Lawyers for suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Friday said his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was the mastermind behind the incident that killed three people, and he was asked to be an informant for the FBI.
The lawyers said Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been encouraged by the FBI to observe and report on the Chechen and Muslim community and asked for the release of documents proving their assertion.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: Lawyers say older brother was asked to be FBI informant
Dick Cheney: 'If I would have to do it all over again, I would'
Former Vice President Dick Cheney says if he had to make the same decisions and actions regarding the waterboarding of prisoners, he would.
Cheney was speaking to students at American University in Washington, D.C. when he said he had no regrets about the U.S. use of enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding on terrorism suspects.
After more than a century, a jewel of ocean research targeted for closure
For more than a century, federal scientists have worked on Pivers Island near the historic town of Beaufort, N.C., and the beaches of Emerald Isle studying the ocean, and the fish, turtles and dolphins of its sea grass estuaries and rocky reefs.
Surrounded by three university labs, it’s one of a handful of oceanography hubs in the nation and the only government research center between New Jersey and Miami studying Atlantic fish populations.
Alex Baer: Swimming Against the Yo-Yo Tide
Everyone's heard the one where Life, after closing one door, opens a window. After doing two of the most dangerous things in America that one can do -- reading and thinking -- I have to take exception to that one.
This is especially true as it often seems Life is intent on demonstrating that other insightful discovery: that, when you die, your soul goes up on the roof of the garage, and is stuck there, with the Frisbees. As soon as I have read something and thought about it some, this is often what happens to my own consciousness.
Methane emissions expected to soar as Earth warms
Carbon dioxide is the gas most discussed in relation to manmade climate change. But there are other gases responsible for the greenhouse effect that climate scientists blame for global warming.
Scientists say the presence of one of those gases, methane, can be expected to rise rapidly, should the planet continue to warm. That's bad news, since methane -- already the third most abundant greenhouse gas -- has roughly 30 times the heat-trapping potency of CO2.
Scientists have known for some time that methane is a byproduct of biological activity in the world's freshwater ecosystems. Microorganisms in freshwater lakes, rivers, ponds, and streams produce methane as they digest organic materials.
US human rights record chastised in UN report
The UN has delivered a withering verdict on the US's human rights record, raising concerns on a series of issues including torture, drone strikes, the failure to close Guantánamo Bay and the NSA's bulk collection of personal data.
The report was delivered by the UN's human rights committee in an assessment of how the US is complying with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR], which has been in force since the mid 1970s.
The committee, which is chaired by the British law professor Sir Nigel Rodley, catalogued a string of human rights concerns, notably on the mass surveillance exposed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.
New CDC Report Finds 1 in 68 Children Have Autism Spectrum Disorders, Up 30% From 2012
One in 68 children in the U.S. are identified with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) according to the latest estimates from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC); this estimate is 30 percent higher than the prevalence reported in 2012. CDC says that since the previous estimate of 1 in 88 children identified with ASD, the criteria used to diagnose, treat, and provide services have not changed.
Overall, the surveillance summary report, “Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder among Children Aged 8 Years—Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, 11 Sites, United States, 2010,” estimates that there are 1.2 million children under the age of 21 with autism. The study based its numbers off of data solely from eight-year-olds (the “peak age of identification,” according to the CDC) in communities from 11 states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Utah, and Wisconsin.
Alex Baer: This Just In -- We're Blue, Tattooed, Etc.
Well, it's just about official: We can all go get blued, tatooed, and have some machined screw threads carved into ourselves, if you catch the drift.
Oh, sure. There's lots of chest-beating about the sacredness of human life, especially from the Family Values segment of the population -- a group of highly religious policy-pushers noted for doing whatever can be done to utterly rip, rend, and wrench apart families, legally. You'd do better with Charles Manson as your social worker, Jeffrey Dahmer as your nutritionist, Jack the Ripper as your morale officer.
More correctly, all the hollering and screaming and protesting and Bible-thumping is about the sacredness of The Fetus. Once the thing is born, to heck with it, say almost all GOP policies for the past 35 or so years. If it's no longer in vivo, or even in vitro, then it's no longer in our supposed thoughts, in our sham prayers, or in our political hay-making and mud-slinging -- that particular life, once sprung from the womb, is simply no longer in play.
Bombing suspect friend dead: Report on FBI shooting leaves some unconvinced
Florida state prosecutor Jeffrey Ashton says he had qualms about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s handling of the Ibragim Todashev affair, but still found justifiable the interrogation shooting of the Chechen street fighter in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings.
Others, including civil rights groups, remain unconvinced that the federal agency has told the whole story of how a valuable witness in a major terror probe ended up dead while being questioned.
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