Thursday, April 30, 2015

Baltimore Police Finish Inquiry Into Death of Freddie Gray - NYTimes.com

Baltimore Police Finish Inquiry Into Death of Freddie Gray - NYTimes.com:



 "The Baltimore police have finished their investigation into how a young man suffered a fatal spinal injury while in police custody, and have handed their findings off to prosecutors, officials said Thursday.

"



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Report Says American Psychological Association Collaborated on Torture Justification - NYTimes.com

Report Says American Psychological Association Collaborated on Torture Justification - NYTimes.com:



"WASHINGTON — The American Psychological Association secretly collaborated with the administration of President George W. Bush to bolster a legal and ethical justification for the torture of prisoners swept up in the post-Sept. 11 war on terror, according to a new report by a group of dissident health professionals and human rights activists."



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Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Clinton Address Baltimore Riots in Impassioned Speech - NYTimes.com

Clinton Address Baltimore Riots in Impassioned Speech - NYTimes.com:



 "In an unusually impassioned speech, Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a pointed assessment of race in America on Wednesday, lamenting the recent deaths of young black men and calling for overhauling the “out-of-balance” criminal justice system on display on the smoke-filled streets of Baltimore."



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On Trade: Obama Right, Critics Wrong - NYTimes.com

On Trade: Obama Right, Critics Wrong - NYTimes.com:



"BERLIN — I strongly support President Obama’s efforts to conclude big, new trade-opening agreements with our Pacific allies, including Japan and Singapore, and with the whole European Union. But I don’t support them just for economic reasons."



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Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Earthquake Devastates Nepal, Killing More Than 1,100 - NYTimes.com

Earthquake Devastates Nepal, Killing More Than 1,100 - NYTimes.com:



"NEW DELHI — A powerful earthquake shook Nepal on Saturday near its capital, Katmandu, flattening sections of the city’s historic center and trapping dozens of sightseers in a 200-foot watchtower that came crashing down into a pile of bricks."



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Friday, April 24, 2015

Eurozone Ministers Admonish Greece for Slow Progress on Overhauls - NYTimes.com

Eurozone Ministers Admonish Greece for Slow Progress on Overhauls - NYTimes.com:



 "RIGA, Latvia — Eurozone officials sharply criticized the Greek government on Friday for moving too slowly on steps to overhaul the country’s economy that they say would be necessary to get debt relief and to avoid a default."



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Armenia, on Day of Rain and Sorrow, Observes 100th Anniversary of Genocide - NYTimes.com

Armenia, on Day of Rain and Sorrow, Observes 100th Anniversary of Genocide - NYTimes.com:



"YEREVAN, Armenia — Armenian officials and dignitaries gathered here Friday to recognize the 100th anniversary of what historians and a growing number of world leaders have called the first genocide of the 20th century."



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Monday, April 20, 2015

Greece on the Brink - NYTimes.com

Greece on the Brink - NYTimes.com:



 "Don’t you think they want us to fail?” That’s the question I kept hearing during a brief but intense visit to Athens. My answer was that there is no “they” — that Greece does not, in fact, face a solid bloc of implacable creditors who would rather see default and exit from the euro than let a leftist government succeed, that there’s more good will on the other side of the table than many Greeks suppose."



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Sunday, April 19, 2015

China’s President Heads to Pakistan With Billions in Infrastructure Aid - NYTimes.com

China’s President Heads to Pakistan With Billions in Infrastructure Aid - NYTimes.com:



 "BEIJING — China’s president, Xi Jinping, travels to Pakistan on Monday laden with tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure and energy assistance on a scale the United States has never offered in the past decade of a close relationship, a gesture likely to confirm the decline of American influence in that nation."



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A Marathoner Outruns a Childhood of Poverty - NYTimes.com

A Marathoner Outruns a Childhood of Poverty - NYTimes.com:



"Fernando Cabada — a poor Latino from one of the rougher neighborhoods in Fresno, Calif. — is the first to acknowledge that he will be an unusual front-runner for Monday’s Boston Marathon."



