Reuters reports: “A dozen car bombs and suicide blasts tore into Shi’ite districts in Baghdad and south of the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people on the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.”
Yesterday, the Baltimore City Council passed legislation to ban the treatment, disposal, discharge and storage of fracking wastewater in Baltimore City. Baltimore has now taken a critical step in protecting citizens from dangers associated with processing wastewater produced by hydraulic fracturing or fracking. With this legislation, Baltimore speaks loud and clear: it will not become a dumping ground for the toxic waste produced by oil and gas wells upriver. Councilman James Kraft introduced the ordinance, along with co-sponsors Bill Henry, William “Pete” Welch, Edward L.
A new report released today documents the astonishing number of hours the New York Police Department has spent arresting and processing hundreds of thousands of people for low-level misdemeanor marijuana possession arrests during Mayor Bloomberg’s tenure. The report finds that NYPD used approximately 1,000,000 hours of police officer time to make 440,000 marijuana possession arrests over 11 years.
State governments could save as much as $73 billion cumulatively over the next ten years if the federal government were to negotiate Medicare prescription drug prices, according to a new issue brief by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). As policy makers across the nation consider various state and federal budget options, they and the American public should be made aware of these significant potential savings.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) today introduced the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) Amendments Act, which would require the government to obtain a warrant based on probable cause before it can access Americans’ email and other communications held by companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft. The American Civil Liberties Union supports the legislation, which Sen. Leahy introduced last Congress.
Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a major precedential decision in the case of Wiest v. Tyco Electronics Corp., establishing the standards for protecting corporate whistleblowers under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In a 2-1 split ruling, the Court held that corporate whistleblowers who have a "reasonable belief" that securities laws are being violated are protected under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).
Some 1.2 billion people-almost a fifth of the world-live in areas of physical water scarcity, while another 1.6 billion face what can be called economic water shortage. The situation is only expected to worsen as population growth, climate change, investment and management shortfalls, and inefficient use of existing resources restrict the amount of water available to people, according to Worldwatch Institute's Vital Signs Online service (www.worldwatch.org).
Today several Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) condemned a statement by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, IFC [1] which defends the record of a Honduran palm oil company, Grupo Dinant, implicated in dozens of murders as well as other human rights abuses. The IFC statement explicitly admits to supporting training for the company’s armed security guards.
The American Civil Liberties Union will argue in federal appeals court tomorrow that the Constitution requires law enforcement to get a warrant from a judge before tracking people's cars with GPS devices.
In the case, the FBI – without a warrant – attached a GPS tracker to the vehicle of three men suspected of burglarizing pharmacies. Following the January 2012 Supreme Court ruling that doing so constitutes a "search" under the Fourth Amendment, the district court issued a decision suppressing the evidence produced by the location tracking.
The Cornucopia Institute formally requested that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) remove the common food additive carrageenan from the US food supply.
As the U.S. Senate grapples with must-pass budget and appropriations bills this week, polluters and their allies in Congress are pushing a series of amendments that will have destructive impacts on the environment. Among the measures expected to be discussed are a requirement to build the controversial Keystone XL pipeline — a move that a top climate scientist says will mean “game over” for avoiding catastrophic effects of climate change.
"We are in the Supreme Court this morning so that all Americans can vote without burdensome and unnecessary barriers. The motor voter law is one of our country's great success stories because it sets a clear national standard for expanding access to the ballot box. Arizona sought to supersede federal requirements by demanding that voters provide additional documents to state officials before they can be added to the rolls. We hope the Supreme Court affirms the 9th Circuit and re-establishes the motor voter law as the law of the land, including Arizona."
Governments from over 190 member states have a second chance to make history this month by agreeing the first ever Arms Trade Treaty, a coalition of NGOs and human rights groups said today.
Diplomats meet today in New York for two weeks of negotiations at the United Nations, to agree an Arms Trade Treaty, which will control the international supply of arms and ammunition.
A new report from the Oakland Institute, Eco-Skies: The Global Rush for Aviation Biofuel, cautions against the ambitious goals of the aviation industry to reduce emissions by 2050. The report finds that the pursuit of this goal will bring an unprecedented expansion into biofuel production, more than likely in poorer countries, and will involve the acceleration of land acquisitions already threatening the lives and livelihoods of people in developing countries.
States should not be allowed to impose burdensome documentation requirements that restrict Americans' ability to register to vote in federal elections, the American Civil Liberties Union said today following an argument at the Supreme Court.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) announced the launch of a major new campaign to reshape U.S. tax policy to make affordable housing more available to the nation’s 10.1 million extreme low-income renter households. The centerpiece of the NLIHC campaign is a proposal to modify the mortgage interest deduction for higher income Americans and invest the savings in the National Housing Trust Fund, which was established to serve low-income housing needs.
The US/UK-led invasion of March 2003 has brought a decade of high and low intensity armed conflict to Iraq. But this conflict is not yet history. It remains entrenched and pervasive, with a clear beginning but no foreseeable end, and very much a part of the present in Iraq. In major regions of the country armed violence continues to exact a remorseless toll on human life, young and old, male and female, across society.
The American Civil Liberties Union said Maryland's repeal of its death penalty today is the latest sign of momentum in favor of ending the use of capital punishment nationwide. The Maryland Legislature today gave final approval to a bill that would make Maryland the sixth state in six years to repeal capital punishment.
"It is wonderful that yet another state has rightly recognized that capital punishment should end. Injustice afflicts the entire death penalty system," said Denny LeBoeuf, director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project.
