Interior allows a dozen iconic national parks to reopen with state funding Washington Post ...What began as a sort of modern Sagebrush Rebellion — with Utah county commissioners threatening to bring in a posse and dismantle federal barricades themselves — has become an intense negotiation between Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and governors across the country eager to reopen public lands that generate valuable tourism revenue...
Over 865,200 Gallons of Fracked Oil Spill in ND, Public In Dark For Days Due to Government Shutdown Desmogblog.com ...Over 20,600 barrels of oil fracked from the Bakken Shale has spilled from aTesoro Logistics pipeline in Tioga, North Dakota in one of the biggest onshore oil spills in recent U.S. history. Though the spill occurred on September 29, the U.S. National Response Center- tasked with responding to chemical and oil spills - did not make the report available until October 8 due to the ongoing government shutdown...
Report Finds Police Worldwide Criminalize Dissent, Assert New Powers in Crackdown on Protests truthout ... the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations details a global crackdown on peaceful protests through excessive police force and the criminalization of dissent…. The case studies detailed in this report show how governments have reacted to peaceful protests in the United States, Israel, Canada, Argentina, Egypt, Hungary, Kenya, South Africa and Britain...
U.S. Said to Open Criminal Probe of FX Market Rigging Bloomberg ...The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation of possible manipulation of the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market, a person familiar with the matter said...
Stop the Presses: Apple Has Not Been Cleared on Tax Avoidance Charges Citizens for Tax Justice ...the SEC is now satisfied that Apple is not violating the rules in the disclosure of its tax circumstances to the agency, which has nothing to do with the legal validity of its tax avoidance methods more generally...
Anti-government anger fuels long-shot Maryland breakaway bid Reuters ...His Western Maryland Initiative is just one of several secession proposals that are emerging across the United States. Nearly a dozen rural Colorado counties have put nonbinding secession referendums on their November ballots. A split-off proposal for southern Florida has also been floated.
Some residents of northern California want to join with counties in southern Oregon to form their own state. Liberals in Tucson, Arizona, fed up with the conservative state governor and lawmakers, want out as well...
Power outage shuts U.S. food stamp program for hours in 17 states Reuters ...A brief power outage caused food stamp recipients in 17 states to lose access for much of Saturday to the electronic system used by stores to verify their benefits, leaving many unable to buy groceries, the company that manages the system said. The power outage that started the problem was fixed within 20 minutes, Xerox Corp spokesman Kevin Lightfoot said, but shoppers kept running into difficulties through the day...
Europe proposes more global governance to eclipse U.S. laws Trade Reform ...The European Union’s top trade official, in one of the first concrete proposals in the trade negotiations with the United States, called on Thursday for a new trans-Atlantic group that would coordinate the work of United States and European regulatory agencies...
France is pushing for a Europe-wide Google tax Quartz ...France is pushing for a the European Union as a whole to adopt a minimum tax on digital companies, which it will formally introduce at an EU summit meeting about the digital economy later this month...
China Exports Unexpectedly Drop Bloomberg ...China’s exports unexpectedly fell in September, signaling constraints from global demand and highlighting distortions from fake invoices that have yet to be eliminated from trade data...
Fast Food Workers Win a Union…through Zoolidarity BeyondChron ...Last month 142 mostly part-time food service workers, public employees at the Oregon Zoo, showed it could be done, winning a landslide election to join Laborers Local 483 in Portland. They join 137 already-union admissions and custodial employees at the zoo—about half of these are temps—doubling the size and power of the bargaining unit just in time for contract negotiations...
