A US federal appeals court has ordered the immediate release of three anti-nuclear activists, including an elderly Catholic nun, the group’s lawyer says. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32762912 Attorney Bill Quigley says he hopes they will be released within days. Last week, sabotage convictions against Sister Megan Rice, 85, Michael Walli, 66, and Greg Boertje-Obed, 59, for breaking into […]

The death of an unarmed black man who died two days after South Florida police officers shocked him with a Taser device has been ruled a homicide, according to the local medical examiner. https://www.newsmax.com/US/florida-man-taser-death/2015/05/15/id/644972/ Calvon Reid, 39, died in February following a late-night incident in which he displayed threatening and violent behavior outside his Fort […]

Tony Menendez worked various accounting jobs before landing an executive position at Halliburton in March 2005. The job came with a fancy title, Director of Technical Accounting Research and Training, and was the most responsibility he’d ever had. https://www.propublica.org/article/the-whistleblowers-tale-how-an-accountant-took-on-halliburton?utm_campaign=sprout&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=1429617751Only months earlier, Halliburton had settled with the SEC after a two-year accounting probe. In hiring him, […]

At high-minded conferences like the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the parties seem to be usurping the panels.  http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/plutocrats-gone-wild-davos/?_r=0 A few weeks ago, a pyramid entitled “The C.E.O. Hierarchy of Needs” went viral. At the bottom is “Stay out of jail,” followed by “Don’t run out of cash”; at the top is “Go to […]

An Iraqi man who worked as a translator for the American military before moving to the United States in 2009 was arrested on Thursday in Texas by F.B.I. agents who say he pledged allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State last year and misled them about his travels to Syria. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/us/iraqi-who-worked-for-the-us-military-is-arrested-in-texas-in-link-to-islamic-state.html?ref=world The Justice Department […]

The government of Colombia on Thursday night rejected a major tool in the American-backed antidrug campaign — ordering a halt to the aerial spraying of the country’s vast illegal plantings of coca, the crop used to make cocaine, citing concerns that the spray causes cancer. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/world/americas/colombia-halts-us-backed-spraying-of-illegal-coca-crops.html?ref=world The decision ends a program that has continued for […]

An almost surreal scandal involving hundreds of thousands of secretly recorded conversations caught top government officials discussing everything from rigging votes to covering up killings. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/world/europe/tiny-macedonia-confronts-a-supersize-scandal.html?ref=world Two ministers and the head of the secret services have resigned. Thousands have taken to the streets demanding the right-wing government’s ouster. And last weekend, 25 miles north of […]

The latest version of Google’s self-driving car — a pod-like two-seater that needs no gas pedal or steering wheel — will make its debut on public roads this summer, a significant step in the technology giant’s mission to have driverless cars available to consumers in the next five years. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/294703690b694ea5a124da4c726ac044/latest-self-driving-google-car-heading-public-streets This prototype is the first […]

Facebook (FB.O) tramples on European privacy laws by tracking people online without their consent and dodges questions from national regulators, Belgium’s privacy watchdog said on Friday. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/15/us-facebook-eu-privacy-idUSKBN0O00XW20150515?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter Belgium’s Privacy Protection Commission (CPVP/CBPL), which is working with German, Dutch, French and Spanish counterparts, launched the blistering attack after trying to find out more about the U.S. […]

A prolonged die-off of the nation’s honeybees, a trend worrisome both to beekeepers and to farmers who depend on the insects to pollinate their crops, apparently worsened last year. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/14/us/honeybees-mysterious-die-off-appears-to-worsen.html?ref=us In an annual survey released on Wednesday by the Bee Informed Partnership, a consortium of universities and research laboratories, about 5,000 beekeepers reported losing 42.1 […]

The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved legislation to end the federal government’s bulk collection of phone records, exerting enormous pressure on Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority leader, who insists that dragnet sweeps continue in defiance of many of those in his Republican Party. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/14/us/house-votes-to-end-nsas-bulk-phone-data-collection.html?ref=us Under the bipartisan bill, which passed 338 to […]

The U.S. Senate is set to hold an important test vote on legislation to help him complete a Pacific Rim deal.http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/14/us-usa-trade-idUSKBN0NZ0AY20150514?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=twitter Just two days earlier, Obama’s own Democrats defied him and blocked consideration of the “fast-track” trade negotiating authority he needs to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal with 11 other Pacific Rim countries […]

Manuel de Jesus Sanchez holds up a green poncho to protect his skin from the midday sun. The farmer says he was working in a rice paddy four years ago when a crop duster buzzed by, dumping large quantities of what everyone here refers to as “the poison.” http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d088d186305f4fa38825c75b61b6761f/rural-colombia-ban-anti-coca-herbicide-bittersweet From that moment Sanchez was exposed […]

The Agriculture Department has developed the first government certification and labeling for foods that are free of genetically modified ingredients. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8930f4ff0d214eaf93143df83cb6f15c/usda-develops-first-government-label-gmo-free-products USDA’s move comes as some consumer groups push for mandatory labeling of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Certification would be voluntary — and companies would have to pay for it. If approved, the foods […]

French troops are said to have sexually abused children during their UN peacekeeping operations in the Central African Republic, the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Thursday. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/world/europe/france-opens-criminal-inquiry-into-charges-of-abuse-by-peacekeepers-in-africa.html?ref=world In a statement, the prosecutor’s office said it had opened a formal judicial investigation against unidentified persons on charges of rape and complicity of rape against minors younger […]

The United States, wading into the international efforts to shape Greece’s economic and geopolitical orientation, is pushing the leftist government in Athens to resist Russia’s energy overtures. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/business/international/greece-us-russia-energy-pipeline.html?ref=world A State Department envoy in Athens on Friday planned to urge Greece to embrace a Western-backed project that would link Europe to natural gas supplies in Azerbaijan, […]

A federal appeals court in New York ruled on Thursday that the once-secret National Security Agency program that is systematically collecting Americans’ phone records in bulk is illegal. The decision comes as a fight in Congress is intensifying over whether to end and replace the program, or to extend it without changes. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/us/nsa-phone-records-collection-ruled-illegal-by-appeals-court.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news In a […]

For decades, they had waited for an apology. This group of black men, some now graying and bent by age, had complained of violent abuse at the hands of the police in the 1970s and ’80s on this city’s South Side. They said they had been suffocated with plastic bags, beaten with phone books, shocked […]

The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued a joint intelligence bulletin to local law enforcement on April 20 warning that the Garland event was a possible target for a terrorist attack, according to a DHS official who was not authorized to be quoted discussing the document. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/6048120ec4514df19a21641c64fe506a/gunmans-hashtag-hinted-texas-plot Social media accounts linked to “violent […]