The Obama administration on Friday unveiled the nation’s first major federal regulations on fracking, sparking negative responses from green groups, who say the “toothless” new rules don’t go far enough to protect public health and the environment and represent a “giveaway” to the fossil fuel industry. The Interior Department regulations (pdf), the result of four…
With cable giant Comcast still hoping to receive a federal blessing for its bid to acquire Time Warner Cable, currently its largest rival, the lobbying blitz is in full swing to sway lawmakers and federal regulators that the mega-merger will not, as critics charge, negatively impact consumers by further monopolizing an already highly-concentrated sector. Known…
When Alice Dreger, accomplished author and professor of medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University, attended her 9th-grade son’s “abstinence-based” sex education class, she was so shocked by the presenters’ baseless claims that she took to social media to live-tweet her outrage. Since then, her Twitter storm has turned into a cyclone, going so viral…
A federal appeals court has vacated the 2014 convictions handed down to three anti-nuclear activists—a nun and two army veterans—and ordered a lower court to re-sentence them. Sister Megan Rice, Greg Boertje-Obed, and Michael Walli were convicted last year of damaging national defense premises under the Sabotage Act after the activists entered the Y-12 National…
Bangladeshi police on Monday formally filed murder charges against 41 people for the Rana Plaza factory collapse over two years ago that killed 1,138 workers—most of them women—in what is is believed to be the worst single tragedy in the history of the world’s garment industry. Among those charged are building owner Sohel Rana, his…
Near and far… the proliferation of drones is coming. With the Federal Aviation Administration facing pressure from corporate interests and drone manufacturers to make room in the skies over the United States, the push for industry-friendly regulations is now in full gear. Meanwhile, foreign governments are rapidly developing their own technology to make sure the…
The U.S. Department of Defense announced on Tuesday that it is indeed planning to bring tanks and other heavy weaponry to Russia’s doorstep, in a move observers say is likely to further stoke Cold War tensions as NATO regional war games commence. Speaking in Tallinn, Estonia, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said the Pentagon…
Though she departed the company in August, Renee Paquette (formerly known as Renee Young in WWE) will be making an appearance on WWE-related programming this month. Fox Sports announced today that Paquette and Booker T will host a pre-show for the Friday, October 16 episode of SmackDown. The special pre-show will be 30 minutes long…
With protests against police brutality, mass incarceration, and systemic racism sweeping the nation, activists seeking to empower local movements and elevate on-the-ground solutions have developed a set of resources that highlights the “the slow but sustained work of many communities to enact meaningful reforms that transform both the practices and the purposes of our policing…
In a move explicitly aimed at reining in risky Wall Street excess, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday introduced what they call a “21st Century Glass-Steagall Act” that would restore the wall of separation between investment and commercial banking. While its sponsors say the proposed legislation (pdf) would protect…