TV News LIES

The CIA is reported to have used unmanned drones to target leaders of al-Q'aida's affiliate in Somalia for the first time, attacks coinciding with the unveiling of a new US counterterrorism strategy shifting the war on terror away from costly battlefields and toward expanded covert operations.

The strikes in Somalia, which last week apparently wounded two leaders of the al-Shabab militant group, bring to six the number of countries where the missile-armed drones have been deployed: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Iraq, and now the lawless country in East Africa which officials here increasingly identify as a major terrorist base after the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

An executive convicted of orchestrating a $3 billion fraud as chairman of one of America's largest private mortgage companies was sentenced Thursday to 30 years in prison. Federal prosecutors in northern Virginia had sought a life sentence for Lee Farkas, former chairman of Florida-based Taylor Bean & Whitaker.

They called the case against him one of the most significant arising from the nation's financial meltdown. A federal jury in Alexandria convicted Farkas in April of all 14 counts, including securities fraud and conspiracy.

The Securities and Exchange Commission doesn’t just enforce the rules that govern Wall Street. When asked, it often grants individual companies exemptions from the rules. But companies that win those special breaks often fail to comply with the conditions that come with them, the SEC’s inspector general said in a report released Thursday.

What’s more, the agency has no formalized process for monitoring whether companies live up to their end of the bargain, the report said. Though the agency routinely inspects financial firms, “only in rare cases” did the examiners focus on that question, the report said.

The United States Internal Revenue Service is gearing up for a widespread campaign to identify federal income tax scofflaws living outside the United States. Tens of thousands of them are estimated to be living in Israel.

The Feds will presumably require banks worldwide to report on all customers with U.S. citizenship or residency, even if they hold a foreign, including Israeli, passport. U.S. tax law requires all American citizens, including those living abroad, to file annual income tax returns reporting their worldwide income.

A new report issued by Brown University says the cost of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - and operations in Pakistan - will cost the country nearly $4 trillion. The report's total is more than three times higher than U.S. President Barack Obama’s estimate in a recent speech.

When Obama recently announced a drawdown of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, he said America's wars have cost the country $1 trillion dollars. But a report by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies estimates the total cost at $3.7 trillion.

A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld the government's new requirement that most Americans buy health insurance, in the first decision by a U.S. appeals court on the centerpiece of the Obama-sponsored health-care overhaul.

The ruling by the Cincinnati-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit gives the administration a significant victory. Yet the 2-1 panel decision marks what is likely to be the first in a series of appeals court rulings in upcoming months. Ultimate resolution of the politically charged dispute is likely to come from the U.S. Supreme Court sometime next year.

Osama bin Laden was out of touch with the younger generation of al Qaida commanders, and they often didn't follow his advice during the years he was in hiding in northern Pakistan, U.S. and Pakistani officials now say.

Contradicting the assertions of some American officials that bin Laden was running a "command and control" center from the walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, officials say that bin Laden clearly wasn't in control of al Qaida, though he was trying to remain involved or at least influential.

Admittedly, Salk's vaccine logged early success; some 60-70 percent of those vaccinated did not develop the disease. But it also saw some early problems. About 200 people who had been vaccinated got the disease, and 11 of them died, forcing a halt to all testing. Once it was determined that a faulty, poorly manufactured batch of the vaccine was the cause of those cases, stricter production standards were implemented and full-scale vaccinations nationwide resumed once more. Four million vaccines were given by 1955; by 1959, 90 countries were using it.

That said, those early cases were far from the last time the vaccine killed. In fact, throughout its history of use, Salk's polio vaccine left a path of death its wake.