In past years, these remote gray waters of the Alaskan Arctic saw little more than the occasional cargo barge and Eskimo whaling boat. No more.
This summer, when the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Bertholf was monitoring shipping traffic along the desolate tundra coast, its radar displays were often brightly lighted with mysterious targets.
In a warming Arctic, U.S. faces new security and safety concerns
ACLU fights the good fight to stop government surveillance of our citizens
Are you, a US citizen, calling cousin Ivor in Budapest, or reaching out to your old pen pal Yasmeen in Sydney? The National Security Agency (NSA) can listen in on your personal cellphone or read what you might be emailing him or her from your personal computer without telling you.
In 2008, the US Senate voted to let the NSA wiretap any US citizens' emails and phone calls internationally in the interest of national security so long as the government's purpose was to collect "foreign intelligence information". In 45 minutes, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought a constitutional challenge to the Fisa Amendments Act. As the Director of the ACLU's Center for Democracy, Jameel Jaffer, pointed out, the amendments:
Leaked Report Suggests Long-Known Flood Threat To Nuclear Plants, Safety Advocates Say
"The redacted information shows that the NRC is lying to the American public about the safety of U.S. reactors," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and safety advocate with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Alex Baer: Let Them Eat Slippers? Zap My Pants? Celebrity-what?
Reality is confused enough these days. Perhaps if we try to overload it, and blow all its fuses and circuit breakers, we'll pop clear out at the other end, in some sort of sane, prosperous, sensible nirvana.
Let's give it a nudge and try this one: Yes, someone paid $65,600 for a pair of Marie Antoinette's slippers. Green and pink silk.
They fetched five times more than auctioneers thought they would get. They were flooded with bids from around the world -- which should give you some indication of the number of people sitting on oversized piles of cash who are hopelessly clueless about what might be constructively done instead with any of those Scrooge McDuck, dollar-sign-sporting, canvas-bag heaps they're using for sofas.
WikiLeaks: Iraqi children in U.S. raid shot in head, U.N. says
A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.
The unclassified cable, which was posted on WikiLeaks' website last week, contained questions from a United Nations investigator about the incident, which had angered local Iraqi officials, who demanded some kind of action from their government. U.S. officials denied at the time that anything inappropriate had occurred.
British engineers produce amazing 'petrol from air' technology
A small company in the north of England has developed the “air capture” technology to create synthetic petrol using only air and electricity. Experts tonight hailed the astonishing breakthrough as a potential “game-changer” in the battle against climate change and a saviour for the world’s energy crisis.
The technology, presented to a London engineering conference this week, removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The “petrol from air” technology involves taking sodium hydroxide and mixing it with carbon dioxide before "electrolysing" the sodium carbonate that it produces to form pure carbon dioxide.
Appeals court rules Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional
A federal appeals court in Manhattan today struck down the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional, becoming the second such court to do so and making it that much more likely that the issue will be decided by the Supreme Court sooner than later.
The Associated Press: The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued its ruling Thursday. The decision upholds a lower court judge who ruled that the 1996 law that defines marriage as involving a man and a woman was unconstitutional. The three-judge panel says the law violates equal protection. A federal appeals court in Boston earlier this year also found it unconstitutional.
Americans eat more than their body weight in GMOs every year, study shows
The consumer advocacy organization Environmental Working Group (EWG) has put out a new paper that estimates the average person's yearly consumption of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). And based on the figures, which EWG admits are very likely understated, the average person consumes more than their own body weight's worth of GMOs every single year, a shocking reality with unknown, long-term health consequences.
For their study, EWG researchers compiled data from 2011 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data sheets on average per capita consumption of various GM foods, including corn-based sweeteners like corn syrup, salad oils, and various other "corn products" like corn oil and corn meal. They then analyzed these figures based on the percentages of each of the crops used to make these products that are genetically engineered in the U.S.
US more of a killer than hijackers - accused 9/11 plotter
The alleged mastermind of 9/11 has said the US is responsible for the deaths of far more people than the hijackers who killed nearly 3000 in the 2001 attacks. He also accused the US of abusing the term national security to justify its actions.
Khalid Sheik Mohammed was allowed to address the military tribunal at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, during a pretrial hearing focused on the secrecy rules that will govern legal proceedings against him.
"When the [US] government feels sad for the killing of 3,000 on September 11, we also should feel sorry that the US government … has killed thousands of people, millions," Mohammed said in Arabic through his translator, as quoted by AP.
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