An order for Exxon Mobil to pay $236 million in damages for groundwater contamination is by far the largest verdict in state history but represents only about two days’ worth of profit for the energy company, an industry analyst said.

Fadel Gheit, managing director of oil and gas research and a senior analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., said the verdict won’t put a dent in Exxon Mobil’s bottom line.

“Exxon will probably make close to a …

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Following the adoption Tuesday of new science education guidelines, school children in the US will—for the first time—be taught about global warming, an issue which has dramatically altered their planet’s climate and has severe consequences for themselves and future generations.

New science education recommendations aim to encourage real world investigations into subjects, including climate change. (Photo: Halle Miller via Ohio Sea Grant Lab via Flickr) However, the final guidelines fall short of making explicit the …

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As woman after woman stepped to the microphone at the Hyatt Regency ballroom in Washington, D.C., and made the case for why immigration is a women’s issue, Sojourner Truth’s words rang in my ears. Immigrant women living in states across the country—from Texas to Minnesota to Missouri to Maine—shared stories of being detained and not seeing a child for three months, of surviving domestic violence and not being able to call for help, of …

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If you turn to network television to get your news, don’t expect to hear much about labor unions or the lives of organized workers.

During the years of 2008, 2009 and 2011, less than 0.3 percent of news stories aired on four major news broadcasting networks involved labor unions or labor issues, according to analysis recently released by Federico Subervi, a professor of media markets at Texas State University.

Subervi’s team searched the Vanderbilt University Television News …

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NABEEL USED TO WORK FOR the Americans in Iraq. He was a security team leader for the Research Triangle Institute, a U.S. contractor that was paid more than half-a-billion dollars to run “local governance programs” throughout the country. He survived three car-bombing attempts. “I was lucky,” he says nonchalantly.

But as GIs began to exit Iraq in 2011, he knew that his luck would not last. Nabeel says that some guys threatened him: “We will kill …

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• Listen to this segment

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

HARTMANN: And Bernie Sanders is here with us. Welcome. Boy, you’ve got a lot on your plate. I understand you delivered a couple of million petitions to the White House. I called the White House comment line this morning and said ‘No’ to the chained CPI. What’s going on?

SANDERS: Well, just a couple of hours ago we had a rally with the AARP and …

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The nation will continue to get its Saturday mail through at least September 30, the U.S. Postal Service said Wednesday.

The Postal Service backed down from its plan to cut mail delivery starting this summer from six days a week to five, saying Congress had prohibited such a move.

A measure passed by Congress last month to fund government operations while the budget remains in limbo included language that barred the U.S. Postal Service from changing its …

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BEIJING (AP) — California and China signed an agreement Wednesday to look for ways to boost trade and investment, even as Gov. Jerry Brown acknowledged the state’s reputation for red tape and its limited willingness to offer tax incentives.

Brown told executives of mostly American companies that California has ranked at the bottom of nearly annual surveys of the business climate of U.S. states for 37 years. Having just resolved a $27 billion budget deficit, Brown …

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A key congressional panel will vote in private on Wednesday on a new law that would allow private companies to share cybersecurity information with federal agencies, drawing criticism from advocates who say the controversial measure should be debated in public.

The intelligence committee, which is working on the bill, will hold its meeting in a secure room in the basement of the new Capitol Visitor Centre, which is specially designed so that classified documents can be …

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Thousands of advocates are expected to descend on the nation’s capital Wednesday afternoon to press for comprehensive immigration reform and a path to citizenship.

The demonstration, dubbed the “Time is Now” rally by its organizers, is the brainchild of the immigrant community group Casa de Maryland and the labor union SEIU 32BJ, which represents service workers such as janitors, security guards, and food service employees. The two host organizations are members of a national pro-reform coalition …

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