The owners of the World Trade Center were blocked Thursday from filing a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against the two airlines whose hijacked planes brought down the twin towers.
The ruling from Manhattan Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein came after a four-day trial where the doomed skyscrapers’ owners sought to sue for at least $3.5 billion in the 9/11 terrorist attack.
World Trade Center owners’ bid to sue airlines for 9/11 attacks blocked
Regulators say Fukushima plant leaking contaminated water into ocean
The Fukushima nuclear power plant is probably still leaking contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean despite denials by the plant's operator, regulators say.
It has apparently been leaking contaminated water into the ocean for the two years since the earthquake/tsunami disaster that saw three of the plant's six reactors suffer a meltdown, Shunichi Tanaka, head of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority said Wednesday.
Fracking research: What's behind EPA's abandoned studies?
When the Environmental Protection Agency abruptly retreated on its multimillion-dollar investigation into water contamination in a central Wyoming natural gas field last month, it shocked environmentalists and energy industry supporters alike.
In 2011, the agency had issued a blockbuster draft report saying that the controversial practice of fracking was to blame for the pollution of an aquifer deep below the town of Pavillion, Wy. 2013 the first time such a claim had been based on a scientific analysis.
Colliding stars could be source of gold on Earth
The gold glinting on your wedding band was likely born in a cataclysmic merger of two exceedingly exotic stars, astronomers report Wednesday.
Dying stars billions of years ago cooked up most of the lighter elements in the universe, the oxygen in the air and calcium of our bones, and blasted it across the cosmos in their final explosive moments. We are stardust, as the singer Joni Mitchell put it.
Gay marriage legalized in England, Wales
MPs cheered in the House of Commons as it was announced that royal assent had been given to the new Bill, paving the way for the first same-sex weddings next spring.
The Queen, who is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, gave her formal approval to the Bill – one of the most radical pieces of social legislation of her reign – this afternoon.
Global Hawk: The drone the Pentagon couldn’t ground
With billions of dollars in spending reductions looming, Air Force officials looked around last year for a program they could cut that was underperforming, had busted its budget and wasn’t vital to immediate combat needs.
Eventually, they settled on the production line for a $223 million aircraft known as the Global Hawk, with the wingspan of a tanker but no pilot in the cockpit, built to fly over vast terrain for a little more than a day while sending back data to military commanders on the ground.
EU takes tougher stance on Israeli settlements
The European Union has dealt a harsh blow to the Israeli settlement enterprise in a directive that insists all future agreements between the EU and Israel must explicitly exclude Jewish colonies in the West Bank or East Jerusalem.
The move, described by an Israeli official as an "earthquake", prompted furious criticism from the Israeli prime minister over "external diktats".
But it was hailed by Palestinians and their supporters as a significant political and economic sanction against settlements.
The Zimmerman Jury Told Young Black Men What We Already Knew
Tonight a Florida man’s acquittal for hunting and killing a black teenager who was armed with only a bag of candy serves as a Rorschach test for the American public. For conservatives, it’s a triumph of permissive gun laws and a victory over the liberal media, which had been unfairly rooting for the dead kid all along.
For liberals, it's a tragic and glaring example of the gaps that plague our criminal justice system. For people of color, it’s a vivid reminder that we must always be deferential to white people, or face the very real chance of getting killed.
Birth defects linked to bad water in California's San Joaquin Valley
An extensive new study confirms a long-suspected link between crippling birth defects and the nitrate contamination that threatens drinking water for 250,000 people in the San Joaquin Valley.
The study took place in the Midwest, but its findings hit hard in the Valley, where research last year showed farm-related nitrate pollution is extensive and expanding in the underground water of Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties.
The birth defects involved include spina bifida, cleft palate and missing limbs.
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