In an attempt to end the war caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. President Donald Trump has offered to return Alaska to Russia in exchange for Russia pulling its troops from Eastern Ukraine. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin said he would agree to the proposal if Trump also returned Fort Ross and the Russian River in California, Russia sold Fort Ross to Mexican citizen John Sutter in 1841.   read more

German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that her country would consider establishing new data networks in Europe that could shield individuals’ private communications from NSA prying. Merkel said her proposal would create European systems that would keep emails and other communications from passing through U.S. networks that the NSA taps into for intelligence purposes.   read more

The administration of Ohio Gov. John Kasich has been accused of covering up its role in a controversial plan to promote fracking in state parks and marginalize organizations opposed to the drilling. Government documents show several state agencies were involved in a PR strategy to help gas companies seeking rights to drill on public lands. A communications plan called for a coordinated effort between the state and industry to push for fracking and attack environmentalists opposed to it.   read more

The disparity between rich and poor Americans is most prominently on display in the nation’s urban powerhouses like New York, San Francisco, and other cities thriving economically. In contrast, income inequality is not as big a problem in cities with more modest economic outcomes, like Columbus, Ohio, and Wichita, Kansas. Essentially, cities said to be “vibrant” because of their total amount of income don’t do a very good job of sharing their wealth.   read more

The General Services Administration says it’s willing to pay $90,000 for solutions to bringing down Washington’s annual travel cost of $9 billion. Anyone with ideas can go to a new GSA website, Travel Data Challenge, which is operated by the agency’s Office of Governmentwide Policy. The person(s) with the best idea will receive $35,000, while the runner up will get $30,000 and the honorable mention $25,000.   read more

“It's using these small devices...to get up in the air and get a perspective on a news event," said Matt Waite. "You can think of floods, forest fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, anything with a large spatial extent.” “They’re starting to see them being used around the world at large protests in Thailand, at the super-typhoon, even in sporting events in Australia. [But] there are a large number of...questions that need to be answered before you will see this being done in a widespread fashion.”   read more

Officials in Lithuania have decided to investigate whether the Baltic nation participated in the CIA secret rendition program of harboring terrorism suspects at “black site” prisons. The decision marks a turnaround for Lithuania, which previously refused to probe its government’s involvement in the counterterrorism scheme. Lithuanian prosecutors are trying to learn if detainee Mustafa al-Hawsawi was imprisoned at a secret CIA location between 2004 and 2006.   read more

Imperial farmers are growing vast amounts of the hay for export to China and other countries. In doing so, the state is indirectly exporting billions of gallons of water overseas, due to alfalfa’s water-hungry biology. “It’s a huge amount. It’s enough for a year’s supply for a million families — it’s a lot of water, particularly when you’re looking at the dreadful drought throughout the South-west,” said University of Arizona's Robert Glennon.   read more

Donna Busche was the head of nuclear safety for cleaning up the former nuclear weapons site at Hanford, Washington. Her termination came after she repeatedly warned company executives that the radioactive-waste solution being used was flawed and posed safety problems. “The Energy Department’s overall safety culture is broken and all they are doing now is sitting idly by,” she said.   read more

Police argued Miranda was subject to the anti-terror law because he was “likely to be involved in espionage activity” and was “knowingly carrying material, the release of which would endanger people’s lives” and was promoting a “political or ideological cause.” “The clause in this act is not meant to be used as a catch-all that can be used in this way,” countered Parliament's Tom Watson. “It’s almost impossible...to conclude that [he] was a terrorist suspect.”   read more

Top officials at the IRS have taken tax deductions on travel-related expenses they were not entitled to under the law, according to the IRS’s watchdog agency. Many IRS executives had improperly classified their travel as something other than “long-term taxable travel” (LTTT). The audit discovered that nine out of 31 IRS senior executives did not use LTTT to avoid paying taxes in 2011 and 2012. Three other employees were faulted for not submitting their records on time.   read more

Police in two northeast states will now have to obtain a warrant before tracking a suspect’s cellphone location to monitor their movements. Massachusetts’ Supreme Court ruled this week that individuals enjoy the right to privacy when it comes to their cell phones and for the government to not follow their whereabouts through such technology—unless a court approves this kind of surveillance. The ruling was very similar to one by New Jersey’s highest court.   read more

The Keystone XL pipeline has hit a major snag in Nebraska, where a local judge threw out the governor’s approval for the project to cut through the state and kick landowners off their property. Environmentalists have opposed Keystone, arguing it would transport “dirty oil” that would contribute to global warming, harm wildlife, ruin underground water supplies, and risk the danger of oil spills on U.S. lands.   read more

Anyone who has visited the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.org may have had their online activity secretly monitored by the NSA and its British intelligence counterpart, GCHQ. This campaign included collecting the IP addresses of any individual who visited the WikiLeaks website “in real time, as well as the search terms that visitors used to reach the site from search engines like Google,” according to a report drawn from classified materials exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.   read more

The plan sparked objections from privacy advocates who feared the program would track the movements of ordinary citizens not suspected of criminal activity. “‘Build it first and worry about privacy and purpose later’—it is the same disease that has infected the NSA and so much of our government," said law professor Fred Cate. "This type of dragnet search is the modern equivalent of the general search that [the Constitution’s] framers were so anxious to guard against.”   read more

A fracking well owned by Chevron blew up last week near a rural Pennsylvania community, terrifying many local residents. For their terror the people of Bobtown got a letter of apology from the billion-dollar oil giant—and a coupon for a free pizza. But Chevron’s generosity did not stop there. The coupon also entitled recipients to a 2-liter bottle of soda.   read more

A dozen different industrial chemicals may each cause brain damage in children, according to new medical research. That research shows exposure to many toxic chemicals can create neurodevelopmental disabilities in kids, including autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. “Large numbers of children...are affected by toxic damage to brain development,” said Philippe Grandjean. “They suffer reduced attention span, delayed development and poor school performance."   read more