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Greece Flashes Warning Signals About Its Debt - NYTimes.com

Greece Flashes Warning Signals About Its Debt - NYTimes.com:



"WASHINGTON — By the standards of his frenzied schedule here last week, the meeting on Friday between Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister, and Lee C. Buchheit, the dean of international debt lawyers, was a quiet one."



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Friday, April 17, 2015

As Iraqis Flee Anbar Province and ISIS, Questions Persist on Role of Shiite Militias - NYTimes.com

As Iraqis Flee Anbar Province and ISIS, Questions Persist on Role of Shiite Militias - NYTimes.com:



"BAGHDAD — In an intensifying humanitarian crisis in Iraq’s embattled Anbar Province, thousands of residents are fleeing a pitched battle between Islamic State militants and pro-government forces around the provincial capital."



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Thursday, April 16, 2015

Mayor de Blasio, in Iowa, Cites ‘Rampant Inequality’ in U.S. - NYTimes.com

Mayor de Blasio, in Iowa, Cites ‘Rampant Inequality’ in U.S. - NYTimes.com:



"DES MOINES — The tall man from out of town came dressed in the colors of the flag, carrying a message of woe about the nation: Washington, he lamented, was out of touch; working-class people were hurting; and political parties had “a lot of explaining to do.”"



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Wednesday, April 15, 2015

In Test for Unions and Politicians, a Nationwide Protest on Pay - NYTimes.com

In Test for Unions and Politicians, a Nationwide Protest on Pay - NYTimes.com:



"The protests by tens of thousands of low-wage workers, students and activists in more than 200 American cities on Wednesday is the most striking effort to date in a two-and-a-half-year-old labor-backed movement that is testing the ability of unions to succeed in an economy populated by easily replaceable service sector workers."



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Atlanta School Workers Sentenced in Test Score Cheating Case - NYTimes.com

Atlanta School Workers Sentenced in Test Score Cheating Case - NYTimes.com:



 "ATLANTA — In an unexpectedly harsh sentence after a polarizing six-year ordeal, eight of the 10 educators convicted of racketeering in one of the nation’s largest public school cheating scandals were sentenced to prison terms of up to seven years Tuesday after they refused to take sentencing deals that were predicated on their acceptance of responsibility and a waiver of their right to appeal."



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Sunday, April 12, 2015

Hillary Clinton Announces, ‘I’m Running for President’ - NYTimes.com

Hillary Clinton Announces, ‘I’m Running for President’ - NYTimes.com:



 "Ending two years of speculation and coy denials, Hillary Rodham Clinton announced on Sunday that she would seek the presidency for a second time, immediately establishing herself as the likely 2016 Democratic nominee."



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House That Wouldn’t Budge (or Float Away) Faces a Last Stand - NYTimes.com

House That Wouldn’t Budge (or Float Away) Faces a Last Stand - NYTimes.com:



"SEATTLE — Asuman Engin and her family, making their first visit to Seattle recently from their home in San Diego, spotted what may be the most famous tiny house in the world as they were coming over a nearby bridge."



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Thursday, April 9, 2015

Review: ‘Personal Correspondents: Photography and Letter Writing in Civil War Brooklyn’ - NYTimes.com

Review: ‘Personal Correspondents: Photography and Letter Writing in Civil War Brooklyn’ - NYTimes.com:



"Symbolically, the Civil War ended when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in a Virginia parlor on April 9, 1865, a century and a half ago this week. Officially, it concluded a year later, when President Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation of peace. For many people who lived through it, the war never ended at all."



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Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Obama to Call for End to ‘Conversion’ Therapies for Gay and Transgender Youth - NYTimes.com

Obama to Call for End to ‘Conversion’ Therapies for Gay and Transgender Youth - NYTimes.com:



"WASHINGTON — A 17-year-old transgender youth, Leelah Alcorn, stunned her friends and a vast Internet audience in December when she threw herself in front of a tractor-trailer after writing in an online suicide note that religious therapists had tried to convert her back to being a boy."



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U.S. Deports Salvadoran General Accused in ’80s Killings - NYTimes.com

U.S. Deports Salvadoran General Accused in ’80s Killings - NYTimes.com:



 "After a 16-year legal battle, a former defense minister of El Salvador once embraced by Washington as a close ally during the civil war there in the 1980s, was deported on Wednesday after immigration courts found that he had participated in torture and killings by troops under his command."



