Every year since 2005, the Senate has voted to eliminate the policy that denies widows the ability to collect both a military survivor's benefit and the full annuity bought when their military husbands were alive. But in each of those years, the fix was dropped when House and Senate negotiators wrote the final bill in private.
"What we always hear is that there is just no funding for us. 'Sorry, this is not your year,'" said Vivianne Wersel, chairwoman of the Government Relations Committee at Gold Star Wives of America.
PROMISES, PROMISES: War widows' futile fight
US military releases Iraqi photographer
An Iraqi freelance photographer who worked for Reuters has been released by the U.S. military after 17 months in detention in Iraq, the news agency reported Wednesday.
The Iraqi Central Criminal Court ruled in December 2008 there was insufficient evidence to hold Jassam. However, the U.S. military refused to release him, saying it was not bound by the ruling because intelligence reports indicated Jassam was a security threat.
The US Military: A Mindset of Barbarism
On December 27, in the eastern Kunar region of Afghanistan, ten Afghans, eight of whom were schoolchildren, were dragged from their beds and shot by US forces during a nighttime raid. Afghan government investigators said the eight students were aged from 11 to 17 years.
F.D.A. to Increase Medical Radiation Oversight
The federal Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that it would take steps to more stringently regulate three of the most potent forms of medical radiation, including increasingly popular CT scans, some of which deliver the radiation equivalent of 400 chest X-rays.
With the announcement, the F.D.A. puts its regulatory muscle behind a growing movement to make life-saving medical radiation — both diagnostic and therapeutic — safer.
Fabricated quote used to discredit climate scientist
For climate
sceptics it was a key piece of evidence showing that the scientists behind global warming could not be trusted. A quotation by one of the world's most eminent climate scientists was supposed to demonstrate the depths to which he and his ilk would stoop to create scare stories exaggerating the threat of global warming.
"Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen," Sir John was supposed to have said in 1994.
French Government Queries US re 50s Secret LSD Experiment
A major diplomatic and political scandal is erupting that could have significant import for French-American relations. It involves new research into the mysterious outbreak of "mass insanity" in a village in southern France that affected some 500 people and resulted in five deaths.
According to reliable US sources, the US State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research has been given a confidential inquiry from the office of Erard Corbin de Mangoux, head of the French intelligence agency DSGE (Directorate General for External Security). According to the report the inquiry regards a recently-published account of U.S. government complicity in a mysterious 1951 incident of mass insanity in France in the village of Pont-Saint-Esprit in southern France.
Israel denies NGOs work permits
The Israeli interior ministry has stopped issuing work permits to foreigners working for international non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
In the last few weeks, NGO staff have been given tourist visas instead, making it virtually impossible for them to carry out their work. The new Israeli policy affects 120 international NGOs, many of which provide vital developmental and humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
French accuse Tony Blair of ‘Soviet-style' propaganda in run-up to Iraq war
Tony Blair was accused by the French government of “Soviet-style” black propaganda in the run-up to the Iraq war, secret memos obtained by the Iraq inquiry have found.
The Chilcot committee has obtained confidential phone records showing that then foreign secretary Jack Straw was told days before the crunch eve-of-war Commons vote not to misrepresent the French position on the need for UN approval.
Tritium hot zone expands
The Department of Health said late Monday there appears to be "a very large area" at the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor contaminated with radioactive tritium, and contamination levels continue to rise.
Because the area is so big, according to William Irwin, radiological health chief, there are many potential sources of radioactive water at this particularly high concentration of tritium.
TVNL Comment: Sure Obama, let's build more nuclear power plants! Let's risk ALL life on Earth!
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