Nearly three dozen rugged C-123 transport planes formed the backbone of the U.S. military’s campaign to spray Agent Orange over jungles hiding enemy soldiers during the Vietnam War. And many of the troops who served in the conflict have been compensated for diseases associated with their exposure to the toxic defoliant.
But after the war, some of the planes were used on cargo missions in the United States. Now a bitter fight has sprung up over whether those in the military who worked, ate and slept in the planes after the war should also be compensated. Two U.S. senators are now questioning the Department of Veterans Affairs’ assertions that any postwar contamination on the planes was not high enough to be linked to disease.
Agent Orange’s reach beyond the Vietnam War
NSA pays $150m in secret funding for UK spy agency GCHQ
The US government has paid at least £100m to the UK spy agency GCHQ over the last three years to secure access to and influence over Britain's intelligence gathering programmes.
The top secret payments are set out in documents which make clear that the Americans expect a return on the investment, and that GCHQ has to work hard to meet their demands. "GCHQ must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight," a GCHQ strategy briefing said.
Sacramento priest gets 8 years for molesting girl
A priest who crawled into the bed of a 13-year-old girl to molest her when he was an overnight guest in her parent's home admitted his betrayal to his victim and her family Friday in a case that unnerved Sacramento's Catholic community for more than 20 months.
"My actions were of a weak and sinful man," the Rev. Uriel Ojeda said in his first public admission to molesting the girl – first when he worked at Holy Rosary Parish in Woodland and later after he had been transferred to Our Lady of Mercy in Redding.
‘Frack Gag’ Bans Children From Talking About Fracking, Forever
When drilling company Range Resources offered the Hallowich family a $750,000 settlement to relocate from their fracking-polluted home in Washington County, Pennsylvania, it came with a common restriction. Chris and Stephanie Hallowich would be forbidden from ever speaking about fracking or the Marcellus Shale.
But one element of the gag order was all new. The Hallowichs’ two young children, ages 7 and 10, would be subject to the same restrictions, banned from speaking about their family’s experience for the rest of their lives.
America’s Secret Government Program to Hire Nazi War Criminals
When James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, lied to the Senate Intelligence Committee in June about the National Security Agency’s top-secret program to spy on U.S. citizens, he did Americans a favor. He reminded us that government officials habitually lie, then hide behind the shield of national security. They get away with their deception for years, if not decades.
One of the biggest U.S. whoppers began in May 1945, just three days after Germany surrendered to the Allied Forces. It lay buried in classified documents until the mid-1980s.
Supreme Court: California must release nearly 10,000 prisoners
A divided Supreme Court ruled Friday that California must proceed with the release of nearly 10,000 prisoners from its overcrowded prison system.
In a ruling by Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court's lone Californian, the justices refused to grant the state a reprieve based on progress on prison overcrowding. The high court had ruled in May 2011 that conditions in the state's prisons violated the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Army officer guilty of murder for ordering soldiers to shoot Afghans
A U.S. Army officer was convicted of murder Thursday for ordering soldiers under his command in Afghanistan to shoot all Afghans they saw on motorcycles.
First Lt. Clint Lorance, 28, was found guilty of a lengthy list of related charges after a court-martial at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer reported. Lorance could receive a life sentence with the sentencing phase beginning immediately.
What is XKeyscore, and can it 'eavesdrop on everyone, everywhere'?
Top-secret documents leaked to The Guardian newspaper have set off a new round of debate over National Security Agency surveillance of electronic communications, with some cyber experts saying the trove reveals new and more dangerous means of digital snooping, while some members of Congress suggested that interpretation was incorrect.
The NSA's collection of "metadata" – basic call logs of phone numbers, time of the call, and duration of calls – is now well-known, with the Senate holding a hearing on the subject this week. But the tools discussed in the new Guardian documents apparently go beyond mere collection, allowing the agency to sift the through the haystack of digital global communications to find the needle of terrorist activity.
Florida's Education Chief Resigns Over Grading Scandal
In education circles, Tony Bennett is widely known as a hard-charging Republican reformer associated with Jeb Bush's prescriptions for fixing public schools: charter schools, private school vouchers, tying teacher pay to student test scores and grading schools on a A through F scale.
Bennett resigned from his post as Florida's education chief this morning when a controversy over the last of those things — the school grades — caught up with him.
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