Diamond, now 69 and a retired social services and human-resources executive who lives in Northwest Washington, racked up his arrests protesting segregation, voting-rights violations and other discriminatory practices in an activist career that took him from Howard University to the Deep South as part of the Freedom Riders, blacks and whites — many of them students — who challenged segregation in public transportation in 1961, mostly in Mississippi.
This month, as Freedom Riders across the country celebrate the 50th anniversary of their activism, Diamond and other D.C. residents reflected on the movement and the special place the city holds in its history.
Local Freedom Riders recall yesterday’s fright, today’s pride
U.S. arms makers said to be bleeding secrets to cyber foes
Top Pentagon contractors have been bleeding secrets for years as a result of penetrations of their computer networks, current and former national security officials say.
The Defense Department, which runs its own worldwide eavesdropping, spying and code-cracking systems, says more than 100 foreign intelligence organizations have been trying to break into U.S. networks. Some of the perpetrators "already have the capacity to disrupt" U.S. information infrastructure, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, who is leading remedial efforts, wrote last fall in the journal Foreign Affairs.
Government to lower prices, ease rules on health plans for people with preexisting conditions
The Obama administration, expanding a program created by the new healthcare law, moved Tuesday to make health insurance more affordable and accessible for Americans who have been denied coverage because they are sick.
Across the country, the federal government is reducing premiums on special coverage available to uninsured people with preexisting conditions such as cancer or diabetes. And the administration is loosening restrictions on who can sign up for so-called preexisting condition insurance plans.
Impossible, Polio Victim Tells Phoenix Cops
After Tasering, kicking and hitting a man in the head with flashlights while calling him a "wetback," Phoenix police officers falsely accused him of assaulting them and running away, but the man can't fight or run at all because he is paralyzed on one side of his body from childhood polio, he says in a civil rights complaint.
Rodriquez, whom the officers accused of aggravated assault against a police officer after they Tasered, kicked and hit beat him with police-issued flashlights, says he could not have assaulted the officers or run because the left side of his body is paralyzed from polio.
Rodriquez the three officers - Tedesco, Mills and Neidenbach - approached him outside of a church on May 27, 2010.
Pentagon files death penalty case against five accused 9/11 plotters
Guaantánamo war court prosecutors filed fresh death penalty charges against five men for allegedly plotting the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, accusing the former CIA captives of murder, conspiracy and terrorism, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
Relatives of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks were notified of the pending charges on Monday, Memorial Day, said Army Lt. Col. Tanya Bradsher, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
FDA targets supplement manufacturers, falsely accuses them of selling drugs
In the eyes of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), there is no difference between a legitimate, scientifically-backed health claim, and a phony, made-up claim, as it concerns food and dietary supplements. Only FDA-approved drugs, you see, provide real health benefits, according to the agency. And in its continued assault against health freedom, the FDA has sent warning letters to five different companies that produce natural treatments and cures for sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs) because those companies dared to make unauthoried health claims, many of which are backed by peer-reviewed, journal-published scientific studies.
Germany to close all of its nuclear plants by 2022
Germany, the economic engine of Europe, said Monday that it will close all of its nuclear power plants over the next 11 years, the latest aftershock from the Japanese earthquake and partial meltdown it set in motion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex.
The move is an about-face for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose government until recently had supported nuclear power as a way to generate electricity without releasing additional greenhouse gases — and without increasing reliance on Russia, Germany’s main source of natural gas.
Anger as US arms dealer takes over running of Scottish nuclear bomb base
THE running of Britain’s nuclear bomb base at Coulport on the Clyde is to be handed over to a consortium of multinational private firms led by the controversial US arms dealer, Lockheed Martin, the Sunday Herald can reveal.
Defence ministers in Westminster have decided that the highly sensitive job of managing more than 200 Trident nuclear warheads, and arming the Royal Navy’s submarines with them, should be taken over by the group of companies within the next year.
WHO caves: Allows smallpox stockpiling for three more years
Once again, the World Health Assembly failed to set a deadline for the destruction of smallpox samples, delaying discussion for another three years. Though it still affirms the need for live sample destruction, the two-day “contentious debate” (repeated for the last 25 years) ended on May 24 in a victory for bioweapons development in the U.S. and Russia.
“The retention of the existing stocks of smallpox virus are not required” to maintain and bolster current vaccine supplies, argues Dr. D. A. Henderson in Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science. Through current technology, smallpox vaccines can be developed from the known genome. Live viruses are simply no longer needed.
Biological disarmament is not on the table, however, though the debate has been raging since smallpox eradication over 30 years ago.
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