Both sides claimed victory this afternoon after the National Labor Relations Board announced an agreement to resolve allegations by Walmart that the recent union-backed pickets outside its retail stores broke the law.

As The Nation has reported, in a charge filed one week before November’s Black Friday strike, Walmart had accused the United Food & Commercial Workers union of organizing illegal pickets for the purpose of winning union recognition (the protests were spearheaded by the UFCW-backed …

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LOS ANGELES — Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, who retired less than two years ago as the leader of the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese, was removed from all public duties by his successor, Archbishop José H. Gomez, as the church complied with a court order to release thousands of pages of internal documents that show how the cardinal shielded priests who sexually abused children.

The documents, released as part of a record $660 million settlement …

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WASHINGTON — Lawmakers were stunned Wednesday to learn that the U.S. economy officially dove toward a double-dip recession at the end of 2012, contracting for the first time in three and a half years amid steep declines in government spending and sluggish exports.

Policymakers were similarly stunned in Europe when reductions in government spending led to continued economic malaise, leading top economists there to question the logic behind austerity recommendations. European austerity programs are a major …

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Revelations that China apparently targeted the New York Times in a campaign of cyber-espionage have cast a rare spotlight on attempts by Beijing to crack down on any criticism of its ruling elite.

The move, which was detected and then monitored by the Times’s digital staff, is believed to have been linked to the newspaper’s hard-hitting October exposé on the vast wealth accumulated by the family of leading communist and outgoing premier Wen Jiabao.

Government officials in …

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