Russia’s environment ministry has ordered the urgent evacuation of 16 scientists from a research station on an Arctic ice floe near Canada because the ice around it is disintegrating at an alarming rate, giving the station little chance of survival.

The emergency has sparked a wider debate among Russian Arctic researchers over how to continue their work amid rapidly changing climate conditions, and in an atmosphere in which the race for newly uncovered Arctic resources …

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The African Union has vowed to finance its working budget using mainly domestic resources as it marks its 50th anniversary this week, the deputy chairperson of the continental body’s commission has said.

Erastus Mwencha made the comments on Thursday at the AU’s headquarters in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, while addressing a news conference about the union’s budget and financial independence.

The financial independence of the AU, launched in 1963 as the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) …

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Turkey’s parliament has backed a controversial bill restricting the consumption and advertising of alcohol in the predominantly Muslim country.

The measure, passed on Friday, prohibits alcoholic beverage companies from sponsoring events and restricts the places where such drinks can be consumed. It also bans the sale of alcoholic drinks between 10pm and 6:00am.

Supporters of the measure – introduced by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Party, which has its roots in Islam – say …

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A group of activists started a crowd-sourcing campaign to purchase the Tribune Company in response to bids by right-wing moguls Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers to snag the massive newspaper corporation.

According to the Indiegogo campaign site, the Other 98% launched Free the Press to reclaim the media from its corporate owners. The Tribune Company owns a host of influential newspapers, including the Baltimore Sun, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. As the Huffington Post …

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The desert locust, the most notorious of about a dozen locust species for its ability to rapidly multiply and travel long distances, threatens an area of 32 million square kilometres, stretching across 50 countries from west Africa to India.

The fearsome insect has been farmers’ foe since the earliest days of agriculture.

When solitary, locusts are harmless. But when they congregate into groups they transform – in behaviour and even appearance – into killer vegetarians. In turn, …

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WASHINGTON — Bank lobbyists are not leaving it to lawmakers to draft legislation that softens financial regulations. Instead, the lobbyists are helping to write it themselves.

One bill that sailed through the House Financial Services Committee this month — over the objections of the Treasury Department — was essentially Citigroup’s, according to e-mails reviewed by The New York Times. The bill would exempt broad swathes of trades from new regulation.

In a sign of Wall Street’s resurgent …

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Better, but not nearly good enough.

Human and civil rights groups generally responded to Obama’s foreign policy speech by saying that though they welcomed the president’s decision to directly address long-ignored issues—including extrajudicial killings, drone attacks, the permanent war footing of the US military, and the ongoing crisis at the Guantanamo Bay prison—there remained enormous problems with many of his declarations and formulations surrounding these controversial policies.

From the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR):

…

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Three Harvard grad students experimented with whether there was ethnic prejudice in local election administration by emailing every local or county election official, commission and supervisor in 48 states with Latino-sounding and non-Latino-sounding names and examined the responses. What they found were that local election officials were three-and-a-half to four-times more likely to respond to the emails that came from the non-Latino name, Greg Walsh, than the Latino name, Luis Rodriguez.

The gap in those responses …

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LUCKNOW: A blistering heat wave has swept across most parts of north and western India, causing massive electricity cuts and leading angry residents to protest and even attack power company officials and property.
In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, enraged citizens have set fire to a power station and held power company employees hostage for several hours. Police said yesterday that at least 21 people have been arrested for the violence and for damaging government …

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As WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange approaches the one-year anniversary of his confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, a report released Wednesday reveals that donations to the secret-spilling site have dwindled to a trickle.

The organization managed to attract only $68,000 in donations, according to an accounting report published by the Wau Holland foundation (.pdf), a German nonprofit organization that processes most of the financial contributions for the group.

This despite constant pleadings for donations from Assange …

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