News stories by Matthew Cardinale, page 3

Civil liberties groups and many citizen activists are outraged over language in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA) that appears to lay the legal groundwork for indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without trial.

Environmental advocates praised a recent new rule limiting pollution of mercury and other air toxins announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, one of several new air pollution standards set under the Barack Obama administration.

When Vandy Beth Glenn, a transgender woman formerly known as Mr. Glenn Morrison, told her supervisors at the Georgia state legislature where she served as a legislative editor that she would start coming to work dressed as a woman, she was fired.

Homeless people make up a significant proportion of participants in the Occupy Movement in cities across the United States, from Los Angeles to Atlanta, where at times they comprise an estimated third of the occupiers.

At least 36 states across the U.S. are proposing laws that would require applicants for and recipients of a variety of public aid programs to undergo drug testing in which they would have to provide a urine sample. Several states, including Arizona, Florida, Indiana and Missouri, have already passed such laws.

In the western desert state of Arizona, a company called EnviroMission is planning to build a new solar tower, the first of its kind, an ambitious new way to produce energy with heat from the sun.

With 221 Indonesian migrant workers facing death sentences in China, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, the government of Indonesia has approved a legal aid budget to assist these workers, who often do not have access to such assistance otherwise.

While some veterans of the Civil Rights Movement have joined forces with the Occupy Movement, other civil rights advocates, some of a new generation, have been more critical, even as the city government's response to the movement reached new levels.

As the Occupy Movement spreads like wildfire across the United States and around the world, protests in the U.S. South are facing unique challenges.

During the last days of Troy Davis's life, activists intensified what was already significant pressure on both U.S. President Barack Obama and the U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ), a federal agency under Obama's purview, to save Davis, but Obama declined to act.