The Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program was created by what is commonly referred to as “welfare reform” in 1996. It replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) as the program through which some low-income families are able to receive cash assistance.

With TANF authorization expiring at the end of March and needing to be renewed (and hopefully improved)—and over 46 million people still living below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family …

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An unusually detailed 60-page study, to be released Tuesday by Mandiant, an American computer security firm, tracks for the first time individual members of the most sophisticated of the Chinese hacking groups — known to many of its victims in the United States as “Comment Crew” or “Shanghai Group” — to the doorstep of the military unit’s headquarters. The firm was not able to place the hackers inside the 12-story building, but makes a …

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(Reuters) – Egypt’s campaign to shut down smuggling tunnels running under its border into the Gaza Strip threatens to throw thousands of Palestinians out of work in the Hamas-run enclave.

The network of tunnels has been a vital lifeline for Gaza, bringing in an estimated 30 percent of all goods that reach the enclave and circumventing a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt for more than seven years.

Weapons are also smuggled underground and at least 10,000 …

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Lawyers are racing against the clock to save the life of a “mentally retarded” man in Georgia who is scheduled to be put to death on Tuesday despite a US supreme court ban on executing prisoners with learning disabilities.

The execution of Warren Hill at 7pm local time on 19 February would be the first completed death sentence in Georgia since that of Troy Davis. The 2011 judicial killing of Davis, in the wake of substantial …

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esterday over 35,000 people rallied in Washington D.C. for urgent action on climate change, which, according to organizers, was the largest climate march in U.S. history. Activists called on the Obama Administration to do much more to tackle climate change, including rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would bring carbon-heavy tar sands oil from Canada through the U.S. to a world market.

“For 25 years our government has basically ignored the climate crisis: now people in …

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Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120 million to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.

The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of think tanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing “wedge issue” for hardcore conservatives.

The millions were routed through two trusts, …

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Across the globe today women are dancing, striking, and in other ways “rising” to call attention to the plight of violence against women and girls across the many cultures of the planet.

Long celebrated as Valentine’s Day in many cultures and leveraged for the last fifteen years by women’s rights activists in the “V-Day movement,” today’s actions are a culmination of the “One Billion Rising” campaign spearheaded by author, playwright and activist Eve Ensler and champions …

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A new battle has flared inside the Republican Party in recent days as supporters of more-liberal immigration laws wage a behind-the-scenes campaign to discredit the influential advocacy groups that have long powered the GOP’s hard-line stance on the issue.

The campaign, largely waged in closed-door meetings with lawmakers and privately circulated documents, is another sign of how seriously many establishment Republicans are pursuing an immigration overhaul in the wake of last year’s elections, in which the …

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Recently, the New York Times ran an entire, stand-alone, special section entitled “Wealth.” The section focused on how the rich can become richer; through smart investment strategies, retirement savings and avoiding looming tax increases (for the wealthy). That the Times will devote an entire section to the topic of wealth, while significantly under-reporting poverty-related issues, is extremely disappointing, if not surprising.

Clearly, the Times finds it more important, and newsworthy, to run stories on 401K investment …

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Hong Kong (CNN) — The number of Tibetans in China who have set themselves on fire to protest Beijing’s rule has reached 100, according to Tibetan advocacy groups.

Lobsang Namgyal, a 37-year-old former monk, set himself on fire earlier this month in Aba prefecture, known in Tibetan as Ngaba, an ethnically Tibetan area of the Chinese province of Sichuan, according to Free Tibet, a London-based advocacy group.

“This grim milestone should be a source of shame to …

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