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William Hague represents Conservative-Liberal Democrat government in Washington
Foreign secretary William Hague will represent the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat government in the US today as he makes his first foreign trip since the coalition was agreed. Mr Hague, a former Tory leader and
Read More »Obama vs. the iPad
President Obama’s disdain for new media has become so consistent that it is hard to dismiss as mere posturing. This is all the more ironic because Obama’s political movement supposedly mastered the new art
Read More »What Does Does Facebook-McDonalds Deal Mean?
By Rick Whiting, CRN A reported deal with fast-food giant McDonald’s could mean that Facebook is setting itself up to compete with Foursquare and other location-based social networking Web sites. Facebook is widely believed
Read More »New York Police Defuse Car Bomb in Times Square
Tourists were evacuated from Time Square and the surrounding area as police officers dismantled a car bomb, which was discovered at around 6.30pm (22.30 GMT) yesterday. The bomb was “amateurish” but potentially very powerful,
Read More »US cybersecurity plan poses new war threats
By Tom Eley | President Barack Obama announced on Friday the creation of a new “cyber czar” position. The Cybersecurity Coordinator, who is yet to be named, would oversee billions of dollars in funding
Read More »Obama Nominates Polluter Lawyer To Run Environment Division
President Barack Obama has nominated a lawyer for the nation’s largest toxic polluters to run the enforcement of the nation’s environmental laws. On Tuesday, Obama “announced his intent to nominate” Ignacia S. Moreno to
Read More »High court rejects claims against Ashcroft
By Joan Biskupic | WASHINGTON — A closely divided Supreme Court on Monday threw out a Pakistani man’s civil rights claim against former attorney general John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller for abusive
Read More »KBR, Halliburton Accused in Investor Suit of ‘Reign of Terror’
By Cary O’Reilly | KBR Inc. and Halliburton Co., two of the largest contractors to the U.S. military, were accused by a pension-fund shareholder of paying bribes, making false claims and operating as criminal
Read More »The Politics of Excusing Torture In The Name of National Security
Allow me to share some analysis about the way things work in Washington. President Obama’s flip-flop on his agreement to turn over photographs of detainees being tortured by American soldiers is a message with
Read More »CIA Refuses to Turn Over Torture Tape Documents
The CIA claims the integrity of a special prosecutor’s criminal investigation into the destruction of 92 interrogation videotapes will be compromised if the agency is forced to turn over detailed documents to the American
Read More »How U.S. Officials Circumvented the Bill of Rights
By Jacob G. Hornberger | In another embrace of President Bush’s war-on-terrorism policies, President Obama has announced that he might retain the Pentagon’s military-commission system to try people accused of terrorism. Apparently, the president, like
Read More »Suspected war criminal to lead U.S. forces in Afghanistan
On July 22 2006, Human Rights Watch issued a report titled “No blood, no foul” about American torture practices at three facilities in Iraq. One of them was Camp Nama, which was operated by
Read More »Senate Hears Testimony On Torture Policy
A key Senate subcommittee is set to hear testimony today on the torture policies of the Bush administration. The hearing, to be held by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the
Read More »Populism is Not a Style, It’s a People’s Rebellion Against Corporate Power
When I lived in Washington, DC, in the 1970s, I got a call from a friend of mine who worked for the Congressional Research Service–a legislative agency that digs up facts, prepares briefing papers,
Read More »Congress Resists Guantánamo Releases
As lawmakers amped up the outcry against releasing Guantánamo “terrorists in our neighborhoods,” France agreed to accept a “cleared” Guantánamo prisoner and human rights groups continued to press for release of 17 Chinese Uighurs
Read More »Memos shed light on CIA use of sleep deprivation torture
By Greg Miller | Reporting from Washington — As President Obama prepared last month to release secret memos on the CIA’s use of severe interrogation methods, the White House fielded a flurry of last-minute
Read More »‘Smart’ cameras doing job of human eyes
The surveillance cameras at Big Y, a Massachusetts grocery chain, are not just passively recording customers and staff. They’re studying checkout lines for signs of “sweethearting.” That’s when cashiers use subtle tricks to pass
Read More »Pentagon’s Black Budget Grows to More Than $50 Billion
By Noah Shachtman | The Pentagon wants to spend just over $50 billion on classified programs next year, newly-released Defense Department budget documents reveal. “That’s the largest-ever sum,” according to Aviation Week’s Bill Sweetman,
Read More »Pentagon eyes new anti-missile technology
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon is redirecting its missile defence efforts by winding down multibillion-dollar programmes aimed at destroying enemy missiles very soon after they take off. The move away from “boost-phase” intercept programmes was announced
Read More »Documents shoot holes in Cheney’s theories on torture
What a difference an election makes. Our national position has now shifted from “we don’t torture” to “we don’t torture anymore.” Let us, then, disabuse ourselves of former President George W. Bush’s notion that
Read More »22 protesters arrested at Obama speech
Former Illinois U.S. Senate candidate Alan Keyes and 21 other protesters were arrested this morning when they refused to leave the Notre Dame campus during a protest of President Obama’s upcoming commencement address there,
Read More »Groups fights bill that keeps biolab secrets
By Laura Elder | Open government advocates are lining up to fight a bill they say would cripple the public’s right to information about deadly germs like those studied at the Galveston National Laboratory.
Read More »Pelosi caught in lie over CIA torture report
By Bob Turner | Washington – A report by the Central Intelligence Agency revealed that now Speaker of the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed on CIA torture methods in 2002, which the
Read More »Government Could Destroy Records in Hundreds of Guantanamo Cases
A stockpile of documents about hundreds of Guantanamo Bay detainees, some authored by the prisoners themselves, could be destroyed under a little-known provision of a federal court order the Bush administration obtained in 2004.
Read More »USA using Patriot Act against its own citizens
Sixteen-year-old Ashton Lundeby’s bedroom in his mother’s Granville County home is nothing, if not patriotic. Images of American flags are everywhere on the bed, on the floor, on the wall. But according to the
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