Mar
21
2013
Urasawa, the rave-inspiring Beverly Hills sushi restaurant where the average check is $1,111, is being fined many times that amount over labor violations.
California Labor Commissioner Julie A. Su wrote in a citation that the eatery will face a $65,785 fine. Three workers are owed $38,585 in unpaid wages after being told to work in excess of 10 hours a day without overtime pay, according to the citation.
The rest of the fine represents penalties. The state …
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Mar
21
2013
The House of Representatives this afternoon approved the Republican budget plan authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) by a vote of 221-207, with 197 Democrats and 10 Republicans voting against it. Three Democrats and one Republican did not vote.
For the third consecutive year, the House GOP has approved a budget that ends the traditional guaranteed Medicare coverage for senior citizens, makes substantial cuts to poverty programs and the social safety net, and grants massive tax …
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Mar
21
2013
New York police officers testified this week that their office set quotas for both the number of police stops and arrests. Officers Adhyl Polanco and Pedro Serrano are two of the more than 100 witnesses to testify during a trial in a class action challenge to the New York Police Department’s rampant use of “stop and frisks,” a practice with constitutional implications in which an officer stops someone suspected of a crime, and may subsequently …
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Mar
21
2013
The United Nations has been ordered to pay a former employee $65,000 in a lawsuit that has raised questions about the UN’s commitment to protecting whistleblowers and stopping corruption.
The UN Dispute Tribunal, which was established to improve accountability in the international organisation, ruled in favor of James Wasserstrom last summer, as Al Jazeera detailed in this report.
It was discovered at that time, that Wasserstrom was forced out of his job in a UN field office …
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Mar
21
2013
A number of US supermarket chains pledged on Wednesday not to sell genetically modified salmon, in a sign of growing public concern about engineered foods on the dinner table.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is in the final stages of deciding whether to allow GM salmon on to the market. If approved, AquaBounty Technology’s salmon would be the first genetically engineered animal to enter the food supply.
The company combined genes from two species of …
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Mar
21
2013
An alliance of Canadian and US aboriginal groups vowed on Wednesday to block three multibillion-dollar oil pipelines that are planned to transport oil from the Alberta tar sands, saying they are prepared to take physical action to stop them.
The Canadian government, faced with falling revenues due to pipeline bottlenecks and a glut that has cut the price for Alberta oil, says the projects are a national priority and will help diversify exports away from the …
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Mar
21
2013
Workers at the Cosmopolitan Casino in Las Vegas engaged in the first act of civil disobedience since labor negotiations began two years ago. Members of Culinary Workers Local 226 blocked traffic on the Las Vegas Strip Wednesday, leading to 98 arrests, according to the Associated Press (AP).
The workers continued to chant as they were being taken away, reports AP: “If we don’t get no contract, you don’t get no peace.”
The approximately 2,000 workers at Cosmopolitan …
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Mar
21
2013
Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett has warned that “parent trigger” bills expected to pass the Legislature are flawed. He’s right, but for the wrong reasons.
Parent trigger laws, despite the name, have nothing to do with guns. But they are a weapon in the scheme to privatize public education. And the parent trigger fad mimics in-your-face laws that the National Rifle Association makes lawmakers pass just to show who’s boss.
Similarly, parent trigger laws force lawmakers …
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Mar
21
2013
Air pollution in China is alarming much of the time, but earlier this year the problem became so acute that it made international headlines. In January, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing reported air pollution levels of 755 on an index that typically stops at 500, embarrassing a Chinese government that had just begun making data on fine particulate matter available for major cities in response to a series of well-publicized citizen demands for more …
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Mar
20
2013
More than 100 prominent civil rights leaders, lawyers, politicians and clergy are calling on the state of Texas to provide a new fair sentencing hearing for Duane Buck, the African American man who was put on death row in 1997 after the jury was told he was a danger to society because he was black.
The Buck case is rapidly becoming a focal point for anxieties that the application of the death penalty across America is …
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