Voters in U.S. counties previously covered by the Voting Rights Act (VRA) will have at least 868 fewer places to cast ballots in the 2016 election than they did previously, according to a new analysis released Friday.

In fact, the report (pdf) from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights finds that in the wake of the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision gutting the VRA, “[c]ounties and states with known records of voting discrimination are closing polling places on a massive scale.” This is among other negative outcomes of the ruling, which Common Dreams has covered extensively. 

Many closures happened in places that would have had to gain federal approval to change voting laws prior to the high court’s ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, “which made Section 5 of the VRA inoperable and opened the door to racial discrimination at every juncture of the electoral process,” as the report explains.

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In North Carolina, for example:

And in Texas:

If it seems like Big Pharma has escaped accountability for its role in perpetuating the nation’s deadly opioid epidemic, those suspicions are not unfounded.

According to a former top Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official, the industry’s influence over Congress has successfully quashed efforts to regulate the pharmaceutical drug market aiding an unprecedented addiction to legal drugs.

“When you sit with a parent who can’t understand why there’s so many pharmaceuticals out in the illicit marketplace, and why isn’t the government doing anything, well the DEA was doing something. Unfortunately what we’re trying to do is thwarted by people who are writing laws,” Joseph Rannazzisi, who for 10 years served as head of the DEA’s Diversion Control Division, told the Guardian.

In an exclusive investigation published on Monday, the Guardian, with Rannazzisi’s help, explains how Congress turned its back on suffering families and, under the guise of combating the national epidemic, has routinely passed legislation that effectively shields the industry.

One such law is the recently-passed Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act, which “requires the DEA to warn pharmacies and distributors if they are in breach of regulations”—namely “crooked doctors and pharmacists” in suspicion of over-prescribing prescription drugs—”and to give them a chance to comply before licenses are withdrawn,” the Guardian reports.

Rannazzisi declared the new law a “gift to the industry,” explaining how it does neither of the things it purports to do. “This doesn’t ensure patient access and it doesn’t help drug enforcement at all,” he said. “What this bill does is take away DEA’s ability to go after a pharmacist, a wholesaler, manufacturer or distributor.”

“The bill passed because ‘Big Pharma’ wanted it to pass,” he added. “When I was in charge what I tried to do was explain to my investigators and my agents that our job was to regulate the industry and they’re not going to like being regulated.”

The Washington Post has also been reporting on the drop in enforcement actions against pharmaceutical distributors, dubbed “pill mills,” which it said was due in part to “resistance from higher-level Justice Department officials who were being heavily lobbied by the wholesalers.”

“Congress would rather listen to people who had a profit motive rather than a public health and safety motive.”
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A prominent Honduran leader of a rural land rights movement was killed on Monday night in what supporters claim was an assassination organized by wealthy landowners.

“How many more activists have to be brutally murdered before the authorities take effective action to protect them, or even be willing to talk about this crisis?”
—Erika Guevara-Rosas,
Amnesty InternationalJose Angel Flores, president of the Unified Campesinos Movement of the Aguan Valley, or MUCA, had been under police protection since March, teleSUR reported, after the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights ordered the Honduran state to protect him from death threats in 2014.

Former MUCA president Johnny Rivas, who hosts a radio show on the local station Radio Progreso, blamed “death squads chasing peasant families fighting for land rights” for the murder.

Of Flores’ organization, teleSUR wrote: “MUCA has been on the forefront of alternative food production and economic development projects in the Aguan on land recovered through large-scale land occupations. The movement struggles to strengthen food sovereignty while continuing to demand comprehensive agrarian reform.”

“The situation in the Aguan has been called the most intense agrarian conflict seen in Central America in the last 15 years,” the Latin American outlet added.

Flores was killed in Tocoa, in the northern Honduran department of Colon.

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The Spanish-language wire service EPE reported on the details of the attack:

About 150 other activists have been killed so far in the region, the local campesinos organizations told teleSUR.

The battle between landowners and peasant farmers has led to so much bloodshed that people describe Bajo Aguan, where MUCA operates, as “killing fields.”

“Many illegal mass graves have been discovered in recent years,” teleSUR wrote.

Honduran Indigenous activist Berta Cáceres, who was assassinated in March, also devoted her life to fighting for land rights. Violence against land defenders is on the rise across Latin America, and Honduras remains one of the most dangerous countries for activists in the world.

