TV News LIES

John Dodson, the Special Agent who blew the whistle on the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal, is calling on Fortune Magazine to retract its landmark article asserting that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives "never intentionally allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels."

In a letter addressed to Fortune managing editor Andrew Serwer yesterday, obtained by POLITICO, Dodson's lawyer called reporter Katherine Eban's article "demonstrably false in many respects" when compared to a report from the Justice Department Inspector General released earlier this month, and said "a retraction is in order to correct the record."

Residents and local officials gathered here Thursday to say a fond and final farewell to a lead-contaminated town that no longer exists.

In the past two years, this city in the far southeastern corner of Kansas has been virtually emptied of its residents, who were given government-sponsored buyouts to move away after Treece was declared unsafe for human habitation. Thursday’s ceremony was part municipal funeral and part celebration of the community that once was and is no longer.

According to current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, some 19,000 sexual assaults are alleged to have occurred in the military last year alone, but because of fears of retaliation, only 20 percent of those are reported. On Thursday night, Panetta was interviewed on NBC about the issue, which he called an “outrage.”

He once again pledged his commitment to confronting the issue, as he has repeatedly in the last year, announcing a slew of new measures, including the establishment of special victims units within every branch, new policies that would allow victims to transfer into a different unit, and—as of just this week—he ordered all branches to review their sexual-assault training and response programs.

A new Afghan army-issued guide explains to soldiers here that when their Western counterparts do something deeply insulting, it’s likely a product of cultural ignorance and not worthy of revenge.

Eleven years into the war in Afghanistan, NATO troops and Afghan soldiers are still beset by a dangerous lack of cultural understanding, officials say, contributing to a string of insider attacks that have threatened to undermine the military partnership. Fifty-one coalition troops have been killed this year by their Afghan counterparts.

n the year since Carrie Klaege moved to Arizona and started a non-profit program to help poor women afford abortions, she’s watched access to the procedure get tougher for her clients.

Following a rash of new laws, abortions are no longer available at clinics outside Tucson and Phoenix and women must wait 24 hours after required ultrasound tests before terminating pregnancies -- forcing some to travel hundreds of miles and stay overnight. Klaege said she’s now making connections in other states where she could send women if the courts allow a ban on later abortions to take effect.

The Republican Party of Florida's top recipient of 2012 expenditures, a firm by the name of Strategic Allied Consulting, was just fired on Tuesday night, after more than 100 apparently fraudulent voter registration forms were discovered to have been turned in by the group to the Palm Beach County, FL Supervisor of Elections.

The firm appears to be another shell company of Nathan Sproul, a longtime, notorious Republican operative, hired year after year by GOP Presidential campaigns, despite being accused of shredding Democratic voter registration forms in a number of states over several past elections.

The US military has designated Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as enemies of the United States - the same legal category as the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban insurgency.

Declassified US Air Force counter-intelligence documents, released under US freedom-of-information laws, reveal that military personnel who contact WikiLeaks or WikiLeaks supporters may be at risk of being charged with "communicating with the enemy", a military crime that carries a maximum sentence of death.

More than 100 million people will die and global economic growth will be cut by 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030 if the world fails to tackle climate change, a report commissioned by 20 governments said on Wednesday.

As global average temperatures rise due to greenhouse gas emissions, the effects on the planet, such as melting ice caps, extreme weather, drought and rising sea levels, will threaten populations and livelihoods, said the report conducted by humanitarian organization DARA.