Jun
06
2013
(CNN) — Decades after the end of colonial rule, thousands of elderly Kenyans are getting compensation and an apology from Britain for years of torture during the fight for independence.
Britain announced a £19.9 million ($30 million) settlement Thursday for human rights violations during its colonial rule in the East African nation.
“The British government sincerely regrets that these abuses took place and that they marred Kenya’s progress towards independence,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague said.
The victims …
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Jun
06
2013
Outrage and rebuke are flying after explosive news broke late Wednesday that the National Security Agency, claiming authority under the Patriot Act and using a secret court order, has demanded (and been receiving) millions of phone records from Verizon which include all the company’s “telephony metadata” for all its US-based customers over a three month period.
The “metadata” being provided to the NSA does not provide individual names for each record, but is a blanket order …
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Jun
05
2013
Although the Harper government seems to believe it has successfully buried the mountain of evidence demonstrating Canada’s long-term, large-scale systemic complicity in illegal Afghan detainee torture and the CIA’s horrific worldwide “extraordinary rendition” scheme, this ghost may soon rise again to haunt all of Canada in a big way.
The UN Committee against Torture (UN CAT) last June followed its legal mandate to review Canada’s compliance with Geneva Convention obligations prohibiting detainee torture and complicity …
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Jun
05
2013
Ten-year-old Philadelphia resident Sarah Murnaghan only has a couple weeks to live unless she receives a lung transplant soon. Sarah, who has end-stage cystic fibrosis, has waited for over a year to receive a lung from a child donor, even though she is at the top of the pediatric organ list. Because there are no child donors available, Sarah is also on the list to receive an adult organ — but at the very bottom, …
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Jun
05
2013
Nawaz Sharif was formally sworn in as Pakistan’s new prime minister Wednesday, and took the opportunity to denounce the patterns of drone strikes and terrorism plaguing the country.
“This daily business of drones has to stop immediately,” Sharif told parliament Wednesday. “Other countries must respect our sovereignty and address our concerns. We have to end lawlessness and terrorism.”
63-year-old Sharif, who was deposed in a coup in 1999 and sent into exile, was elected during Wednesday’s …
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Jun
05
2013
The legal headaches besetting billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. now include a grand jury in Los Angeles, part of a federal money-laundering probe of his Nevada-based casinos, The Huffington Post has learned.
The involvement of a federal grand jury, not previously reported, suggests an escalation of the money-laundering investigation into Sands and one of its executives, being led by the U.S. attorney for Los Angeles, according to a person with direct knowledge of the …
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Jun
05
2013
Today begins the court-martial of Private First Class Bradley Manning, Wikileaks’ source inside the US military. Because Manning was arrested over three years ago, the global news media have already written much about the young soldier from Crescent, Oklahoma. And though news accounts have frequently gotten the facts right (he’s 25, was deployed to FOB Hammer in the Mada’in Qada desert of Iraq, is 5 foot 2), most reports have written about the big issues …
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Jun
05
2013
As hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” has boomed in Ohio, Pennsylvania and nearby states in recent years, waste wells in Ohio have absorbed millions of barrels of liquid waste from oil-and-gas drilling operations in the region. Environmentalists and other observers are now calling Ohio a “dumping ground” for the fracking industry. Drillers now want to dump potentially radioactive waste mud, drill cuttings and frack sand from fracking operations in municipal landfills in the state, and environmentalists …
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Jun
05
2013
WASHINGTON – The U.S. government announced Tuesday that it would be going forward with long-discussed plans to auction federal leases off the Atlantic Ocean coast for the development of offshore wind energy.
The sales, to take place in late July, will be the first time that federal lands have been offered on a competitive basis for the United States’ nascent offshore wind business. Proponents say the industry has significant potential, but for decades it has …
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Jun
05
2013
Of all the charges against Bradley Manning, the most pernicious—and revealing—is “aiding the enemy.”
A blogger at The New Yorker, Amy Davidson, raised a pair of big questions that now loom over the courtroom at Fort Meade and over the entire country:
* “Would it aid the enemy, for example, to expose war crimes committed by American forces or lies told by the American government?”
* “In that case, who is aiding the enemy—the whistleblower or …
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