, polls showed Democrats to be slightly more popular than Republicans, 44% versus 40%. But that didn’t stop the onslaught of losses by Democratic candidates in battleground states. Voters were angry and they took it out on many incumbents, including some Senate Democrats who came into office in the Obama wave of 2008.   read more

Dr. Margaret Chan, director of the World Health Organization, said the drive for profits by drug makers prevented an Ebola vaccination solution from being available by now. “A profit-driven industry does not invest in products for markets that cannot pay,” she said. “WHO has been trying to make this issue visible for ages. Now people can see for themselves.” Chan has called the Ebola crisis “the most severe acute public health emergency seen in modern times.”   read more

Nearly 300 cities and counties have informed the Department of Homeland Security that they won’t cooperate with immigration requests to hold someone for deportation consideration. In addition, officials in three states—California, Colorado and Connecticut—have adopted the same policy of noncompliance. More than half of the nation’s 22 million immigrants live in the 300 jurisdictions defying DHS. These include the cities of New York, Los Angeles and Miami.   read more

The provision that would allow a judge in one district to authorize searches of computers in another would allow the bureau to go “judge shopping” for one who might be most likely to grant a warrant. Some civil rights activists are concerned that such a significant rule change is being decided by such an obscure panel with little public notice.   read more

The United States’ high rate of child poverty earned it a poor ranking by UNICEF, which listed it at 36th out of 41 wealthy nations. Thirty-two percent of all U.S. children reside in households that have annual incomes below 60% of the national median income for 2008, or $31,000, UNICEF reported (pdf). In some states, the rate is even higher. New Mexico’s is 41.9%, the worst in the country. New Hampshire has the best rate, at 12.5%.   read more

Pennsylvania residents living less than two-thirds of a mile from natural-gas wells were much more likely to report skin and upper-respiratory problems than people living farther away. In Colorado, 30% more congenital heart defects were found in babies born to mothers in areas with natural gas wells. And the state of West Virginia reported benzene levels above what’s considered safe near four of seven gas well sites where air samples were recorded.   read more

The king of shadowy campaign spending this election is the nation’s leading big business lobby, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “When large corporations decide they want to get their own candidates into office but they don’t want to be seen doing it, they call the U.S. Chamber,” said Lisa Gilbert. “These politicians then push for anti-environmental, anti-consumer, and anti-health policies.” As of October 25, the Chamber has spent $31.8 million.   read more

Last year alone, USPS approved nearly 50,000 “mail cover” requests from police and agency inspectors to secretly monitor individuals’ mail for criminal and national security investigations. Law enforcement agencies have stepped up use of mail covers as part of counterterrorism and criminal cases since 9/11. But the scope of the surveillance was not previously known to be so widespread, nor was the absence of oversight from potential abuses.   read more

As the old saying goes, as temperatures rise, tempers flare. That adage also applies to the effects of global warming on the human condition. Researchers found 55 credible studies linking increases in violence with rising global temperatures. Those increases ranged from personal conflicts (domestic violence, road rage, assault, murder, and rapes) to country or group conflicts, including riots, ethnic violence, invasions, gang violence and civil wars.   read more

Federal law enforcement has increasingly used a key provision of the Patriot Act to pry into people’s lives without having to tell them. This practice has been justified under the guise of counterterrorism, but government statistics show that less than 1% of all “sneak and peek” actions involve suspected terrorists. Only 51 such requests during 2013 were for terrorism out of 11,129 total requests that year. The biggest reason for the warrants was to investigate drug crimes.   read more

Anti-abortionists have tried in several states to up the stakes in the fight to end women’s right to control their bodies by pushing new laws that would define human life as beginning at conception. After several defeats, they might finally succeed next month in North Dakota. However the wording of the amendment doesn’t mention abortion. Instead, it reads: “The inalienable right to life of every human being at any stage of development must be recognized and protected.”   read more

The United States looks a little better if you add in the number of senators. Twenty of the 100 senators are women, giving the U.S. 18.6% female representation overall. But adding in upper chambers for all legislatures allows Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Ireland and Bahrain to vault over the United States in the rankings and puts 103 nations ahead of the United States on the list.   read more

Acting Inspector General Michael Carroll got into trouble when he censored portions of an investigation involving pro-democracy groups in Egypt. A confidential draft of the report included a $4.6 million payoff to the Egyptian government. But the final version of the report contained nothing about it. Reportedly the State Department had wanted to keep the entire audit from public view. Some auditors claimed that Carroll didn’t want to rock the boat as he awaited Senate confirmation.   read more

Private security guards employed by Blackwater Worldwide, in 2007, opened fire in the middle of a busy Baghdad intersection, killing 17 Iraqis. This week four of the security guards were convicted in a U.S. federal court on charges ranging from murder to use of an automatic weapon. “This verdict is a resounding affirmation of the commitment of the American people to the rule of law, even in times of war,” said U.S. attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr.   read more

No matter how you look at it, the economic picture for most of America is not good. Saddled with growing amounts of mortgage, consumer credit and student debt, the 90% has had little in the way of extra money to put into savings, says a new study. In fact, the savings rate by those in the lower 90% is about zero. By comparison, the top 1% of families put aside about 35% of their income. The authors say that income inequality will increase as long as the middle-class savings rate remains low.   read more

“Among those receiving Social Security benefits were SS troops who guarded the network of Nazi camps where millions of Jews perished, a rocket scientist accused of using slave laborers...and a Nazi collaborator who engineered the...execution of thousands of Jews in Poland,” reported AP. Still getting Social Security payments from the U.S. government are Martin Hartmann, former SS guard at the Sachsenhausen camp; Jakob Denzinger, former guard at Auschwitz; and Wasyl Lytwyn of the Nazi SS.   read more