News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
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The federal prison population has dropped in the last year by roughly 4,800, the first time in several decades that the inmate count has gone down. In a speech Tuesday in New York City, Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice Department expects to end the current budget year next week with a prison population of roughly 215,000 inmates. It would be the first time since 1980 that the federal prison population has declined during the course of a fiscal year. The crime rate has dropped along with the prison population, Holder said, proving that “longer-than-necessary prison terms” don’t improve public safety. “In fact, the opposite is often true,” he said. The Bureau of Prisons accounts for roughly one-third of the Justice Department budget, and the prison population has exploded in the last three decades as a result of “well-intentioned policies designed to be 'tough’ on criminals,” Holder said. In August 2013, for instance, he announced a major shift in sentencing policy, instructing federal prosecutors to stop charging many nonviolent drug defendants with offenses that carry mandatory minimum sentences. More recently, the Justice Department has encouraged a broader swath of the prison population to apply for clemency, and has supported reductions in sentencing guideline ranges for drug criminals that could apply to tens of thousands of inmates. “We know that over-incarceration crushes opportunity. We know it prevents people, and entire communities, from getting on the right track,” Holder said. Holder also said that there should be new ways for the government to measure success of its criminal justice policies beyond how many people are prosecuted and sent to prison.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise's summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Climate change is serious business - in more ways than one. Capitalist 'bootleggers' have co-opted the environmental [movement] to fulfil their raison d'etre - making money. Thanks to the 'greenwash', the solutions could be worse than the problems. Sitting on the board of [a] virtuous-sounding group - the Alliance for Climate Protection (ACP) - is one of the world's most famous green champions, Al Gore. Alongside him sits Theodore Roosevelt IV. Theodore the Fourth is a ... managing director of Barclays Capital. Consider another environmental-economics powerhouse, Generation Investment Management (GIM). Gore founded it ... with the aid of David Blood - chief executive of Goldman Sachs Asset Management from 1999 to 2003. It is economics, not environmentalism, that has driven the search for ethically superior energy from "clean" sources derived from previously sacrosanct areas of wilderness, the exploitation of which has suddenly been legitimised, perhaps as new "energy farms" or for "biofuels". Likewise, previously off-limits coastal areas have been designated as not only suitable but also positively benign sites on which to drill for oil and gas. After all, the long-term interest - one might say the fuel - propelling countries is money. "Greenwash" is the term environmentalists use to describe businesses that present themselves as green although their practices are not.
Note: For lots more on corporate corruption from major media sources, click here.
Across the country, police are using GPS devices to snare [criminal suspects], often without a warrant or court order. Privacy advocates said tracking suspects electronically constitutes illegal search and seizure, violating Fourth Amendment rights of protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and is another step toward George Orwell's Big Brother society. With the ... ever-declining cost of the technology, many analysts believe that police will increasingly rely on GPS ... and that the public will hear little about it. "I've seen them in cases from New York City to small towns -- whoever can afford to get the equipment and plant it on a car," said John Wesley Hall, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "And of course, it's easy to do. You can sneak up on a car and plant it at any time." Details on how police use GPS usually become public when the use of the device is challenged in court. Leibig said GPS should be held to a different standard because it provides greater detail. "While it may be true that police can conduct surveillance of people on a public street without violating their rights, tracking a person everywhere they go and keeping a computer record of it for days and days without that person knowing is a completely different type of intrusion," he said. Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's technology and liberty program, considers GPS monitoring, along with license plate readers, toll transponders and video cameras with face-recognition technology, part of the same trend toward "an always-on, surveillance society."
Note: For lots more on threats to privacy from major media sources, click here.
