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If the controversial practice of fracking wasn’t infuriating enough for activists concerned about pollution and climate change, a new report has found that some companies have been fracking off the coast of California.

Fracking, which involves pumping a high pressure cocktail of toxic chemicals into the ground to release oil and gas reserves, is generally a land-based practice.

But, it …

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“Western civilization is a loaded gun pointed at the head of this planet.” — Terence McKenna …

In the wake of the not guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial, there has been a renewed interest in repealing “stand your ground” laws in the state of Florida.

No other case has garnered as much interest or illustrated the misapplication of the controversial law more than that of the case of Marissa Alexander.

Alexander was sentenced to 20 years for firing a warning shot, that hit no one, during a confrontation with her then-husband who …

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Four weeks after the Washington DC City Council passed a bill to hike some retail workers’ wages, DC Mayor Vince Gray has not yet indicated whether he will let it become law. The measure, the Large Retailer Accountability Act, has drawn fierce opposition from Walmart, whose urban expansion ambitions have recently been dealt setbacks by labor groups and allied critics. With the bill so far one vote short of a veto-proof majority, an apparently likely …

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The US is suing the Bank of America for investor fraud over the sale of $850m worth of residential mortgage-backed securities.

The lawsuits are the latest legal headache for the second-largest US bank, which has already agreed to pay in excess of $45bn to settle disputes stemming from the 2008 financial crisis.

While most of the cases Bank of America has already confronted pertain to its acquisitions of brokerage Merrill Lynch and home lender Countrywide, the two …

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It is the largest demonstration of its kind since the latest political crisis began two weeks ago when a prominent opposition politician was assassinated.

Earlier, the constituent assembly was suspended until the government and opposition open negotiations.

The assembly is drawing up a new constitution.
Union call

The protest in central Tunis was called by the opposition to demand the assembly’s dissolution and the resignation of the government, and to mark the six-month anniversary of the assassination of prominent …

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President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law 48 years ago today. But in June, the conservative justices on the Supreme Court struck down a major section of the law, freeing jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to change their voting laws without federal permission. For decades, Section 5 of the VRA required a number of jurisdictions, mostly in the South, to seek the feds’ approval—called preclearance, in legal parlance—before …

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Nine young people are changing the way the country talks about immigration—not from the floor of Congress or a campaign podium, but from a detention center.

On July 22, the undocumented youth deliberately crossed the southern border into the United States, as a protest against immigration policy as well as a symbolic act of resistance to the deportation system that has loomed over them and their families since they first entered the country.

Their carefully orchestrated protest …

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Bradley Manning’s maximum possible sentence for leaking state secrets to WikiLeaks was cut from 136 years to a possible 90 years on Tuesday, marking a rare victory for the defence in a trial that has so far swung almost exclusively in the US government’s direction.

The judge presiding over the court martial, Colonel Denise Lind, granted the most elements of a defence motion calling for some of the 20 counts for which Manning has been found …

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Contaminated water has been pouring into the Pacific Ocean from the disabled Fukushima nuclear plant for the past two years, an Industry Ministry official told reporters on Wednesday as PM Shinzo Abe pledged to step up efforts to halt the crisis.

Abe put the Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry in charge of the situation, while demanding that the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) take the necessary steps to deal with the cleanup, which …

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