New Hampshire, Wyoming and Nebraska are the latest states to introduce Ag-Gag laws aimed at preventing employees, journalists or activists from exposing illegal or unethical practices on factory farms. Lawmakers in 10 other states introduced similar bills in 2011-2012. The laws passed in three of those states: Missouri, Iowa and Utah. But consumer and animal-welfare activists prevented the laws from passing in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York and Tennessee.

In all, six states now …

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Next month marks the four-year anniversary of the world’s most ambitious LED street light conversion project. On February 16, 2009, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and President Bill Clinton announced [PDF] a partnership under which the city, advised by the Clinton Climate Initiative, would outfit 140,000 street lights with light-emitting diode (LED) fixtures.

Project planners faced daunting logistics. The City of Los Angeles owns and operates the nation’s second-largest street lighting system: 210,000 street lights (including …

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San Bernardino County and two of its cities abandoned a plan that would use eminent domain to seize troubled mortgages and write down debt for homeowners.

The decision strikes a blow to an idea that garnered national attention as a potential — if unconventional and controversial — solution to the mortgage crisis.

The proposal was unanimously shot down in a vote by members of the Joint Powers Authority that the county and the cities, Ontario and Fontana, …

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(Istanbul, January 22, 2013) – Yesterday’s Istanbul court decision to order the pre-trial detention of nine human rights lawyers highlights the arbitrary and abusive use of anti-terrorism laws in Turkey, said Human Rights Watch. The 9 were among 12 lawyers arrested, 11 during early morning raids on January 18, and 1 on January 20.

In the past few years, Turkey’s overbroad anti-terrorism laws have been used against an ever-widening circle of people, charged for non-violent political …

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Friday’s rallies appeared to have brought out at least 500,000 opposition supporters, a small proportion of Egypt’s 85 million people, but large enough to suggest that opposition to Morsi and his Islamist allies is strong in a country fatigued by two years of political turmoil, surging crime and a free falling economy that is fueling popular anger. Protests — and clashes — took place in at least 12 of Egypt’s 27 provinces, including several that …

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With more Seattle public schools joining the standardized testing boycott which has flung his district into the national spotlight, Seattle Public Schools chief Jose Banda announced on Wednesday that he would be organizing a task force to investigate possible alternatives to his district’s testing regime and the MAP test in question. The new task force, formed immediately, “will have the opportunity to explore and review the strengths and limitations of the MAP assessment, and will …

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Ministers today admitted Britain is facing “very, very grave difficulties” after figures showed the economy did not grow at all in 2012.

Both George Osborne, the Chancellor, and Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said they do not underestimate the scale of the challenge but insisted the Goverment is on a “path of repairing our public finances”.

Despite their optimism, City analysts warned that the economy is still “in crisis”, more than four years …

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In just a few years, she’s gone from running a successful advertising business to being a single mom on disability. Hers is a dilemma of American life: A leg injury keeps her from working, but she can’t afford the surgery to fix it without health insurance.

Yet Orr doesn’t make excuses for the fact that she wrote a bum check at the grocery store. “Sure, we’ve fallen on tough times,” says the 54-year-old from Riverside. “But …

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Hollywood-area City Councilman Eric Garcetti, who is running for mayor in the March 5 primary and has for 12 years avidly led the urban renewal in Hollywood, won’t discuss the census data, the outflow of Latinos or the area’s net population loss, none of which were foreseen by his office. But Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival, a tenants’ rights advocacy group, says, “It was an economic tsunami that pushed low-income …

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Just one day after quietly introducing a whopper of a bill that would categorize abortions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest as “tampering with evidence,” New Mexico State Rep. Cathrynn N. Brown found herself doing some swift damage control.

As it still currently appears on the New Mexico Legislature’s page, Bill HB206 is blazingly, insanely straightforward. It explains that “tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to …

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