TV News LIES

The Rena Plaza incident is officially the worst disaster in the history of the global clothing industry, and it renewed calls for improved safety protections and building code standards in Bangladesh -- a country that owes much of its recent economic growth largely to low-wage clothing work.

The dangerous conditions have been partly blamed on price-conscious businesses, some of whom go with the cheapest and often least-safe local suppliers at the expense of protections for workers. After a November fire that killed 112 workers, brands like Wal-Mart, Gap, and H&M refused to sign a new union-proposed safety plan, which would have introduced more rigorous safety inspections, saying it was "not financially feasible."

A Detroit-area lawyer has been fighting for almost a decade to win compensation for four men who spent time in Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

CACI Premier Technology, a Virginia company that handled interrogations at Abu Ghraib, has asked a federal judge to dismiss Shereef Akeel's lawsuit, the Detroit Free Press reported Thursday. A hearing is scheduled Friday in Arlington, Va.

While advocates for both gay rights and immigration reform pursue comprehensive solutions to the problems they want addressed, one group at the center of both debates is desperately hoping their troubles will finally be over.

For the estimated 32,000 same-sex couples in which one partner is a U.S. citizen and the other is not, finding ways to legally stay together in the United States has been a constant source of anxiety and uncertainty. If the Supreme Court doesn't strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, these couples are in trouble: Immigration reforms currently being considered in the Senate do not include a fix for bi-national families, if those families are same-sex.

British cosmologist Professor Stephen Hawking has announced his withdrawal from an Israeli conference in Jerusalem, prompting reports that he is supporting an academic boycott on the country.

Hawking was due to appear at the conference, hosted by Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, but his name was recently dropped from the list of speakers.

A statement on the website of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine said: "We understand that Professor Stephen Hawking has declined his invitation to attend the Israeli Presidential Conference, Facing Tomorrow 2013, due to take place in Jerusalem on 18-20 June.

The ill-treatment of Palestinian minors held within the Israeli military detention system is "widespread, systematic and institutionalised," a report Wednesday by the UN children's fund found.

UNICEF in the 22-page report that examined the Israeli military court system for holding Palestinian children found evidence of practices it said were "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment."

"Ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalised," it concluded, outlining 38 recommendations to improve the protection of children in custody.

Just hours before Willie Jerome Manning was set to be executed, the Mississippi Supreme Court granted a stay of execution for the death row inmate in an 8-1 decision.

Manning’s case has gained considerable media attention as his execution date approached. Manning, who is black, was convicted in 1994 by a white-majority jury of killing white Mississippi State University students Jon Steckler and Tiffany Miller in 1992. He was convicted despite there being no physical evidence linking him to the crimes while an inmate who claimed Manning confessed to the crimes later recanted his testimony.