The Nigerian authorities have dropped criminal bribery charges against Halliburton and Dick Cheney, the former vice president, following the oil services giant’s agreement to a $35 million settlement, the company said in statement this week. Nigerian officials said last week that the settlement would amount to $250 million.
Mr. Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. The Nigerian charges, filed in early December, were just the latest fallout from a $180 million bribery scheme that Kellogg Brown & Root, a former Halliburton subsidiary, has admitted carrying out with three other companies in a joint venture to develop a liquid natural gas facility in the Niger Delta.




Could Ruffles and Granny be in trouble? At 59, Ruffles is the oldest known male orca in the world, one of an estimated 150 orcas known to inhabit the Puget Sound and the coast of Washington state. Granny is his 99-year-old mother.
Having won big in the fall elections, Republicans preparing to take over statehouses around the country are proposing to cut corporate taxes, weaken union clout and rewrite laws on discrimination, whistle-blowers and injured workers to the benefit of employers.
The United Nations is probing a complaint that Bradley Manning, the detained Army private suspected of giving classified documents to WikiLeaks has been mistreated in custody. And WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange called Manning "a political prisoner" during an interview on MSNBC.
A new study pre-published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives confirms that fluoridated water causes brain damage in children. The most recent among 23 others pertaining to fluoride and lowered IQ levels, the new study so strongly proves that fluoride is a dangerous, brain-destroying toxin that experts say it could be the one that finally ends water fluoridation.





























