ABC News’ Cara Newlon reports:

Senate lawmakers say that a compromise to prevent student loan interest rates from doubling before the impending July 1 deadline appears unlikely.

“If I were a betting person, I’d say that’s something we’ll come back and attempt to fix retroactively,” Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., told ABC News.

If the Senate fails to reach an agreement, interest rates on new Stafford student loans will double from 3.4 to 6.8 percent. The doubling …

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During the 15 days the AKP government pulled out security forces from Gezi Park and its environs in Istanbul and left the park to protesters, the young people there used also humor to express their reactions to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

One the most memorable protests was by three young protesters holding a placard saying, “Hey Erdogan! Do you want three children like us?” They had it photographed and shared it via social media.

There …

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A 450-megawatt solar project may break ground as early as next year at Edwards Air Force Base in the western Mojave Desert. The project, now undergoing environmental review, would sell power to utilities outside the military base.

The proposed Oro Verde Solar Project is proceeding under a 2010 agreement between Edwards Air Force Base and the solar contractor SunEdison, which would lease up to 4,000 acres in the base’s northwestern corner in Kern County. The Air …

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WASHINGTON — U.S. efforts to help rebuild Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake have been plagued by poor planning, delays and mistaken cost estimates that have forced many projects to be scaled back, the Government Accountability Office has concluded in a report released this month.

Of the $651 million Congress allocated for Haiti reconstruction to the U.S. Agency for International Development, only $204 million has been spent three years later. And much of that has …

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Bank of America Corp. and Barclays Plc (BARC) are among more than a dozen banks sued by the Regents of the University of California over claims they manipulated the London Interbank Offered Rate.

The university system filed an antitrust complaint in federal court in San Francisco. It accuses the banks of fraud, deceit and unjust enrichment, among other claims, and it seeks unspecified damages for either paying inflated interest rates or receiving deflated interest rates on …

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How can ride-app outfits like Lyft, Uber and Sidecar operate in a town with strict rules about how and where taxis can do business?

It’s a question we’ve been asking here at L.A. Weekly world headquarters. And Los Angeles Department of Transportation taxicab administrator Thomas Drischler this week came up with an answer.

Namely, they can’t:

In a cease-and-desist letter sent to those three companies, Drischler accused them of …

… operating an unlicensed, for-profit …

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A possibly record-breaking, New Jersey-size dead zone may put a chokehold on the Gulf of Mexico (map) this summer, according to a forecast released this week.

Unusually robust spring floods in the U.S. Midwest are flushing agricultural runoff—namely, nitrogen and phosphorus—into the Gulf and spurring giant algal blooms, which lead to dead zones, or areas devoid of oxygen that occur in the summer.

The forecast, developed by the University of Michigan and Louisiana State University with support …

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On the 75th anniversary of the landmark bill that established a minimum wage, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) called for abolishing it completely, the Huffington Post reports.

At a Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee meeting to mark 75 years since the signing of the Federal Labor Standards Act, which set a minimum wage and mandated overtime pay, Alexander, the ranking Republican on the committee, jumped into a discussion between a witness from the Heritage Foundation and …

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Vietnam is not a good place to be a blogger. At least, it’s not a good place to be a blogger if you actually want to write what’s on your mind. In the last month or so, three bloggers have been arrested for criticizing the communist government, or—as Vietnamese authorities deftly put it—”abusing democratic freedoms” by posting their opinions online. While that charge might seem like a bit of a paradox, their prospects post-arrest …

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DUBLIN (AP) — Ireland will pay several hundred former residents of Catholic-run Magdalene laundries at least 34.5 million euros ($45 million) to compensate them for their years of unpaid labor and public shame, the government announced Wednesday following a decade-long campaign by former residents of the workhouses.

Justice Minister Alan Shatter apologized to the women — an estimated 770 survivors out of more than 10,000 who lived in the dozen facilities from 1922 to 1996 — …

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