“I’ve got more interest in good quality long underwear than I have in birth control pills,” the unfamiliar voice on the phone said to me.

It was Michael Potter, the Eden Foods founder and CEO. He was calling to respond to my Salon report from last week, which revealed that his organic food company — which markets itself to a crunchy, liberal crowd — was quietly suing the Obama administration over its requirement that his company’s …

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Now more than seven years since the last execution in California, the state this week will try again to revive its dormant death penalty system in an appeals court considering the latest legal tangle over San Quentin’s lethal injection procedures.

In a hearing Tuesday, the 1st District Court of Appeal will review a Marin County judge’s 2011 order stopping executions because prison officials failed to comply with administrative rules in revising California’s three-drug execution method. The …

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(Reuters) – As the Senate prepares to debate a gun-control bill for the first time in two decades on Monday, Republicans in the House of Representatives are devising ways to delay and weaken gun legislation they see as limiting Americans’ right to bear arms, congressional sources say.

Some Republican lawmakers and strategists are urging House Speaker John Boehner to kill any gun-control bill passed by the Senate by refusing to take action on it.

But the Republican …

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A BP executive who oversaw the company’s Gulf of Mexico operations testified Tuesday that he he led a push to improve safety when he started the job more than two years before an April 2010 rig explosion killed 11 workers and led to the nation’s worst offshore oil spill.

Neil Shaw, a witness for BP at a trial over the deadly Deepwater Horizon disaster, said safety was his team’s top priority when …

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Campaigners reacted angrily last night after Scotland Yard suggested protesters should consider avoiding Baroness Thatcher’s cortège – because they face arrest under a controversial public order law.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman told The Independent yesterday that demonstrators were more likely than usual to be held under Section 5 of the Public Order Act, because mourners are considered particularly vulnerable to suffering distress.

The law allows police to detain those who cause “alarm, harass or distress”, and officers …

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Hugo Chavez’s former vice-president Nicholas Madura has won a closer-than-expected victory over his opponent in Sunday’s presidential election in Venezuela.

According to the country’s National Electoral Council, Maduro won took 50.66 percent of the vote and his rival, Henrique Capriles, came closer than most expected with 49.07 percent.

The difference amounts to less than 300,000 votes, but as Capriles refused to acknowledge his defeat, Maduro said he would welcome any recounts or audits requested in order to …

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Washington (CNN) — A video from 2011 has resurfaced showing American-born al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn discussing how easy it is to buy guns in the United States and urging fellow radicals to do so.

In the video, the California-raised Gadahn said militants should arm themselves for attacks on Western governments.

“America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms,” said Gadahn, “You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away …

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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The federal No Child Left Behind law was born in Texas, and billionaire Ross Perot first rallied big business to support tougher standardized testing and high school graduation standards here nearly three decades ago.

But the state now appears ready to step back from the strenuous accountability policies it has long been a national leader in championing, amid fears that youngsters are being forced to take too many high-stakes tests and that …

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LONG BEACH, Calif. — Just before officials at the Port of Los Angeles unanimously approved a plan for a vast new railyard last month, the mayor of Long Beach was incensed. How dare they, he angrily asked at a public meeting, value the lives of residents on Los Angeles’s side of the border more than those who live in his city.

It was a provocative statement from the mayor of this city of nearly half …

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BILOXI, Miss. — Michael White’s high blood pressure is acting up again.

The 51-year-old casino janitor has recurring seizures and recently awoke in an ambulance after passing out at a bus stop.

“It doesn’t hit me suddenly,” White said. “It creeps up on me. I get this feeling like I’m outside of my own body.”

If White had insurance, he’d be under the care of a primary physician and taking medications regularly. But he can’t afford job-based …

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