Hundreds of thousands of student loan borrowers will now have an easier path to getting their loans discharged, the Obama administration announced Tuesday. The Department of Education will send letters to 387,000 people they’ve identified as being eligible for a total and permanent disability discharge, a designation that allows federal student loan borrowers who can’t work because of a disability to have their loans forgiven. “Americans with disabilities have a right to student loan relief,” said Ted Mitchell, the undersecretary of education.

About 179,000 of the borrowers are in default on their student loans, and of that group more than 100,000 are at risk of having their tax refunds or Social Security checks garnished to pay off the debt.

Often borrowers losing out on these benefits aren’t even aware that they’re eligible for a disability discharge, said Persis Yu, director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-obama-is-forgiving-the-student-loans-of-nearly-400000-people-2016-04-12

A comic gag by Hillary Clinton and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio at an annual satirical event triggered a social media storm over perceived insensitivity to African-Americans.

Clinton and de Blasio took the stage on Saturday at the Inner Circle, a media roast of politicians that traditionally ends with New York’s mayor delivering a snarky rebuttal in the form of a rehearsed skit, often with the help of Broadway cast members.

This year Leslie Odom Jr., who is black and plays Aaron Burr in the hit Broadway show Hamilton, participated in the planned joke. In the skit, Clinton kidded de Blasio about his delay in endorsing her bid for the White House.

“Sorry, Hillary, I was running on C.P. Time,” de Blasio said, referring to the phrase “colored people time” used to indicate chronic lateness.

“I don’t like jokes like that,” Odom said.

Clinton then added: “‘Cautious politician time.’ I’ve been there.”

The joke quickly led to an angry reaction on social media, with commentators criticizing Clinton and de Blasio for being insensitive to black people. De Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, is African-American.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/clinton-cp-time-1.3531902

Pressure is building on the Obama administration to release information about the 9/11 attacks that has been kept from the public for well over a decade. New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has read the 28 pages that have been locked in a vault under the Capitol for 13 years. She said the 9/11 families she represents deserve to read them too — before the president travels to the Middle East next week. “If the president is going to meet with the Saudi Arabian leadership and the royal family they think it would be appropriate that this document be released before the president makes that trip, so that they can talk about whatever issues are in that document,” Gillibrand said. Steve Kroft, for 60-Minutes, interviewed former Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired the joint congressional inquiry. He said the classified pages lay out a network of people he believes helped some of the hijackers find housing and enroll in flight school.

News Story:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pressure-obama-administration-release-9-225105617.html

Related Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roIN0P-yyBk

Malik Jalal: I am in the strange position of knowing that I am on the “Kill List.” I know this because I have been told, and I know because I have been targeted for death over and over again … I took to the habit of sleeping under the trees, well above my home, to avoid acting as a magnet of death for my whole family. But one night my youngest son, Hilal (then aged six), followed me out to the mountainside. He said that he, too, feared the droning engines at night. I tried to comfort him. I said that drones wouldn’t target children, but Hilal refused to believe me. He said that missiles had often killed children. It was then that I knew that I could not let them go on living like this … I am in England this week because I decided that if Westerners wanted to kill me without bothering to come to speak with me first, perhaps I should come to speak to them instead.

In January 2010, I lent my vehicle to my nephew, Salimullah, to drive to Deegan for an oil change and to have one of the tires checked. Rumors had surfaced that drones were targeting particular vehicles, and tracking particular phone signals. The sky was clear and there were drones circling overhead.

As Salimullah conversed with the mechanic, a second vehicle pulled up next to mine. There were four men inside, just local chromite miners. A missile destroyed both vehicles, killed all four men, and seriously injured Salimullah, who spent the next 31 days in hospital.

Upon reflection, because the drones target the vehicles of people they want to kill in Waziristan, I was worried that they were aiming for me.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/i-am-on-the-us-kill-list-this-is-what-it-feels-like-to-be-hunted-by-drones-a6980141.html

Ruth Marcus, Washington Post: Politicians like to bet that reporters and their pesky questions will go away. Too often, they’re right. Thus, the drumbeat of demands for Donald Trump’s tax returns faded after he waved it all away with claims that a pending audit prevented the transparency he would otherwise be delighted to provide. .

Trump is, by far, the greatest offender here and, in this area at least, Clinton the avatar of full disclosure.

Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Bernie Sanders have claimed transparency but released only the initial, summary pages of their tax returns.

This dodge obscures all sorts of potentially significant information, from amounts and details about charitable giving to precise sources of income to their use of various tax shelters. Voters should not be misled by this phony forthcomingness.

Would they accept a president who provided a similarly flimsy summary?

