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Liberian health care workers largely ignored a call to strike Monday, despite claims that an estimated 80% of them are being forced to go without adequate supplies to fight the Ebola outbreak that has claimed more than 4,000 lives in west Africa. The government had asked health care workers to be reasonable, arguing a strike would have negative consequences on the containment of the outbreak, BBC reports. Liberia’s National Health Workers Association had called the strike demanding an increase in hazard pay Liberia is one of countries hit hardest by the Ebola outbreak, with 3,924 cases of the more than...

American television show, "Washington Spotlight", debating the topic of private telephone wiretapping. Guests are two United States Congressmen: Senator Wayne Morse (Independent, formerly both Republican and Democrat) of Oregon, and Representative Kenneth Keating (Republican) from New York. The ideas of national security and communist infiltration are brought up, of course. This during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the debate continues today with President Barack Obama, especially after the revelations from Edward Snowden & Glenn Greenwald. Video Link

Superclusters – regions of space that are densely packed with galaxies – are the biggest structures in the Universe. But scientists have struggled to define exactly where one supercluster ends and another begins. Now, a team based in Hawaii has come up with a new technique that maps the Universe according to the flow of galaxies across space. Redrawing the boundaries of the cosmic map, they redefine our home supercluster and name it Laniakea, which means ‘immeasurable heaven’ in Hawaiian. Video Link

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region--The Ministry of Peshmarga warned the Iraqi air force not to attack Kurdish positions or civilian population after Iraqi jets targeted the town of Tuz Khurmatu south of Kirkuk on Sunday afternoon, killing a 12-year-old girl and wounding several others. “If the Iraqi government fails to address the issue, the Peshmarga forces will not hesitate to retaliate against the next Iraqi assault on Kurdish positions,” said Jabar Yawar, Peshmerga Ministry spokesperson. “At 5:50 pm (local time) the Iraqi warplanes struck Tuz Khurmatu, killing one 12 year-year-old girl and wounding either others," said Sardar Ahmed Fatih, a member of...

There has been more fierce fighting in Iraq as Isis forces battle to control areas in the north and east of the country. The fate of the country's biggest oil refinery remains unclear, as fighting continues between Sunni jihadists led by Isis, and Iraqi government and Kurdish forces. The BBC's Fergal Keane went to Jalula in northern Iraq, and obtained exclusive footage of Isis suspects surrendering to Kurdish forces. Link

The Conservative government is proposing more than $100 billion in defence spending on a series of projects that would see the Department of National Defence get new fighter jets, rescue planes, helicopters, drones, ships, satellites, uniforms and even rifles. The Defence Acquisition Guide is a list of more than 200 separate procurement projects the military hopes to undertake in the next 20 years. The guide is not a rock-solid program, but a road map of sorts for the Canadian defence industrial sector. The generic nature of the information in the guide has already cause some consternation. Only a few minutes...

South Korea will donate a corvette warship to the poorly-equipped Philippine navy amid growing tensions -- particularly with China -- over maritime territorial disputes in the region, the government said Thursday. The "Pohang-class corvette" will be decommissioned by the end of the year and donated to the Philippines, the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said in a statement issued this week. It was unclear if the donation would include the ship's weapons systems. South Korean Defence Minister Kim Kwang-jin informed his Filipino counterpart Voltaire Gazmin of the donation during his visit to Seoul on May 30, the statement added....

The Kurdish fighters have had enough of ISIS on their land and are determined to drive them out. From the cover of mud trenches the peshmerga fire at ISIS positions 100 metres or so away. This is the ISIS perimeter defence of Jalula town. It is old-style fighting. Man replacing man on the barricade as they run out of ammunition. There is a constant barrage from both sides. Sky's Stuart Ramsay reports. Link

With labor costs rising rapidly in China, American manufacturers of all sizes are looking south to Mexico with what economists describe as an eagerness not seen since the early years of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s. From border cities like Tijuana to the central plains where new factories are filling farmland, Mexican workers are increasingly in demand. American trade with Mexico has grown by nearly 30 percent since 2010, to $507 billion annually, and foreign direct investment in Mexico last year hit a record $35 billion. Over the past few years, manufactured goods from Mexico have...

A deal with Moscow makes clear that India has no plans to abandon Afghanistan post 2014.In a recent deal with Moscow, India has agreed to pay for military equipment sourced from Russia to Afghanistan. The equipment will include artillery, helicopters, tanks, and armored vehicles. India will also pay to repair old Soviet hardware left behind after the Russian withdrawal in 1989. The scale and exact composition of the deal have yet to be announced, but it is known that the first order has already been placed. India had so far hesitated to provide lethal weapons to Afghanistan for fear of...

