Top Stories
U.S. Rail Company Involved in Fatal Explosion was already Accident-Prone
Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway (MMA), the company involved in the derailment and explosions that killed an estimated 50 people in Lac-Mégantic, Québec, has been involved in eight derailments and four collisions in just the last three years in Canada, and another 10 derailments in the U.S. since 2003.
The national average of accidents per million miles of travel by railroads is 2.3 accidents in Canada. But for MMA, the rate is 34.7 accidents.
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NSA Spying on Latin American Countries Included Targeting of Trade Secrets
The account indicated that the NSA had collected military and security data on countries including Venezuela, while also carrying out surveillance operations to acquire trade secrets from within the oil industry in Venezuela and the energy sector in Mexico.
O Globo also published a story over the weekend saying Brazil was a major target of the NSA’s global spying on telecommunications, which involved the cooperation of American and Brazilian companies (which were not named).
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Pentagon Hides Files on Osama bin Laden Assassination
Information about the mission was stored at the Department of Defense (DoD) until Admiral William McRaven, the top U.S. Special Operations commander, ordered the files be purged from Pentagon computers and sent to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where it will be more difficult for the media and the American public to access them.
The move violates government rules regarding the archiving of official records and possibly the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
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Judicial Oversight of U.S. Spying Rests with One Man…John Roberts
Today’s FISC has Roberts’ imprint all over it—he’s appointed all of its members since becoming chief justice. Ten of the eleven FISC judges are Republicans and they are not subject to confirmation. When hearing cases, they only hear the government’s point of view. Opposing arguments are not presented. read more
Republican State Legislators Pass 40 Laws Restricting Abortion in First Half of 2013
Although national leaders of the GOP have been attempting to “rebrand” their party by emphasizing economic opportunity and downplaying social issues like marriage equality and abortion, Republican state legislators must have missed the memo. Since the beginning of the year, Republicans have spearheaded the passage of at least 40 new state laws intended to restrict access to abortion, including mandatory ultrasounds for pregnant women and expensive new regulations for clinics. read more
Postal Service Photographs Every Piece of Mail Sent in U.S.
The Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program was implemented following the 2001 Anthrax attacks that killed five people, including two postal workers. It involves computers used by the USPS that photograph the exterior of all paper mail processed in the U.S.
Last year, the Postal Service handled about 160 billion pieces of mail.
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The High Cost of Childbirth…Only in America
Americans are confronted with hospital costs for delivering a child that can range from $30,000 to $50,000, according to a new report commissioned by three health care groups.
In European countries, like France, the Netherlands and Switzerland, the cost tops out at $4,000 (assuming the mother does not require a Cesarean section). In others, like Ireland, there is no cost at public hospitals.
No other country comes close to spending so much on its next generation of citizens. read more
Montana becomes First State to Require Search Warrants for Cellphone Location Tracking
Montana has become the first state in the U.S. to require that police obtain a search warrant before using a person’s cellphone records to track their whereabouts.
Federal legislation—the Geolocational Privacy & Surveillance Act (pdf)—was recently introduced in Congress, but neither the House nor the Senate has taken it seriously so far.
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Report Claims Drones more likely to Kill Civilians than Manned Aircraft
Larry Lewis, a principal research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses, which has close ties to the Pentagon, examined a year’s worth of classified data regarding drone attacks and civilian deaths and injuries caused by them. The study contradicts what Obama proclaimed in a May speech that “conventional airpower or missiles are far less precise than drones, and likely to cause more civilian casualties and local outrage.” read more
Immigration Reform Bill Gives Big Money Straight to Largest Defense Contractors
Six airborne radar systems made by Northrop Grumman will be purchased, at a cost of $9.3 million a piece.
Helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky will benefit, too, from the legislation, through the Border Patrol buying 15 Black Hawks at $17 million each.
The government even has to buy 17 UH-1N helicopters from Bell Helicopter, even though the company no longer makes that particular model.
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Law Enforcement Budget Cutbacks: Organized Crime and Medicare Fraud
Organized crime has not gone away, and neither has Medicare fraud. But the Obama administration has decided to cut back on enforcement efforts in these two important crime-fighting areas.
Since organized crime members are the biggest perpetrators of Medicare fraud, these budget cutbacks have provided a double dose of good news for crime syndicates. read more
North Carolina becomes First State to Reject Federal Aid for Long-Term Unemployed
The new law cuts the maximum unemployment benefit by about one-third, from $535 a week to $350, and slashes the maximum weeks of benefits from 26 to a sliding scale between 12 and 20 weeks. Because the new law violates a federal requirement that states maintain current benefit amounts in order to qualify for extended federal benefits, the new law will stop benefits for about 70,000 workers who have exhausted their state benefits but cannot find a job. read more
The Precarious Life of Temp Workers
EMSI estimates that temps have accounted for 15% of job growth despite making up only 2% of the total U.S. workforce.
Grabell writes that the “overwhelming majority” of the temp job growth has been in “blue-collar work in factories and warehouses.”
In 1993, 60% of temp jobs were white-collar and 30% blue-collar. By 2012 the ratio had shifted to 47% blue-collar and 40% white-collar.
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Colorado Theater Shooting Judge Calls for 5,000 Potential Jurors
Judge Carlos Samour, who will preside over the case of accused shooter James Holmes, plans to call 5,000 potential jurors. By comparison, the ongoing trial of George Zimmerman in Florida for the killing of Trayvon Martin required a jury pool of only 500 and the current trial of mobster Whitey Bulger in Massachusetts started with a pool of 858 potential jurors. read more
Military Court Holds Session so Secret Defendant Can’t Attend
What made this legal event noteworthy was the fact that the defendant wasn’t even allowed to attend because prosecutors insisted the information being revealed was so secret that the hearing had to be completely closed.
After concluding the hearing, the military revealed only one thing to the media: that it lasted 78 minutes.
A Saudi millionaire, Nashiri has been in U.S. custody for 11 years.
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FBI Upgrades Latinos to their Own Category in Crime Reports
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will begin separating out arrests involving Latinos in their annual crime reports, doing for this ethnic group what the FBI has already done for whites, blacks and Asians.
Until now, it was impossible to know just how many Latinos were arrested and for what types of crimes because FBI tabulations only revealed numbers by race, which factored in Caucasians, African-Americans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans or Alaska Natives.
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