Last-minute regulations cement Bush’s dirty legacy

Despite a backdrop of two wars and a crumbling economy that desperately needs attention, the Bush administration is spending much of its last few months in office undermining established environmental, health, and safety protections. The executive branch is scrambling to file a bumper crop of last-minute rules regarding everything from worker rights to traffic safety to industrial pollution that threatens to have long-term and devastating impact.

Midnight regulations, to be sure,…

ProPublica has a rundown of The Bush Administration’s midnight regulations.

If you’re not up on the political upheaval in Thailand, read this BBC article.

Illegal BASE jumping from the Burj Dubai—the tallest building in the world—in this Current.com video.

A diamond ring shows up in a Salvation Army Kettle in Pennsylvania.

Japanese moonshiners have brewed the world’s first space beer.

From the GOOD Community:  bradleemajor shares videos from a future documentary (hopefully) about a person whose land is seized by the Canadian government…

In the wake of last week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, tensions are rising between India and neighboring Pakistan. Enmity between two nuclear powers: that’s never a good thing. The Ploughshares Fund’s Joe Cirincione gives us a look at what nuclear conflict in South Asia might mean for the region–and for the rest of the world.

Ploughshares Fund

The conservative pundit Michelle Malkin, who had previously joked about a countdown to a print media bailout, is currently cringing in response to the fact that one could actually come to pass for a number of local New England newspapers. In today’s National Review Online she asks:

How “free” can a “free press” be if it is leveraged with government funding? How free would they be to criticize other corporate enterprises seeking local, state or federal help to keep…

For his “Contradictions” series, Italian artist Filippo Minelli is painting the names of various buzz-making web 2.0 properties onto structures and scenes in countries like Mali and Cambodia. He explains his rhetorical aims in a Wooster Collective interview:

“…what i want to do by writing the names of anything connected with the 2.0 life we are living in the slums of the third world is to point out the gap between the reality we still live…