TV News LIES

As the Muslim protests subside, more and more people have come to realize that what seems to have sparked them--one of the worst YouTube videos ever, which is saying something--isn't what they were mainly about.

But what were they about? Here theories differ, and some of the best theories haven't been getting much attention, because they're not on the talking-points agendas of Democrats or Republicans--which means they won't be occupying much airtime on network or cable TV during an election campaign.

Over two decades, the Boy Scouts of America failed to report hundreds of alleged child molesters to police and often hid the allegations from parents and the public.

A Los Angeles Times review of 1,600 confidential files dating from 1970 to 1991 has found that Scouting officials frequently urged admitted offenders to quietly resign — and helped many cover their tracks. Volunteers and employees suspected of abuse were allowed to leave citing bogus reasons such as business demands, "chronic brain dysfunction" and duties at a Shakespeare festival.

At least eight women have died in a Nato air strike in Afghanistan's eastern province of Laghman, local officials say. Nato has conceded that between five and eight civilians died as it targeted insurgents, and offered condolences.

The remote region in which the strike took place is out of the reach of central government, correspondents say. Earlier on Sunday, four US soldiers with the Nato forces were killed in an attack by suspected Afghan police.

here is no shortage of messaging from Big Oil trumpeting efforts to green “the Patch,” which is the euphemistic term applied to Alberta’s tar sands mine and melt sites.

They underplay the carbon impacts of what has been termed “the dirtiest oil on the planet” and trot out fancy technologies and plans that have yet to be put into action at industrial scale. And while there is a rosy picture painted for us Stateside, the business pages in Canada tend to lay bare the galling details of tar sands infrastructure pretty openly. There’s a great example of this from the Globe & Mail’s excellent reporter Nathan VanderKlippe.

Happy belated New Year, even though everything is the same as it ever was, year in and year out:  corporations trump human life; Republicans can't be bothered with truth, facts, or logic;  labor and the middle class have been cold-cocked and are down for the count.  Money still shrieks out the rules.

Happy belated Earth Day, while we're at it, even though nothing's changed over here either, even after 40-plus years.  Oh, sure, there have always been engaging science fairs, well-meaning bazaars,  contests using various arts and crafts, and nice ideas we try on as if playing dress-up for an hour or so.

Wish we could take credit for altruism being a standard part of human nature.  It's just not so. Instead, we all get back into our fossil-fuel eaters after the Earth Day show, and go roaring away somewhere else.

Somewhere in West Texas is a 7-inch radioactive cylinder that Halliburton would like to find. Anyone who comes across it is advised to keep their distance.

The oil field services company lost track of the device, which is used to assess potential sites for hydraulic fracturing, last Tuesday while trying to transport it from Pecos to a well site near Odessa 130 miles away. A special unit of the Texas National Guard has now stepped in to aid Halliburton in a search for the cylinder, according to Bloomberg.

Congress doesn't really understand what it's doing.

Specifically, the House members who voted 301-118 on Wednesday to reauthorize the vast spying powers in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act (or FISA Amendments Act, and yes, that's really its name) don't seem to understand what they were doing.

The same thing happened in 2008, when Congress first voted to retroactively legalize warrantless wiretapping. Then, as now, supporters of the legislation falsely insisted that it does not collect the communications of American citizens.

Three Palestinians on hunger strike in Israeli detention will die unless authorities find a quick solution, the International Committee of the Red Cross warned Friday.

Samer Barq, Hassan Safadi and Ayman Sharawneh have been on hunger strike for weeks to demand their release from administrative detention without trial, an ICRC spokesman said.

The ICRC said it was “extremely concerned about the deteriorating health” of the men who are on long-term hunger strike.