MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — Uruguayan lawmakers have voted in favor of a proposal to legalize same-sex marriage.

The Senate voted 23-8 on Tuesday in favor of the bill, which would make Uruguay the world’s 12th nation — and the second in Latin America — to legalize same-sex unions.

The bill was previously approved by the lower house of Congress in December.

The measure also allows couples, gay or straight, to decide whose surname goes first when they name their …

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The United States Supreme Court is poised to issue a ruling in the case of Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum. The stakes are enormous – the case will determine whether victims of human rights abuses on foreign soil, who often lack any other viable legal remedy, can bring suit against corporations in US courts.

The underlying facts of the Kiobel case are deeply disturbing. In the 1990s, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni …

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Stephen Warner works part-time at a McDonald’s in New York City, earning the legal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. He hasn’t seen a pay bump since he started six months ago. Depending on how many shifts he gets, he says his take-home pay sometimes comes out to less than $100 for the week.

Hoping for a living wage, the 27-year-old said he plans to protest his own employer on Thursday, and he believes that several …

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RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — City Council here is set to vote on a proposal Thursday to ban drones in residential areas, what could be the first law of its kind in California.

The proposed ordinance bans the flying of “unmanned aircraft that can fly under the control of a remote pilot or by a geographic positions system (GPS) guided autopilot mechanism” up to 400 feet above areas zoned residential. Anything flying higher is in Federal Aviation …

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Dozens of journalists sifted through millions of leaked records and thousands of names to produce ICIJ’s investigation into offshore secrecy

By Gerard Ryle, Marina Walker Guevara, Michael Hudson, Nicky Hager, Duncan Campbell and Stefan Candea

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

A cache of 2.5 million files has cracked open the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts, exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con men and the mega-rich the world over.

The secret records obtained by the International …

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BISBEE, Ariz. — Hours after the City Council in this small southeastern Arizona city became the first in the state to approve of civil unions for same-sex couples, the state’s attorney general said he would challenge the new ordinance.

Arizona voters in 2008 approved a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriages. However, two years earlier, voters rejected a broader version that would have barred the state and local governments from creating or recognizing “a legal status …

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The Zanu PF side of government, which has been using the MDC’s as a window dresser for it’s electoral and political legitmacy over the past four years, is also desperately mortgaging the country’s mineral wealth to Beijing in return for opaque economic loans, which the administration is finding difficult to repay thus piling up the responsibility on future generations.

Zimbabwe is targeting to make use of domestic nuclear energy by 2020, thereby necessitating the overtures with …

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It’s been a long, dark winter in Germany. In fact, there hasn’t been this little sun since people started tracking such things back in the early 1950s. Easter is around the corner, and the streets of Berlin are still covered in ice and snow. But spring will come, and when the snow finally melts, it will reveal the glossy black sheen of photovoltaic solar panels glinting from the North Sea to the Bavarian Alps.

Solar panels …

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“This election is going to be won on the ground,” Chris Cox, the National Rifle Association’s top lobbyist, told me early last year as the gun lobby prepared to launch its all-out campaign to defeat Barack Obama. Historically, pro-gun voters have favored Republicans by a margin of 2- or 3-to-1, but that only matters if they vote. And, Cox stressed, millions of gun owners were not registered yet.

The NRA’s get-out-the-vote effort, its most ambitious ever, …

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A bill to regulate the sale of ammunition in California cleared the Assembly Public Safety Committee on Tuesday.

Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, said Assembly Bill 48 adds “reasonable safeguards” to the purchase of ammunition by requiring sellers to be licensed and purchasers to show identification.

The Department of Justice would be required to notify local law enforcement of large-quantity purchases of more than 3,000 rounds that are made within a five-day period by someone who is …

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