TV News LIES

The Israeli government has effectively frozen new Jewish construction in Jerusalem's disputed eastern sector, municipal officials said Monday. The decision was made despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's public insistence that building would not be stopped in the face of U.S. pressure.

For hearings on whether U.S. forces tortured confessions out of a Canadian teenager accused of killing an American soldier in Afghanistan, the Pentagon Monday unveiled a new face to advocate military commissions:

Fired former Bush-era prosecutor David Iglesias, a key figure in the so-called Attorney-Gate scandal. He was mobilized last year to the war court as a U.S. Navy Reserves captain.

Rumors of an upcoming terror attack to be blamed on Iran are moving around the world, “backchannel chatter.”  The primary suspect is Israel who is said to have a number of small “suitcase” type nuclear weapons, some primarily “dirty bombs,” possibly supplied secretly by a previous US administration.  These devices are in the “40 ton” range, highly radioactive, extremely small and can be engineered to leave the signature of a primitive device.  They were originally designed for use against Soviet armor and troop concentrations in Europe if a massed attack on NATO were to occur.  Current conventional systems have made this type of weapon obsolete.

For eight years, Israeli commuters have whizzed between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Route 443, a highway whose West Bank portion is lined with barriers and is off-limits to Palestinians who live along the way.

Naji Suliman, mayor of the Palestinian community of Beit Ur al-Tahta, thought that would change after a decision by Israel's Supreme Court calling for the ban on Palestinians to be lifted by May. But after meeting with a commander from the Israeli military last week, Suliman concluded that Israel's actions have been "just for public relations."

Palestinian protesters and Israeli police have clashed after Jewish settlers marched in the Arab neighbourhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem. The rightwing settlers, who staged the march on Sunday, want Palestinians removed from the area and their homes pulled down.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Wednesday in a Washington state case in which religious conservatives fear retaliation from gay rights groups if the names of the 138,000 people who signed ballot petitions to overturn a same-sex domestic partnership law are released.

Aliens almost certainly exist but humans should avoid making contact, Professor Stephen Hawking has warned. In a series for the Discovery Channel the renowned astrophysicist said it was "perfectly rational" to assume intelligent life exists elsewhere.

The documents show that the firm's executives were celebrating earlier investments calculated to benefit if housing prices fell, a Senate investigative committee found. In an e-mail sent in the fall of 2007, for example, Goldman executive Donald Mullen predicted a windfall because credit-rating companies had downgraded mortgage-related investments, which caused losses for investors.

"Sounds like we will make some serious money," Mullen wrote.