Friday, Dec 19th
Last update08:48:44 AM GMT
Nigeria's Ogoniland region could take 30 years to fully recover from oil spills, a UN report says. The long-awaited UN study says environment restoration could prove to be the world's "most wide-ranging and long-term oil clean-up" ever taken.
The report found that pollution seriously threatened public health in at least 10 communities in the region. Oil giant Shell has accepted liability for two spills which devastated communities in 2008 and 2009.
A healthy diet is expensive and could make it difficult for Americans to meet new U.S. nutritional guidelines, according to a study published Thursday that says the government should do more to help consumers eat healthier.
An update of what used to be known as a food pyramid in 2010 had called on Americans to eat more foods containing potassium, dietary fiber, vitamin D and calcium. But if they did that, the journal Health Affairs said, they would add hundreds more dollars to their annual grocery bill.
Forty lawmakers from both the coalition and opposition Wednesday submitted a proposal to the Knesset for a new Basic Law that would change the accepted definition of Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state."
The bill, initiated by MKs Avi Dichter (Kadima ), Zeev Elkin (Likud ) and David Rotem (Yisrael Beiteinu ), and supported by 20 of the 28 Kadima MKs, would make democratic rule subservient to the state's definition as "the national home for the Jewish people."
Two U.S. administrations declined in recent years to place sanctions on Syrian officials who now are involved in that country's harsh crackdown on dissidents, despite the officials' involvement in crushing internal opposition previously, according to secret State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks.
In one instance, the top diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Damascus asked the State Department in 2007 to impose sanctions on Ali Mamluk, the chief of intelligence for Syrian President Bashar Assad.
A 1987 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finding, which the agency has ignored for years, concluded that hydraulic fracturing of a deep natural gas well in Jackson County, W.Va., contaminated groundwater and private wells.
Although the gas drilling industry has repeatedly claimed that such "fracking" operations in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale natural gas fields pose no threat to rural underground aquifers, groundwater and drinking water wells, EPA investigators concluded a gas well drilled and fracked by the Kaiser Gas Co. in 1982 did contaminate groundwater.
A multi-agency SWAT-style armed raid was conducted this morning by helmet-wearing, gun-carrying enforcement agents from the LA County Sheriff's Office, the FDA, the Dept. of Agriculture and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control).
Law enforcement demanded that all customers (members) of the store vacate the premises, then they demanded to know how much cash James had at the store. When James explained the amount of cash he had at the store -- which is used to purchase product for selling there -- agents demanded to know why he had such an amount of cash and where it came from.
But many other more telling facts indicate that Obama is but a figurehead of an unelected government in the US. This unelected power of corporate elites – commercial, financial, military – governs with the same core policies regardless of who is sitting in the White House. Whether these policies are on social, economic or foreign matters, the elected president must obey the direction ordained by the unelected elite. That kind of untrammeled power structure conforms more closely in practice to dictatorship, not democracy.
Obama’s presence in the White House indulges a superficial moral/political correctness while the masters whip us all into austere servitude.
A US judge has ruled that a former American military contractor who claims he was tortured in Iraq can sue former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The man's lawyers say he was abducted by the US military and abused at a US military detention centre near Baghdad. The government says he was suspected of helping pass information to the enemy, although he was never charged.
More than 36 million pounds of fresh and frozen ground turkey are being voluntarily recalled by food giant Cargill Inc. because of the possibility of salmonella contamination.
Health authorities say the poultry could be contaminated with Salmonella Heidelberg, a strain of salmonella that killed a California man and caused the illness of 79 others. Cargill said the ground turkey was produced at the company's Springdale, Ark., facility between Feb. 20 and Aug. 2. Production at the plant has been suspended.
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