Although an audit for a taxpayer of Trump’s magnitude and complexity is not evidence of tax mischief, if anything, it argues for more transparency, not less.

Trump says there was no “net” deficiency. Were there dodges that the IRS disallowed? Aren’t voters entitled to know about those? Richard Nixon, of all people, released his tax returns — in the midst of an IRS audit, while he was president. (He owed nearly a half-million dollars in taxes and interest.)

Next Tax Day will see a new president in the White House. Will it be the first in decades in which the president won’t be straight with fellow taxpayers?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/every-presidential-candidate-should-release-full-tax-returns/2016/04/12/e79af5b4-00c2-11e6-9d36-33d198ea26c5_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-f%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Ethan Couch, the affluenza teen was sentenced to nearly two years in jail Wednesday, 180 days for each parole violation relating to a 2013 drunken driving crash that killed four people. But the judge also said he would hear arguments in two weeks to determine if he should reconsider the sentence. During Couch’s 2013 trial concerning the four deaths, a witness testified he didn’t know right from wrong due his wealthy upbringing, hence dubbing Couch the affluenza teen. After being released on probation, a video was brought to officials attention that appeared to show someone who looks like Couch at a beer-pong party. Couch and his mother fled to Mexico but were found by authorities and returned to the U.S. Couch has been in jail since his return. “I do believe Ethan Couch is not the same person he was when he came to jail,” a jail official told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram . “This time he’s spent, it’s a rude awakening for anyone.”

Video a young man paralyzed by the 2013 Ethan Couch drunk driving wreck.

http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/crime/article61289177.html

Texas prisoners are forbidden to have any social media presence, according to the new Texas Department of Criminal Justice Offender Handbook published April 1. Fusion reports that prison officials say they will send social media outlets, such as Facebook, notices to take down accounts and prisoners will be given level-three punishments, the lowest. But the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out that had Martin Luther King, Jr. written “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” today, his wife would not have been able to post it on his social media account. “Supporters of inmates often use social media to raise attention about prison conditions and the appeal campaigns of individual prisoners,” EFF wrote. “This policy would not only prohibit the prisoners’ exercise of their First Amendment rights, but also prevent the public from exercising their First Amendment right to gather information about the criminal justice system from those most affected by it.”

http://fusion.net/story/290894/texas-inmates-social-media-ban/

A device being presented as evidence at a trial in Pakistani blew up after the judge asked a police officer to show how it worked. At least two people were injured, including the policeman, in the blast at an anti-terrorism court in Karachi. The device presented in court was at the request of the defense. When Judge Shakil Haider asked how it worked, a part of the device was pulled and it exploded, throwing the judge off his chair. “We are investigating as to how the detonator was brought to the court without being defused,” said senior police official Jamil Ahmed.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36028224

Donald Trump’s struggling campaign has brought together a new team under recently hired strategist Paul Manafort and they’re taking control of people once overseen by campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, multiple campaign sources told Politico. The power struggle has left two groups with conflicting authority and staffers unsure which one to follow. A GOP fundraiser said Manafort is casting a wide net for prospective staff as he endeavors to build “an entire mirror organization.” A former campaign adviser said, “Corey has been neutered.”

Manafort was brought in last month and given more control last week in response to the Trump campaign’s struggles to amass delegates, a process mostly controlled by party insiders with knowledge of arcane, state-specific rules that has befuddled the GOP front-runner’s operation. Trump has almost no margin for error if he hopes to secure the 1,237 delegates required to win the nomination outright.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/rick-wiley-donald-trump-campaign-221909

How much would you pay to hide something embarrassing? At least $175,000 is what the University of California in Davis, California, has shelled out to companies to scrub the Internet of information about campus police pepper spraying students, according to the Sacramento Bee. In November 2011 campus police officers calmly pepper sprayed students seated during an Occupy movement protest. “I would say that it is common for an individual who might be applying for a job or an individual who has been wrongly maligned to go to a company like Reputation.Com, but for a public university that is funded through taxpayer funds, who has repeatedly stepped into a vast hole, it is surprising that they though this could be done without the light of day shining on the act,” said public affair consultant Doug Element to The Sacramento Bee.

