THE FUTURE OF WIND TURBINES? NO BLADES

So it’s not just that Cheney is cartoonishly evil, it’s that he’s monstrously incompetent; in fact, his monstrous incompetence is a large part of why he’s so cartoonishly evil.

Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell is sworn in as he testifes before the House Intelligence Committee. Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. For a dozen years, the Bush-Cheney crowd have been trying to escape—or cover up—an essential fact of…

Israel has suspended new rules that would have had the effect of separating Palestinian and Jewish passengers on buses travelling to the West Bank. The defence ministry launched a three-month trial on Wednesday morning, but within hours Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was "unacceptable".…

The US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, gets tough with ‘the cartel’ of international banks.Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters The reputation of the banking industry took another hammering on Wednesday as the fines imposed on major banks – including Barclays and bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland –…

Thomas Peter/Reuters Civil libertarians and privacy advocates were applauding yesterday after the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation to stop the National Security Agency from collecting Americans’ phone records. But they’d best not break out the bubbly. The really big winner…

WARSAW — Poland is paying a quarter of a million dollars to two terror suspects allegedly tortured by the CIA in a secret facility in this country — prompting outrage among many here who feel they are being punished for American wrongdoing. Europe's top human rights court imposed the penalty against…

A small flotilla of kayakers and other protest boats follow as the oil drilling rig Polar Pioneer is towed toward a dock on Thursday in Elliott Bay in Seattle.Photograph: Elaine Thompson/AP Hundreds of kayakers in Seattle were preparing to go and “shake their paddles” in protest at a newly arrived…

Candy makers say they won’t stand in the way of an effort in Congress to end a decades-old statute that allows U.S. companies to import goods made with forced labor. The National Confectioners Association (NCA) stormed Capitol Hill this week to correct what they called a mischaracterization of their…

Chile’s Communist Party Rejects Intervention in Venezuela Nigeria: Early Tally Shows Buhari in Lead, Opposition Rejects 86% Votes For New Constitution in Cuba US VP Pence Leads Lima Group, Pushes for More Severe Blockade Venezuela: EU Spurns Violent Intervention for Peaceful Solution Campaign…

Two planes fumigated fields of coca, the basis for cocaine, in Colombia in 2006. Some fear the chemical causes cancer. Credit Fernando Vergara/Associated Press BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The government of Colombia on Thursday night rejected a major tool in the American-backed antidrug campaign — ordering a…

WASHINGTON (AP) — For more than a decade, oil has been leaking into the Gulf of Mexico where a hurricane toppled a drilling company's platform off the coast of Louisiana. Now the federal government is warning that the leak could last another century or more if left unchecked. Government estimates…

This post first appeared at OtherWords.org . (Photo: Justin Norman /flickr CC 2.0 ) After I blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program in 2007, the fallout for me was brutal. To make a long story short, I served nearly two years in federal prison and then endured a few more months of house…

With a deadlock in Congress over NSA surveillance firmly in place, three key Patriot Act provisions are set to end on June 1. So what does that mean for the controversial spying program? Nsa_sign640b Surveillance will certainly continue under parts of the act and under other government programs…

Texas Greg Abbott ensures state legislature has sole authority over oil and gas regulation in Texas Last modified on Wed 14 Feb 2018 13.30 EST This article is over 3 years old Large hoses lead from one hydraulic fracking drill site to another as horses graze in a Midland, Texas, field.Photograph:…

Fossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (£3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10m a minute every day, according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund . The IMF calls the revelation “shocking” and says the figure is an “extremely robust” estimate of…

A Saudi Arabian executioner shows off his sword. Executioners are also required to perform amputations on those convicted of lesser offences.Photograph: Magazine/Rex_Shutterstock Saudi Arabia is advertising for eight new executioners, recruiting extra staff to carry out an increasing number of death…

A man watches a television showing news coverage of the reported execution of North Korea's defense minister, Hyon Yong Chol, at a railway station in Seoul on Wednesday. Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images Just days after grabbing international attention for reportedly testing a submarine-fired ballistic…

Newly arrived Rohingya migrants gather at Kuala Langsa Port in Langsa, Aceh province, Indonesia, on Friday after coming ashore. Most such migrants have been prevented from making port in Southeast Asia. Binsar Bakkara/AP The spectacle of thousands of desperate Rohingya Muslim "boat people" being…

Brian Jones (1942–1969) and Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones, enjoying a food fight at the Kensington Gore Hotel, where the band staged a mock-medieval banquet for the launch of their album Beggars Banquet, while the band’s drummer, Charlie Watts (left) looks on, December 5, 1968 | Photo by Hulton…

Below, we have gathered together some of the most intelligent video collections on YouTube. A great place to find culturally enriching video... General @GoogleTalks Google has lots of famous visitors speaking at its headquarters, and they're all recorded and neatly presented here. Al Jazeera English…

They Built a Commune but No One Came 14 Photos View Slide Show › Christopher Gregory for The New York Times PITMAN, Pa. — They slept in the barn their first winter, on a straw mattress with antique linen sheets and a feather tick. There was no electricity, heat or plumbing, so they made their own…

The Incas worshipped the sun, which they called Inti . I was fortunate to capture the first rays of sunlight at the Temple of the Sun during both solstices one year. At the June solstice , the temple's carved stone floor is perfectly aligned with the rising sun that reaches it through the…

Mexico City CDMX & environs, architecture, food, and hidden treasures

While the debate over the value of a college education goes on, a peculiar trend is picking up speed in the IT job market. Shortages of certain skills have become so severe that they’re making formal education irrelevant. The latest case in point: A fast-growing discipline known as DevOps, aimed at…

On the 19th of May 1984, at CBS Television City in Hollywood, a curious air of tension hung over the studio during the taping of the popular game show Press Your Luck . Ordinarily a live studio audience could be counted upon to holler and slap their hands together, but something was keeping them…

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Tuesday announced the arrest of a Chinese professor and the indictment of five other Chinese citizens in what it contended was a decade-long scheme to steal microelectronics designs from American companies on behalf of the Chinese government. The indictment,…

Alejandro Sanchez helps hold a banner during a May Day rally on Friday May 1.Photograph: Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images Los Angeles became the largest US city to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour on Tuesday, as a wage increase bill passed the city council by a vote of 14-1. It is now up to city…

A 400-year-old botany book contains what could be the only known portrait of Shakespeare made in his lifetime, according to an academic expert. Botanist and historian Mark Griffiths cracked an "ingenious cipher" to identify the playwright in an engraving in the 16th-Century work. "This is what…

A federal court judge Tuesday morning ordered the State Department to devise a schedule for releasing Hillary Clinton's emails on a rolling basis, rejecting a proposal the department made hours earlier to release all 55,000 pages on January 15, 2016. US District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras also…