By Marcus Morgan | After the worst Spanish air tragedy in 25 years on Wednesday, accident investigators have begun examining the wreckage of the plane that crashed at Madrid’s Barajas airport, killing 153 passengers. Just 19 passengers have survived the crash, 5 of whom are said to be in a critical condition, with horrific injuries. The captain and co-pilot are confirmed among the dead. Flight JK5022 was bound for Las ...

With less than three months before the presidential election, the hotly contested state, Ohio, along with others, continue to have problems with E-voting technology By Larry Greenemeier  In their rush to avoid a repeat of the controversy that plagued the 2000 presidential election, and to meet the requirements of Congress's hastily mandated 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), states and counties flocked to electronic voting systems they hoped would eliminate ...

By Alex Lantier | US media claims about Georgian democracy notwithstanding, a key factor in US backing for Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in his conflict with Russia has been the emergence of Georgia as a key transit country for oil and gas exports from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea basin. The August 7 outbreak of hostilities between Georgia and Russia, as Georgia bombarded Russian peacekeepers in the breakaway Georgian ...

UCi | A team of UC Irvine scientists has been awarded a $4 million grant from the U.S. Army Research Office to study the neuroscientific and signal-processing foundations of synthetic telepathy. The research could lead to a communication system that would benefit soldiers on the battlefield and paralysis and stroke patients, according to lead researcher Michael D’Zmura, chair of the UCI Department of Cognitive Sciences. “Thanks to this generous grant we ...

Socialist Worker  | The threat to strike by 1,000 workers at the Tube Lines consortium on the London Underground over pay and conditions this week has won a new offer from bosses as Socialist Worker went to press. Theirs is a battle between those who provide a vital public service and the bosses who make a profit from it. A 72-hour strike is planned from 12 noon on Wednesday of ...

Stop the War Coalition | The UN's committee on human rights has just published a report criticising Britain's anti-terror laws and the resulting curbs on civil liberties. For many commentators the issues raised are mostly a matter of academic abstractions and speculative meanderings. For me, it is anything but. These laws have destroyed my life. On May 14 I was arrested under section 41 of the Terrorism Act - on ...

A group of 52 local activists today announced a $2 million settlement in their lawsuit against the City of New York. The activists were illegally arrested on April 7, 2003 while protesting against the Iraq war in front of a military contractor's offices in midtown. The settlement in Kunstler et al v. New York City follows the dismissal in 2003 of all criminal charges brought against these individuals and four ...

Corporate-government fraud has gotten a major boost ever since Iraq became the latest colony of the failing American Empire. "Iraq is fast becoming one of the United States' top customers for military sales," reports USA Today in an article called "Iraqis buy billions in U.S. arms." http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/ 2008-08-18-iraqtanks_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip "Since January 2007, Iraq has spent $3.1 billion on U.S. weapons. That number looks likely to grow exponentially as Iraq uses its vast unspent reserves of ...

PR Watch | The Center for Union Facts, one of lobbyist Rick Berman's front groups, is railing against the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation that would "allow employees at a work place to unionize as soon as a majority signs cards ...

By Phil Mattera | In April, I wrote about the efforts of my son Thomas and other students at the University of North Carolina to get UNC’s administration to endorse the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP), an initiative that seeks to improve the abysmal working conditions of employees at companies that produce university logo apparel—a big business for schools such as Carolina. After pressing the matter ...

By Daniel Soar | For a moment in the late 1990s, it looked as though mobile phones might make us free. You could work in the park, be available when you wanted to be, choose who you answered to. You could be anywhere while you did anything. If location was mentioned it was gratuitous chatter (‘I’m on the train!’) or a handy lie (‘I’m in the office’). Back then, ...

Legalise Cannabis Alliance | A BREAST cancer victim made medical history recently, as the first person in Scotland to be prescribed cannabis as a treatment for chronic pain. Former National Health Service nurse Jeanie Rae, 57, has been taking a purified extract of the controversial drug to treat the agonising nerve damage in her right arm caused by an operation and radiotherapy to beat her cancer. The pain left her virtually imprisoned ...

Werther | The first crisis over North Korea's nuclear program arose in late 1994. It was obvious there was not much the United States could do to step in unilaterally and disarm the North Korean regime. Sanctions, the normally inevitable option short of war, had no meaning – the United States had no trade with the North in the first place and the regime followed a policy of economic ...

The Public Record | Four months before the United States invaded Iraq, the Department of Defense was secretly working with Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton Corp., on a secret deal that would give the world's second largest oil services company total control over Iraq's oil fields, according to interviews with Halliburton's most senior executives. Previously undisclosed Halliburton documents obtained by The Public Record confirm that controlling the world's ...