TV News LIES

The first new weight-loss pill in a decade moved closer to U.S. approval on Tuesday, when a panel of expert advisers backed Orexigen Therapeutics's Contrave despite heart risk concerns. It was the third new weight-loss drug to come before U.S. regulators this year, the Food and Drug Administration having rejected two rival medicines in October.

Orexigen's stock more than doubled to $12.20 from Monday's close of $4.76 when it reopened in after-hours trade Tuesday. Shares of competitors Vivus Inc and Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc also rose, as investors bet Contrave's approval could revive their fortunes.

With China’s debut in international standardized testing, students in Shanghai have surprised experts by outscoring their counterparts in dozens of other countries, in reading as well as in math and science, according to the results of a respected exam. American officials and Europeans involved in administering the test in about 65 countries acknowledged that the scores from Shanghai — an industrial powerhouse with some 20 million residents and scores of modern universities that is a magnet for the best students in the country — are by no means representative of all of China.

About 5,100 15-year-olds in Shanghai were chosen as a representative cross-section of students in that city. In the United States, a similar number of students from across the country were selected as a representative sample for the test.

A smokeless tobacco company has agreed to pay $5 million to the family of a man who died of mouth cancer in what the family's attorney and an expert called the first wrongful death settlement from chewing tobacco. Attorney Antonio Ponvert III told The Associated Press on Tuesday that U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. agreed to pay $5 million to the family of Bobby Hill of Canton, N.C.

"This company manufactures and sells a dangerous and defective product that it knows causes addiction, disease and death in consumers who use it as intended," Ponvert said. The company, which makes Copenhagen and Skoal brands and was headquartered in Greenwich, Conn. before it was acquired by Altria last year, confirmed the settlement in a regulatory filing, but declined further comment.

A judge on Tuesday threw out a lawsuit aimed at preventing the United States from targeting anti-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki for death, but questioned whether a president or his aides can order a U.S. citizen assassinated for terrorist activity.

U.S. District Judge John Bates said in an 83-page opinion that he does not have the authority to review the president's military decisions and al-Awlaki's father does not have the legal right to sue to stop the United States from killing his son. But Bates also said the "unique and extraordinary case" raised vital considerations of national security and for military and foreign affairs.

A numbr of leading rabbis who signed on to a religious ruling to forbid renting homes to gentiles – a move particularly aimed against Arabs – defended their decision on Tuesday with the declaration that the land of Israel belongs to the Jews.

Dozens of Israel's municipal chief rabbis signed on to the ruling, which comes just months after the chief rabbi of Safed initiated a call urging Jews to refrain from renting or selling apartments to non-Jews.

A highly placed source within the White House and CIA confirmed, in an interview, that the invasion of Iran was scheduled for 2006 but planned in 1999.  We have heard some of this before but not with so many pieces and, I am told, more to come.

Q. What do you know about 9/11?

A. “9/11 was planned as early as 1999 or before, to be executed as soon as the Bush team was in place. One meeting in April 2001, a meeting outlining the invasion of Iraq, may have been the green light.’  Chalibi was in place early on, from day number one.  I remember telling them he was a known crook, totally disreputable and that things in Iraq would fall apart immediately.  Nobody in the National Security Council ever spoke about what they would do once Saddam was overthrown.  Nobody really seemed to care.

The Swiss postal system stripped WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of a key fundraising tool Monday, accusing him of lying and immediately shutting down one of his bank accounts. The swift action by Postfinance, the financial arm of Swiss Post, came after it determined the "Australian citizen provided false information regarding his place of residence during the account opening process."

Assange had told Postfinance he lived in Geneva but could offer no proof that he was a Swiss resident, a requirement of opening such an account. Postfinance spokesman Alex Josty told The Associated Press the account was closed Monday afternoon and there would be "no criminal consequences" for misleading authorities.

Fresh doubts have been raised over how Dr David Kelly died after police admitted no fingerprints were found on the packs of pills he supposedly overdosed on.

The public inquiry into Dr Kelly’s death found the weapons expert killed himself by slashing his wrist with a pruning knife and taking ‘an excess amount of co-proxamol tablets’.

Three blister packs of the painkiller, each able to hold ten pills, were retrieved from Dr Kelly’s coat pocket when his body was found in woods near his home.