Southern Utah residents welcomed the opportunity Thursday to speak their piece about the proposed Divine Strake explosion test. Person after person stepped to the microphone during the first of Gov. Jon M. Huntsman's two Divine Strake public hearings. Outrage, grief and frustration spilled out from about five dozen people who blame atomic testing in the 1950s at the nearby Nevada Test Site for a grim litany of illnesses and deaths. "It always surprises me we have to fight this," said Claudia Peterson, whose family has been plagued with cancer that she believes is caused by the atomic testing. "I don't think we should have to fight so hard to have a happy, healthy life." They doubt the federal government's assertion the test will not send a mushroom cloud of radiation-tainted litter into Utah. They also want Divine Strake stopped to ensure that the U.S. government does not begin testing and using nuclear weapons once again. Department of Environmental Quality Director Dianne Nielson, representing the Republican governor, listened for more than two hours in a packed Dixie State College auditorium. Physicist Raymond H. Cyr urged Nielson to "be all over the measures" if the tests do go forward. Richard Andrews complained about lies from the federal government over the impacts of past tests. "I don't know about anyone else," he said, "but I don't trust them." Applause roared from the audience of more than 200 after his remarks, as they did many times after speakers talked about the lingering impacts of past tests. St. George resident Carl Palmer was the sole speaker in support of the tests.
Note: For more on this highly controversial bomb given the bizarre name of "Divine Strake," click here.
Turning corn into fuel is all the rage these days as America attempts to reduce its oil dependency. But a team of Metro Detroit researchers has identified a potentially cheaper and more Earth-friendly fuel source: peat, that half-rotted vegetation that covers a considerable chunk of Michigan. The scientists, from University of Detroit Mercy and Wayne State University, are working to develop what they call "pethanol" to run small, fuel-cell-powered vehicles such as golf carts and riding mowers. Because peat forms naturally and requires no fertilization, it's a benefit over corn, the researchers say. "Corn's biggest problem is that you only get one crop a year," said John Shewchun, an adjunct chemistry and engineering professor at Wayne State. "Peat is dirt cheap (to harvest), and with it you've got something that is easily replenished." In lab tests, the pethanol has also powered a fuel cell without the use of hydrogen, which eliminates the need for hydrogen storage tanks in fuel-cell vehicles. Benvenuto, principal investigator on the project, said if peat works as a fuel, the researchers will look at duplicating its success with other hearty native Michigan plants. He said the answer is likely not one plant, but a variety of sources. "None of the three of us think this will solve America's energy dependence," Benvenuto said. "But it will help."
Have you ever thought about someone for no apparent reason, and then that person rang on the telephone? Have you felt you were being watched, and turned round to find someone staring at you? Recent surveys show that a majority of the population in Britain have had these experiences. There is a growing body of evidence that telepathy and the sense of being stared at are real, with an active discussion of these topics in scientific journals. Telepathy [is] expressed in domesticated animals, many of which seem to be able to detect the feelings and intentions of their owners. For example, many dogs seem to know when their owners are coming home, and go to wait at a door. In a series of videotaped tests...dogs still went and waited at the door when the owners returned at times randomly selected by the experimenter. About 80 per cent of the population claim to have had experiences in which they think of someone for no apparent reason, then that person calls; or they know who is calling when the phone rings, before picking it up. [Researchers] have investigated telephone telepathy experimentally in hundreds of controlled trials. [In one experiment] volunteers were asked to give us the names and telephone numbers of four people. By chance, participants would have been right about one time in four. In fact, 45 per cent of the guesses were correct. This research has been replicated at the University of Amsterdam. Emotional closeness, rather than physical proximity, seemed to be the most important factor. Our minds may extend far beyond our brains, stretching out through fields that link us to our environment and to each other. Mental fields could help to explain telepathy, the sense of being stared at and other widespread but unexplained abilities.
Note: This research is very much in alignment with the message of one of the PEERS websites. Take a look at http://www.weboflove.org for some exciting ideas on opening to greater interconnectedness with those around us. And for some amazingly inspiring videos which move us to deeper connection, see our inspiring videos page at http://www.WantToKnow.info/051204inspiringvideos.
President Bush, again defying Congress, says he has the power to edit the Homeland Security Department's reports about whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists. In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints. But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency's 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section "in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch." The American Bar Association and members of Congress have said Bush uses signing statements excessively as a way to expand his power. Bush's signing statement Wednesday challenges several other provisions in the Homeland Security spending bill. Bush, for example, said he'd disregard a requirement that the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency must have at least five years experience and "demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management and homeland security."
