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Abby Ohlheiser

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Halliburton Will Pay a $200,000 Fine For Destroying BP Oil Spill Evidence

September 20, 2013 Halliburton's criminal liability related to the 2010 BP oil spill was resolved on Thursday when US District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo accepted a plea deal requiring the company to pay $200,000 for destroying evidence. That fine is the maximum for the misdemeanor charge, and Milazzo agreed that the punishment "adequately ...

The Viral Navy Yard Photo Is Related, After All

September 20, 2013 The Associated Press dropped a rare plot twist into a story of how the facts that emerge in the first hours after breaking news are so often wrong by undoing its retraction of a photo that, it turns out, was related to the Navy Yard shootings on Monday after all. ...

Company That Vetted Snowden Also Ran Aaron Alexis's Background Check

September 20, 2013 The contractor responsible for vetting Edward Snowden in 2011, already under a criminal investigation for "routine" background check failures, was also responsible for vetting Washington Navy Yard gunman Aaron Alexis in 2007. After initially denying involvement, USIS did some digging and discovered that it did, in fact, run the background ...

Report: Assault Team Ordered to Stand Down During Navy Yard Shooting

September 18, 2013 A tactical unit of heavily-armed Capitol Police officers was near the scene of the Washington Navy Yard shooting as it happened, ready and capable of stepping in. But according to multiple sources speaking to the BBC, that unit was ordered to stand down and leave the scene, instead of helping ...

Alleged Navy Yard Gunman Was Treated by the VA for Mental Illness

September 17, 2013 On Monday afternoon, officials identified 34-year-old Aaron Alexis as the deceased gunman in the Washington Navy Yard mass shooting. Alexis, a Navy contractor, lived in Texas until recently. He was killed in a "running gun battle with police" responding to the shooting, according to the AP. As is the pattern ...

Man Throws Firecrackers on the White House Lawn Hours After D.C. Shootings

September 16, 2013 There's no good day to throw lit firecrackers on the White House lawn. But Monday, the day of a tragic mass murder at the Washington Navy Yard, is definitely one of the worst. And yet, that's exactly what one man did on Monday evening, prompting a security alert at the ...

The CIA Begins Weapon Delivery to Some Syrian Rebels

September 12, 2013 The CIA began delivering lethal aid to some Syrian rebel groups two weeks ago, according to a Washington Post report, along with non-lethal aid from the State Department and other government agencies. That seems to end months of delays from the CIA on an authority they've had since July. Now ...

Obama Pledges to Consider Syria Plan, While Keeping Threat of a Strike

September 10, 2013 "Tonight I want to talk to you about Syria. why it matters, and where we go from here," President Obama told the nation in a prime time speech Tuesday night, where he announced that the United States will continue to pursue congressional authorization for a military strike while, at the ...

Brazil's Strategy to Evade the NSA Involves Buying a New Satellite

September 6, 2013 FROM NEXTGOV arrow Brazil will buy a new satellite and build its own fiber-optic cable to try and avoid the bulk collection of their country's communications by the NSA. The country learned from stories sourced to Edward Snowden's NSA leaks that U.S. intelligence was collecting the emails, phone calls, and texts of its ...

John Kerry Makes the Syria Case to the Liberal Public

September 6, 2013 Secretary of State John Kerry brought the case for Syrian intervention to the left on Thursday night during an interview with Chris Hayes on MSNBC. As the Obama administration continues to lobby legislators on their upcoming vote to authorize a military strike on Syria, the administration's been waging a companion ...