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Magna Carta Celebrates 800th Birthday—How Far Has Liberty Come?
By Klaus Marre
On the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta, a bipartisan group of worried senators serve as a reminder that no president is above the law.
WHO
Dianne Feinstein vs. the CIA
The New Yorker dives deep into Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and her battle with the CIA—and Obama’s White House—over the Senate’s three year-long investigation into the agency’s “enhanced interrogation” program. Although many assumed that the national security-friendly Democrat would’ve gone easier on the agency, she ended up in a pitched battle stoked by the CIA spying on the investigation and by objections to the release last year of the 600-page declassified summary.
CIA Torture Appears to Have Broken Spy Agency Rule on Human Experimentation
Meanwhile, revelations about the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program continue… this time with a story in The Guardian about a document that appears to have empowered the agency’s director to “approve, modify, or disapprove all proposals pertaining to human subject research.” Perhaps not surprisingly, the CIA manipulated basic definitions of human experimentation to avoid its own rules and, therefore, make certain the “It’s Not Really Torture” program could continue to torture detainees.
France Bans Sale of Monsanto Herbicide Roundup in Nurseries
One of America’s most popular “solutions” to the suburban “problem” of weeds is now banned in France. French Ecology Minister Segolene Royal announced a ban on the sale of Roundup for consumer use. Why? Because the UN’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said in March that Roundup’s poisonous ingredient glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Go figure.
WHAT
Billionaire Bunkers: Exclusive Look Inside the World’s Largest Planned Doomsday Escape
For the discerning billionaire who is worried about the long-term impact of oil extraction, climate change, chemical production, weapons sales or possible chaos from wealth inequality, Vivos has the perfect way to assuage that well-founded angst. Just call them up and reserve a spot in their wholly-exclusive bunker built in East Germany by the Soviets. The five star, underground survival complex is an “an underground cruise ship for the elite” that is guaranteed to withstand all of the fallout created by even the most aggressive investment portfolio. So, act now… before it’s literally too late.
WHY
How Dinosaurs Shrank and Became Birds
Quanta Magazine shows how an influx of new dinosaur fossils from China in the 1990s led to a complete overhaul of the way scientists thought of both dinosaurs and birds. Now it is widely accepted that birds are linked to dinosaurs on the evolutionary tree, but Emily Singer explains why the biological imperative to “get smaller” drove the rise of birds from the massive beasts that once dominated the planet.
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