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Monday, April 6, 2015

Days of Rage

The Weathermen. The Symbionese Liberation Army. The FALN. The Black Liberation Army. The names seem quaint now, when not forgotten altogether. But there was a stretch of time in America, during the 1970s, when bombings by domestic underground groups were a daily occurrence. The FBI combated these groups and others as nodes in a single revolutionary underground, dedicated to the violent overthrow of the American government.

The FBI’s response to the leftist revolutionary counterculture has not been treated kindly by history, and in hindsight many of its efforts seem almost comically ineffectual, if not criminal in themselves. But part of the extraordinary accomplishment of Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage is to temper those easy judgments with an understanding of just how deranged these times were, how charged with menace. Burrough re-creates an atmosphere that seems almost unbelievable just forty years later, conjuring a time of native-born radicals, most of them “nice middle-class kids,” smuggling bombs into skyscrapers and detonating them inside the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol, at a Boston courthouse and a Wall Street restaurant packed with lunchtime diners—radicals robbing dozens of banks and assassinating policemen in New York, San Francisco, Atlanta. The FBI, encouraged to do everything possible to undermine the radical underground, itself broke many laws in its attempts to bring the revolutionaries to justice—often with disastrous consequences. 

Benefiting from the extraordinary number of people from the underground and the FBI who speak about their experiences for the first time, Days of Rage is filled with revelations and fresh details about the major revolutionaries and their connections and about the FBI and its desperate efforts to make the bombings stop. The result is a mesmerizing book that takes us into the hearts and minds of homegrown terrorists and federal agents alike and weaves their stories into a spellbinding secret history of the 1970s.

Amazon

Friday, April 3, 2015

Candidate for Chicago Mayor Struggles to Unite Latinos and Blacks - NYTimes.com

Candidate for Chicago Mayor Struggles to Unite Latinos and Blacks - NYTimes.com:



"CHICAGO — Jesus G. Garcia, candidate for mayor, strode down the sidewalk on Monday evening, trailed by a giddy pack of supporters, volunteers and passers-by. They snapped pictures and chanted his nickname: “Chu-y! Chu-y!”"



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U.S. Economy Gained 126,000 Jobs in March, an Abrupt Slowdown in Hiring - NYTimes.com

U.S. Economy Gained 126,000 Jobs in March, an Abrupt Slowdown in Hiring - NYTimes.com:



"The labor market’s yearlong streak of robust monthly job creation was broken on Friday with the Labor Department’s report that employers added just 126,000 workers in March, a marked slowdown in hiring that echoed earlier signs of a winter pall on the economy."



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Wednesday, April 1, 2015

4 Killed in Explosion and Fire on Pemex Mexican Oil Platform - NYTimes.com

4 Killed in Explosion and Fire on Pemex Mexican Oil Platform - NYTimes.com:



 "Huge fireballs illuminated the early dawn skies of the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday as an explosion and fire killed four people and injured as many as 16 others on a large oil platform in the southeastern Bay of Campeche, Mexican officials said."



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McDonald’s to Raise Pay at Outlets It Operates - NYTimes.com

McDonald’s to Raise Pay at Outlets It Operates - NYTimes.com:



"McDonald’s announced on Wednesday that it would raise wages and offer new benefits to 90,000 employees in the 1,500 outlets in the United States that it owns and operates, responding to competitive pressure from a tighter job market and to labor campaigns drawing public attention to its pay policies."



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Tell Me How This Ends Well - NYTimes.com

Tell Me How This Ends Well - NYTimes.com:



"HONG KONG — I’ve been in China for the last week. It’s always instructive to see how the world looks from the Middle Kingdom. Sometimes the best insights come from just reading the local papers. On March 25, The China Daily published an essay detailing how “Beijing authorities” had “launched inspection tours of kindergartens this week to ensure that children are not overburdened with schoolwork. Although Chinese, mathematics and English are supposed to be taught to primary school students, it is not uncommon to see pre-school-age children across China being forced to study these subjects.” The essay went on to explain why it wasn’t healthy to “begin preparing for the college entrance exam” in preschool."



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