Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt recently warned unarmed Americans that he had found firearms in the Bible, and that was proof that God was ‘judging
Reports of the National Security Agency’s massive spying programs are hurting the U.S. economy, companies claim.
Since former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden disclosed the NSA’s controversial surveillance programs some six months ago, much of the ensuing debate has centered around the privacy rights of U.S. citizens.
However, according the Electronic Frontier Foundation, many American companies have been reporting large profit losses due to the spying revelations. By some estimates, the damage to U.S. companies could run as high as $180 billion.
How does this happen? According to the Wall Street Journal, AT&T, for example, was interested in acquiring the European telecom company Vodafone. However, that deal is apparently in jeopardy because Vodafone was implicated in helping the NSA and the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters spy on customers.
Meanwhile, Cisco systems said the news that the NSA had cracked certain encryption protocols had caused foreign customers to lose faith in the company. Cisco’s sales appear to reflect this: In Brazil and Russia, sales have dropped by 25 and 30 percent, respectively. The company projects a loss as high as 10 percent overall for the quarter.
According to the EFF, the Norwegian telecom Telenor was planning on migrating to a U.S. cloud server but has halted […]
Right wing politicians who are push laws to restrict a woman’s access to later-term abortions presumably do so because they don’t want women having abortion after 20 weeks. But new research from medical school-based scholars finds that other policies that conservative Republicans are pushing, including restrictions on access to clinics as well as constrained access to health insurance, actually result in more women seeking later-term abortions. In other words, not only are Republicans hypocrites-but their hypocrisy is backfiring.
Diana Greene Foster and Katrina Kimport are professors in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences in the School of Medicine at the University of California in San Francisco. Between 2008 and 2010, Foster and Kimport studied the cases of 272 women who had received an abortion at or after 20 weeks of gestation, as well as of 169 women who received first-trimester abortions. These women were interviewed just one week after their abortions and asked a variety of questions including what led to the delay in their medical care. The results are striking and profoundly important for those who seek to promote-or constrict-the rights of women to access and exercise their own reproductive freedom.
The study found that young, low-income women are […]
With Somalia now set to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the U.S. will soon once again be one of only two countries that have not ratified the CRC. Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud made the announcement last Wednesday, November 20, 2013, Universal Children’s Day and the 24th anniversary of the CRC. The CRC is a legally binding human rights treaty that recognizes children’s right to survival, to develop to the fullest potential, to protection from abuse, neglect, and exploitation, and to participate in family, cultural, and social life. In the countries that have ratified it, the CRC serves as a framework to change public policy, laws, and programs to improve the lives of children. Currently, the U.S. is joined by South Sudan and Somalia as the only countries that have not ratified the CRC.
Prior to July 9, 2011, the U.S. and Somalia were the only countries to not have ratified the CRC because South Sudan was not yet a country. South Sudan gained independence on July 9, 2011 after decades of civil war that exacerbated drought and famine and led to a terrible humanitarian disaster that lasted through the 1990s and into the early […]