News Story

http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article71659992.html

Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4

U.S. Capitol police said “unlawful demonstration activity” such as crowding, obstruction or sitting in unauthorized areas led to the arrest of more than 400 protesters Monday outside the Capitol. Democracy Spring is a group working to get rid of laws that allow money to influence the U.S. political system. The group lists individuals including actor Mark Ruffalo and dozens of other political groups who support the movement on their website. More protests are planned this week.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-capitol-demonstration-idUSKCN0X82M1

Hillary Clinton is maintaining her double-digit lead over Democratic presidential rival Bernie Sanders in New York, ahead of the April 19 primary, according to a Monmouth University poll released Monday. The poll found Clinton and Sanders effectively tied among white voters — 48% for Sanders, 46% for Clinton — but the former secretary of state leads the Vermont senator 62% to 22% among African-American, Hispanic and other non-white voters. The results are similar to recent findings from Quinnipiac University and Fox News, which also showed her double-digit leads in the state she was twice elected to the Senate.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/11/politics/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-poll-new-york/

An octopus has made a successful dash for freedom from a New Zealand aquarium and is now thought to be roaming the Pacific Ocean. Inky the octopus took his chance to escape through a small gap in his enclosure at the National Aquarium in the coastal city of Napier. After managing to squeeze his way out, Inky slid across the floor and found a six-inch-wide drain pipe which — luckily for him — led to the sea. Aquarium manager Rob Yarrall says the tank’s lid was left slightly ajar following maintenance work. “He managed to make his way to one of the drain holes that go back to the ocean and off he went — didn’t even leave us a message,” he tells Radio New Zealand.

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-36025141

Donald Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski will not be prosecuted for battery of former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields, according to Politico, citing unnamed sources. Palm Beach County State Attorney David Aronberg will make the official announcement Thursday. Police charged Lewandowski with simple battery after Fields was grabbed trying to ask Trump a question following a press conference. After the incident, Trump and Lewandowski denied that Lewandowski ever touched her, which video later showed was a lie. Trump then downplayed the incident and said the pen the reporter was carrying could have been considered dangerous. “She had a pen in her hand, which Secret Service is not liking because they don’t know what it is, whether it’s a little bomb,” Trump said.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/trump-campaign-manager-lewandowski-221921

Deep radio imaging by researchers in the University of Cape Town and University of the Western Cape, in South Africa, has revealed that supermassive black holes in a region of the distant universe are all spinning out radio jets in the same direction — most likely a result of primordial mass fluctuations in the early universe. The astronomers publish their results in a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.|

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160411130033.htm

Thousands of East Coast Verizon workers are planning to strike on Wednesday if labor representatives can’t negotiate a new contract with the communications giant.

The strike is scheduled for 6 a.m. on April 13 and would be “by far the largest work stoppage in the country in recent years,” according to union leaders.

“[Our members] are located all over the state,” CWA spokesman Robert Master told Patch. “It’s the phone company, so we serve every community.”

In the Hudson Valley, if Verizon workers do go out on strike, union officials said there will be about 600 workers manning the picket lines at 111 Main St. in White Plains beginning at 6 a.m.

However, Verizon representatives said that the company is “fully prepared to serve its customers” in the event of a strike.

In a Monday joint statement, labor leaders with IBEW Local 827 and CWA Local 1000 said that 39,000 East Coast workers plan to “stand up for working families” against “Verizon’s corporate greed.”

Union leaders are alleging that even though Verizon made $39 billion in profits over the last three years, the company wants to “gut job security protections, contract out more work and send jobs overseas, and require technicians to work away from home for as long as two months without seeing their families.”

The corporate giant is also refusing to negotiate any improvements in wages, benefits or working conditions for Verizon Wireless retail workers, who formed a union in 2014, labor leaders allege.

According to labor leaders, contract negotiations began in June 2015; the workers’ contracts expired on August 1 last year.

“For months and months, we’ve made every effort to reach a fair agreement at the bargaining table,” said Myles Calvey, IBEW Local 2222 business manager and chairman, T-6 Verizon New England. “We’ve offered Verizon hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings and yet they still refuse to provide basic job security for workers. We have to take a stand now for our families and every American worker.”

According to union leaders, Verizon Chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam earns 200 times more than the average Verizon employee.

In addition, the company’s top five executives allegedly made $233 million over the last five years.

VERIZON’S REPLY

The company said it is “fully prepared to serve its customers” in the event of a strike.

“We do not take strike threats lightly,” said Bob Mudge, president of Verizon’s wireline network operations. “For more than a year, we’ve been preparing in the event union leaders order our employees to walk off the job. If a strike takes place, whether it’s one day, two weeks or longer, we are ready.”

Mudge said that the company has trained thousands of non-union Verizon employees to carry out “virtually every job function handled by our represented workforce,” from making repairs on utility poles to responding to inquiries in its call centers.

According to a company statement, Verizon approached contract negotiations with “a goal of preserving good jobs while also making critical changes needed to legacy contracts.”

Verizon’s 36,000 employees covered under these contracts currently have a wage and benefit package that averages more than $130,000 a year, the company asserted.

