Turkey’s leader offered protesters concessions early Friday, officials and protesters said, in a step that may help quiet the demonstrations that have swept the country for two weeks.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a delegation of protesters in a closed-door meeting in Ankara that he would be willing to soften his approach to redevelopment in Istanbul’s central Gezi Park, the issue that originally sparked demonstrations.
Erdogan offers concessions to Turkey’s protesters
New Report Finds Fracking Poses Health Risks to Pregnant Women and Children
The Center for Environmental Health (CEH) today released a new report outlining the health risks to pregnant women and young children from harmful chemicals used in fracking.
The report, Toxic and Dirty Secrets: The Truth About Fracking and Your Family’s Health, shows how chemicals related to the oil and gas industry when conducting fracking operations can pollute the air and water in communities around fracking sites and pose health risks especially to pregnant women and children, who are most vulnerable to chemical exposures.
Iraqis, Afghans who helped U.S. in wars look to Congress for resettlement
Congress will consider legislation Friday that could ease the way for thousands of Iraqis and Afghans to resettle in the United States to escape the dangers that come with their work for the U.S. military, news outlets and nonprofit groups.
The current version of the government’s “special immigrant visa” program expires next fall, and refugee advocates are pushing hard not only for an extension but also for sweeping changes to a process that’s been widely criticized as too slow, too narrow in eligibility and unreasonably complicated.
North Carolina Is the New Wisconsin
“Outsiders are coming in and they’re going to try to do to us what they did to Scott Walker in Wisconsin,” North Carolina Republican Governor Pat McCrory said yesterday, in response to the growing “Moral Monday” protest movement.
North Carolina is the new Wisconsin, but not for the reasons McCrory alleges. Like in Wisconsin, a homegrown grassroots resistance movement has emerged—and grown rapidly—to challenge the drastic right-wing agenda unveiled by Republicans in the state. Just like the Koch brothers backed Scott Walker, the Koch’s billionaire ally and close associate Art Pope funded North Carolina’s Republican takeover in 2010 and 2012.
Bob Alexander: Nothing Bad Happens in This Story
It all started back in 1944 when a group of high-powered Democratic hacks couldn’t pressure FDR to drop vice-president Henry A. Wallace from the ticket. The corrupt Democratic machine knew Roosevelt wouldn’t survive a fourth term and they wanted their favorite weasel Harry Truman in the number two slot ready to carry out their agenda the moment the president dropped dead. But Roosevelt held firm, kept Wallace on the ticket, and easily won the party’s nomination and then the national election.
In his last State of the Union address Roosevelt introduced a "Second Bill of Rights" which would complete the Founders' vision of ensuring all Americans equality in the pursuit of happiness. Millions were listening spellbound when Roosevelt said, “In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.
Guantánamo doctors must refuse to force-feed hunger strikers – physicians
A group of senior American doctors has called on military physicians at Guantánamo Bay to refuse to work in a mass force-feeding programme that is being used to keep hunger-striking detainees alive.
Writing in the prestigious and influential New England Journal of Medicine, the three doctors called Guantánamo "a medical ethics free zone" and said that medical staff had a moral duty to allow the prisoners to go on hunger strike without coercing them into treatment. They also called on doctors to refuse to take part in force-feeding.
In new interview, NSA leaker Edward Snowden says he is not hiding from justice in Hong Kong
The former CIA employee who leaked top-secret information about U.S. surveillance programs said in a new interview in Hong Kong on Wednesday that he is not attempting to hide from justice here but hopes to use the city as a base to reveal wrongdoing.
Edward Snowden dropped out of sight after checking out of a Hong Kong hotel on Monday. The South China Morning Post newspaper said it was able to locate and interview him on Wednesday. It provided brief excerpts from the interview on its website.
U.S. disrupts al-Qaeda’s online magazine
U.S. intelligence operatives covertly sabotaged a prominent al-Qaeda online magazine last month in an apparent attempt to sow confusion among the group’s followers, according to officials.
The operation succeeded, at least temporarily, in thwarting publication of the latest issue of Inspire, the English-language magazine distributed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. When it appeared online, the text on the second page was garbled and the following 20 pages were blank. The sabotaged version was quickly removed from the online forum that hosted it, according to independent analysts who track jihadi Web sites.
We’re Being Watched: How Corporations and Law Enforcement Are Spying on Environmentalists
In February 2010, Tom Jiunta and a small group of residents in northeastern Pennsylvania formed the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition (GDAC), an environmental organization opposed to hydraulic fracturing in the region. The group sought to appeal to the widest possible audience, and was careful about striking a moderate tone.
All members were asked to sign a code of conduct in which they pledged to carry themselves with “professionalism, dignity and kindness” as they worked to protect the environment and their communities. GDAC’s founders acknowledged that gas drilling had become a divisive issue misrepresented by individuals on both sides and agreed to “seek out the truth.”
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