The U.S. Justice Department has withdrawn a series of allegations made in federal court that tie Binyam Mohammed, a British resident held at Guantanamo Bay, to a plot to explode a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States, blow up apartment buildings here and release cyanide gas in nightclubs.
Ex-AIG chief Greenberg takes the Fifth
Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the legendary former chief executive of AIG, declined to answer questions Saturday from the New York Attorney General's office about his role in a controversial transaction between AIG and another insurer. Instead, Greenberg invoked his Fifth Amendment rights, his defense lawyer confirmed.
They said repeatedly that as long as he was provided with the full results of AIG's internal investigation of the deal - which he eventually was - he would answer all of state regulators' questions.
Greenberg's chance to testify finally came on Saturday, but he declined. It was a stunning turnaround for a man who has spent just shy of a quarter of a billion dollars to tell his side of the story and clear his name.
Bush Declares Exceptions to Sections of Two Bills He Signed Into Law
President Bush asserted on Tuesday that he had the executive power to bypass several parts of two bills: a military authorization act and a measure giving inspectors general greater independence from White House control. Mr. Bush signed the two measures into law. But he then issued a so-called signing statement in which he instructed the executive branch to view parts of each as unconstitutional constraints on presidential power.
In the authorization bill, Mr. Bush challenged four sections. One forbid the money from being used “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq”; another required negotiations for an agreement by which Iraq would share some of the costs of the American military operations there.
TVNL Comment: Understand that signing statements allow George Bush to ignore the bills he signs into law.
Pentagon bans SERE interrogation techniques
The Pentagon has revised a directive on detainee interrogations to specifically prohibit the use of techniques developed for a pilot survival training program from Chinese torture methods, officials said Wednesday.
Critics charge that the so-called SERE techniques served as the basis for coercive interrogation practices that spread after the September 11 attacks to military detention centers in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mainstream Media Lies about Vitamin D Deficiency and Parkinson's with Deceptive Headlines
Following the release of a new study strongly correlating vitamin D deficiency with Parkinson's disease, the mainstream media (MSM) has once again gone out of its way to intentionally distort the findings of the study and mislead readers about vitamin D. The study was conducted by Emory University, the same university that has just had $9.3 million in NIH grants frozen because of undisclosed ties between its researchers and the drug companies (http://www.naturalnews.com/News_000362_...).
Thus, from the start, we already know that Emory University researchers are working for Big Pharma and likely have a financial stake in promoting pharmaceuticals or discrediting natural alternatives.
Where's the congressionally mandated WMD czar?
The prospect that Al Qaeda or some other terrorist group might get its hand on a nuclear bomb is widely viewed as the scariest national-security threat facing the country. But more than a year after Congress passed a law creating a White House "czar" to focus on the issue, the post has yet to be filled—the apparent victim of yet another clash over presidential powers.
Infant Mortality: U.S. Ranks 29th
The U.S. ranks 29th worldwide in infant mortality, tying Slovakia and Poland but lagging behind Cuba, the CDC reports. The CDC's latest estimates for international rankings are based on 2004 data. But as of 2005, the numbers haven't changed much since 2000.
Nearly seven U.S. babies die out of every 1,000 live births. More than 28,000 American babies die before their first birthday. In Japan, ranked in third place behind Singapore and Hong Kong, the infant mortality rate is 2.8 per thousand live births -- less than half the U.S. rate.
New pact pares legal immunity for GIs, Iraqi aides say
American troops could face trial before Iraqi courts for major crimes committed off base and when not on missions, according to a draft security pact that has been put together after months of tortuous negotiations, Iraqi officials familiar with the document said Wednesday.
The draft also calls for U.S. troops to leave Iraqi cities by the end of June and withdraw from the country entirely by Dec. 31, 2011, unless the Baghdad government asks some of them to stay for training or security support.
Bush Rule Changes Could Block Product-Safety Suits
Bush administration officials, in their last weeks in office, are pushing to rewrite a wide array of federal rules with changes or additions that could block product-safety lawsuits by consumers and states.
The administration has written language aimed at pre-empting product-liability litigation into 50 rules governing everything from motorcycle brakes to pain medicine. The latest changes cap a multiyear effort that could be one of the administration's lasting legacies, depending in part on how the underlying principle of pre-emption fares in a case the Supreme Court will hear next month.
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