Who was Kimani Gray, and why did his death send an estimated 100 people to the streets of Brooklyn last night in protest?

While the story isn’t generating a ton of national headlines yet, it has been flying around Twitter as #brooklynriot (some are now pushing the more neutral #brooklynprotest as a rival hashtag), and appears primed to develop into the latest national story surrounding police and race. With that in mind, here’s what we do …

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A powerful California lawmaker wants public college students who are shut out of popular courses to attend low-cost online alternatives – including those offered by for-profit companies – and he plans to encourage the state’s public institutions to grant credit for those classes.

The proposal expected today from Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat and president pro tem of the state Senate, aims to create a “statewide system of faculty-approved, online college courses,” according to a written statement …

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Two years ago today, floodwaters from a massive, deadly earthquake/tsunami combo in Japan knocked out cooling equipment at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, resulting in what experts were quick to deign the second-worst nuclear disaster in history (after Chernobyl), after radioactive contamination touched everything from tuna to baby formula to butterflies. The $125 billion incident precipitated an identity crisis among the world’s big users of nuclear power, particularly Germany, which was so spooked that it …

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Opponents of a copper mine worth nearly $1bn in north-western Burma have expressed outrage over a government-ordered report that said the project should continue and that refrained from demanding punishment for police involved in a violent crackdown on protesters.

The opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, chaired the investigation commission behind the report, which was released late on Monday night. It could pose a problem for Aung San Suu Kyi by identifying her with the government’s …

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Dr. Corey Hebert, CEO of Blackhealthtv.com, talks with Current TV’s John Fugelsang about warnings from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that bacteria are evolving to resist our current antibiotics — and that new antibiotics are not being developed to counteract the problem. This reason for this, says Hebert, is that big pharma prefers to invest in drug research for treating lifelong conditions, such as diabetes, in order …

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Catch ya later, unspoiled beaches of Bahamian paradise. It’s been real.

Offshore oil drilling will soon be allowed in the heavenly West Indies archipelago of the Bahamas, which is made up of thousands of islands and cays off the Floridian coast. Initially, the drilling will be exploratory only — an experiment that will punch a bunch of holes in the ocean floor to see what goop lies beneath.

The Bahamas environment minister said the option of allowing …

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) roared to an all-time high on Friday wrapping up a 4-day winning streak and shrugging off grim reports of government budget cuts that are expected to slow growth. The Dow rose 67 points on the day to close at 14,397 passing the previous record set in October 2007. While Wall Street’s bulls claim that stocks are still underpriced and have further to go, wary traders are watching for any …

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Happy Conclave Day, everyone. While you are discreetly scanning TMZ on your office computer or contemplating the Chipotle you will eat for lunch, 115 cardinals have gathered at the Vatican to select God’s new representative on earth.

But there is something more than just choosing a spiritual leader for the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics weighing on the cardinals today: Gay bathhouses.

News broke on Tuesday that the Holy See had purchased a $30 million dollar share of …

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The Better Business Bureau chapter that predominantly served the Los Angeles area is no more.

The BBB of the Southland was expelled Tuesday from the national organization, losing the right to use the BBB name and logo.

The move comes after a 2010 ABC News report which detailed the group’s practice of accrediting new members and awarding them inflated ratings in exchange for cash.

“Over a period of more than two years, BBB of the Southland failed …

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A favorite saying of Official Washington is that “the cover-up is worse than the crime.” But that presupposes you accurately understand what the crime was. And, in the case of the two major U.S. government scandals of the last third of the Twentieth Century – Watergate and Iran-Contra – that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Indeed, newly disclosed documents have put old evidence into a sharply different light and suggest that history has substantially miswritten …

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