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Delays Abound In Prosecution Of Austin Police Detective For 2013 Shooting Of Larry Jackson

Archives for August 2015

Barack Obama To Give Mount McKinley Back Its Native American Name

The highest peak in North America to be renamed Denali, an Athabascan word meaning ‘the high one’, Barack Obama announced during his trip to Alaska.

The Guardian
By The Guardian

Barack Obama has said he will be changing the name of the highest mountain in North America from Mount McKinley to Denali. He announced that he will be returning the mountain’s traditional Alaskan native name on the eve of a presidential visit to Alaska. Denali is an Athabascan word meaning “the high one”. The name has long been a sore spot

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Global Response To People Fleeing Ravages Of War: ‘Callous Indifference,’ Humanitarian Failure

Boat tragedy in Libya, corpses of refugees in truck in Austria reminder of human cost of war, lack of humanitarian responses.

Andrea Germanos
By Andrea Germanos
Migrants wait to disembark from the Italian Navy vessel 'Bettica' in the harbor of Salerno, Italy, Tuesday, May 5, 2015. About 700 migrants, including children, were rescued in the Sicilian Strait while they were trying to cross. (AP Photo/Francesco Pecoraro)

It's a crisis of record proportions that is being met with global "callous indifference" and failed, dehumanizing responses, human rights experts say. The crisis, described as Europe's worst refugee crisis since World War Two, involves hundreds of thousands of people fleeing conflict, many from Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan, trying to reach

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Federal Court Overturns Landmark Ruling On NSA Spying

New decision finds plaintiff in 2013 case did not have legal standing to challenge NSA, but impact remains unclear in wake of USA Freedom Act.

Nadia Prupis
By Nadia Prupis
nsa

A federal court on Friday reversed a lower court's landmark 2013 decision that said the National Security Agency (NSA)'s spying operation was likely unconstitutional. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled (pdf) that the plaintiff in the case of Klayman v. Obama did not have the legal standing to challenge the

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Ruling Makes It Harder For U.S. To Charge High FOIA Fees To Media, Nonprofits

There is a long list of instances, where the government abused its authority and refused to recognize individuals or organizations as news media representatives under FOIA.

Kevin Gosztola
By Kevin Gosztola
A judge ruled in January that the FBI had acted in a manner ‘fundamentally at odds with’ the Freedom of Information Act.

Published in partnership with Shadowproof. The District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision which could make a huge difference for alternative media and nonprofit organizations seeking to have fees waived when making Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Under FOIA, a requester can have fees from document searches,

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Cocaine Production Plummets After DEA Kicked Out Of Bolivia

According to data released by the United Nations, cocaine production in the country declined by 11% in the past year, marking the fourth year in a row of steady decrease.

John Vibes
By John Vibes
Top photo | In this Sept. 25, 2013, photo, a girl plays on a bed of coca leaves, in the village of Trincavini in Peru’s Pichari district. Pichari lies on the banks of the Apurimac river in a valley that the United Nations says yields 56 percent of Peru’s coca leaves, the basis for cocaine. Coca is central to rituals and religion in Andean culture but in recent decades has become more associated with global drug trafficking. (AP/Rodrigo Abd)

After the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was kicked out of Bolivia, the country was able to drastically reduce the amount of coca (cocaine) produced within its borders. According to data released by the United Nations, cocaine production in the country declined by 11% in the past year, marking the fourth year in a row of steady decrease. It

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Cop Who Shot And Killed Six People Now Teaches Other Officers When To Use Their Guns

VirTra’s pain compliance training operates on the theory that officers who hesitate to take action, “effectively training them to shoot first and ask questions later.”

Jackson Marciana | Counter Current News
By Jackson Marciana | Counter Current News
The notorious officer James Peters

Officer James Peters is well known in Scottsdale, Arizona for having shot and killed six people in the course of only ten years on the force. Between 2002 and 2012, Officer Peters was constantly in the news for shooting someone new, each time the shootings being ruled justified. But how could so many cops go their whole careers without shooting

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