Climate change: 4 countries that are fighting the trend

The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states in no uncertain terms that global warming will lead to wild weather and other environmental hardships in the coming years.

"Things are worse than we had predicted" in 2007, said report co-author Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University in Bangladesh.

Senate Report: Torture Didn't Work and the CIA Lied About It

The Washington Post has gotten hold of the Senate investigation into CIA interrogation practices and—

No, wait. They haven't. They've only learned what the report says "according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document." It's impossible to say if these sources are characterizing the report accurately, and their summary descriptions of the report make it very hard to judge how fair the report's conclusions are.

Hobby Lobby's Hypocrisy: The Company's Retirement Plan Invests in Contraception Manufacturers

When Obamacare compelled businesses to include emergency contraception in employee health care plans, Hobby Lobby, a national chain of craft stores, fought the law all the way to the Supreme Court. The Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate, the company's owners argued, forced them to violate their religious beliefs. But while it was suing the government, Hobby Lobby spent millions of dollars on an employee retirement plan that invested in the manufacturers of the same contraceptive products the firm's owners cite in their lawsuit.

How to Vote Against the Koch Brothers

The Koch Brothers don't actually run for office—at least not since David Koch's amusingly ambitious 1980 bid for the vice presidency on a Libertarian Party ticket that proposed the gutting of corporate taxes, the minimum wage, occupational health and safety oversight, environmental protections and Social Security.

That project, while exceptionally well-funded for a third-party campaign, secured just 1.06 percent of the vote. The Kochs determined it would be easier to fund conservative campaigns than to pitch the program openly. Initially, the project was hampered by what passed for campaign-finance rules and regulations, to the frustration of David Koch, who once told The New Yorker, "We'd like to abolish the Federal Elections Commission and all the limits on campaign spending anyway."

The Nuclear Omnicide

In the 35 years since the March 28, 1979, explosion and meltdown at Three Mile Island, fierce debate has raged over whether humans were killed there. In 1986 and 2011, Chernobyl and Fukushima joined the argument. Whenever these disasters happen, there are those who claim that the workers, residents and military personnel exposed to radiation will be just fine.

Of course we know better. We humans won’t jump into a pot of boiling water. We’re not happy when members of our species start dying around us. But frightening new scientific findings have forced us to look at a larger reality: the bottom-up damage that radioactive fallout may do to the entire global ecosystem.

The Distributional Games

Every year I ask my class on “Wealth and Poverty” to play a simple game. I have them split up into pairs, and imagine I’m giving one of them $1,000. They can keep some of the money only on condition they reach a deal with their partner on how it’s to be divided up between them. I explain they’re strangers who will never see one other again, can only make one offer and respond with one acceptance (or decline), and can only communicate by the initial recipient writing on a piece of paper how much he’ll share with the other, who must then either accept (writing “deal” on the paper) or decline (“no deal”).

Migrants face 'living hell' in Greek detention

Migrants and asylum-seekers detained in Greece are being forced to endure deplorable conditions, often with devastating effects on their health, according to a report from aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Doctors who have attended internment camps, police stations and coastguard facilities around the country described "a living hell" for thousands of immigrants denied fresh air, natural light and basic sanitation.

Vince Cable defends Royal Mail sell-off in Commons debate

The business secretary, Vince Cable, has refused to apologise over the government's privatisation of Royal Mail, despite a scathing report from the National Audit Office, which said undervaluing the share sale had cost the taxpayer £750m in a single day.

In a lively debate in the House of Commons, Cable defended the controversial float last October, after coming under fire from the shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna, and other MPs. "The last thing I intend to do is apologise," Cable said. He insisted that the privatisation had been a success and that there had been a real risk that the flotation could have failed if the shares had been priced higher.

Attacks On The Homeless Jumped 23 Percent Last Year: Report

The streets have become an increasingly dangerous place to be homeless.

While the number of homeless people in the U.S. dropped for the third straight year in 2012, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s latest estimates, advocates can’t quite celebrate yet.

Protect Your Work: Creativity and Digital Law

You've decided to embrace the creative (and let's hope lucrative) potential of the web. You're ready to present online your music, insights, art... fill in the blank. And of course you troll the web for inspiration and opportunities.

But how to keep your work from being ripped off? Or prevent others from claiming you stole from them?

How do you get all the upsides of sharing your work with the digital world, while avoiding all the downsides of having it copied and cheapened in the process?

Wouldn't it be great to spend some quality time with a legal expert who could clear all that up? You can. This Saturday. There are still a few seats left for The Tyee Master Class Martha Rans will be conducting on April 5 -- with lunch and a splash of wine included.