Federal officials are throwing out their first bone to blood thirsty environmentalists (like you and I) who seek justice for BP’s 2010 oil spill. Kurt Mix, a 50 year old BP engineer is being charged with obstruction of justice for deleting hundreds of text messages sent to his superiors describing the shit tons of oil leaking out of BP’s Horizon well. According to the Huffington Post, the criminal charges against Mix may “validate concerns raised by scientists, elected officials and environmental groups that BP officials deliberately misled the government and the public about how much oil was leaking from the ruptured...

Survival International, with support from the likes of Colin Firth, will this week launch a campaign to protect Brazil’s indigenous Awa tribe. With just 355 members, illegal logging in the Amazon is threatening this population with extinction, leading Brazilian judge Jose Carlos do Vale Medeira to proclaim the situation “a real genocide.” Demands for iron ore extraction have led to an influx of settlers into the area, causing both a destruction of Awa land and the introduction of numerous diseases to which the Awa have no immunity. The violence with which Awa resistance is met is the subject of huge concern, with reports of...

Reports of virginity testing performed on young Zimbabwean schoolgirls have been met with criticism from women’s and children’s rights groups who are decrying the practice as a violation of dignity and respect. The tests were carried out on Grade 7 girls at Tsetse primary school without parental consent; parents have claimed that “the Child Protection Committee and the teachers threatened to beat up the pupils if they did not reveal whom they have slept with.” Linda Valerie Guzha, the Zimbabwe Programme Director for Days for Girls, has termed the process of virginity testing on girls as “taking 10 steps back in...

Saudi Arabia – A Sri Lankan woman is facing decapitation by sword following accusations of witchcraft from the father of a 13 year old girl. The woman came into brief contact with the girl at a local shopping mall and allegedly cast a spell on her. But how does the dad know this? According to reports in the daily Okaz, the man told authorities that his daughter “suddenly started acting in an abnormal way” which apparently was enough to determine that the Sri Lankan was in fact a witch, and for the Jeddah police to arrest her. The penalty of death by decapitation is of course derived from the principles of Wahhabism,...

Aspen, CO – During a snow storm this past fall, several cows apparently froze to death after wandering into an abandoned ranger’s station in search of shelter. Now the problem has become how to get rid of the carcasses before they thaw, and three options have been proposed: blowing the cows up, burning down the cabin, or hauling them out by helicopter or truck. Because helicopters would be too expensive and trucks would harm the natural wilderness in the area, it appears that the only viable options are burning down the cabin or blowing the cows up with explosives. “Obviously, time is of the essence because we...

Chevron is apparently trying to get out of paying an $18 billion judgment to 30,000 Ecuadoran rainforest residents, for creating “one of the world’s largest oil-related environmental disasters,” aka Chevron’s Chernobyl in the Amazon. Yes, this is bigger than the BP f*@k up, only it happened 19-years ago and they’ve been trying to keep it on the down-low ever since. Chevron attorney, Doak Bishop of King & Spalding, said, “The plaintiffs are really irrelevant. They always were irrelevant. There were never any real parties in interest in this case… There will be no prejudice to [the rainforest...

U.S. soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division had quite the Kodak moment after orders led them to investigate and document the remains of three Afghan suicide bombers. Upon completing their mission, the paratroopers made the prudent decision to pose with body parts (heads, legs etc) and take pictures as if they were at a celebrity meet and greet. The LA Times broke the story earlier today, noting that they’d received the photos from a soldier who wanted to “draw attention to the safety risk of a breakdown in leadership and discipline” [within the U.S. Military]. The U.S. Army launched an immediate, “criminal...

The water supply of an all-girls high school in northern Afghanistan was poisoned in what educators believe to be a heinous attack aimed at deterring female education. Approximately 150 schoolgirls were affected by the poison, many experiencing symptoms including severe vomiting and headaches. Several of the girls remain in critical condition at a local hospital in the Takhar province. According to the education department spokesman, Jan Mohammad Nabizada, “We are 100 percent sure that the water they drunk inside their classes was poisoned. This is either the work of those who are against girls’ education or irresponsible armed...

Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth, Sweden’s Minister of Culture, was the subject of outrage after photos of her cutting into a cake depicting the genital mutilation of a stereotyped African woman circulated around the internet. Ummm Ya. Bad Idea. The cake was apparently an art installation for a tax payer funded event in celebration of World Art Day. According to The Local, the installation “was reportedly meant to highlight the issue of female circumcision,” and that it did! The most atrocious part of the exhibit, and yes, it does get worse, was the combination of screams coming from the head of the cake (a live performance...

Not only has the population of emperor penguins in Antartica nearly doubled since 1992, but this finding was also made possible via satellite imagery. New technology in satellite imagery called “pansharpening” has allowed scientists to use a focusing technique to actually count the population of penguins from space. Tracking these four foot tall penguins is difficult due to their remote habitats found only in Antarctica. The last time an emperor penguin census was conducted was in 1992, and at that time the population was close to 300,000. With the new satellite census, tracking the population has become more accurate, allowing...

Web-based television and movie streaming service Netflix has found itself in a nice little flip-flopping situation. On April 5, the digital upstart filed paperwork with the Federal Elections Committee to create a new super-PAC dubbed FLIXPAC. Last week, RT reported that Netflix could use the funds relegated to that political action committee to support politicians who would in turn, help fund controversial bills like Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act (SOPA and PIPA, respectively). Soon thereafter, Netflix emailed RT with a response to the article that argued that FLIXPAC was not set up to financially support such bills. Joris...

“Superbugs” have been popping up in conversations, hospitals, and people around the world. They are strands of bacteria that are immune, or resistant, to current natural and synthetic antibiotics. After studying samples of non-pathogenic bacteria from one of the world’s most pristine cave networks, scientists are beginning to form a new thesis on the creation of “superbugs.” It’s inevitable for bacteria to have a resistance to a newly introduced antibiotic (zithromax, amoxicillin, or penicillin) grow over time, but scientists have found bacteria in a cave in New Mexico, untouched by humankind, that are...

Children’s rights activists in Egypt have united in their call for the government to act against the increase in child abductions since the revolution. A coalition consisting of 100 child advocacy groups has expressed serious concern at the negligible attention paid to the crisis by the new administration. Reports suggest that child abductions have risen threefold since the popular uprising and the Coalition on Children’s Rights has indicated a 300 percent increase in the number of abduction-related calls it receives from parents. Hani Helal, secretary-general of the Egyptian Coalition on Children’s Rights, has suggested...

One hundred years ago tonight (11:40pm), the Royal Mail Steamer (R.M.S.) Titanic, on her maiden voyage slicing through the dead-calm waters of the North Atlantic at approximately 21.5 knots, under a moonless sky, scraped her starboard bow against a huge iceberg, popping rivets and allowing thousands of tons of icy water into at least the first four of her much-touted watertight compartments. The ship that had inspired almost unprecedented fanfare – that was so big her wake had almost stripped the S.S. City of New York from its moorings as she left Southampton – that had incorporated into her design and operation many safety features...