The State Department’s recent conclusion that the Keystone XL pipeline “is unlikely to have a substantial impact” on the rate of Canada’s oil sands development was based on analysis provided by two consulting firms with ties to oil and pipeline companies that could benefit from the proposed project.

EnSys Energy has worked with ExxonMobil, BP and Koch Industries, which own oil sands production facilities and refineries in the Midwest that process heavy Canadian crude oil. Imperial …

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In the high desert city of Lancaster, Calif., not too far from where telephone pole-hoarding folk hero Alan Kimble Fahey was forced to demolish his home and where a former member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad known only as The Bride had her nuptials officially ruined, mayor R. Rex Parris recently announced a pioneering update to the city’s residential building code: Starting on Jan. 1, 2014, all newly constructed single-family homes must include a …

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Strike Debt, one of the offshoot groups of Occupy Wall Street, has planned a week of action March 16-23 in response to what it calls a “healthcare emergency.” A majority of personal bankruptcies in the United States are linked to medical bills with 75 percent of people declaring bankruptcy even though they have health insurance.

“These debts are literally killing patients, students, providers and communities,” Strike Debt states at its website. “They deepen the already entrenched …

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Last week, Bloomberg Businessweek ran a magazine cover featuring gross caricatures of black and Latino people swimming in money, feeding it to their dogs, and burning it for warmth. This cover led Colorlines’ Channing Kennedy to ask, “Would a more racially diverse and equitable newsroom at Bloomberg have presented this mess?”

As the American Prospect’s Jamelle Bouie points out, the problem isn’t just the racist caricatures. “The whole cover plays into the widely-debunked myth that unreliable …

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Alleging unpaid wages and repeated retaliation, McDonalds workers in central Pennsylvania launched a surprise strike at 11 AM this morning. The strikers are student guest workers from Latin America and Asia, brought to the United States under the controversial J-1 cultural exchange visa program. Their employer is one of the thousands of McDonalds franchisees with whom the company contracts to run its ubiquitous stores.

“We are afraid,” striker Jorge Victor Rios told The Nation prior to …

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Bertrand Russell once wrote about the American revolutionary Thomas Paine, “He had faults, like other men; but it was for his virtues that he was hated and successfully calumniated.”

This was certainly true of Hugo Chavez Frias, who was probably more demonised than any democratically elected president in world history. But he was repeatedly re-elected by wide margins, and will be mourned not only by Venezuelans, but also by many Latin Americans who appreciate what …

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I first met Hugo Chávez in New York City in September 2006, just after his infamous appearance on the floor of the UN General Assembly, where he called George W. Bush the devil. “Yesterday, the devil came here,” he said, “Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.” He then made the sign of the cross, kissed his hand, winked at his …

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Mexico City, Mar 4 (EFE).- President Enrique Peña Nieto has won the approval of the assembly of his governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to move forward with energy and tax reforms.

The PRI’s 21st National Assembly voted to remove the so-called “padlocks” that required legislators to reject the opening of state-owned oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, to private investment and prevented them from allowing the value-added tax (VAT) to be imposed on food products …

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Brazil is home to more McDonald’s than any other place in the Western Hemisphere, aside from the US. The federal police in Brazil recently announced that they have been investigating McDonald’s for the past several months over allegations that its workers have been laboring in “slave-like conditions.” The case was announced last week, in response to a 17-year-old girl’s complaint, filed in October, that she had worked at a São Paulo McDonald’s for eight …

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Japan’s major supplier of nuclear power generating equipment, France’s Areva group, has announced Tokyo’s plans to restart six reactors by the end of 2013. The other reactors will be restarted later – except the Fukushima-type made in the US.

In addition to two reactors already put back into operation in Japan “there could be half a dozen reactors that will restart by the end of the year,” the Chief Executive Officer of the French state-owned nuclear …

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