Manning will send a personal plea to Barack Obama next week for a presidential pardon after he was sentenced on Wednesday to 35 years in prison for passing hundreds of thousands of classified military documents to WikiLeaks.

The sentence was more severe than many observers expected, and is much longer than any punishment given to previous US government officials who have leaked information to the media.

Manning showed no emotion, neither when the sentence was delivered, nor …

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As of today, Wednesday 21 August 2013, Bradley Manning has served 1,182 days in prison. He should be released with a sentence of time served. Instead, the judge in his court martial at Fort Meade, Maryland has handed down a sentence of 35 years.

Of course, a humane, reasonable sentence of time served was never going to happen. This trial has, since day one, been held in a kangaroo court. That is not angry rhetoric; the …

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A soldier wrongly beaten and arrested by Jorge Mercado — the Miami Beach police officer who Tasered teenage tagger Israel Hernandez before he died — says he and another service member were forced to quash their complaint in order to save their families and careers.

Luis Maldonado says he and buddy Randy Vega faced a painful choice: either drop their complaint against Mercado and three other Miami Beach cops, or drop out of the military in …

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A military judge on Wednesday morning sentenced Army Pfc. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

Manning, 25, was convicted last month of multiple charges, including violations of the Espionage Act for copying and disseminating the documents while serving as an intelligence analyst at a forward operating base in Iraq. He faced up to 90 years in prison.

Manning is required to serve one-third …

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TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has an unprecedented plan to boost economic growth and shore up his country’s shrinking labor force — help more women return to work.

About two-thirds of Japanese women leave the workforce after the birth of their first child. Most do not return for years, if ever. It’s a major reason the employment rate of Japanese women is one of the lowest in developed economies, particularly among those married and …

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The fight for higher fast-food wages is coming to Los Angeles.

Just a few days before Labor Day, restaurant workers plan to walk off the job at big-name chains around Southern California to demand $15-an-hour pay, according to organizers.

The protests, part of a nationwide day of strikes called for Aug. 29, would be the latest in a series of one-day, rolling walkouts that have occurred in major cities in recent weeks. Workers have picketed McDonald’s, KFC …

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Even on its inaugural day of broadcasting, Al Jazeera America was still fighting for visibility.

Hours after its launch at 3 p.m. ET, AJAM announced that it had filed a lawsuit against AT&T, which dropped the nascent channel from its U-verse pay-TV service at the last minute citing “breaches by Al Jazeera of the existing agreement.”

“Al Jazeera America made a decision to seek judicial intervention in its dispute with AT&T. Unfortunately AT&T’s decision to unilaterally delete …

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Ecuador has abandoned a pioneering conservation plan in the Amazon that attempted to raise funds from the international community instead of drilling for oil in a pristine corner of the Yasuni national park.

The collapse of the Yasuni ITT initiative is a devastating blow for activists who are trying to save one of the world’s most biodiverse regions from development and pollution. It also kills climate campaigners’ hopes that the Ecuador plan could provide a model …

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Conflicting reports emerged of recent chemical weapons use in Syria. This comes on the same day that the UN inspectors arrive in Damascus to investigate allegations of use of toxic arms. The casualty figures range from dozens to almost 1,300 deaths.

Initially, Al-Arabiya posted news of 280 victims on Twitter. Later, the news outlet upgraded the figure up to 1,188 victims quoting the Free Syrian Army.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights had a much lower figure, …

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WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency—which possesses only limited legal authority to spy on U.S. citizens—has built a surveillance network that covers more Americans’ Internet communications than officials have publicly disclosed, current and former officials say.

The system has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans. In some cases, it retains the written content of emails sent between …

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