The bacteria was found among 31 microbes in two fracking wells in different kinds of shale separated by hundreds of miles. Interestingly, the wells are owned by different energy companies that use different techniques. "We think that the microbes in each well may form a self-sustaining ecosystem," said professor Wrighton. "Drilling the well and pumping in fracturing fluid creates the ecosystem, but the microbes adapt to their new environment in a way to sustain the system over long periods."   read more

The proposed rules were in a long-awaited report released Thursday from the three largest banking regulatory agencies: the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The agencies were required to issue the report by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial overhaul. The report was supposed to be completed years ago. The most significant new rules were proposed by the Federal Reserve, which oversees all of the nation’s largest banks   read more

The amount of money spent on homeland security to prevent another 9/11 is staggering. But what's driving the spending upward is fear, not facts, said John Mueller, a senior scientist at the Mershon Center. The level of fear Americans feel -- fueled by politicians and news reports -- isn't supported by the actual terrorism threat. An American has a 1 in 4 million chance of being killed by a terrorist on U.S. soil. One is far more likely to die from lightning or getting struck by a deer.   read more

The approach has set off some complaints among patients, who rely on regular injections of the drugs to keep painful symptoms in check. But Express Scripts said that the move was necessary to contain costs. The drugs account for nearly 10% of all drug spending among its members — costing an estimated $7.5 billion — even though fewer than 1% of its members use them. The company said the move would require drug companies to compete more directly, pushing drug companies to offer better discounts.   read more

Advocacy groups said Texas’s education campaign was misleading voters into believing that voting would still be more difficult than it is. The reason is that the campaign omits the word “reasonably." That not only ignores the court’s order, but also leaves voters with the erroneous impression that they cannot vote unless they have exhausted every avenue to acquire an ID. The single word may seem a small matter, but the issue is not: More than 600,000 Texans have none of the required IDs.   read more

The dairy producers were accused of conspiring to prematurely slaughter more than 500,000 cows between 2003 and 2010 to limit the production of raw milk and drive up prices for yogurt, sour cream and other dairy products. "The biggest dairy producers in the country, responsible for almost 70 percent of the nation's milk, conspired together in a classic price-fixing scheme, forcing higher prices for a basic food item onto honest consumers and families," said attorney Steve Berman.   read more

Declaring a “moral obligation” to heal the wounds of a secret war, President Barack Obama on Tuesday pledged help to clear away the 80 million unexploded bombs the U.S. dropped on Laos a generation ago — more than 10 for every one of the country’s 7 million people. Obama announced the U.S. would double its spending on bomb-clearing efforts to $90 million over three years.   read more

“This is opening up a whole new can of worms — we have seen problems with security contractors on the battlefield since 9/11, and there’s been an improvement in oversight in that area, but that came after a decade of problems,” said law professor Laura A. Dickinson. “With drones, this is a new area where we already do not have a lot of transparency and with contractors operating drones there’s no clearly defined regime of oversight and accountability.”   read more

The NSO Group sells surveillance tools that can capture all smartphone activity, such as a user’s location and personal contacts. They can even turn the phone into a secret recording device. Last month, its spyware tried to gain access to the iPhone of a human-rights activist in the UAE. A second target was a Mexican journalist who wrote about corruption in the Mexican government. “There’s no check on this ... governments can essentially use them however they want," said Bill Marczak.   read more

Microsoft’s effort to rally support is part of a growing resistance by technology companies to government attempts to snoop on the electronic communications of their customers. Microsoft president Brad Smith said the company was grateful for the support of 80 signatories. “It’s not every day that Fox News and the ACLU are on the same side of an issue,” he said. “We believe...people should know when the government accesses their emails unless secrecy is truly needed,”   read more

The Obama administration has spent three years arguing that showing the treaty's corporate fingerprints to the public would threaten national security by shining a light on secret negotiations between a dozen world powers. But Judge Ramos splashed cold water on those fears on Wednesday. Critics of the deal have noted that the treaty is so vast and sweeping that it can hardly be called a "trade" deal at all, but a bid by transnational businesses to loosen regulatory constraints.   read more

Cluster bombs, used since World War II to kill and maim indiscriminately, were outlawed under a 2008 international treaty. Most of the world’s countries have signed the treaty, but not the U.S. and Russia, where many of the bombs were made. A report released Thursday in Geneva found that the weapons continued to be used with near impunity in the conflicts in Syria and Yemen. In June, a provision to ban the transfer of such munitions to Saudi Arabia was defeated in the House of Representatives.   read more

The Baltimore report found that officers end up in unnecessarily violent confrontations with mentally disabled people who in many instances haven't even committed crimes. In one of the instances cited, an officer sprayed mace to force a troubled person — said by his father to be unarmed and off his medications — out of an apartment. The report was the first time the Justice Dept. has explicitly found that a police department's policies violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.   read more

The figures should be seen as under-estimates of the total spent. DoD routinely fails to publish records of significant amounts of foreign military assistance and contracts. For instance, the DoD published contracts for small arms and munitions purchases for Iraq and Afghanistan that if fulfilled totaled just $277,795,299. Such shortfalls highlight the lack of accountability and transparency that exists at the very heart of the US government’s weapon procurement and distribution systems.   read more

Not all college prep companies are playing by the rules. In their investigative series for Reuters, a team of reporters found that foreign companies are increasingly helping students game the U.S. college application process. Some companies have leaked questions from college entrance exams to their students before they take the test. Others have gone so far as to ghostwrite entire college applications and complete coursework for students when they arrive on campus.   read more

"We never had any idea we were being recorded," said public defender Cardarella. "This has had a chilling effect." A federal judge said the recordings might have violated the Sixth Amendment rights of hundreds of inmates and ordered them stopped. Kansas Public Defender Melody Brannon called the intrusion into attorney-client privilege "unprecedented." "We couldn't find anything even comparable to the degree of invasion and misconduct by the government that is before the court," she said.   read more