Chris and Stephanie Hallowich were sure drilling for natural gas near their Pennsylvania home was to blame for the headaches, burning eyes and sore throats they suffered after the work began.
The companies insisted hydraulic fracturing -- the technique they used to free underground gas -- wasn’t the cause. Nevertheless, in 2011, a year after the family sued, Range Resources Corp (RRC). and two other companies agreed to a $750,000 settlement. In order to collect, the Hallowiches promised not to tell anyone, according to court filings.
Drillers Silence Fracking Claims With Sealed Settlements
Technicolor star Esther Williams dies at age 91
Esther Williams, the swimming champion turned actress who starred in glittering and aquatic Technicolor musicals of the 1940s and 1950s, has died. She was 91. Williams died early Thursday in her sleep, according to her longtime publicist Harlan Boll.
Following in the footsteps of Sonja Henie, who went from skating champion to movie star, Williams became one of Hollywood's biggest moneymakers, appearing in spectacular swimsuit numbers that capitalized on her wholesome beauty and perfect figure.
Bilderberg 2013: welcome to 1984
The auditorium grew hushed as a senior Watford borough councillor took to his feet. The police liaison team looked nervous. They had made their presentation and laid out their plans for this "unique event": the anti-terrorism zones, the identity checks, the restriction on vehicles stopping in the vicinity of this "important international conference". But now it was the turn of the people of Watford to speak.
What would they make of this international three-day policy summit, with its heavyweight delegate list bulging with billionaire financiers, party leaders and media moguls, protected by the biggest security operation Watford has ever seen?
Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily
The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
Julian Assange: On the First Day of the Manning Trial
As I type these lines, on June 3, 2013, Private First Class Bradley Edward Manning is being tried in a sequestered room at Fort Meade, Maryland, for the alleged crime of telling the truth. The court martial of the most prominent political prisoner in modern US history has now, finally, begun.
It has been three years. Bradley Manning, then 22 years old, was arrested in Baghdad on May 26, 2010. He was shipped to Kuwait, placed into a cage, and kept in the sweltering heat of Camp Arifjan.
The Road to War: How the U.S. blew $2 trillion on two wars in the 21st century.
The electronic media invariably beat the war drums, presumably in subconscious anticipation of higher ratings for blood and guts live from the scene of the action, what war correspondents called "bang bang" assignments.
This could be one of the reasons the United States has gone to war time and again since World War II without the constitutional requirement of a congressional mandate.
Bob Alexander: Forward ... Into the Past
In 1997 Kevin Costner directed and starred in The Postman, a epic post apocalyptic movie that bombed at the box office.
The film begins with this voice-over narration:
The last of the great cities died when my father was a child. Another victim of yet another war. The plagues followed. And the terrors. The living hid themselves away in tiny hamlets in hopes of surviving whatever new madness conspired to rob them of the little that remained. The Earth itself had fallen prey to chaos. For three years a dirty snow fell that even summer could not erase. The ocean was barren. Poisoned. Near death. Sixteen long years passed before the great lungs started working again. My father said it was as if the ocean breathed a great sigh of relief...
A lone wanderer, leading a mule, treks across a barren landscape. The year is 2013.
18 Major US Corporations Use Tax Havens to Skirt $92 Billion In U.S. Taxes: CTJ
Apple is not alone. Dell, Microsoft and Fifteen Other Fortune-500 Corporations’ Financial Reports Indicate Their Offshore Profits Are In Tax Havens; Hundreds More Likely Do the Same
Recent Congressional hearings on the international tax-avoidance strategies pursued by the Apple corporation documented the company’s strategy of shifting U.S. profits to offshore tax havens. But Apple is hardly the only major corporation that appears to be engaging in offshore-tax sheltering: seventeen other Fortune 500 corporations disclose information, in their financial reports, that strongly suggests they have paid little or no tax on their offshore holdings. It’s likely that hundreds of other Fortune 500 companies are also engaging in similar strategies to take advantage of the rule allowing U.S. companies to “defer” paying U.S. taxes on their offshore income.
House GOP defense bill blocks Guantanamo closing
Rebuffing President Barack Obama's latest plea, House Republicans on Monday proposed keeping open the military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by barring the administration from transferring its terror suspects to the United States or a foreign country such as Yemen.
The provisions dealing with the fate of the remaining 166 prisoners are part of a defense policy bill drafted by Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, R-Calif. The chairman released the bill Monday, two days before Republicans and Democrats on the committee will vote on it.
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