TV News LIES

The latest quarterly reports from the big Wall Street banks revealed a startling fact: None of the big four banks had a single day in the quarter in which they lost money trading.

For the 63 straight trading days in Q1, in other words, Goldman Sachs (GS), JP Morgan (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), and Citigroup (C) made money trading for their own accounts.

Trading, of course, is supposed to be a risky business: You win some, you lose some. That's how traders justify their gargantuan bonuses--their jobs are so risky that they deserve to be paid millions for protecting their firms' precious capital. (Of course, the only thing that happens if traders fail to protect that capital is that taxpayers bail out the bank and the traders are paid huge "retention" bonuses to prevent them from leaving to trade somewhere else, but that's a different story).

But these days, trading isn't risky at all. In fact, it's safer than walking down the street.

Why?

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has won the 2011 Martha Gellhorn prize for journalism.

The annual prize is awarded to a journalist "whose work has penetrated the established version of events and told an unpalatable truth that exposes establishment propaganda, or 'official drivel', as Martha Gellhorn called it".

"WikiLeaks has given the public more scoops than most journalists can imagine: a truth-telling that has empowered people all over the world. As publisher and editor, Julian Assange represents that which journalists once prided themselves in – he's brave, determined, independent: a true agent of people not of power."

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"If mentally incapacitated troops are being drugged with dangerous, mind-altering drugs and deployed to battle against their will, how can we say that we have a volunteer army?" asked Alliance for Human Research Protection, the national network dedicated to advancing responsible and ethical medical research practices.

This is just one of the many criticisms being levied against the U.S. military in light of its liberal use of prescription medication, which is now being linked to rising suicide rates among soldiers.

Jessica Cross, 24, Benjamin Markeson, 49, and Jonathan "Keith" McHenry, 54, were arrested at 6:10 p.m. on a charge of violating the ordinance restricting group feedings in public parks. McHenry is a co-founder of the international Food Not Bombs movement, which began in the early 1980s.

The group lost a court battle in April, clearing the way for the city to enforce the ordinance. It requires groups to obtain a permit and limits each group to two permits per year for each park within a 2-mile radius of City Hall.

Arrest papers state that Cross, Markeson and McHenry helped feed 40 people Wednesday night. The ordinance applies to feedings of more than 25 people.

The bacterium that has killed more than a dozen Europeans, sickened nearly 2,000 more and raised international alarms would be legal if it were found on meat or poultry in the United States.

If the bacterium were to contaminate fruits or vegetables grown here, there would be no way to prevent an outbreak, because farmers and processors are not required to test for the pathogen before the food heads to supermarkets.

Already under fire over perceived threats to local water sources, the natural gas industry is facing a new challenge: earthquakes.

A small energy company halted its shale gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing program in Britain after two mild earthquakes were recorded in the vicinity, an area where such tremors are rare.

Now, the controversial drilling activity is being linked to earthquakes – first in Arkansas, where companies are developing the prolific Fayetteville play, and now at Britain’s first shale gas exploration site, near Blackpool in northwest England.

“They pointed guns at us. Then they ordered us to put our hands up and checked us,” says one. “I was in fear of my life. I felt very cold and tired because I was two months pregnant.

“After that, both of us were handcuffed. They ordered me to sit on the floor. We were taken into the living room. At that moment I knew that those men around us were police. There were about eight or nine policemen.”

Though the officers are told he also was not fluent in English, a Vietnamese man in the back part of the house is punched several times on the back of the head, after he is face down on the floor, hands behind him. The entire house is ransacked.

Diamond, now 69 and a retired social services and human-resources executive who lives in Northwest Washington, racked up his arrests protesting segregation, voting-rights violations and other discriminatory practices in an activist career that took him from Howard University to the Deep South as part of the Freedom Riders, blacks and whites — many of them students — who challenged segregation in public transportation in 1961, mostly in Mississippi.

This month, as Freedom Riders across the country celebrate the 50th anniversary of their activism, Diamond and other D.C. residents reflected on the movement and the special place the city holds in its history.