The Obama administration Wednesday for the first time acknowledged killing four U.S. citizens in “counterterrorism operations” abroad.
The deaths of three of the Americans — Anwar al-Awlaki, his 16-year-old son Abd al-Rahman Anwar al-Awlaki, and Samir Khan, all of whom were killed in drone strikes in Yemen in 2011 — had been previously reported. The death of the fourth, Jude Kennan Mohammad, a Florida native apparently killed in Pakistan, had not been.
U.S. acknowledges killing of four U.S. citizens in counterterrorism operations
BBV Exclusive: Californians getting hammered on provisional ballots
More than one in ten voters who shows up at the polls in California is being given a provisional ballot. While you might think this is due to voters missing from the list, only 10% of rejected provisionals in California are because the voter is not registered. Ninety percent are rejected for other reasons -- calling into question why provisional ballots were issued in the first place.
I did a spreadsheet analysis using a pile of U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) data(1) and found that voters who show up to vote in California are getting hit hard with provisional ballots, making it more difficult to vote and expanding disenfranchisement.
Vermont governor signs 'death with dignity' measure
With the strokes from three gubernatorial pens, Vermont on Monday became the fourth state in the country to allow doctors to prescribe lethal medication to terminally ill patients.
Gov. Peter Shumlin signed the measure in a state House ceremony in Montpelier, capping a decade-long effort on the issue in Vermont.
Vermont is the first state to pass such a law through the legislative process. Oregon and Washington enacted their laws by referendum; in Montana, it was legalized by the courts.
A Word from Our Sponsor: Public television’s attempts to placate David Koch
Last fall, Alex Gibney, a documentary filmmaker who won an Academy Award in 2008 for an exposé of torture at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, completed a film called “Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream.”
It was scheduled to air on PBS on November 12th. The movie had been produced independently, in part with support from the Gates Foundation. “Park Avenue” is a pointed exploration of the growing economic inequality in America and a meditation on the often self-justifying mind-set of “the one per cent.”
Tar sands exploitation would mean game over for climate, warns leading scientist
Major international oil companies are buying off governments, according to the world's most prominent climate scientist, Prof James Hansen. During a visit to London, he accused the Canadian government of acting as the industry's tar sands salesman and "holding a club" over the UK and European nations to accept its "dirty" oil.
"Oil from tar sands makes sense only for a small number of people who are making a lot of money from that product," he said in an interview with the Guardian. "It doesn't make sense for the rest of the people on the planet. We are getting close to the dangerous level of carbon in the atmosphere and if we add on to that unconventional fossil fuels, which have a tremendous amount of carbon, then the climate problem becomes unsolvable."
What do we eat? New food map will tell us
Do your kids love chocolate milk? It may have more calories on average than you thought. Same goes for soda.
Until now, the only way to find out what people in the United States eat and how many calories they consume has been government data, which can lag behind the rapidly expanding and changing food marketplace.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are trying to change that by creating a gargantuan map of what foods Americans are buying and eating.
Fracking the Suburbs: An Explosive Combination?
As rural deposits of fossil fuel grow fewer and farther between, extractive industries are increasingly siting their operations over the next best location: suburban neighborhoods.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, the Marcellus shale formation beneath parts of the Midwest and Appalachia contains literally trillions of cubic feet of natural gas—the most accessible of which often lies beneath residential neighborhoods.
Victims: Marines failed to safeguard Camp Lejeune water supply
A simple test could have alerted officials that the drinking water at Camp Lejeune was contaminated, long before authorities determined that as many as a million Marines and their families were exposed to a witch’s brew of cancer-causing chemicals.
But no one responsible for the lab at the base can recall that the procedure — mandated by the Navy — was ever conducted.
'US drone' kills four in strike on al-Qaida target in Yemen
At least four people were killed and a number of others wounded in a drone strike on a vehicle carrying suspected al-Qaida members in southern Yemen, a local official said on Saturday.
The official said the strike took place at dawn on Saturday on a road to the north of Jaar in Abyan Governorate, near Aden. He did not say who was behind the strike, but previous drone strikes have been carried out by the United States. Washington does not usually comment on drone strikes.
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