Author Archive

"Two prominent civil rights groups have filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency over its program that reportedly collects the telephone records of millions of American customers of Verizon. The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union say in a lawsuit filed in federal court Tuesday that the program violates First Amendment rights of free speech and association. It also alleges the program violates Fourth Amendment rights to privacy. The lawsuit additionally alleges the government's program exceeds Congress' authority." (06/11/13)

"A coalition of Internet and civil liberties groups launched a campaign Tuesday protesting the huge US online surveillance program revealed in the past week. Joining the effort were the Mozilla Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union, Greenpeace USA, the World Wide Web Foundation and more than 80 other organizations or companies. The coalition launched a website, StopWatching.us, and called on Congress to launch a full probe and urging more disclosure from US officials about the National Security Agency’s vast program Internet surveillance program. An online petition was also launched on the website." (06/11/13)

"California Governor Jerry Brown and top Democrats in the legislature have agreed to a state budget deal that gives them some increased spending in exchange for accepting his more cautious revenue outlook, a lawmaker involved in budget talks said on Monday. The state Assembly and Senate must still approve the budget deal, but the agreement means the legislature will likely meet its June 15 deadline for approving a new spending plan. Few details were available but Brown last month proposed general fund spending of $96.4 billion, up from this year’s $95.7 billion." (06/10/13)

"An Illinois businessman convicted of bank fraud won an opportunity to receive a lighter sentence on Monday as the US Supreme Court ruled that his 70-month prison term violated the Constitution’s ban on ex post facto laws. The high court ruled that the businessman, Marvin Peugh, was entitled to be sentenced under a version of the sentencing guidelines in effect at the time he committed his crimes, not the more punitive guidelines later enacted. In a 5-to-4 decision, the high court said a federal judge’s reliance on the tougher guidelines in fashioning Mr. Peugh’s sentence violated the concept of 'fundamental justice.'" (06/10/13)

"If the Troika that handles bailouts of distressed euro zone countries were a soccer team, it would probably be looking for a new manager after achieving a track record of one win, one loss and one draw. The uneasy trio of European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank was assembled in haste in March 2010 after Greece's public debt and deficit exploded and it was about to lose access to market funding." (06/10/13)

"The federal government on Monday told a judge it will reverse course and take steps to comply with his order to allow girls of any age to buy emergency contraception without prescriptions. The Department of Justice, in the latest development in a complex back-and-forth over access to the morning-after pill, notified U.S. District Judge Edward Korman it will submit a plan for compliance. If he approves it, the department will drop its appeal of his April ruling." (06/10/13)

"The ex-CIA employee who leaked details of US top-secret phone and internet surveillance has disappeared from his hotel in Hong Kong. Edward Snowden, 29, checked out from his hotel on Monday. His whereabouts are unknown, but he is believed to be still in Hong Kong. Earlier, he said he had an 'obligation to help free people from oppression.' It emerged last week that US agencies were gathering millions of phone records and monitoring internet data." [editor's note: We can only hope he stays "missing" at least until efforts by the Obombya folks to track him down and silence him are thwarted! - SAT] (06/10/13)

"Nepotism is alive and well at the Department of Energy, according to a new report by a government watchdog group. A senior official in the department used his position to secure competitive internships in 2012 for his three college-aged children. In addition, the report found, the senior staffer didn’t think he had done anything wrong and defended his actions to investigators, saying doling out favors for family members is a common practice in the department. The report did not identify the senior official by name." (06/10/13)

"A secretive deal aimed at settling a dispute with Washington over Swiss banks’ alleged complicity in tax evasion by Americans has caused uproar in the wealthy Alpine nation. Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf announced a deal last week that she said would put an end to the row that has been poisoning relations between Switzerland and the United States for years. However, she acknowledged, the settlement was not a negotiated agreement but a 'unilateral offer' from Washington, and due to a confidentiality clause, no details of the deal could be divulged until parliament had given it its blessing." (06/09/13)

"Some 165 million children worldwide are stunted by malnutrition as babies and face a future of ill health, poor education, low earnings and poverty, the head of the United Nations children's fund said on Friday. Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF, told Reuters the problem of malnutrition is vastly under-appreciated, largely because poor nutrition is often mistaken for a lack of food. In reality, he said, malnutrition and its irreversible health consequences also affect relatively well-off countries, such as India where there is plenty of food, but access to it is unequal and nutritional content can be low." (06/09/13)

"The size of the Amazon rainforest has been shrinking -- and not just because of traditional deforestation. Fires that creep slowly and low in the forest understory burned nearly 3 percent of the world’s largest tropical rainforest in a little more than a decade, scientists at NASA say. ... The study estimated that between 1999 and 2010, understory forest fires burned more than 33,000 square miles, or 2.8 percent of the forest." (06/08/13)

"On a sunny January afternoon, 12 stories above a busy street, a newly engaged 19-year-old woman jumped to her death from a spectacular arch bridge west of downtown Portland. Last month, in the middle of the night, a 40-year-old man did the same. Last week, yet another person (a 15-year-old girl) plunged from the span. The deaths sadden but no longer surprise those who live and work near the Vista Bridge, known colloquially citywide as 'The Suicide Bridge.' ... Attorney Kenneth Kahn shares an office with his wife, a life coach, that sits almost directly underneath the bridge. Over the years he has heard the horrible slam of bodies on pavement and discovered the remains of eight strangers." (06/09/13)