The careless, astonishing cruelty of Barack Obama’s government Let me introduce you to the world’s most powerful terrorist recruiting sergeant: a US federal agency called the office of the comptroller of the currency. Its decision to cause a humanitarian catastrophe in one of the poorest, most troubled places on Earth could resonate around the world for decades.

Last Friday, after the OCC had sent it a cease-and-desist order, the last bank in the United States still processing money transfers to Somalia closed its service. The agency, which reports to the US treasury, reasoned that some of this money might find its way into the hands of the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab. It’s true that some of it might, just as some resources in any nation will find their way into the hands of criminals (ask HSBC). So why don’t we shut down the phone networks to hamper terrorism? Why don’t we ban agriculture in case fertiliser is used to make explosives? Why don’t we stop all the clocks to prevent armed gangs from planning their next atrocity?

Ridiculous? In fact it’s not far off. Remittances from the Somalian diaspora amount to $1.2bn-$1.6bn a year, which is roughly 50% of the country’s gross national income, and on which 40% of the population relies for survival. Over the past 10 years the money known to have been transferred to suspected terrorists in Somalia amounts to a few thousand dollars. Cutting off remittances is likely to kill more people than terrorists will ever manage.

Compare this pointless destruction with the US government’s continued licensing of HSBC. In 2012 the bank was condemned by a Senate committee for circumventing safeguards “designed to block transactions involving terrorists, drug lords, and rogue regimes”. It processed billions of dollars for Mexican drug barons, and provided services to Saudi and Bangladeshi banks linked with the financing of terrorists. But there was no criminal prosecution because, the attorney general’s office argued, too many jobs were at stake. The outrageous practices revealed this week will doubtless be treated with the same leniency.

So in order to protect American jobs, the US government fails to take action over the illegal transfer of billions of dollars, while sentencing people in the Horn of Africa to death because of the illegal transfer of a few thousand. There is a word for these double standards: racism.

Isis war to extend far beyond Iraq and Syria under Obama's proposed plan Sources say White House plan will bless anti-Isis war for three years and ensure that Obama, like George W Bush, will hand over two wars to his successor

Barack Obama’s proposed framework for the US-led war against the Islamic State will not restrict the battlefield to Iraq and Syria, multiple congressional sources said on Tuesday, placing the US into a second simultaneous global war that will outlast his presidency.

Several congressional sources familiar with the outlines of the proposal, all of whom expected the White House to formally unveil it on Wednesday, told the Guardian the so-called Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) would bless the anti-Isis war for three years.

Congressional language to retroactively justify the six-month-old US war against Isis will not, they said, scrap the broad 9/11-era authorities against al-Qaida, as some congressional Democrats had proposed, meaning the two war authorizations will coexist.

Asked if the anti-Isis AUMF opens the US to a second worldwide war against a nebulous adversary, one congressional aide answered: “Absolutely.”

Two legislative aides with knowledge of the outlines of the White House proposal said the new AUMF would clarify that the 2001 authority, which Obama has cited to justify everything from drone strikes in Yemen to detaining Taliban combatants beyond the end of US combat in Afghanistan, will no longer apply to the war against Isis.

When would an anti-war activist back arms sales? When he's secretary of state

Secretary of State John Kerry has to be the worst anti-war activist in recorded history. Is there a military action - save one - that he hasn’t supported since he came to national prominence as an anti-war activist in the early 1970s? In the the past decade and a half alone, he’s voted for the war in Iraq, strongly defended drone strikes, was the chief advocate for the bombing of Syria in 2013, and was by far the most hyperbolic cabinet member calling for a years-long, multi-country war against ISIS.

And now Kerry has been privately telling lawmakers that he supports the US entering into a proxy-war against Russia by sending lethal weaponry to the Ukrainian military, even though the Obama administration supposedly does not yet have an official position.

Wildfires Could Spread Chernobyl's Radioactive Material

Nearly three decades after the explosion at the Soviet Union's Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the area is long devoid of permanent residents. But as much as nine percent of the radioactive cesium released into the air following the explosion remains in the soils and vegetation surrounding the decommissioned plant. Forest fires frequently break out and climate change could mean they become more frequent and more intense.

Those fires could release radioactive material into the atmosphere, which could pose health risks to humans living far beyond the contaminated zone, according to a new study published in the journal Ecological Monographs.

"In places like Chernobyl and now in Fukushima, we need to prepare for the possibility of these catastrophic fires," Tim Mousseau, a biologist at the University of South Carolina, Columbia and co-author on the study, told VICE News. "And we need to invest in proper management of these areas so they don't go up in smoke."

The original disaster released radioactive cesium, which the researchers used because it's easy to measure, along with other radioactive elements including strontium and plutonium. Though much of the material has disappeared due to radioactive decay, what remains is dispersed in the soil and water, which is sucked up by growing trees and distributed throughout their leaf systems. Dead, fallen leaves on the ground are a prime fuel for forest fires. In previous papers, the researchers discovered that leaves contaminated with radiation did not decompose as quickly as uncontaminated leaves, leading to greater buildup of leaf litter on the forest floor. ... A fire consuming the leaves vaporizes the radioactive material, and its heat causes the vapors to rise into the atmosphere. Once there, the vapors travel on the air until they fall or are brought to the ground with rain.