Some of America’s largest technology and telecoms companies, including Facebook, Microsoft and AT&T, are backing a network of self-styled “free-market thinktanks” promoting a radical rightwing agenda in states across the nation, according to a new report by a lobbying watchdog.
The Center for Media and Democracy asserts that the State Policy Network (SPN), an umbrella group of 64 thinktanks based in each of the 50 states, is acting as a largely beneath-the-radar lobbying machine for major corporations and rightwing donors.
Facebook and Microsoft help fund rightwing lobby network, report finds
Former FBI agent sentenced to three years in prison for Associated Press leak
A former FBI explosives expert was sentenced on Thursday to more than three years in prison for possessing and disclosing secret information, which he has said included intelligence he gave to the Associated Press for a story about a US operation in Yemen in 2012.
The story on Yemen led to a federal leaks investigation and the seizure of AP phone records in the government's search for the information's source.
Thousands sentenced to life without parole for nonviolent offenses
At least 3,728 prisoners in the United States will spend the rest of their lives in prison for non-violent offenses according to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) study published on Wednesday.
The study found that 79 percent of these prisoners were convicted of nonviolent, drug-related crimes and 20 percent of nonviolent property crimes like shoplifting. Most of these cases were sentenced under mandatory minimum guidelines, for which judges had no choice but to dole out a life without parole sentence.
“Fairness has departed from the system,” said one judge as he sentenced a nonviolent offender to life in prison without parole.
Whistleblowers tell Senate panel of alleged sexual misconduct by Secret Service agents
Secret Service agents and managers have engaged in sexual misconduct and other improprieties across a span of 17 countries in recent years, according to accounts given by whistleblowers to the Senate committee that oversees the department.
Sen. Ronald H. Johnson (Wis.), ranking Republican on a Homeland Security subcommittee, said Thursday that the accounts directly contradict repeated assertions by Secret Service leaders that the elite agency does not foster or tolerate sexually improper behavior.
Bacterial Competition In Lab Shows Evolution Never Stops
Evolution is relentless process that seems to keep going and going, even when creatures live in a stable, unchanging world.
That's the latest surprise from a unique experiment that's been underway for more than a quarter-century.
Evolution is so important for biology, medicine and a general understanding of our world that scientists want to understand it as fully as possible. That's why, in 1988, biologist took a dozen glass flasks and added identical bacteria to each of them. Those 12 populations have been evolving ever since, letting scientists watch evolution in real time.
World's oldest animal inadvertently killed by scientists
Scientists at Bangor University in North Wales have inadvertently killed Ming the Mollusc, which it turns out was the world's oldest living animal.
The ocean quahog -- a type of deep sea clam -- was found in Iceland in 2006 and found to be 405 years old. However while taking a closer look at it, researchers found that it may be a hundred years older, pegging it's age at 507 years old. But this process, opening its shell to put it under scrutiny, led to the death of the mollusc.
U.S.-led troop pullout may be behind Afghanistan record opium poppy crop
The 2014 pullout of U.S.-led combat troops from Afghanistan appears to be having a major impact on the country's narcotics trade, with opium poppy cultivation growing to a record high this year, according to a U.N. report released Wednesday.
The boom underscores the failure of U.S.-led international efforts to fight opium poppy cultivation that have cost U.S. taxpayers some $4.42 billion since 2002. Afghanistan remains the world's largest producer of opium, which contains morphine, the alkaloid from which heroin is produced.
Alex Baer: Hot new trend: Home-Made Straitjackets
A clear theme has emerged in news magazines during the last few years and keeps getting stronger all the time, especially in the last few weeks: The country is conducting its business on the basis of how much Crazy we can scrape together at any given time.
This is very bad news for the country but somewhat more acceptable news for me personally because, for a second there, I thought it was just me.
See, some time ago my own life slipped on a Canvas Camisole it has still not figured out how to shed. It will take some time to undo this thing. I am no Houdini. Even a right-off-the-rack straitjacket offers me a tight fit -- and tight fits.
60 Minutes Benghazi interview update: CBS conducting ‘journalistic review
When “60 Minutes” apologized for featuring in its report on Benghazi a security contractor whose story turned out to be a lie, it said it had been “misled.” But a close examination of the controversial piece by McClatchy shows that there are other problems with the report, whose broadcast renewed debate about one of the most contentious events in recent U.S. diplomatic history.
In an email Wednesday, CBS declined to respond to questions about the accuracy and origin of some of the other aspects of the report. But it said that it was undertaking “a journalistic review that is ongoing” – the network’s first acknowledgement that concerns about the report may go deeper than just the discredited interview with security supervisor Dylan Davies.
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