Bank of America Lied to Homeowners and Rewarded Foreclosures, Former Employees Say | ProPublicaBank of America employees regularly lied to homeowners seeking loan modifications, denied their applications for made-up reasons, and were rewarded for sending homeowners to foreclosure, according to sworn statements by former bank employees. ICIJ Releases Offshore […]

An Oregon program designed to help those with mental health histories restore gun ownership rights currently operates with a $576,000 budget and has restored those rights to just three people, according to an investigation by The Oregonian. The program comes from federal money -- the result of lobbying efforts by the National Rifle Association -- but funds a […]

Bloomberg News reports that India accounts for 37 percent of the world's female sterilizations. Last year, 4.6 million women were sterilized, a number reach in large part because of govenrment quotas and incentives for doctors. Women are supposed to receive counseling before they give consent for the operations, which doesn't always happen. Sterili […]

Seeking Truth, an official journal of the central CCP leadership, has run a new piece criticizing the use of the internet to attack the government and spread negativity about China. The piece concludes: "We must have an accurate grasp of online public opinion. The government must . . . see online public opinion as a way to understand the popular mood . […]

On June 9, 2013, Liu Hui (刘晖), the younger brother of Liu Xia (刘霞), the wife of jailed dissident and Nobel Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波), was sentenced to 11 years in jail on a criminal fraud charge that legal experts in China have said was a miscarriage of justice. In an open letter today, Liu Xia appeals directly to Chinese President Xi Jinping. She wri […]

Artist and celebrity dissident Ai Weiwei (艾未未), known for his provocative works of art making thinly veiled criticisms of Chinese society and politics, formally made his rock music debut this week with the video release of his single "Dumbass." The video, filmed by Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle, directly references the nearly three m […]