Posts from — April 2009

An “independent” Justice Department means that decisions about whether to indict are shielded from political considerations of the White House.

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An “independent” Justice Department means that decisions about whether to indict are shielded from political considerations of the White House.

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The Obama team must investigate the lawyers who wrote the memos on prisoner interrogation, which were written not to set legal limits, but to provide legal immunity for illegal and immoral acts.

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Lack of law enforcement against illegal trade in Indonesia threatens the survival of orangutans and gibbons on Sumatra, a new study by the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC shows. Despite considerable investment in wildlife conservation, numbers of the endangered orangutans captured mainly for the pet trade exceeded the levels of the 1970s.

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A Brazilian court has ordered the arrest and retrial of an Amazon rancher acquitted of orchestrating the murder of American nun and rainforest activist. Para state’s highest court threw out last year’s verdict, which found Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura not guilty of the 2005 shooting of Stang, 73, who campaigned for 30 years to save the rainforest.

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A video of the unprovoked assault of Ian Tomlinson by a masked policeman. Tomlinson was walking away from the police with his hands in his pockets when he was struck from behind with a baton, then pushed to the ground. Moments after this video was shot, Tomlinson suffered a heart attack and died.

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When Jon Bohmer sat down with his two little girls for a simple project they could work on together, he didn’t realize they’d hit upon a solution to one of the world’s biggest problems for just $5: A solar-powered oven.

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Spokane County’s limits on the sales of phosphates in dishwasher detergent has slowed the flood of pollutants into the Spokane River — but sped the flood of shoppers into Idaho to get the strong soap

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We speak to University of Utah student Tim DeChristopher, who has just been charged with two felonies for disrupting the auction of over 100,000 acres of federal land for oil and gas drilling. DeChristopher was arrested after he posed as a bidder and bought 22,000 acres of land in an attempt to save the property from drilling. He faces up to 10 yr

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Officials at New York’s Empire State Building today unveiled a new process for analyzing and retrofitting existing structures for environmental sustainability. As central elements of the $500 million upgrade program presently underway at the world’s most famous office building, the program is expected to reduce energy consumption by up to 38%

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