“Honduras has turned into a ‘no-go zone’ for anyone daring to campaign for the protection of the environment. How many more activists have to be brutally murdered before the authorities take effective action to protect them, or even be willing to talk about this crisis?” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.

And the U.S. continues to funnel millions of dollars in military funding to the Honduran government, despite the targeted assassinations and other human rights abuses.

“We are indignant that in the face of the ongoing and documented violence, repression and corruption involving the Honduran government, the U.S. State Department has certified that it is satisfied that the Honduran government has taken effective steps to improve human rights,” grassroots coalition Honduras Solidarity Network said Wednesday. “This clears the way for $55 million more in U.S. aid.”

Security experts on Monday testified in support of Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein, who is spearheading a by-hand election recount initiative in Wisconsin.

Unless a judge rules in her favor, the state will likely allow its 72 counties to decide whether they want to conduct the process manually or by machine. On Monday, a group of academics and other specialists agreed with Stein’s argument that an automated recount would risk an incorrect tally. President-elect Donald Trump won Wisconsin 47.9 percent to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s 46.9 percent—a margin of just over 22,000 votes.

A manual count would be the only way to ensure that there had been no hacking, the experts said.

“It is not possible to determine with certainty the absence of malicious software hiding within what might appear to be many thousands of lines of legitimate software code,” Poorvi Vora, a professor at George Washington University, wrote in an affidavit (pdf) on Monday.

In another affidavit, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Ronald Rivest quoted (pdf) the famous proverb, “Trust, but verify.”

“We have learned the hard way that almost any computer system can be broken into by a sufficiently determined, skillful, and persistent adversary,” he said.

Buried amid the outcry over the white-nationalist beliefs of Steve Bannon, President-elect Donald Trump’s selection for chief strategist, is the scale of his global ambitions as sources close to the Brietbart News chairman predict he will use his influence to craft a foreign policy that includes “aggressive military action” and bolstering international far-right leaders, beginning with France’s Marine Le Pen.

Speaking with sources close to Bannon, The Hill reported Tuesday that he is expected to “be an influential adviser to Trump in the international arena.”

“Bannon admires right-wing nationalists and hard-line illegal immigration opponents in Europe and elsewhere,” The Hill reports. “He wants to work more closely with them and sees them as part of a worldwide movement to overthrow the ‘globalists,’ according to multiple sources familiar with his thinking.”

In fact, Breitbart is planning to open offices in France and Germany specifically in preparation for upcoming elections in those countries, Breitbart editor Andrew Marlow told the New York Times. 

A source “familiar with the website’s internal dynamics” told The Hill that the new Paris bureau, “will campaign aggressively” on behalf of Le Pen, leader of France’s far-right National Front party.

Meanwhile, Bannon’s strong opposition to Chancellor Angela Merkel will be a source of inspiration for the German branch. According to a “source familiar with Breitbart’s internal dynamics,” Breitbart Berlin will focus “on the Islamic refugee crisis that Merkel created.”

Former Breitbart writer Ben Shapiro minced no words Monday when he declared: “Bannon has goals.”

One of those goals, he wrote, is “maximization of personal power,” which in large part will be used to “target enemies.” 

Marking the divestment movement’s “undeniable success,” a new report shows the value of funds controlled by individuals and institutions who have vowed to dump their fossil fuels assets now surpasses $5 trillion.

350.org co-founder Bill McKibben said the “news is mammoth.”

The report (pdf) by Arabella Advisors for the Divest-Invest Network shows that the value of global funds making the commitment—now at about $5.2 trillion—has doubled in size since September 2015, and comes from 688 institutions and over 58,000 individuals spanning 76 countries.

It comes exactly one year after the adoption of the landmark Paris climate accord, and that agreement, the report says, “bolstered the economic arguments underpinning divestment, validating it as a key tool for achieving the agreements goals.”

Pointing to the election of climate science-denier Donald Trump, the report adds: “Any setback to official U.S. climate policy elevates the importance of divestment as an organizing and financial tool to speed the clean energy transition. Absent effective federal policy to curb emissions, advocates and investors can use their assets and their voice to continue pushing the energy sector beyond fossil fuels.”

Outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the findings, stating that “it’s clear the transition to a clean energy future is inevitable, beneficial, and well underway, and that investors have a key role to play.”