistrate, a fact Sen. Lisa Murkowski argued is inconsistent with Miller's position on the constitutionality of such benefits.
Until recently, Taj Ayubi’s specialty was retail. Mr. Ayubi, an Afghan immigrant, ran a furniture store in Leesburg, Va., and before that, a thrift shop in Washington. But today, Mr. Ayubi’s specialty is foreign policy. He is the senior foreign affairs adviser to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.
Last week, the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics opened a new Internet-based voting system for a weeklong test period, inviting computer experts from all corners to prod its vulnerabilities in the spirit of "give it your best shot." Well, the hackers gave it their best shot -- and midday Friday, the trial period was suspended, with the board citing "usability issues brought to our attention."
Buffett, the billionaire investor who runs Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA), said Tuesday at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington that the nation's tax code "has gotten distorted to a huge extent," by levying higher taxes on secretaries and janitors than on CEOs and private equity whiners.
