As closed-door talks for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement resume in Singapore this week, international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières is calling on Australia and negotiating countries to reject rules that threaten to dismantle internationally agreed public health safeguards and restrict access to medicines in developing countries.

The TPP negotiations, which currently involve eleven Asia-Pacific countries, are being conducted in secret, but leaked texts reveal the most aggressive intellectual property (IP) measures ever suggested in …

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RIYADH | Mon Mar 4, 2013 11:03am EST

(Reuters) – Saudi Arabia is scheduled to execute seven men on Tuesday for crimes committed when they were juveniles aged under 18, the British-based rights group Amnesty International said.

The seven were sentenced to death in 2009 for an armed robbery in 2006, but Amnesty quoted the men as saying they were tortured into confessions. It said King Abdullah ratified their sentences in February.

“They have since said they were …

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There are a record 1,426 billionaires spread around the globe, according to the latest count from Forbes, as rising stock prices helped bring 210 new members into the exclusive 10-figure club.

The Forbes rankings published Monday showed Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim on top of the list for the fourth year in a row. His estimated $73 billion fortune, up from $69 billion a year ago, edged out Microsoft founder Bill Gates, once again No. 2 …

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ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

HARTMANN: Senator Sanders, great to have you here. There is a lot going on.

SANDERS: There is a lot going on. Yes there is. Most of the listeners know that sequestration has begun. This is a real real tragedy to my mind because it’s a tragedy that goes beyond the people who will lose their jobs. Tom, I just came from an event at the …

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I was in a military courtroom at Fort Meade in Maryland on Thursday as Pfc. Bradley Manning admitted giving classified government documents to WikiLeaks. The hundreds of thousands of leaked documents exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as government misconduct. A statement that Manning made to the court was a powerful and moving treatise on the importance of placing conscience above personal safety, the necessity of sacrificing careers and liberty for …

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RAWABI, West Bank — As gambles go, it hardly gets bigger: A $1 billion dollar bet on peace — or at least a measure of calm — in the West Bank.

Even the founder of Rawabi, the biggest construction project in the history of the Palestinian people, says nobody in his right mind would invest here.

Standing on a wind-swept hilltop overlooking the biblical hills of Judea, a half-hour drive from Ramallah, Bashar Al-Masri points to the …

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(Reuters) – At least 15 people were killed in attacks by machete-wielding gangs on Monday as millions of Kenyans voted in the first presidential election since a disputed 2007 poll unleashed weeks of tribal bloodshed.

Voting the tight contest passed off peacefully across most of the East African nation, although many of its 14.3 million voters were caught in long lines. Election officials said there was a high turnout without giving figures.

Officials and candidates have made …

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WASHINGTON — The $85 billion in automatic cuts working their way through the federal budget spare many programs that aid the poorest and most vulnerable Americans, including the Children’s Health Insurance Program and food stamps.

But the sequestration cuts, as they are called, still contain billions of dollars in mandatory budget reductions in programs that help low-income Americans, including one that gives vouchers for housing to the poor and disabled and another that provides fortified …

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Los Angeles mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti flip-flopped days before the March 5 primary election, embracing Parent Trigger, the dramatic law now spreading nationwide that lets disgusted parents take over bad schools through petition.

On February 15, when L.A. Weekly pressed the five top mayoral candidates for their positions on Parent Trigger, Wendy Greuel, Jan Perry, Kevin James and Emanuel Pleitez backed it. Garcetti, who is getting campaign help from UTLA, the powerful teachers union that hates …

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SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown has pointed to reams of documents to make the case in court and on the stump that California’s prison crisis is over, and inmates are receiving good care.

But there is at least one document the administration wanted to hide.

New court filings reveal that the state suppressed a report from its own consultant warning that California’s prison suicide-watch practices encouraged inmate deaths.

Click here for the full story. …