TV News LIES

The widow of a city cop killed by lung cancer after two months of toxic post-9/11 duty won a bitter four-year fight Tuesday to collect enhanced line-of-duty death benefits.

The Appellate Division of State Supreme Court ruled in favor of Nilda Macri, whose husband Frank was an iron-pumping, non-smoking housing officer known for his buff physique.

Israel's crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories - like the settlements, the killing of civilians and the demolition of homes - are openly condemned in the West by human rights groups and others like never before. But as the peace process remains stuck, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu forces the issue of Israel as a "Jewish state" into the spotlight, understanding the situation of Palestinian citizens of Israel has become crucial to grasping the core of the entire conflict.

So-called "Israeli Arabs" have got it better than most Palestinians, who are either under military rule or forcibly excluded from their homeland. But the institutional discrimination they have faced since 1948 goes to the heart of the contradiction that Israel is "Jewish and democratic".

Lynn Samuels, the former left wing radio host on WABC, died of a heart attack on Saturday. The 69-year-old had missed her Saturday morning Sirius XM radio, so, the Post reports, "SiriusXM sent someone to her apartment, and that person notified police, who found her body."

The Daily News' David Hinckley has a thorough obituary, noting how she worked at WBAI and then WABC for 15 years, where she was fired three times and rehired twice.

The U.S. troops have left Iraq, and U.S. diplomats will now be the face of America in a country that remains extremely volatile.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, along with several consulates, will have some 15,000 workers, making it the largest U.S. diplomatic operation abroad. Those diplomats will be protected by a private army consisting of as many as 5,000 security contractors who will carry assault weapons and fly armed helicopters.

In a year that included an attempted House repeal of the federal health care law, several court cases challenging its constitutionality and Republican candidate debates proposing a replacement plan, it can be difficult to dig through the rhetoric to determine just what the 2010 health care law has done.

The 2,400-page document and a multiyear and multistep implementation don't help with the confusion. Proponents and foes say big pieces of the law have been enacted and have already affected millions of people's lives.

A resurgent green movement is launching a multi-pronged counter-attack against the shale oil and gas boom in the United States that could slow, though ultimately not stop, development.

Building upon their unexpected success in the battle against the Keystone XL pipeline, a renewed onslaught from environmentalists is putting the shale industry on the defensive while adding to costs, limiting expansion and potentially scuttling major projects.

Americans have trouble dealing with science, and one place that's especially obvious is in presidential campaigns, says Shawn Lawrence Otto, who tried, with limited success, to get the candidates to debate scientific questions in the 2008 presidential election.

Otto is the author of a new book, "Fool me twice: Fighting the assault on science in America," which opens with a quote from Thomas Jefferson: "Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government."

Drug companies are working to develop a pure, more powerful version of the nation’s second-most-abused medicine, which has addiction experts worried that it could unleash a new wave of abuse.

The new pills contain the highly addictive painkiller hydrocodone, packing up to 10 times the amount of the drug as existing medications such as Vicodin. Four companies have begun patient testing, and one of them — Zogenix of San Diego — plans to apply early next year to begin marketing its product, Zohydro.