Judge Orders NYPD To Release Records On X-ray Vans

The NYPD has a secretive program that uses unmarked vans with X-ray machines designed to detect bombs. ProPublica tried to find out more about it, but the NYPD refused to answer for three years.

Michael Grabell
By Michael Grabell
Democrats are calling for the NYPD to destroy its files it acquired from spying in Muslim neighborhoods. (Photo by Scott Davidson)

A state judge has ordered the New York City Police Department to release records on a secretive program that uses unmarked vans equipped with X-ray machines to detect bombs. The ruling follows a nearly three-year legal battle by ProPublica, which had requested police reports, training materials, contracts and any health and safety tests on the

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Are ‘We the People’ Useful Idiots In The Digital Age?

In an Orwellian age where war equals peace, surveillance equals safety, and tolerance equals intolerance of uncomfortable truths and politically incorrect ideas, “we the people” have gotten very good at walking freely into the slaughterhouse.

John Whitehead
By John Whitehead

Back in the heyday of the old Soviet Union, a phrase evolved to describe gullible western intellectuals who came to visit Russia and failed to notice the human and other costs of building a communist utopia. The phrase was “useful idiots” and it applied to a good many people who should have known better. I now propose a new, analogous term more

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Weak Oil-Train Regulations Don’t Go Nearly Far Enough, Experts Warn

Proposed rules prioritize industry over community and environmental safety.

Deirdre Fulton
By Deirdre Fulton

Environmental groups say the Obama administration's new crude-by-rail regulations (pdf), proposed Wednesday, don't go nearly far enough to reduce the risk posed by hazardous rail cars carrying oil and ethanol across long distances. The proposed rules, which include a phase-out of older tank cars and new brake controls and speed restrictions,

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Medical Marijuana Group Issues its First Quality Certificates

Just two months after announcing a program to verify the safety and quality of medical marijuana, Americans for Safe Access announced the first two dispensaries to pass the certification process.

Katie Rucke
By Katie Rucke
Jake Dimmock, co-owner of the Northwest Patient Resource Center medical marijuana dispensary, works with flowering plants in a grow room, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

About two months after the medical marijuana patient advocacy group Americans for Safe Access announced that it would launch a program to verify medical marijuana products sold at licensed businesses, the group announced the certification of the first two dispensaries in the country: Berkeley Patients Group and SPARC of San Francisco. The

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Chemical Spill Shuts Down Much Of W.Va. Capital

The chemical, a foaming agent used in the coal preparation process, leaked from a tank at Freedom Industries, overran a containment area.

Associated Press
By Associated Press

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Schools and restaurants closed, grocery stores sold out of bottled water, and state legislators who had just started their session canceled the day's business after a chemical spill in the Elk River in Charleston shut down much of the city and surrounding counties even as the cause and extent of the incident remained

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India’s High Court Rules To Protect People “Used As Guinea Pigs” In Drug Trials

Drug companies will now face stricter regulations for clinical trials in India after the Supreme Court’s ruling last month.

Katie Rucke
By Katie Rucke

After it was discovered earlier this year that thousands of impoverished people living in rural parts of India were being subjected to what many described as “unethical and flat-out inhumane clinical trials” by Big Pharma companies to determine the safety and effectiveness of new drugs, the country’s Supreme Court ruled last month that there needs

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