TV News LIES

Babies exposed to pesticides before birth may have significantly lower intelligence scores by age 7 than children who were not exposed, three separate studies published on Thursday said. Results from the studies -- two in New York and one in an agricultural community in California -- suggest prenatal exposure to pesticides can have a lasting effect on intelligence.

In one study, a team at the University of California Berkeley found that every tenfold increase in prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides corresponded with a 5.5 point drop in overall IQ scores in children by age 7.

On the eve of the November midterm elections, Koch Industries sent an urgent letter to most of its 50,000 employees advising them on whom to vote for and warning them about the dire consequences to their families, their jobs and their country should they choose to vote otherwise.

The Nation obtained the Koch Industries election packet for Washington State—which included a cover letter from its president and COO, David Robertson; a list of Koch-endorsed state and federal candidates; and an issue of the company newsletter, Discovery, full of alarmist right-wing propaganda.

Gay students at a South Carolina university are being advised to conceal their sexual orientation when off campus. The warning follows an attack April 9 on an openly gay 19-year-old, WBTV in Charlotte, N.C., reported.

Kelly James, a professor of sociology and criminology at Winthrop University in Rock Hill and adviser to a gay group, says she is educating her students know about the attack.

"My first thought was that, I've got to let my students know so that when they are out and about in Rock Hill that they, you know, act straight, And that's a sad lesson in 2011 to be teaching young people. I mean, it's been off the books as a mental illness since 1973," James said.

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Scouring the anthrax-laced mail that took five lives and terrorized the East Coast in 2001, laboratory scientists discovered a unique contaminant — a tiny scientific fingerprint that they hoped would help unmask the killer.

One senior FBI official wrote in March 2007, in a recently declassified memo, that the potential clue "may be the most resolving signature found in the evidence to date." Yet once FBI agents concluded that the likely culprit was Bruce Ivins — a mentally troubled, but widely regarded Army microbiologist — they stopped looking for the contaminant, after testing only a few work spaces of the scores of researchers using the anthrax strain found in the letters.

They quit searching, despite finding no traces of the substance in hundreds of environmental samples from Ivins' lab, office, car and home.

Officials said thousands of gallons of fluid leaked over farm land and into a creek from a natural gas well in Bradford County. Now there is a massive operation underway to contain the spill of drilling fluids.

The rupture near Canton happened late Tuesday night, contaminating nearby land and creeks. The blowout happened on the Morse family farm in LeRoy Township outside Canton, a farming community. Chesapeake Energy officials said a piece of equipment on the well failed. Now a major response is underway to stop the leak of frack fluid and get control of the well.

A leading global health fund believes millions of dollars worth of its donated malaria drugs have been stolen in recent years - perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars worth - vastly exceeding levels of theft previously suspected, according to confidential documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The internal investigation by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria comes two months into a new anti-corruption program that the fund launched after an AP report detailing fraud in their grants attracted intense scrutiny from donors.

Last week we reported on the debate in the Texas state legislature over whether to repeal to the state's ban on "homosexual conduct." It's been eight years since the Supreme Court officially knocked down anti-sodomy laws as unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas, but Texas' state legislature has thus far refused to remove the law from the books—in large part because most Texas Republicans still support it.

In 2010, the state GOP made defense of the anti-sodomy statute part of its platform, calling for the state to effectively ignore the the law of the land: "We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S.

Bradley Manning, the soldier being held on suspicion of leaking classified material to Wikileaks, is being moved to a different prison after what the Associated Press describes as "international criticism about his treatment".

Manning had been held at the brig of the US Marine base in Quantico, in Virginia, since July last year in conditions that have been described as "inhumane", while Amnesty International has said that Manning's treatment potentially violates his human rights.