May
02
2013
LOS ANGELES, May 1, 2013 – As many as 3,000 prison inmates in central California deemed to be at risk from a potentially lethal lung disease may need to be moved to other regions under an order from a court-appointed federal overseer.
The directive, issued on Monday, marks the latest effort to stem cases of valley fever, or coccidioidomycosis, at two prisons where the disease was found to have contributed to the deaths of nearly three …
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May
02
2013
Retired Gen. David Petraeus, architect and namesake of the counterinsurgency doctrine that stabilized Iraq under U.S. and allied forces and former director of the CIA, will join the USC faculty this fall.
Petraeus, whose appointment becomes effective on July 1, will be a Judge Widney Professor, a title reserved for eminent individuals from the arts, sciences, professions, business and community and national leadership. Judge Robert Maclay Widney was USC’s founder.
“USC is thrilled to have General Petraeus …
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May
02
2013
Mogadishu, Somalia (CNN) — Between 2010 and 2012, more than a quarter of a million people died in the famine in Somalia — in part because the world was too slow to react, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia said Thursday.
Half of the 258,000 Somalis who died in the famine were children younger than 5, Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement.
The report, jointly commissioned by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the USAID-funded …
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May
02
2013
(CBS News) Federal investigators have raided a diplomatic compound just outside of Washington, D.C. They’re looking into allegations of human trafficking on the property. But investigators already face a huge legal hurdle: diplomatic immunity.
After a tip to a telephone hotline, agents from the State Department spoke to two Filipino women employed in a compound owned by the Saudi military in McLean, Va., just across the Potomac River from Washington.
The women told agents they are household …
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May
01
2013
“If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” So goes the old saying. Yet conditions in some American facilities are so obscene that they amount to a form of extrajudicial punishment.
Doing time is not supposed to include being raped by fellow prisoners or staff, beaten by guards for the slightest provocation, driven mad by long-term solitary confinement, or killed off by medical neglect. These, however, are the fates of thousands of prisoners every …
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May
01
2013
On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that states have no constitutional obligation to honor public records requests from non-residents. Journalists, who frequently rely on freedom of information laws to expose corruption and break open stories, fear that the decision may make it harder for them to access public records.
MuckRock, a website that files public records requests on behalf of activists, journalists, and private citizens for a small fee and posts the resulting records online, …
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May
01
2013
Gov. Jerry Brown is pursuing a prison contract in California, too small to meet federal orders to reduce crowding, but enough to help Brown end the shipment of inmates to for-profit prisons out of state.
According to bid documents, California offers to pay no more than $63 a day, on top of facility costs, to house up to 1,225 additional inmates in what the state calls “modified community” prisons. California currently has 600 inmates in one …
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May
01
2013
Shocked! That’s how U.S. makers of electric buses say they feel, following a decision by the transit authority of Long Beach, Calif., to buy 10 electric buses made in China–but financed by U.S. taxpayers.
The contract, worth more than $12 million, was awarded in April by a 5-2 vote of Long Beach Transit’s board of directors.
Ebus, a U.S. maker based in Downey, Calif., protested the decision. The company, one of four losing domestic bidders, complained …
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May
01
2013
President Obama on Wednesday will nominate telecom industry lobbyist Tom Wheeler to head the Federal Communications Commission and Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) to be the next director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the White House said.
Wheeler, a venture capital investor and friend of Obama’s, would take over an agency struggling to keep up with enormous changes in the telecom industry as consumers turn to mobile devices and ultra-fast broadband Internet for news, communications and …
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