Short Subjects That Cast Light on Our Variegated World

*An Israeli cabinet minister told Defense News that the Obama package of military aid would jump $40 billion over the 10-year period beginning in 2018.

*Israel's nuclear-armed submarine fleet in the Mediterranean threatens the Middle East and Europe. The Dolphine class subs carry sixteen torpedoes and SLCMs. The cruise missiles have a range of 1,500 km (930 mi.).

*The United States recently unveiled an autonomous marine drone, given the mouth-filling name of the Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel. The drone will use radar to detect other vessels in the water.

*Charles Branas and others, in a 2009 study, found that "individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession."

*More than a third of people shot by Los Angeles police last year had documented signs of mental illness, nearly triple the number from the year before, according to a lengthy review by LAPD officials. Most of the thirty-eight people shot by  LAPD officers in 2015 were Latinos; however, eight of the thirty-eight people -- or 21 percent --  struck down by police gunfire in 2015 were African American, who make up 9 percent of the city's population.

* Ohio Governor John Kasich  recently signed a bill repealing all state funding for Planned Parenthood. The new law will prevent the state health department from providing any money for Planned Parenthood programs.

*Justice Samuel Alito has crassly entered the political arena by supporting Senate Republican vows to give no consideration to any Supreme Court Obama appointee. He told a Georgetown Law School gathering that there is no constitutional provision on the size of the Court.

*Recent polling shows that one in four Republicans in Mississippi and one in five in Alabama, believe that interracial marriage should be illegal, while closer to two-thirds in both states don't believe in evolution..

*Corporate profits are the  highest ever measured, while workers' wages are the lowest as a percentage of GDP. Paul Klugman looks to  an age of "stagnant living standards for most Americans... reinforced by a set of 'headwinds'; a rising inequality, a plateau in education levels, and worse."

*The LA Times of April 29, 2014 referenced a study showing that more than four percent of Death Row inmates were wrongfully  convicted; furthermore, in 2014, the U.S. executed more people than any other country on earth, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and China.

**Progressive Breakfast points out that "we are a nation of Flints. Lead poisoning is a pervasive problem for our inner cities, where some children have higher levels of lead contamination than those in Flint." In Washington DC's Stadium-Armory neighborhood, lead levels in the soil were found o be ten times higher than the accepted standards of other developed countries. Baltimore has high levels of lead in some areas of the city. Eighteen cities in Pennsylvania and eleven in New Jersey have areas of lead concentration elevated above those found thus far in Flint children.