After 18 months of screaming headlines and attacks vilifying the anti-poverty group ACORN--attacks reminiscent of a New McCarthyism that threatened the group's very existence--it's clear now that this was a right-wing witch-hunt which, sadly, too many Democrats and the mainstream media failed to fact-check.
In December, the Congressional Research Service cleared ACORN of allegations of improper use of federal funding and voter registration fraud. The latest to weigh-in on the controversy is Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. After a four-month investigation Hynes declared "no criminality has been found" with regard to the conduct of three ACORN employees in the infamous and--turns out--misnamed "pimp-prostitute" video.
In fact, a law enforcement source told the New York Daily News that the unedited version of the video which caused all the outrage "was not clear." "They edited the tape to meet their agenda," said the official.
The Rightwing Witch Hunt Against ACORN
Israel 'risking peace talks' with West Bank building
Israel has authorised the building of 112 new apartments in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. The move comes as the US announced that Israel and the Palestinians had agreed to hold indirect talks.Meanwhile, US Vice-President Joe Biden has arrived in the region, becoming the highest-ranking US official to visit since Barack Obama took office. Israel had promised a 10-month pause in settlement building in the West Bank, not including East Jerusalem. Israeli officials said construction was approved before the moratorium was declared.
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Mystery problem again hits bee colonies
A mysterious problem that causes bee colonies to decline is once again taking its toll on the state's beekeepers. The problem known as colony collapse disorder is characterized by a sudden drop in a bee colony's population and the inexplicable absence of dead bees.
The disorder has no known cure and appears to be cyclical. After several mild years, it has resurfaced with a vengeance, said Eric Mussen, apiculturist with the University of California at Davis. "It never went away, but this year a substantial number of beekeepers got walloped again," said Mussen, the state's leading bee expert. "And worse than they had been hit before."
Although Mussen said it is too early to tell exactly how many bees have been lost, a bee industry official said losses in the state vary from 30% to 80%.
Rachel Corrie's Parents Get Vile Letter From Haifa Univ
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Corrie,
You are coming to our lovely town to sue Israel, claiming that your daughter was "killed by an Israeli bulldozer." But you neglect to mention the circumstances under which she was so killed (nor the fact that she died from her injuries while under Palestinian medical care).
Database can crack missing person cases _ if used
A new online database promises to crack some of the nation's 100,000 missing persons cases and provide answers to desperate families, but only a fraction of law enforcement agencies are using it.The clearinghouse, dubbed NamUs (Name Us), offers a quick way to check whether a missing loved one might be among the 40,000 sets of unidentified remains that languish at any given time with medical examiners across the country. NamUs is free, yet many law enforcement agencies still aren't aware of it, and others aren't convinced they should use their limited staff resources to participate.
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Researchers: AIDS virus can hide in bone marrow
The virus that causes AIDS can hide in the bone marrow, avoiding drugs and later awakening to cause illness, according to new research that could point the way toward better treatments for the disease. Finding that hide-out is a first step, but years of research lie ahead.
Dr. Kathleen Collins of the University of Michigan and her colleagues report in this week's edition of the journal Nature Medicine that the HIV virus can infect long-lived bone marrow cells that eventually convert into blood cells.
Vitamin D 'triggers and arms' the immune system
Scientists at the University of Copenhagen have discovered that Vitamin D is crucial to activating our immune defences and that without sufficient intake of the vitamin, the killer cells of the immune system – T cells – will not be able to react to and fight off serious infections in the body.
For T cells to detect and kill foreign pathogens such as clumps of bacteria or viruses, the cells must first be ‘triggered’ into action and "transform" from inactive and harmless immune cells into killer cells that are primed to seek out and destroy all traces of invaders. The researchers found that the T cells rely on vitamin D in order activate and they would remain dormant, ‘naïve’ to the possibility of threat if vitamin D is lacking in the blood.
Indonesian 'hobbit' challenges evolutionary theory
Her scientific name is Homo floresiensis, her nickname is "the hobbit," and the hunt is on to prove that she and the dozen other hobbits since discovered are not a quirk of nature but members of a distinct hominid species.
The discovery of Homo floresiensis shocked and divided scientists. Here apparently was a band of distant relatives that exhibited features not seen for millions of years but were living at the same time as much more modern humans. Almost overnight, the find threatened to change our understanding of human evolution.
It would mean contemplating the possibility that not all the answers to human evolution lie in Africa, and that our development was more complex than previously thought.
Growing low-oxygen zones in oceans worry scientists
Lower levels of oxygen in the Earth's oceans, particularly off the United States' Pacific Northwest coast, could be another sign of fundamental changes linked to global climate change, scientists say. They warn that the oceans' complex undersea ecosystems and fragile food chains could be disrupted.
In some spots off Washington state and Oregon, the almost complete absence of oxygen has left piles of Dungeness crab carcasses littering the ocean floor, killed off 25-year-old sea stars, crippled colonies of sea anemones and produced mats of potentially noxious bacteria that thrive in such conditions.
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