Speaking to a chamber that included Republicans who refused to take up a bipartisan reform bill last year, the Catholic leader urged U.S. lawmakers to listen to “human examples and consider them in the context of U.S. history and the Bible.”
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By Gareth Porter, Middle East Eye —
Credible challenges to claims that Iran sanitized a site of all traces of nuclear material suggest that U.S. officials sought to cover their tracks for a day when international inspectors report discovering nothing incriminating.
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In a speech titled “On Power and Ideology” delivered at The New School for Social Research in Manhattan on Saturday, world-renowned political dissident Noam Chomsky discussed the persistent notion of U.S. exceptionalism, Republican efforts to torpedo the Iran nuclear deal, and the normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations.
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By Nick Turse, TomDispatch —
They belong to the special operations forces, America’s most elite troops. And odds are, if you throw a dart at a world map or stop a spinning globe with your index finger and don’t hit water, they’ve been there sometime in 2015.
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By Kieran Cooke, Climate News Network —
As momentum builds for a new deal on climate change, investors are becoming increasingly nervous about having their cash in fossil fuels.
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If you have a tattoo, you no longer have to worry about it dying out with your body, thanks to a new service; a piece explains why we’re unable to keep pharmaceutical companies from charging absurd amounts for drugs; meanwhile, a year after the Ayotzinapa disappearances in Mexico, relatives of the missing students are still seeking justice. These discoveries and more after the jump.
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By Juan Cole — In his White House address on Wednesday, Pope Francis again brought up the urgent issue of global warming, linking climate change not only to the general welfare of people on earth but especially to the fate of the “excluded”—i.e., the poor.
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By Annie Waldman, ProPublica —
Many Catholic colleges leave low-income students with big debts. And wealthy Catholic schools that provide generous support don’t enroll many poor students.
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By Bill Boyarsky — Whether a Truthdig series had anything to do with it or not, the mayor has committed to finding $100 million to get 10,000 people off the streets and into programs to help them.
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Volkswagen’s rigging of emissions tests for 11 million cars may be responsible for up to nearly a million tons of air pollution a year worldwide, according to a Guardian analysis.
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Saudi Arabia has been accused of human rights abuses for decades, from suppressing dissent to beheading people for minor crimes. So why has it been appointed to head a U.N. human rights panel?
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Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli is being called the most hated man in America for raising the price of the HIV drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill. Now his earlier pricing decisions are being examined. It is being reported that one such decision led to a 2,000 percent price increase for a medication taken by children suffering from a rare kidney disease.
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At the start of his weeklong visit to the United States, The New York Times notes that the pontiff is inspiring support ranging from respectful to enthusiastic from people across religious traditions.
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By Ellen Brown, Web of Debt —
Economists predict that we will soon see the direct injection of central bank-created money into the real economy worldwide. All other options having failed, governments will cover budget deficits by issuing money outright.
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By Tim Radford, Climate News Network —
If Arctic soils melt and release frozen carbon, the impact would cost almost half the world’s annual gross domestic product, researchers say.
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By Douglas Lain —
To grasp the work of the groundbreaking economist and philosopher, we have to go beyond his image and do more than just intuit what is right in his work.
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Shelley Puhak updates James Wright’s “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” to give it a modern political twist. The full title of her poem is “Channeling James Wright Near a Sand Mining Site in Minnesota.”
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On Sunday, she became the first black woman ever to win an Emmy Award for best actress in a drama series, and she used her time onstage to make a powerful political statement about what it’s like to be black and female in Hollywood and the U.S.
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In a new lawsuit, the animal rights organization claims that Whole Foods is peddling “misleading” information on the treatment of animals whose meat it sells.
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In an interview in Jacobin magazine, the linguist and scholar predicts what would happen if Bernie Sanders won the 2016 presidential election and comments on the rise of progressive political parties like Greece’s Syriza and figures such as Jeremy Corbyn of the U.K.
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By Juan Cole — The positioning of the pope as a “liberal” or “progressive” in American politics is incorrect and indeed a little bizarre.
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By Kasia Anderson — Amy Berg’s disturbing documentary on the Warren Jeffs polygamist sect zooms in on a story that oozes with archetypal evil.
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