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Fukushima Reactor 4 poses massive global risk
Andy Johnson, CTVNews.ca
Date: Saturday May. 19, 2012 8:20 PM ET

More than a year after a devastating earthquake and tsunami triggered a massive nuclear disaster, experts are warning that Japan isn’t out of the woods yet and the worst nuclear storm the world has ever seen could be just one earthquake away from reality.

The troubled Reactor 4 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is at the centre of this potential catastrophe.

Reactor 4 — and to a lesser extent Reactor 3 — still hold large quantities of cooling waters surrounding spent nuclear fuel, all bound by a fragile concrete pool located 30 metres above the ground, and exposed to the elements.

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Members Of Congress Speak Like High School Sophomores, Sunlight Foundation Report Says
The Huffington Post | By Amanda Terkel Posted: 05/21/2012 10:07 am Updated: 05/21/2012 11:10 am

The sophistication of federal lawmakers’ speech patterns is on the decline, with members of Congress now talking, on average, at the level of high school sophomores. According to a new report by the Sunlight Foundation, Congress has fallen by almost a full grade-level since 2005.

The members speaking at the lowest grade levels tend to be freshmen Republicans.

As NPR noted on Monday, “Of the 10 members speaking at the lowest grade level, all but two are freshmen, and every one is a Republican.” That measurement is for all speeches since 1996.

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Chicago police accused of planting evidence in ‘Molotov cocktail’ plot
Police say men planned to target Obama election HQ but supporters of the men say they intended to protest at the Nato summit
Staff and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 19 May 2012 21.15 EDT

Lawyers for three protesters arrested on terrorist-related charges ahead of the Nato summit have accused police of entrapping them and encouraging an alleged bomb-making effort.

The three were arrested on Wednesday night when members of theChicago police department battered their way into an apartment in the Bridgeport area of the city.

According to court documents released on Saturday, the three men considered targeting Barack Obama’s re-election headquarters and the home of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel.

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Fracker Range Resouces Sues Over YouTube of Burning Well
By Mark Drajem and Mike Lee on May 18, 2012

Steven Lipsky shot video of methane- fueled flames shooting from a hose hooked up to his well in Weatherford, Texas, and sent it to Sharon Wilson, a blogger who posted it on YouTube. And he hired Alisa Rich to test the water in his well and alert the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

For gas-driller Range Resources Corp. — which Lipsky blames for contaminating his water from two wells near his home — those actions amount to a conspiracy to harm its reputation, and it went to state court seeking $3 million in damages from Lipsky and Rich.

Range won one round in its fight this week, when a judge ruled that Wilson had to turn over e-mails she exchanged with the EPA and Lipsky, as she is a “central and recurring character in the conspiracy lawsuit.”

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Alabama Judicial Scandal Could Taint Many Cases, Not Just Siegelman’s
By Andrew Kreig

An Alabama newspaper exposed a scandal May 16 that deserves national prominence. The headline was “Federal judge’s lengthy affair with court worker is exposed.”

This is a scandal not simply for the judge, Mark Everett Fuller, shown at right in a photo by my research colleague Phil Fleming. It is a lifetime shame for those in the Justice Department, federal court system and the United States Senate who have coddled and protected him for an entire decade during his obvious previous disgraces.

It was fully a decade ago that Fuller was first accused by Alabama’s pension officials at their highest level of trying to bilk the system out of $330,000. Yet Alabama’s two senators pushed Fuller forward for a lifetime appointment, which Fuller received from voice vote by the United States Senate with no serious discussion of his past. Fuller and his court staff were even able to hide from public view a 180-page impeachment filing against him in 2003 with no apparent attempt at investigation.

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Quebec passes ‘emergency bill’ on student protests

The provincial government of Quebec has passed emergency legislation to curtail the most sustained student protests in Canadian history.

The law will shut some universities early and impose fines on protesters blocking students from classes.

Thousands of people protested in the streets of Montreal on Friday after the 68-48 vote.

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Not that it makes any practical difference.

MCM

Congressmen Seek To Lift Propaganda Ban

Michael Hastings | BuzzFeed Staff
Posted May 18, 2012 4:27pm EDT

An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed has learned.

The amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon, according to the summary of the law at the House Rules Committee’s official website.

The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.

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Pharoah Bloomberg: Paying Workers Enough to Live Is ‘Communism’
By Sarah Jaffe, AlterNet
Posted on May 18, 2012, Printed on May 19, 2012

To a few hundred New York workers laboring for $8 or $9 an hour, a living wage bill recently passed by the city council means a raise, a few dollars more a week to help feed their families.

To billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg, it’s a wedge to open the door to communism. That’s right — the mayor told a local radio program that requiring businesses that get taxpayer subsidies to pay their workers a little bit more is just like a centrally planned economy. “The last time we really had a big managed economy was the USSR, and that didn’t work out so well,” Bloomberg said.

Bloomberg is just fine with handing over millions of New Yorkers’ dollars in taxpayer subsidies to companies that threaten to flee the city — no complaints about “free market” capitalism when it’s wealthy real estate developers getting the dough. Requiring those businesses that are happily slurping at the public trough to pay their workers a dollar or two more an hour, though, is just opening the door to Stalin.

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Three anti-NATO protesters face terrorism charges
By Eric Johnson
CHICAGO | Sat May 19, 2012 12:27pm EDT

May 19 (Reuters) – Three anti-NATO protesters arrested in a late-night raid days before start of the 60-nation summit have been charged with terrorism for possession of explosive devices, police and their attorney said on Saturday.

But supporters of the three men arrested Wednesday evening at a residence in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago disputed the charges and said the police had confused beer-making equipment with explosives.

The Chicago Police Department said the men were charged on Friday with conspiracy to commit terrorism, providing material support for terrorism, and possession of an explosive incendiary device. They were the only people charged among a group of nine arrested at the same time.

“The charges are utterly ridiculous. CPD doesn’t know the difference between home beer-making supplies and Molotov cocktails,” said Natalie Wahlberg, a member of the Occupy Chicago movement protesting over income inequality.

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