TV News LIES

In America, we hold some truths to be self-evident: our news should report facts, and our personal communications should be private. Given the scandal rocking Britain over Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid paper News of the World and his huge influence over US media, both of these notions could be in jeopardy.

James Murdoch announced today that amidst a growing furor, News of the World will cease publication on Sunday. Far from resolving the problem, this radical step raises the question of just how deep this scandal goes. The Murdoch-owned paper The Sun has faced similar allegations of phone hacking this year, and no investigation has yet been conducted to see if similar abuses occurred at Murdoch-owned papers here in the United States.

A federal appeals court has overturned part of a 2008 loosening of U.S. media-ownership rules that made it easier to own a newspaper and a broadcast outlet in a single market.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said on Thursday that this cross-ownership portion of the Federal Communications Commission's order had failed to meet notice and comment requirements set out by law.

French senators voted to outlaw hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, making France the first country to pass a law banning the technique for extracting natural gas and oil.

“We are at the end of a legislative marathon that stirred emotion from lawmakers and the public,” French Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet said late yesterday before the vote. Hydraulic fracturing will be illegal and parliament would have to vote for a new law to allow research using the technique, she said.

The federal government has supplied local police departments with military uniforms, weaponry, vehicles, and training.

Shockingly, paramilitary raids that mirror the tactics of US soldiers in combat are not uncommon in America. According to an investigation carried out by the Huffington Post's Radley Balko, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement over the last 30 years, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units for routine police work. In fact, the most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

Serious spills of oil and gas from North Sea platforms are occurring at the rate of one a week, undermining oil companies' claims to be doing everything possible to improve the safety of rigs.

Shell has emerged as one of the top offenders despite promising to clean up its act five years ago after a large accident in which two oil workers died.

The prolonged ingestion of fluoride may cause significant damage to health and particularly to the nervous system…  It is important to be aware of this serious problem and avoid the use of toothpaste and items that contain fluoride, particularly in children as they are more susceptible to the toxic effects of fluoride.  Fluoride can be toxic by ingesting one part per million (ppm), and the effects are not immediate, as they can take 20 years or more to become evident. Most fluoridating U.S. public drinking water suppliers add fluoride chemicals to deliver 1 ppm fluoride.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered the U.S. government to immediately cease enforcing the longstanding ban on openly gay members of the military.

In a brief two-page order, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said “don’t ask, don’t tell” must be lifted now that the Obama administration has concluded it’s unconstitutional to treat gay Americans differently under the law.

A few days after Barack Obama's December 2009 announcement of 33,000 more troops being sent to Afghanistan, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Robert Gates advanced the official justification for escalation: the Afghan Taliban would not abandon its ties with al-Qaeda unless forced to do so by US military force and the realization that "they're likely to lose."

Gates claimed to see an "unholy alliance" of the Afghan Taliban, al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban emerging during 2009. Unless the United States succeeded in weakening the Taliban in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda would have safe haven in Afghanistan, just as they had before the 9/11 attacks, according to Gates.