After the Newtown shootings, the urgency to secure schools shot up. California Senator Barbara Boxer floated legislation to deploy the National Guard in districts nationwide; President Obama included grants for “school resource officers” in his since-mothballed gun control proposals; and districts, including Los Angeles, which already has the largest school police force in the country, called for more police or stronger partnerships with local law enforcement.

Across the country, students of color braced for the aftershock. …

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Are pro-mining forces trying to sway the Environmental Protection Agency on Pebble Mine?

Last month, I reported on the potential environmental threats posed by the massive proposed gold and copper mine in Alaska. The EPA conducted a watershed analysis, released in April, that showed that the mine would endanger rivers and the Bristol Bay, as well as the region’s salmon fishery. The EPA extended the comment period through the end of June, allowing more time for …

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For the first time since President Obama took office Washington has publicly disclosed the names of inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp classified as “indefinite detainees” – those who pose too great a threat to release but cannot be tried in court.

The 48 inmates were first identified in 2009 when the Obama administration first announced plans to close the prison camp by executive order. Authorities examining the cases, though, determined at that time 48 …

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In the Academy Award-winning documentary Hearts and Minds, Daniel Ellsberg, who secretly copied and then released the Pentagon Papers, offers a catalog of presidential lying about the U.S. role in Vietnam: Truman lied. Eisenhower lied. Kennedy lied. Johnson “lied and lied and lied.” Nixon lied.

Ellsberg concludes: “The American public was lied to month by month by each of these five administrations. As I say, it’s a tribute to the American public that their leaders perceived …

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Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) — After clashes between police and protesters, Indonesia’s parliament Monday night voted to revise the national budget and allow an increase of up to 44% in the prices of subsidized gas and diesel fuel.

Earlier Monday, protesters who rejected the increase clashed with police outside the parliament building in Jakarta. Police fired tear gas and water cannons at thousands of them before legislators began voting on the budget revisions.

There were smaller protests in …

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The rumors are true. Amazon is providing cloud services to the CIA. But what’s most intriguing about the multi-million-dollar deal is not what Amazon is doing, but how the company is doing it — and what that means for the future of that thing called cloud computing.

Word of the deal broke in mid-March by way of a publication called FCW, which reported that the king of cloud computing had inked a contract with the Central …

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The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, says he is fit enough to spend another five years inside the tiny Ecuadorean embassy in London, Ecuador’s foreign minister said on Monday, as it was announced that British and Ecuadorean legal experts would try to resolve the impasse.

Despite the news of the legal talks – which followed a meeting on Monday morning between the British foreign secretary, William Hague, and his Ecuadorean counterpart, Ricardo Patiño – neither London nor …

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Follow one of Fire Island’s quaint footpaths away from the ferry dock, past modest cottages and better-appointed vacation homes, to an elegant modern beach house that extends across three lots. A composition in bold, unadorned planes, it has a perimeter of green and two separate entrances, each outfitted with the long ramps that are the local custom.

Its most interesting feature, however, is not architectural, but financial. The house, which is owned by John Sexton, …

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Afghanistan’s lower house of parliament, or Wolesi Jirga, has given the country’s Information and Culture Minister a one-month deadline to ban “anti-Islamic” television broadcasts.

According to Afghanistan’s TOLO News, Minister Sayed Makhdoom Raheen said at a legislative session on Saturday, June 15 that, “A number of media organizations and journalists are insulting the country’s respected personalities and their broadcasting is un-Islamic. However, we are trying to strengthen the ‘freedom of speech’ in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, media organisations …

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Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) signed a bill on Friday that blocks local governments from implementing paid sick leave legislation, the Orlando Sentinel reports. He made his decision quickly, only taking four of the 15 days he legally had to review the bill before he signed it.

In signing the bill, Scott sided with big business interests including Disney World, Darden Restaurants (owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster), and the Florida Chamber of Commerce. The …

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