White House adviser resigns amid 9/11 controversy

Presidential adviser Van Jones is resigning after coming under fire for signing a controversial petition regarding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The White House issued a statement late Saturday saying that Jones was giving up his post at the Council on Environmental Quality, where he helped coordinate government agencies focused on delivering millions of green jobs to the ailing U.S

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Cash for Clunkers: The Bribery Stimulus

In the closing days of Cash for Clunkers, car dealers were turning buyers away, the government website crashed trying to keep up with the paperwork, and even the purple cars were selling. So, what does it tell us about our national character when the most popular government program in years is an economically dubious, environmentally negligible, politically lazy handout from 99% of the population to the other 1%, all aimed at reviving the economy from its vegetative state

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Germany’s Cash-for-Clunkers Black-Market Scandal

As the U.S. jumps on board the cash-for-clunkers bandwagon, the Obama Administration would do well to pay attention to what is happening in Hamburg’s sprawling harbor. The seaport city is one of the busiest ports in the world: nearly every car — new or used — passes through its docks on the way out of Germany.

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Greening the Internet: How much CO2 does this article produce?

Twenty milligrams; that’s the average amount of carbon emissions generated from the time it took you to read the first two words of this article. Now, depending on how quickly you read, around 80, perhaps even 100 milligrams of C02 have been released.

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Four-story building collapses in Brooklyn

A four-story residential building collapsed Sunday in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, and at least four people suffered minor injuries, according to the New York City Fire Department. The cause of the midday collapse of the building on Myrtle Avenue between Ryerson and Hall streets was not immediately known.

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Saro-Wiwa’s son welcomes Shell payout

A $15.5 million payout made by oil giant Shell to settle a lawsuit brought against it by relations of executed Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and other activists will allow the families of the victims to move on with their lives, Saro-Wiwa’s son has told CNN. The New York lawsuit — brought to court by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of Saro-Wiwa’s family and others in 1996 — accused Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary of complicity in the writer’s 1995 hanging and the killings or persecution of other environmental activists in the Niger Delta. Nigeria’s Ogoni people have complained for years that Shell was allowed to pollute its land without consequences

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Shell to pay $15.5 million to settle Nigeria claims

Oil company Royal Dutch Shell will pay $15.5 million to settle a lawsuit against its Nigerian subsidiary by the family of executed Nigerian environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and other dissidents, the plaintiffs announced Monday. The lawsuit accuses Shell of complicity in the 1995 hanging of Saro-Wiwa and the killings or persecution of other environmental activists by the military government that ruled the country at the time

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