TV News LIES

An official at the United States Embassy in Iraq has told federal prosecutors that he believes that State Department officials sought to block any serious investigation of the 2007 shooting episode in which Blackwater Worldwide security guards were accused of murdering 17 Iraqi civilians, according to court testimony made public on Tuesday.

David Farrington, a State Department security agent in the American Embassy at the time of the shooting in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, told prosecutors that some of his colleagues were handling evidence in a way they hoped would help the Blackwater guards avoid punishment for a crime that drew headlines and raised tensions between American and Iraqi officials.

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If every tax-exempt religious organization received the same scrutiny as Washington's now famous C Street rowhouse, the IRS would have its hands full. But given the evidence available, it's difficult to see why a boarding house for evangelical Congressmen should be classified as a church -- for the purposes of God or Caesar.

Until last fall, the C Street Center paid no property taxes in the District of Columbia because it received an E1, or religious, exemption. After D.C. officials inspected the $1.8 million townhouse near the U.S. Capitol, they declared 66 percent of it to be a taxable residence, not a tax-exempt church. "Portions are being rented to private individuals for residential purposes," a D.C. official told the Post.

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The Supreme Court today refused to block the District of Columbia's gay marriage law, freeing the city to issue its first marriage licenses to same-sex couples the following day.

Opponents of gay marriage in the nation's capital had asked Chief Justice John Roberts to stop the city from issuing the licenses on Wednesday while they appealed. They argued that D.C. voters should have been allowed to vote on the issue. Local courts have rejected the opponents' arguments. "It has been the practice of the court to defer to the decisions of the courts of the District of Columbia on matters of exclusively local concern," said Roberts, writing for the court.

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Just 50 miles off the Pacific Northwest coast is an earthquake hotspot that threatens to unleash on Seattle, Portland and Vancouver the kind of damage that has shattered Chile.

The fault has been dormant for more than 300 years, but when it awakens — tomorrow or decades from now — the consequences could be devastating. Recent computer simulations of a hypothetical magnitude-9 quake found that shaking could last 2 to 5 minutes — strong enough to potentially cause poorly constructed buildings from British Columbia to Northern California to collapse and severely damage highways and bridges.

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Makers and sellers of fish oil supplements were sued in California for not including labeling about PCB contamination, a plaintiff's attorney said Tuesday.

"Consumers who want the health benefits of fish oil shouldn't also have to take the health risks of an extremely toxic man-made chemical," attorney David Roe said in a release. "And they don't have to, since preliminary test results show that some fish oil brands have only 1/70th as much PCB contamination in them as others."

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Consumer advocates filed a class-action suit against Anthem Blue Cross on Monday, accusing California's largest for-profit health insurer of illegally using drastic rate hikes to force customers into inferior health plans.

The suit comes two days before top executives from several major U.S. health insurers, including Anthem's parent company, WellPoint Inc. , were to meet in Washington with Obama administration officials to discuss escalating premiums. Anthem's plan to boost its individual premiums by as much as 39 percent has spawned inquiries by state regulators and congressional committees.

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Contamination of drinking water by a common herbicide poses a greater health threat than previously believed, according to a report issued by the nonprofit environmental organization Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

Most people are familiar with traditional weapons of mass destruction such biological weapons, nuclear weapons and chemical weapons. The point of all such weapons of mass destruction is to inflict a large number of casualties on civilian populations as a way to cripple a nation into political or military submission.