Gold fell, capping the longest slump since October 2009, and silver tumbled to a three-month low as Europe’s deepening debt crisis drove commodities and stocks lower.
The euro dropped to an 11-month low against the dollar as lending to financial institutions sent the European Central Bank’s balance sheet to a record high. The Standard & Poor’s GSCI index of 24 raw materials and the MSCI World Index of equities were poised for the biggest declines in two weeks. Pl... (more)
GoDaddy.com, one of the largest domain registrars on the Internet, stands to potentially lose thousands of customers on Thursday, Dec. 29, after the company gave and then repealed its support for a controversial bill before Congress that many fear could heavily restrict the web.
On the eve of what has been dubbed "Dump Go Daddy Day," imgur.com -- pronounced "imager," it's one of the largest image hosting sites in the world, ... (more)
TAFT - Wearing prison-issue yellow clothes, Patricia Spottedcrow reflects on her first year in prison through the lens of tears and determination.
One year ago, on the week of Christmas, the first-time offender was checked into the Eddie Warrior women's prison - the first holiday away from her four young children.
"I cried and cried just thinking of my kids opening presents on Christmas and I wasn't there," she said. "This year, it's going to be any other day. I t... (more)
If our founding fathers could see the cesspool that the U.S. Congress has become today, they would roll over in their graves. Most Americans don't realize this, but we already have a "part-time Congress". Members of Congress only "work" a little over a third of the days on the calendar. The rest of the time they have off. It is no wonder why so many members of Congress are involved in so much corruption - they have so much free time on their hands that they are bound to g... (more)
September 11, 2001, is another date that will live in infamy. The tragic events that occurred on this day have forever changed the United States, and the world. Like similar events in history, it served as a catalyst, creating a flurry of new rules, regulations and, as we now see, serious restrictions on the freedoms we once had. Just as Pearl Harbor launched America into WWII, and the burning of the Reichstag building in Germany granted untold powers to Hitler, 9/11 has allowed America ... (more)
While on vacation in Hawaii, Obama tapped Jerome Powell to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Powel served as the undersecretary for finance under the president George H. W. Bush and was a partner of The Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group is a massive private equity firm and one of the largest defense contractors in the world.... (more)
Back during the initial swing of protests in Bahrain, and when the Khalifa regime’s crackdown was at its harshest, dozens of medical professionals were arrested for the crime of treating as patients those protesters who had been injured by violent Bahraini security forces. At the time, the authorities slapped trumped up charges on them like “attempting to overthrow the government” and “spreading false news.” After international condemnation, mainly from rights group... (more)
BALTIMORE (CN) - A new student in elementary school who was bullied by classmates hanged himself in class and his teacher "grabbed her phone and began taking pictures" and didn't help him down until she said, "'Now that's the picture I want,'" the boy's grandmother claims in City Court.
Renola Dowler sued the Baltimore City Public School System and its CEO, the Leith Walk Elementary School, its principal and her grandson's teacher, identified in the complaint as "Ms. Stinger.... (more)
The conservative and liberal blogospheres are unifying behind opposition to Congress’s Stop Online Piracy Act, with right-leaning bloggers aruging their very existence could be wiped out if the anti-piracy bill passes.
“If either the U.S. Senate’s Protect IP Act (PIPA) & the U.S. House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) become law, political blogs such as Red Mass Group [conservative] & Blue Mass G... (more)
Nearly one in three Americans will already have been arrested by the age of 23, recent research suggests.
A study analyzing data from the federal government’s National Longitudinal Survey of Youth found that 30.2 percent of 23-year-olds reported being arrested for something more serious that a traffic violation.
It’s the first time since the 1960s that researchers have tried to determine how often young people are arr... (more)
Senate majority leader Harry Reid argues that the rich simply do not create jobs...at all.
Funny thing is Harry Reid's full time 'job' is to destroy other people's jobs. He's also a millionaire by the way, and he got rich not through providing a good or service on the market but through looting the public, which also destroys jobs! - Chris
In recent weeks we discovered BitTorrent pirates at the RIAA, Sony, Fox, Universal and even law-abiding organizations such as the Department of Homeland Security. By now it should be clear that people are using BitTorrent pretty much everywhere, and not only for lawful downloads. Today we can add the U.S. House of Representatives to that list, the place where lawmakers are drafting the much discussed “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA).
In the debate about the American “Stop Online Piracy Act”, some have hailed the decade-old American DMCA as a law that was somehow beneficial for the development of new services on the net. This is not only a complete misconception, but a very dangerous one at that. The DMCA was basically a wet dream come true for the copyright industry, and the “safe harbor” provisions have gradually shifted the environment to suppress free speech and expression in favor of the suppressi... (more)
For many years, the state has been attempting to disarm the citizenry. While not understood by the mainstream, the success of these efforts has far exceeded the imagination of most. Those who own guns, and live in remote areas, don’t fully grasp the problem, as they are somewhat insulted from the norm. But many, especially those who live in the cities and more populated areas, know that they are heavily restricted, and for the most part accept this condition of helplessness volunta... (more)
Political Scientist and MSNBC contributor Melissa Harris-Perry has called for renewed faith in democracy. According to Harris-Perry, recent events have damaged public confidence in the democratic process.
Our faith has been badly damaged by governors who crush unions, by a Congress that will not govern, by a military that tortures, … by CEOs who slash jobs as profits rise, by a system that seems irreparably broken. But build
As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2011 and discussing where we are in the fight for a free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy.
The government has been using its secrecy system in absurd ways for decades, but 2011 was particularly egregious. Here are a few examples:
Government report concludes the government classified 77 million documents in 2010, a 40% increase on the year before. The
