The Weekend Off – News You Missed

Alaska

The Blaze – Take a Gander at America’s Most Heavily Armed Counties. The Ones That Aren’t on the Map Might Surprise You

Maybe Texans don’t like guns as much as stereotypes have led us to believe. A map, posted Saturday by Reddit user Ramesses_Deux, purports to show the 30 U.S. counties with the highest rates of gun-owning residents.

NY Times – Shift in Alaska Helps Republicans Retain Senate Edge

The Senate battleground remains broad and competitive, with 10 races within six percentage points, according to the second wave of data from the New York Times/CBS News/YouGov online panel of more than 100,000 respondents.

The results nonetheless suggest that Republicans, who received good news in Alaska, hold an advantage in the fight for control of the Senate. They hold at least a nominal lead in eight states held by Democrats, more than the six they need to retake the chamber.

ADN.com – Democrats ask Maryland officials to review Sullivan’s tax breaks

The Alaska Democratic Party has asked Maryland tax authorities to review tax credits received by Alaska Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan while he lived in a Washington, D.C., suburb.

The party’s chairman, Mike Wenstrup, wrote the Maryland taxation department’s director last week to ask for a review of what the party says are $4,500 in tax breaks that Sullivan and his family received between 2006 and 2008 when they purchased a house in Bethesda and declared it their “principal residence.”

National

Salon – Finally, Wall Street gets put on trial: We can still hold the 0.1 percent responsible for tanking the economy

The Tea Party regards Barack Obama as a kind of devil figure, but when it comes to hunting down the fraudsters responsible for the economic disaster of the last six years, his administration has stuck pretty close to the Tea Party script. The initial conservative reaction to the disaster, you will recall, was to blame the crisis on the people at the bottom, on minorities and proletarians lost in an orgy of financial misbehavior. Sure enough, when taking on ordinary people who got loans during the real-estate bubble, the president’s Department of Justice has shown admirable devotion to duty, filing hundreds of mortgage-fraud cases against small-timers.

Desmogblog – Louisiana’s St. Tammany Parish Comes One Step Closer to Fracking

The Department of Louisiana Natural Resources (DNR) has approved a unit permit for Helis Oil & Gas Company for a site in St. Tammany Parish that the company plans to frack. The department’s decision came on Friday, August 29, the ninth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the beginning of the Labor Day weekend.

Slate.com – America May Have the Worst Hunger Problem of Any Rich Nation

During the recession, the number of Americans threatened by hunger skyrocketed. But during the recovery, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported yesterday, the number has barely fallen. All told, the government finds that more than 14 percent of households are considered “food insecure,” meaning they at least have difficulty affording meals, and in extreme cases may go without eating.

International

The Guardian – Russians open new front after Estonian official is captured in ‘cross-border raid’

The Estonian-Russia border at Luhamaa does not look like a new Checkpoint Charlie. Set among the wooded plains that mark Nato and the European Union’s eastern-most territory, the crossing is more likely to be the site of long lines of idling lorries than machine-gun nests and prisoner exchanges.

LA Times – Mexico crackdown keeps migrants off trains known as ‘La Bestia’

Around midnight, armed with flashlights, Mexican immigration agents halted “La Bestia” — the Beast. “Come down!” “Come over here!” they shouted at the migrants clinging to the top and sides of the freight train. Some migrants scrambled, hoping to escape. Most just gave up in the darkness. The agents wrapped their arms around the migrants’ necks and marched them to a waiting patrol wagon. About 20 were taken into custody.

BBC – Fifa World Cup ‘hits the poorest hardest’

A leading international charity is calling for major sports governing bodies Fifa and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to change their way of doing business around their showcase global events. The Swiss-based NGO, Terre des Hommes, which is dedicated to stopping child exploitation in developing countries, wants to see a number of financial and social changes around World Cups and Olympic Games.

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