With the passage of the Keystone XL pipeline uncertain and under financial pressure to find export terminals so to justify expansion of vast tar sands operations in Alberta, the Canadian pipeline company—with backing from the Harper government— announced on Thursday that it will seek to build an enormous eastward pipeline so it can bring what critics call “the world’s dirtiest fuel” to market.

Environmentalists and citizens groups in Canada were swift to promise “fierce opposition” to …

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More than a third of young adults lived at their parents’ home in 2012, the highest rate in at least four decades, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center.

Thirty-six percent of America’s so-called Millennial generation – young adults aged 18 to 31 – lived at home last year, compared with 32 percent in 2007, prior to the Great Recession. In 2009, the year the recession officially ended, 34 percent of Millennials lived …

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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Secretary of State John Kerry offered an unexpected lift to Egypt’s military leaders on Thursday, saying they had been “restoring democracy” when they deposed the country’s first freely elected president, Mohamed Morsi, on July 3 after mass demonstrations against his rule.

“The military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people” who feared the country would descend into chaos, Mr. Kerry said during a visit to Pakistan, a country that …

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North Carolina’s governor signed a controversial, restrictive abortion bill into law this week, forcing the state’s last remaining abortion clinic to lose its licensing.

FemCare, a women’s health clinic in Asheville, N.C., was the only abortion clinic that remained open after Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed the restrictive anti-abortion bill into law on Monday.

The legislation requires doctors to be present during surgical abortion procedures, as well as when a patient receives her first dose of …

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Balcombe, UK – It is a good day to test the defences of the protest camp that has sprung up on the outskirts of this southern English village, or the flood defences at least.

Rain lashes down on the small cluster of tents gathered around a police-guarded entrance in the Sussex countryside that has become the unlikely frontline in Britain’s battle over fracking.

Protesters and police have confronted each other daily since last Thursday after energy company …

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Three US senators announced bills on Thursday that proposed the most sweeping structural changes to the secret court that oversees the legal basis for surveillance activities since it was set up 35 years ago.

Senators Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Tom Udall of New Mexico, all Democrats, want a special advocate for Americans’ privacy to argue before the so-called Fisa court when the government seeks extraordinary surveillance requests. They also propose to …

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A group of congressional Democrats is set to introduce legislation Thursday that would apply stricter ethical standards to the Supreme Court, amid concerns that justices have been engaging in questionable behavior.

The proposed Supreme Court Ethics Act of 2013 would subject the justices to the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, a set of standards that currently applies to all other federal judges. Those rules would have forced the justices to recuse themselves from certain …

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After six years living in New Zealand, Albert Buitenhuis may have to go back to South Africa. The government decided he’s too heavy to stay.

Buitenhuis is now facing deportation after officials denied his request to renew his work visa. He and his wife claim to have had no previous trouble with their annual visa renewals.

New Zealand’s immigration ministry maintains that, at more than 280 pounds, Buitenhuis’s weight puts him at added risk for diabetes, high …

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A leak in Exxon Mobil’s nearly 70-year-old Pegasus pipeline, which spilled thousands of barrels of crude oil in a small Arkansas town in March, was caused by an original manufacturing defect according to an initial review, U.S. regulators said on Thursday.

The 95,000-barrel-per-day pipeline, which has been shut since March after spilling about 5,000 barrels of Canadian crude in Mayflower, Arkansas, will remain shut until it can be restarted safely, a spokesman for …

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A bill being taken up by the House Science Committee would force the EPA to include language in its years-long study on fracking that adds “objective estimates of the probability, uncertainty and consequence of each identified impact, taking into account the risk management practices of states and industry.”

The bill, which is scheduled for mark-up on Thursday, was introduced by the Committee’s Chair, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas. As The Hill reported, in a hearing last week …

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