U.S. and the World

Widely Cited Report from Defunct U.S. Agency Exaggerates Mexican Drug Cartel Presence in U.S.

Law enforcement officials and drug policy analysts told the newspaper that the figure was inflated because NDIC relied on self-reporting by police, instead of using documented criminal cases involving Mexican drug-trafficking organizations. Some local police chiefs were surprised to learn that the NDIC claimed cartels were operating in their cities. “That’s news to me,” Randy Sobel, chief of police in Middleton, New Hampshire, told the Post. read more

Obama Administration Accused of Bowing to Tobacco Industry in Secret Trade Talks

Public health advocates, anti-tobacco activists and corporate watchdog groups are criticizing the Obama administration for capitulating to big tobacco lobbyists by gutting a proposal to ensure that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) cannot be used to undermine anti-smoking laws and regulations. The TPP is a broad trade treaty being negotiated—in secret—by the U.S. and 11 other countries. read more

Convicted of Funding Chechen Independence Group, Oregon Man Wins Retrial Due to FBI Misconduct

Prosecutors withheld “significant impeachment evidence” by not disclosing that key witness Barbara Cabral—whose testimony was the only evidence directly linking Seda to the Chechen mujahedeen—had been paid $14,500 by the FBI. “The records of the FBI’s payments…would have shaded the jurors’ perceptions of Cabral's credibility,” wrote Judge M. Margaret McKeown. read more

British Agents Supervised Destruction of Guardian’s Computers to Disrupt NSA Reporting

Rusbridger told the BBC News that “given that there were other copies and we could work out of America, which has better laws to protect journalists, I saw no reason not to destroy this material ourselves rather than hand it back to the government.” He also said that there is little point in fighting the government in court. read more

Most Americans Who Speak Non-English Languages at Home also Speak English “Very Well”

In a new Census Bureau report, the government calculated that 58.2% of U.S. residents age five and older who speak a language other than English at home speak English “very well” and another 19.4% speak English “well.” read more

Appeals Court Rules that Wealthy Landowners are a Legitimate Persecuted Class when Seeking Asylum

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that two rich men from Latin America, Edgar René Córdoba and Antonio Medina-González, can seek asylum because they had been targeted for extortion and kidnapping by a drug cartel and anti-government rebels. read more

Accused Torture Contractor Sues Abu Ghraib Torture Victims

CACI convinced a judge last month to throw out the lawsuit by four Iraqis after it was determined that the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, lacked jurisdiction because the alleged abuse occurred overseas. The contractor now wants the plaintiffs to pay for $15,580 of its legal expenses, which largely relate to depositions CACI took. read more

Does U.S. Pay Compensation when it Kills Innocent Civilians in Yemen? It’s None of our Business

In the past two weeks alone, as many as six civilians died from a recent surge in drone strikes that totaled nine missions. But neither the White House nor the Department of Defense will reveal if American tax dollars are going to survivors of such attacks. read more

Is it Fair to Deport Veterans who Break the Law?

Retired Air Force General Richard B. Myers told The Washington Post that deporting veterans “is not fair, and it’s not appropriate for who we are as a people.” “One thing America has always done is revere its veterans,” he said. “To say to them, ‘You swore to support and defend the Constitution and put your life on the line for the rest of us. But you’re not a citizen. So, too bad. You’re gone.’ I just think that’s not us.” read more

Obama Administration Uses 5-Year-Old Wire Transfer of $8,500 to Justify Phone Call Data Surveillance

“There’s no reason why NSA needed to have its own database containing the phone records of millions of innocent Americans in order to get the information related to Moalin,” said Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colorado), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who has been critical of the spying. “It could have just as easily gone directly to the phone companies with an individualized court order.” read more

Tar Sands Oil Extraction Uses more Water than Entire City of Toronto

In order to extract oil from tar sands, oil companies use super-heated water to carry out this separation process. Two years ago, these operations sucked about 370 million cubic meters of water (or 2.3 billion barrels) from the Athabasca River, which is more that the amount of water that the city of Toronto, with a population 2.8 million people, uses annually. Tar sands companies get this water for free, needing only a license from the province of Alberta. read more

Steep U.S. Medical Costs Send Americans Overseas for Affordable Surgery

Stumpf-Biro said the cost of American medical care is a big reason, “but the main driving factor is quality and a common background.” Michael Shopenn went to Belgium in 2007 for hip replacement surgery. If he elected to have the surgery in the U.S., the cost would have approached $100,000. But in Belgium he paid only $13,660, which included all medicine, doctors’ fees and round-trip airfare. read more

German Spy Agency Supplies NSA with Daily Trove of Surveillance Data

Although the BND and NSA have been working hand-in-hand—with American agents providing German agents with training as well as its secret surveillance technology—the issue as to whether it is Germany or the U.S. that is the primary director of this intelligence gathering remains murky. The BND took over NSA-operated surveillance sites controlled by the BND on German soil and has been passing along its collected data to the NSA. read more

Is the U.S. Prison in Afghanistan an Overlooked Version of Guantánamo?

The U.S. still holds 67 non-Afghan detainees at the facility. The question now is what to do with these individuals, most of whom are from Pakistan and deemed too dangerous to release by the administration. This despite the fact that informal military review boards cleared many of them, the newspaper reported. None of them have been put on trial. Unlike the prisoners at Guantánamo, those at Bagram do not have habeas corpus rights. read more

Ex-CIA Agent Accuses Top Bush Officials of Approving Kidnapping in Italy and then Abandoning those who Followed Orders

Senior CIA officials, including then-CIA Director George Tenet, approved the operation even though Nasr wasn’t wanted in Egypt and wasn’t on the U.S. list of top al-Qaeda terrorists. Condoleezza Rice, then the White House national security adviser, also had misgivings about the case, especially what Italy would do if the CIA were caught, but she eventually agreed to it and recommended that President Bush approve the abduction. read more

U.S. Congress Authorizes the Sale of 16 Drones to France for $1.5 Billion

Although the proposal sent to Congress lists 16 drones for the sum of $1.5 billion, this is in fact an overestimate, as is often the case in arms deals, in order to allow a partner to order additional hardware without having to reapply to Congress. The initial acquisition project actually involves only 12 drones. The French government wants to deploy two drones by the end of the year in the Sahel, a region in north-central Africa, south of the Sahara Desert. read more