Over 99 percent of these employees support the company’s wireline business, which in 2015, contributed about 29 percent of Verizon’s revenue but less than seven percent of its operating income, company spokespeople stated.

“We’ve tried to work with union leaders to reach a deal,” said Marc Reed, Verizon’s chief administrative officer. “Verizon has been moving the bargaining process forward, but now union leaders would rather make strike threats than constructively engage at the bargaining table.”

“A strike in this case is not going to change the issues on the table that need to be addressed,” Reed added.

According to Verizon, offered terms of its wireline contract proposal include:

A 6.5 percent wage increase over the term of the contract
“Competitive retirement benefits” including a 401K with a company match
Verizon spokespeople also said that the current proposal includes “structural changes” to its health plan due to rising healthcare costs.

LAWMAKERS URGE VERIZON TO REACH AGREEMENT

In a March 18 letter to McAdam, 20 U.S. senators called for the Verizon to “act as a responsible corporate citizen and negotiate a fair contact with the employees who make your success possible.”

Signatories to the letter included Bernie Sanders, Robert Menendez, Cory Booker and Charles Schumer.

The senators wrote:

“It is our understanding that the [CWA and IBEW] have offered to negotiate substantial savings in heaelth care for the wireline workforce, but there are additional areas of concern for your workers, including job security, the treatment of sick and injured workers, pensions and the contracting out of work. While we recognize that changes in technology and customer preference have led to a decline in landline service, driving the need for some contract changes, we also want to be sure that Verizon preserves good, family-supporting jobs in our region.”

Photo: CWA Local 1101 workers protest outside a Verizon store in New York City on Sunday

Patch staff writer Michael Woyton contributed to this report.

http://standuptoverizon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/SenatorLetter.png

A federal appeals court restored Utah’s ban on polygamy Monday, handing a defeat to the family from TV’s Sister Wives and other polygamists who say the ruling could send plural families back into hiding out of fear of prosecution. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a 2013 ruling that struck down key parts of Utah’s law against bigamy, or holding multiple marriage licenses. U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups had found the state violated polygamists’ right to privacy and religious freedom. The appeals court ruled that Waddoups should not have considered a lawsuit from Kody Brown and his four wives because they were never charged with a crime and there was little chance they would be.

The decision brings back a rule forbidding married people from living with a second purported “spouse,” making Utah’s law stricter than those in every other state and creating a threat of arrest for plural families. Like most polygamous families in Utah, Brown is legally married to one wife and “spiritually married” to the others.

State authorities have long said they don’t go after polygamists who otherwise follow the law, and they reiterated that stance after the ruling. Officials wanted the clause kept on the books to help in criminal cases related to polygamy.

The battlelines for the next expansion of marriage have been drawn.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/utah-polygamy-ban-restored-loss-sister-wives-family-n554466

Leo Shane III, Military Times: The path for former Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis to become president is simple: 1. Declare himself a candidate. 2. Ensure no other candidate gets 270 electoral college votes in November. 3. Have Congress install him as commander-in-chief.

O]ne possible scenario is all of the states breaking for the same party as in 2012, but with Mattis capturing Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania (forget for a moment that Mattis has never won a single vote in those states or even appeared on a local ballot).

The former four-star currently works as a national security fellow at the Hoover Institution, a California-based think tank connected to Stanford University.

He developed a cult-like following among service members during his 34-year military career, in large part due to his blunt talk about the nature of combat. He once advised Marines serving under him to “be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”

A meeting of James Mattis and Vlad Putin would be a fun one.

http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/election/2016/04/10/general-james-mattis-president-movement/82806616/

If it were not for the pragmatic belief that Donald Trump is the most likely Republican candidate who can win, Ben Carson said he would join the never-Trump movement. Speaking on the Denver, Colorado-based radio show Kelley and Kafer last week, Carson explained that the stakes are too high not to support any Republican that could win. Host Krista Kafer explained that she will never vote for Donald Trump saying he is a bad man and that she does not want to put nuclear codes in the hands of a person who makes fun those with disabilities. “If it were just me, I would be completely where Krista is,” Carson said at the end of the 19-minute clip on BuzzFeed.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/ben-carson-id-be-never-trump-too-if-election-stakes-werent-s#.rtv3lJV7Pe

The Tor Project’s new executive director Shari Steele, a former leader of the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wants the browser to attract more mainstream users. Before coming to Tor, Steele said like most Internet surfers, she had never used Tor. The Browser has about 2.4 million users each day and some say it’s clunky design makes it hard to use. A recent ad by the group featured a picture of Edward Snowden, with the words, “This is What a Tor Supporter Looks Like.”

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/2016/0408/Tor-aims-to-grow-amid-national-debate-over-digital-privacy