An overhaul in how states and localities record votes and administer elections since the Florida recount battle six years ago has created conditions that could trigger a repeat...of last week's Election Day debacle. In Maryland last Tuesday, a combination of human blunders and technological glitches caused long lines and delays in vote-counting. The problems, which followed ones earlier this year in Ohio, Illinois and several other states, have contributed to doubts among some experts about whether the new systems are reliable. What is clear is that electronic machines have their own imponderables. In Montgomery County, the breakdown came when election officials failed to provide precinct workers with the access cards needed to operate electronic voting machines. In Prince George's County, computers...failed to transmit data to the central election office. At least nine other states have had trouble this year with new voting technology. In Ohio, results from the May primary election were delayed for nearly a week in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) when thousands of absentee ballots were incorrectly formatted. Twenty-seven states require electronic voting machines to produce a paper trail available for auditing during a recount, but an analysis of Cuyahoga County's paper trail...showed that a tenth of the receipts were uncountable. For several years, prominent computer scientists have taken aim at the electronic voting machines. In analyses of the software that runs widely used models of the machines...scientists have shown how they could manipulate the machine to report a vote total that differed from the actual total cast by voters. In the Nov. 7 election, more than 80 percent of voters will use electronic voting machines.
Note: For lots more critical information on elections, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/electionsinformation
It is a bright and hopeful morning that greeted Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. Then it starts. By lunchtime, both buildings are gone, having crumbled to the ground, neatly compacting themselves in the descent. In the ensuing hours we begin to learn the names of those involved in the tragedy. Their passports sitting atop the smoldering rubble prove easier to find than virtually indestructible black-box data recorders that vanish without a trace. We are told that Osama bin Laden -- a known terrorist who had been trained in war tactics by the United States -- is to blame. The destruction of a third Manhattan skyscraper -- the 47-story Building #7 -- also collapsed, although no plane struck it. It's owner, Larry Silverstein, insured the building for $7 billion shortly before the disaster. "You have to ask yourself some simple questions, like how is it that Morgan Bush, the president's younger brother, owned the company that was in charge of security for the World Trade Center, yet it has never appeared in The New York Times?"
Note: This article largely seeks to debunk the 9/11 cover-up, yet it does give some good information.
Sacramento's Solar Cookers International, will take the global stage Friday in Florence, Italy. The nongovernmental organization, which is dedicated to saving the world with solar power, will receive an award from the World Renewable Energy Congress. The secret of the group's success is the "CooKit," a 3-by-4-foot piece of cardboard lined with aluminum foil that harnesses the sun's rays to cook food and pasteurize water. About 90,000 "CooKits" are heating up in Africa, where they are being manufactured and sold for $8 or $9. The group has helped introduce 500,000 solar cookers to 25 nations where people spend half their $1-a-day wages to buy firewood to cook their meals, said Bob Metcalf, a microbiologist who co-founded the group in 1987. Solar cookers allow them to spend that money on food instead of firewood, said Metcalf, who teaches at California State University, Sacramento. Metcalf says he hopes the award will get him 30 minutes with Bill Gates or some other investor to spread the gospel of the CooKit, which could be used by "2.5 billion people today" who rely on wood, charcoal or animal dung to cook meals. Metcalf also invented the Water Pasteurization Indicator -- a reusable sealed test tube with wax that melts when food or water has been pasteurized at 149 degrees Fahrenheit. "It takes about 90 minutes in the sun," he said. For more information, go to www.solarcookers.org.
Note: For how to easily help several families a year pull out of poverty in third world countries, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/051023microcredit
The Bush administration drafted amendments to the War Crimes Act that would retroactively protect policy makers from possible criminal charges for authorizing any humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees, according to lawyers who have seen the proposal. At issue are interrogations carried out by the CIA and the degree to which harsh tactics such as water-boarding were authorized by administration officials. When interrogators engage in waterboarding, prisoners are strapped to a plank and dunked in water until nearly drowning. One section of the draft would outlaw torture and inhuman or cruel treatment, but it does not contain prohibitions from Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions against "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." Another section would apply the legislation retroactively. The initiative is "not just protection of political appointees, but also CIA personnel who led interrogations." Interrogation practices "follow from policies that were formed at the highest levels of the administration."
