TV News LIES

The Palestinians' chief negotiator said Friday that a U.S. diplomat had warned of a cut in aid to the Palestinians if they proceed with a unilateral bid for statehood at the U.N in September.

The U.S. said that negotiator Saeb Erekat had mischaracterized the words of the U.S. consul-general in Jerusalem, but declined to comment further.

His voice cracking with emotion, President Felipe Calderon Friday declared three days of national mourning for what he described as “an act of terror” by gangsters who doused gasoline in a casino and caused a fire that left at least 52 people dead.

“Today is a day of grief for Monterrey and all of Mexico,” Calderon said in a nationally televised address before flying to the northern industrial city where the attack occurred Thursday afternoon. Authorities released a video taken by closed circuit camera showing how gunmen in four vehicles approached the Casino Royale in a posh area of western Monterrey Thursday at 3:48 p.m., went inside and set the installation ablaze.

New York’s police commissioner confirmed Thursday that a CIA officer is working out of police headquarters there, after an Associated Press investigation revealed an unusual partnership with the CIA that has blurred the line between foreign and domestic spying. But he and the CIA said the spy agency’s role at the department is an advisory one.

CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood said the agency does not spy inside the United States and also described the relationship with the NYPD as collaborative.

Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.

The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.

Government nuclear experts, however, said the World War II bomb blast and the accidental reactor meltdowns at Fukushima, which has seen ongoing radiation leaks but no deaths so far, were beyond comparison. The amount of caesium-137 released since the three reactors were crippled by the March 11 quake and tsunami has been estimated at 15,000 tera becquerels, the Tokyo Shimbun reported, quoting a government calculation. That compares with the 89 tera becquerels released by "Little Boy", the uranium bomb the United States dropped on the western Japanese city in the final days of World War II, the report said.

After spending over a decade promoting President Bush, the PATRIOT Act, and the Iraq War, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation appears to be up to the same tricks, this time with an hour-long promotional video about Bush’s leadership during the 9/11 attacks.

Although News Corp. is perhaps best known for its Bush cheerleading through its Fox News subsidiary, the Bush documentary is airing on another News Corp. company with a better brand image, National Geographic.

A Maryland rabbi described as the "Jewish Indiana Jones" is accused of fraud for allegedly making-up stories of finding Torahs in former concentration camps.

Menachem Youlus, 50, was arrested Wednesday in New York City on federal fraud charges for allegedly misrepresenting the origin of Torahs sold through his "Save a Torah" organization and then pocketing some of the money, The New York Times reported.

Americans eager to give after the 9/11 terrorist attacks poured $1.5 billion into hundreds of charities established to serve the victims, their families and their memories. But a decade later, an Associated Press investigation shows that many of those nonprofits have failed miserably.

There are those that spent huge sums on themselves, those that cannot account for the money they received, those that have few results to show for their spending and those that have yet to file required income tax returns. Yet many of the charities continue to raise money in the name of Sept. 11.