Ethiopia's bold decision to pay for a huge dam itself has overturned generations of Egyptian control over the Nile's waters, and may help transform one of the world's poorest countries into a regional hydropower hub. By spurning an offer from Cairo for help financing the project, Addis Ababa has ensured it controls the construction of the Renaissance Dam on a Nile tributary. The electricity it will generate - enough to power a giant rich-world city like New York - can be exported across a power-hungry region. But the decision to fund the huge project itself also carries the risk of...

An innocent man who spent nearly a quarter century in prison for a murder he did not commit walked out of a Brooklyn courtroom with his freedom and his mother by his side Tuesday. Jonathan Fleming, now 51 years old, was in tears as he hugged his lawyers and family Tuesday after his conviction was thrown out by a judge. "I feel like the time I felt when he was born and the nurse bring him to me," said Patricia Fleming, the mother of the wrongly jailed man. "That's how happy I was." From the start, Fleming proclaimed his innocence...

The Peruta dominos continue to fall. In an earlier decision in Baker v Kealoha, a District Court refused to rule in favor of the plaintiff, Christopher Baker. Baker had moved for an injunction against various Hawaii state agencies that had denied him a carry license. As a Ninth Circuit panel summed up the District Court’s rationale, the District Court denied the motion because, “Baker was not likely to establish that Hawaii’s restrictions on carrying firearms in public were unconstitutional under the Second Amendment, and therefore, Baker was not likely to succeed on the merits.” But that was pre-Peruta . ....

Video LinkThrough a wide variety of projects, in order to quickly respond to any contingencies at home and abroad, we will build an "Adaptive Agile Ground Defense Force," rapidly deployed in phased sequence for effective deterrence and response, so as to bring forth a Dynamic Joint Defense Force. We are resolved to create a "Tough & Resilient JGSDF" capable of quickly responding and completing any mission anytime, thus defending our people's lives and property, and the territorial integrity of Japan.

*Canada recalls Russian ambassador, pulls out of G8 process *Obama tells Putin to withdraw forces from Ukraine *Ukraine asks UN council to stop Russian 'aggression' *Pro-Russia demonstrations break out in Ukrainian cities *Canadians advised to leave Crimea 'while it is safe to do so' Ominous developments in Ukraine have prompted Prime Minister Stephen Harper to strongly condemn Russian military intervention in the country while urging President Vladimir Putin to withdraw his troops immediately. In a statement issued following a cabinet meeting held Saturday afternoon, Harper said Canada is recalling its ambassador from Moscow and pulling out of the G8 process...

In another example of the government picking winners and losers, the House Ways and Means Committee, in its long-awaited tax reform bill, singles out violent video game makers for tax increases. On page 19 of the executive summary, the committee mentions an improved and permanent research and development tax credit, which has benefitted countless industries from manufacturers to software creators to food producers. The summary advocates for “an improved, permanent R&D tax credit, finally giving American manufacturers the certainty they need to compete against their foreign competition who have long had permanent R&D incentives." Well, unless they make violent video...

<p>Venezuela's chief prosecutor says five more members of a national intelligence agency have been arrested on murder charges related to the shooting deaths of two people in anti-government street demonstrations.</p> <p>In a statement Wednesday, the office says the five agents were present at protests Feb. 12 in Caracas where 24-year-old university student Bassil Da Costa and government supporter Juan Montoya died. They were among the first of at least 16 killed in the protests.</p>

It's happening in Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand, Bosnia, Syria, and beyond. Revolutions, unrest, and riots are sweeping the globe. The near-simultaneous eruption of violent protest can seem random and chaotic; inevitable symptoms of an unstable world. But there's at least one common thread between the disparate nations, cultures, and people in conflict, one element that has demonstrably proven to make these uprisings more likely: high global food prices. Just over a year ago, complex systems theorists at the New England Complex Systems Institute warned us that if food prices continued to climb, so too would the likelihood that there would be...

In a recent speech in Hawaii, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made some interesting predictions about two of the Supreme Court’s most notorious decisions: Kelo v. City of New London, which ruled that government can condemn private property and give it to other private owners to promote “economic development,” and Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the internment of over 100,000 Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during World War II. On Kelo, Scalia reiterated his 2011 prediction that the decision will eventually be overruled, stating that it “will not survive.” Kelo was a closely divided 5-4 decision (Scalia voted with the...

Pope Francis on Monday revolutionized the Vatican's scandal-plagued finances, inviting outside experts into a world often seen as murky and secretive and saying the church must use its wealth to help the poor. Francis, elected nearly a year ago with a mandate for reform, used a document known as a Motu Proprio - Latin for "by his own initiative" - to implement immediate changes including appointing an auditor-general. The document says the Church must see its possessions and financial assets in the "light of its mission to evangelize, with particular concern for the most needy". A new Secretariat for the...