The court also knocked back a separate appeal against same-sex marriage laws in California, restoring the right to gay marriage in the largest US state and nearly doubling the number of Americans living in states where gay marriage would be legal.
Historic decisions by SCOTUS: DOMA is unconstitutional! Parties cannot bring suit against Prop 8!
Kevin Rudd ousts Australia's first female PM Gillard
Kevin Rudd, Australia's former leader, has ousted Prime Minister Julia Gillard as Labor chief in a dramatic ballot, deposing the country's first female prime minister as the party fights for electoral survival.
The embattled Gillard - who announced she will quit politics in September - called the vote on Wednesday after a day of internal party manoeuvring in favour of her arch-rival and predecessor, whom she had deposed in 2010.
NIH to retire most chimps from medical research
The government is about to retire most of the chimpanzees who've spent their lives in U.S. research labs.
The National Institutes of Health said Wednesday that it will retire about 310 chimps from medical research over the next few years, saying humans' closest relatives "deserve special respect."
The darkness behind fracking’s silver lining
Climate change may have reached the point of no return last month.
CO2 levels in the atmosphere topped 400 parts per million on May 19, for the first time since the Pleistocene era, over 2.5 million years ago. President Barack Obama’s historic speech on climate change today highlights his growing focus on this issue for his second term.
Climate scientists have long regarded that 400 number as the symbolic threshold. One step beyond, and it would be virtually impossible to put the brake on human-generated climate change. The bad news escalated last week when the International Energy Agency reported that global emissions of carbon dioxide rose 1.4 percent in 2012, the largest annual increase on record.
Ken Cuccinelli Appeals To Defend Virginia's Anti-Sodomy Law At Supreme Court
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the GOP's 2013 gubernatorial candidate, filed a petition Tuesday with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to uphold Virginia's anti-sodomy law.
Cuccinelli wants the court to reconsider a March 2013 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit striking down the state's "crimes against nature" statute. The 4th Circuit ruled that the law did not pass muster in light of the Supreme Court's 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, which struck down the latter state's anti-sodomy law as an unconstitutional criminalization of Americans' sexual conduct. The Virginia law, however, remained on the books.
Radioactive tritium level rising in Fukushima water
The density of tritium in samples of sea water doubled in the past 10 days to a record 1,100 Becquerels per liter, an indication contaminated ground water may be seeping into the Pacific Ocean, the company reported Monday.
Saying times have changed, Supreme Court guts Voting Rights Act core
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote Tuesday, struck down a core provision of the Voting Rights Act that singles out part of the country for special treatment.
The outlawed provision, Section 4, identifies all or parts of 16 states, mainly in the South. A separate provision, Section 5, not struck down by the Supreme Court, forces them to get permission -- or "preclearance" -- from the U.S. Justice Department or a three-judge federal panel in Washington to make any changes in how people vote in their jurisdictions, no matter how innocuous.
Natural gas found in drinking water near fracked wells
Elevated levels of methane and other stray gases have been found in drinking water near natural gas wells in Pennsylvania's gas-rich Marcellus shale region, according to new research. In the case of methane, concentrations were six times higher in some drinking water found within one kilometer of drilling operations.
"The bottom line is strong evidence for gas leaking into drinking water in some cases," Robert Jackson, an environmental scientist at Duke University in Durham, N.C., told NBC News. "We think the likeliest explanation is leaky wells," he added.
The real supreme court stunner: sometimes workplace harassment is OK
Every June a few US supreme court cases get a reputation for being blockbusters, and this year has been no different. We're still awaiting decisions on cases concerning gay marriage and the Voting Rights Act. But the blockbusters can obscure smaller cases with profound effects. On Monday, the court quietly delivered a destructive, toxic decision on workplace harassment that is as significant as anything else this year.
Vance v Ball State University, which concerned the interpretation of a section of the Civil Rights Act, shouldn't have even reached America's highest court – but it did, and the court's right wing grabbed ahold and used it to further gut workplace protections.
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