Month: <span>October 2020</span>

Alumni and students of Britain’s Oxford University are up in arms over the school’s deferral of a plea to pull shares of its $3.9 billion endowment from fossil fuel companies. Following the University Council decision on Monday to postpone the matter of divestment to a “future meeting,” a number of alumni swiftly claimed occupation of…

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Thousands of people left homeless in Vanuatu last weekend after a deadly cyclone ripped through the cluster of islands in the South Pacific were still waiting for relief on Friday. As the confirmed death toll from the hurricane rose to 13, many survivors were still taking refuge in homeless shelters, while Vanuatu’s government began distributing…

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The Seattle City Council resoundingly approved a resolution Monday evening cementing its opposition to so-called Fast Track authority that’s needed to speed passage of corporate-friendly, rights-trampling trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The resolution (pdf), which passed the nine-member council unanimously, expresses concern with the “closed-door manner” in which that 12-nation pact is being…

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As California Governor Jerry Brown this week instituted the state’s first-ever mandatory restrictions on water usage to combat its historic four-year drought, environmental activists are pointing out two glaring exemptions from the order: the fossil fuel and agriculture industries. Brown’s mandate, announced Wednesday, directs cities and communities to cut down their water consumption by 25…

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Award-winning Uruguayan writer and thinker Eduardo Galeano, considered a leading voice of Latin America’s left, has died at 74. The world-renowned author, who had been diagnosed with lung cancer, died in Montevideo on Monday. The novelist and journalist—whose work transcended genre and who once said “all written work constitutes literature, even graffiti”—was the prolific author…

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The World Bank regularly broke its own promises to protect Indigenous rights around the globe by funding projects that displaced or threatened the livelihood of millions of the most vulnerable people on the planet, a new investigation has found. Evicted and Abandoned, a joint report published Thursday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and…

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For the first time ever, California’s state water board on Wednesday approved mandatory water conservation rules in the face of a historic drought, now entering its fourth year. But the regulations, which will require water usage cutbacks of up to 36 percent for some communities, are letting the worst environmental offender in the state—the agriculture…

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Four years after U.S. forces assassinated Osama bin Laden, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has published an explosive piece claiming much of what the Obama administration said about the attack was wrong. Hersh claims at the time of the U.S. raid, bin Laden had been held as a prisoner by Pakistani intelligence since 2006….

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At least one small slice of the American public looks forward to the non-stop, sleazy political advertisements set to inundate viewers during the 2016 elections: media executives and their investors. Peter Liguori, the chief executive of Tribune Company, said earlier this month that the next presidential campaign presents “enormous opportunity” for advertising sales. Speaking at…

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The Patriot Act will expire at midnight tonight unless Congress takes action today. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) pledged Saturday to “force the expiration” of the goverment spying laws – ensuring that they would lapse, despite a rare 4 PM Sunday Senate session to try and make one last attempt at renewing them. Under Senate rules,…

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