Monday, Dec 01st
Last update11:28:32 PM GMT
The US conducted most of its early nuclear tests in the Pacific, but they became too costly to continue so in 1950, the US government began to look for a safe place to test nuclear weapons on its mainland.
The Nevada Test Site was established a few years after the end of the second world war, against the fear of an all-out nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. As the Cold War took hold, America needed a convenient place to design and build its nuclear arsenal.
Casting the fight against climate change as an urgent moral duty, Pope Francis in June urged the world to phase out highly-polluting fossil fuels.
Yet in the heart of U.S. oil country several dioceses and other Catholic institutions are leasing out drilling rights to oil and gas companies to bolster their finances, Reuters has found.
And in one archdiocese -- Oklahoma City -- Church officials have signed three new oil and gas leases since Francis's missive on the environment, leasing documents show.
Authorities believe a man fatally shot his wife and four children, set their rural South Dakota house on fire, then turned the shotgun on himself, the state's attorney general's office said Tuesday.
Preliminary autopsy results show all six members of the Westerhuis family died of shotgun wounds. The bodies of Scott and Nicole Westerhuis and their children Kailey, Jaeci, Connor and Michael were found in the burned ruins of their home in Platte on Thursday.
The Icelandic capital city of Reykjavik has declared a boycott of all Israeli goods. The measure is clearly symbolic, as the city itself can’t do enough trade with Israel, or any other country, for such an action to have any impact. The responses to the action, however, are worth examining.
A retiring official, Björk Vilhelmsdóttir, of the Social Democratic Alliance, a center-left party, brought the motion for the boycott. The motion compels the city to boycott all Israeli products “as long as the occupation of Palestinian territories continues.” The memo that explains the reasoning behind what it terms a “symbolic” decision states that the city condemns “the Israeli policy of apartheid” in the Occupied Territories.
...Iran: “On Day One in the Oval Office, I will make two phone calls, the first to my good friend Bibi Netanyahu to reassure him we will stand with the state of Israel.
“The second, to the Supreme Leader, to tell him that unless and until he opens every military and every nuclear facility to real anytime, anywhere inspections by our people, not his, we, the United States of America, will make it as difficult as possible and move money around the global financial system.
The leader of an international counterfeit currency ring responsible for over $70 million in fake U.S. bills was sentenced to 15 years in prison Friday.
Itzhak Loz, an Israeli national, was also ordered to turn over $20 million and specific assets including a warehouse in New Jersey where the counterfeit money was most recently printed.
President Barack Obama nominated Eric Fanning to be the next secretary of the Army, the White House said Friday, paving the way for the first openly gay leader of a military branch in U.S. history.
Fanning is currently serving as acting Army undersecretary and previously worked as an Air Force undersecretary and a chief of staff to Defense Secretary Ash Carter. His nomination to the post must be confirmed by the Senate.
A deputy for the Kentucky county clerk who was jailed after refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples questioned on Friday the validity of the licenses he has issued since his boss' return.
In a filing with the federal judge overseeing a lawsuit against Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis for not issuing marriage licenses, the attorney for deputy clerk Brian Mason said he has "some substantial questions" about the new licenses Davis altered and gave him to issue after she returned to work on Monday.
A total of 87 out of 91 former NFL players have tested positive for the brain disease at the center of the debate over concussions in football, according to new figures from the nation’s largest brain bank focused on the study of traumatic head injury.
Researchers with the Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University have now identified the degenerative disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in 96 percent of NFL players that they’ve examined and in 79 percent of all football players. The disease is widely believed to stem from repetitive trauma to the head, and can lead to conditions such as memory loss, depression and dementia.
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