When Pope John Paul II visited Damascus in May 2001, Bashar used his welcoming speech to denounce the Jews, saying, “They tried to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality in which they betrayed Jesus Christ and the same way they tried to betray and kill the Prophet Muhammad.”   read more

Weeks of violent protests in Peru have ended after the government agreed to revoke two key elements of a free trade agreement with the United States that threatened to open up the country’s Amazonian forests to foreign oil and mineral interests. I...   read more

Franklin Roosevelt made Wall Street good and angry with his overhaul of the financial system and the imposition of strong government oversight during the New Deal. But one can hardly imagine bankers getting little more than ruffled over President ...   read more

Lt. Col. Deanna Violette became the first woman to assume command of a fighter squadron in the U.S. Air Force on Thursday, taking control of the 13th Air Support Operations Squadron at Fort Carson, CO. Violette is a product of the military’s decis...   read more

It took nearly eight hours and a record-setting 53 votes, but the House of Representatives finally approved the first appropriations bill for the FY 2010 budget on Thursday. Although the $64.4 billion bill was not without importance—providing fund...   read more

After years of negotiations with local officials, an off-the-grid collective in Austin, TX, has won approval for the city’s first officially-sanctioned “humanure” toilet—a modern day outhouse that uses no running water. Built by the Rhizome Collec...   read more

The small town of Libby, Montana, home to one of the worst cases of asbestos contamination in the country, has prompted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to declare its first-ever public health emergency. Coming under the Comprehensive Envi...   read more

Although its ruling rejected any constitutional right to DNA testing by prisoners, a U.S. Supreme Court decision on Thursday is not expected to drastically affect efforts by inmates across the country to challenge their convictions through genetic...   read more

Despite President Barack Obama’s pledge to improve the system of processing benefits claims for veterans, and hiring thousands more adjusters, the Department of Veterans Affairs has almost a million unprocessed requests piling up on its desks. A c...   read more

This is one reunion Tom Hayden and the remaining members of the Chicago Seven probably won’t be attending. Next Friday the Fraternal Order of Police is planning a “Chicago Riot Cops Reunion” to bring together and celebrate the men in blue who part...   read more

Twenty-five years after one of the world’s worst chemical accidents, the city of Bhopal is still struggling to get the American corporate owners of the plant that spilled deadly fumes to clean up the mess left behind. A delegation from India, incl...   read more

When the new commander of the war in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, testified before Congress last week, he gave lawmakers the impression that he was not a supporter of the torture methods employed by the military against insurgents in ...   read more

Who would have thought with the arrival of President Barack Obama and his pledge to make government more open and honest, that the most precarious job in Washington would become that of inspectors general (IG)? Since the Obama administration took ...   read more

Medtronic, already under investigation by the Justice Department and Congress for allegedly using illegal marketing practices to promote their Infuse Bone Graft, has admitted to making $788,280 in direct payments and about $64,000 in expense payme...   read more

With things deadlocked 31-31 between Democrats and Republicans in the New York state Senate, newly imposed Senate President Pedro Espada, Jr. (D) announced on Tuesday that he should be given two votes to end the legislative gridlock. Even though E...   read more

With the nation’s prisons bulging with convicts, many of whom wind up back behind bars after being released, isn’t it time to try a different approach to operating correctional facilities, argues writer Pamela Gerloff. The current system just isn’...   read more

It turns out that the United States wasn’t the only government conducting interrogations of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. With the permission of the Bush administration, representatives of the People’s Republic of China were allowed in 2002 t...   read more