Panelists talked about the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Among the issues they addressed were various theories concerning the origins of the attacks, charges of a government and media cover-up of key facts, the results of investigations into the attacks, and public perceptions of the events of September 11, 2001. Participants...called on citizens to question official versions of the terrorist attacks, examine independent sources of information, and conduct grassroots education campaigns to change public opinion. Following their presentations they answered questions from the audience. The two-day event, "American Scholars Symposium: 9/11 and The Neo-Con Agenda," was held in the ballroom of the Sheraton Los Angeles Downtown.
Note: This 105-minute program was aired on C-SPAN four times over the course of four days! Click on the links to see the schedule: July 29th, 8:00 PM, July 29th 11:00 PM, July 30th, 3:18 PM, and Aug. 1st, 6:11 PM. To view the program on C-SPAN's website as broadcast, see rtsp://video.c-span.org/60days/ap072906_theories.rm or see http://www.911blogger.com/2006/07/cspans-coverage-of-american-scholars.html. We express gratitude to C-SPAN for their courage in broadcasting this program and helping people to question what really happened on that fateful day.
The House, displaying a foreign affairs solidarity lacking on issues like Iraq, voted overwhelmingly Thursday to support Israel in its confrontation with Hezbollah guerrillas. The resolution, which was passed on a 410-8 vote, also condemns enemies of the Jewish state. House Republican leader John Boehner cited Israel's "unique relationship" with the United States as a reason for his colleagues to swiftly go on record supporting Israel in the latest flare-up of violence in the Mideast. Yet as Republican and Democratic leaders rally behind the measure in rare bipartisan fashion, a handful of lawmakers have quietly expressed reservations that the resolution was too much the result of a powerful lobbying force and attempts to court Jewish voters.
Note: It's interesting to note that very few major media picked up this revealing story.
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that President Bush had personally decided to block the Justice Department ethics unit from examining the role played by government lawyers in approving the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program. Mr. Gonzales made the assertion in response to questioning from Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the committee. Mr. Specter said the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Justice Department had to call off an investigation into the conduct of department lawyers who evaluated the surveillance program because the unit was denied clearance to review classified documents. Representative Zoe Lofgren...said Tuesday that she was shocked that Mr. Bush had blocked the clearances of lawyers from that office. "The president's latest action shows that he is willing to be personally involved in the cover-up of suspected illegal activity," Ms. Lofgren said.
The attorney general's startling revelation that President Bush personally blocked a Justice Department investigation into the administration's controversial secret domestic spying programs hasn't gotten the attention it deserves. Bush's move -- denying the requisite security clearances to attorneys from the department's ethics office -- is unprecedented in that office's history. It also comes in stark contrast to the enthusiastic way in which security clearances were dished out to...those charged with finding out who leaked information about the program to the press. Time and time again, Bush and his aides have selectively leaked or declassified secret intelligence findings that served their political agenda -- while aggressively asserting the need to keep secret the information that would tend to discredit them. Some legal experts and members of Congress who have questioned the legality of the NSA program said Bush's move to quash the Justice probe represents a politically motivated interference in Justice Department affairs. The government has in effect curtailed an investigation of itself and hardly anyone has noticed. It has not caused much interest in Congress, or on the nation's editorial pages, or the even in the blogosphere, which takes pride in causing a stir about things that should but nobody else has yet taken notice."
Note: As noted in our key summary Building a Brighter Future, "Secrecy leads to control through preventing the exposure of hidden agendas, and through breeding distrust, suspicion, and paranoia in the world."
Computerized voting was supposed to be the cure for ballot fiascos such as the 2000 presidential election, but activist groups say it has only worsened the problem. Lawsuits have been filed in at least nine states, alleging that the machines are wide open to computer hackers and prone to temperamental fits of technology that have assigned votes to the wrong candidate. About 80 percent of American voters will use some form of electronic voting in the November election. New York University's Brennan Center for Justice released a one-year study last month that determined that the three most popular types of U.S. voting machines "pose a real danger" to election integrity. More than 120 security threats were identified, including wireless machines that could be hacked "by virtually any member of the public with some (computer) knowledge" and a PC card. Diebold spokesman David Bear said his company's technology "has proven to be more accurate" than punch cards. The company's former CEO, Wally O'Dell, authored a 2003 Republican fundraising letter that promised, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Bear said there has been no evidence in any election of hackers breaching electronic security measures. However...Lowell Finley, co-director of Voter Action...said, "We had dozens of affidavits from voters in New Mexico who said they touched one candidate's name, but the machine picked the opponent," he said. In the state's biggest county, home to Albuquerque, touch-screens machines purchased from Sequoia lost 13,000 votes.
