BBC World Service fears losing information war as Russia Today ramps up pressure

BBC World Service fears losing information war as Russia Today ramps up pressureThe BBC World Service is being financially outgunned by Russian and Chinese state-owned news channels, its former director Peter Horrocks has warned, amid high-level concerns that Britain and the US are losing a global “information war” with the Kremlin.

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Congress changes savings accounts and retirement funds, and America sleeps

Where’s the outrage? Congress changes savings accounts and retirement funds, and America sleepsDo you remember where you were six years ago? Probably not. It was a long, long time ago. December 2008 is not one of those dates that gets burned on your brain, like the moon landing, or D-Day, or the end of Seinfeld. But I remember where I was.

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Two big banks sued over shoddy mortgage securities

Two big banks sued over shoddy mortgage securitiesA U.S. credit union regulator has filed a lawsuit against two major banks over shoddy mortgage securities they sold during the run-up to the financial meltdown. In the lawsuit, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) claims U.S. Bank and Bank of America broke state and federal laws by failing their duties as trustees for 99 residential mortgage-backed securities trusts, according to Reuters.

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U.S. Bancorp unit settles lawsuit over role as trustee

U.S. Bancorp unit settles lawsuit over role as trusteeThe settlement was disclosed in papers filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan and requires court approval. Several big banks acted as trustees for mortgage-backed securities in the real estate bubble of a decade ago. In the aftermath of the crisis that ensued, they have denied their responsibilities made them liable for losses.

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Whistle-Blower on Countrywide Mortgage Misdeeds to Get $57 Million

Whistle-Blower on Countrywide Mortgage Misdeeds to Get $57 MillionA former Countrywide Financial executive who became a whistle-blower is collecting more than $57 million for helping federal prosecutors force Bank of America to pay a record $16.65 billion penalty in connection with its role in churning out shoddy mortgage and related securities before the financial crisis.

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Ex-CIA Operative Says Prison Was Punishment for Whistleblowing on Torture

Ex-CIA Officer: Prison Was Torture Whistleblowing PunishmentFormer CIA officer John Kiriakou is the only CIA employee connected to its interrogation program to go to prison. But he was prosecuted for providing information to reporters, not for anything connected to waterboarding or other actions that today’s Senate Intelligence Committee report calls “torture.”

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New ACLU report takes a snapshot of police militarization in the United States

New ACLU report takes a snapshot of police militarization in the United StatesThe American Civil Liberties Union has released the results of its year-long study of police militarization. The study looked at 800 deployments of SWAT teams among 20 local, state and federal police agencies in 2011-2012. Among the notable findings: 62 percent of the SWAT raids surveyed were to conduct searches for drugs.

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Manning tortured like terrorist, Welsh relatives say

‘Stripped naked, kept in solitary’: Manning tortured like terrorist, Welsh relatives sayUS authorities tortured Chelsea Manning with barbaric CIA techniques, which posed a threat to her psychological health, the Welsh aunt of the jailed whistleblower revealed to local media. Before her trial for providing WikiLeaks with the largest cache of classified information in US history, Chelsea Manning was humiliated in a similar way that terrorist suspects were, her Welsh relatives told WalesOnline on Sunday.

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Plummeting Oil Prices Could Destroy The Banks That Are Holding Trillions In Commodity Derivatives

Plummeting Oil Prices Could Destroy The Banks That Are Holding Trillions In Commodity DerivativesCould rapidly falling oil prices trigger a nightmare scenario for the commodity derivatives market? The big Wall Street banks did not expect plunging home prices to cause a mortgage-backed securities implosion back in 2008, and their models did not anticipate a decline in the price of oil by more than 40 dollars in less than […]

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Top 25 Most Censored Stories of 2013-2014

Top 25 Most Censored Stories of 2013-2014The presentation of the 2013-2014 Top 25 stories extends the tradition originated by Professor Carl Jensen and his Sonoma State University students in 1976, while reflecting how the expansion of the Project to include affiliate faculty and students from campuses across the country has made the Project even more diverse and robust.

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