Thursday, Dec 18th
Last update08:26:17 AM GMT
A new food-labeling campaign called Smart Choices, backed by most of the nation’s largest food manufacturers, is “designed to help shoppers easily identify smarter food and beverage choices.”
The green checkmark label that is starting to show up on store shelves will appear on hundreds of packages, including — to the surprise of many nutritionists — sugar-laden cereals like Cocoa Krispies and Froot Loops.
Further evidence has come to light of widespread fraud during the recent Afghan presidential election. One tribal elder has admitted to the BBC that he tampered with hundreds of ballots in favour of incumbent President Hamid Karzai.
More than 600 serious complaints are being investigated, but the deadline for new complaints has now passed.
“The Obama administration has proven its pledge to usher in a new era of government transparency was more than just a campaign promise,” CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said. “The Bush administration fought tooth and nail to keep secret the identities of those who visited the White House. In contrast, the Obama administration – by putting visitor records on the White House web site – will have the most open White House in history.”
The scariest thing about the report, perhaps, is that it isn't about what happened in the past as much as it's an indicator of what our future looks like. The Madoff Ponzi scheme was a relatively simple scam: all anyone in enforcement ever had to do over the years was to obtain documents showing that wily old Bernie wasn't doing any trading at all. They never did. This is the same agency, slightly tweaked, that we're going to depend on to root out fraud in the mind-bogglingly complex world of over-the-counter derivatives that is even now resuming its old habits.
Belgium on Friday became the latest European country to offer asylum to a Guantanamo Bay detainee, announcing that it would resettle a captive now at the prison camps who has been cleared of prosecution by a U.S. court.
The announcement follows similar deals between the Obama administration and France and Portugal, which last month took in two Syrians for resettlement. Ireland has also agreed to take two detainees seeking third-country asylum.
The United States Agency for International Development has opened an investigation into allegations that its funds for road and bridge construction in Afghanistan are ending up in the hands of the Taliban, through a protection racket for contractors.A federal appeals court has ruled that former Attorney General John Ashcroft may be held liable for people who were wrongfully detained as material witnesses after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In a harshly worded ruling handed down Friday, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals called the government's use of material witnesses after Sept. 11 "repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history."
Transcripts and taped conversations of actions that took place in 2007, included in the commission’s case, reveal the secretive workings of high-frequency trading, a fast-growing Wall Street business that is suddenly drawing scrutiny in Washington. Critics say this high-speed form of computerized trading, which is used in a wide range of financial markets, enables its practitioners to profit at other investors’ expense.
A jury in Kentucky sentenced a 24-year-old former soldier to life in prison without parole on Thursday for raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and murdering her, her parents and a younger sister in Iraq.
The verdict spared the defendant, Steven D. Green, death for a crime that prompted Iraqi demands for retribution and raised questions about Army oversight of its combat-stressed forces.
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