Note: For lots more on elections problems, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/electionsinformation
Alongside the submarines, ships and airplanes participating in large-scale military exercises in the Pacific this month, a team of sea lions and dolphins are expected to patrol the sea. These marine animals will be flown in from San Diego for simulated mine recovery and mine detection during the biennial RIMPAC war games. Six bottle-nosed dolphins would find the mines, while four California sea lions would help recover them. High-tech gadgets deployed by the military can't match the natural skills of the dolphins and sea lions. Sea lions have "incredibly good underwater hearing" and can dive to 1,000 feet to attach a recovery line to a simulated mine, he said. Dolphins use their sonar to find the mines. Marine mammals have been used by the Navy since the early 1960s. The animals save the Navy an estimated $1 million a year. The $15 million Marine Mammal Program has 75 dolphins and 30 sea lions at its San Diego facility. Opponents of the program say the military should not train animals for use in warfare.
A team of engineering students from The University of British Columbia has built a vehicle so efficient that it could travel from Vancouver to Halifax on a gallon of gasoline. The futuristic-looking, single-occupancy vehicle won top prize at a recent international competition, marking the UBC team's fourth win in as many years. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Supermileage Competition took place June 9 in Marshall, Michigan. Forty teams from Canada, the U.S. and India competed in designing and building the most fuel-efficient vehicle. 'We achieved this level of efficiency by optimizing many aspects of the vehicle design, including: aerodynamics, light-weight construction, a small displacement engine (54 cc), and conservative driving habits,' says Team Captain Kevin Li. The UBC design...achieved 3,145 miles per US gallon. Supermileage...is an annual student competition that challenges students to design, build, and drive a single person vehicle (powered solely by a gasoline engine) to achieve the best fuel mileage possible. The vehicle must be powered by only an internal combustion engine, with no assistance from electric motors or human propulsion.
Note: Why don't we see articles like this in the mainstream media? Even if this vehicle is ultra lightweight and has a top speed of only 30 mph, why can't we design heavier, faster cars which get just 10% of what this car got? For answers to this question, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/050711carmileageaveragempg
Sitting stone still under a skull cap fitted with a couple dozen electrodes, Austrian scientist Peter Brunner stares at a laptop computer. Without so much as moving a nostril hair, he suddenly begins to compose a message -- letter by letter -- on a giant screen overhead. "B-O-N-J-O-U-R" he writes with the power of his mind, much to the amazement of the largely French audience of scientists and curious onlookers gathered. Brunner and two colleagues from the state-financed Wadsworth Center in Albany, New York were demonstrating a "brain computer interface (BCI)," an astounding technology which digitalizes brain signals emitted as electrical impulses -- picked up by the electrodes -- to convey intent. Possible applications extend beyond the written word into physical movement -- it is only a matter of time, Sellers says, before the same technology is used to operate motorized wheel chairs.
The League of Women Voters has been signing up voters ever since women won the right to vote in 1920. But now, for the first time in the League's storied history, a branch of the organization has shut down its operations to protest a new Florida law that the League claims will have a chilling effect on voter registration -- in a state that already has one of the nation's most notoriously dysfunctional election systems. The League's Florida branch acknowledged that it had recently ceased efforts to register voters because of what it calls the law's draconian fines against organizations (other than political parties) for submitting forms late. The League of Women Voters of Florida joined several other pubic interest and labor groups, including the Florida AFL-CIO, in challenging the constitutionality of the law, which went into effect Jan. 1. They are asking the U.S. District Court to immediately suspend the fines -- which the groups say could bankrupt their voter registration budgets. The challenged law imposes civil fines of $250 for each voter registration application submitted more than 10 days after it is collected, $500 for each application submitted after any voter registration deadline, and $5,000 for each application [not] submitted. Plaintiffs are strictly liable for these fines, even if their inability to meet the statutory deadlines results from events beyond their control, such as the destruction of applications in a hurricane."
Note: For more on serious risk of election fraud, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/electionsinformation and see this week's Newsweek article "Will Your Vote Count in 2006?"
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.