Wednesday, Dec 31st
Last update10:11:09 AM GMT
Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather called on President Barack Obama to form a White House commission to help save the press Tuesday night in an impassioned speech at the Aspen Institute.
Corporate and political influence on newsrooms, along with the conflation of news and entertainment, has created what Rather called “the dumbing down and sleazing up of what we see on the news.”
The House approved Thursday the first major changes to food safety laws in 70 years, giving sweeping new authority to the Food and Drug Administration to regulate the way food is grown, harvested and processed.
"Americans are dying because the Food and Drug Administration does not have authority to protect them and American producers and agriculture are being hurt," said Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the bill's author, who has been pushing food safety reform for more than 20 years. "This will fundamentally change the way in which we ensure the safety of our food supply."
Larry Franklin, the former Pentagon analyst convicted of revealing classified information, says he worked undercover as an FBI double agent to gather information on the pro-Israel lobby in the United States before the bureau turned on him and pressured him to plead guilty to spying for Israel.
Our nation’s police forces prior to the criminal thug Richard Nixon were centered on community policing. MOST of their time was spent on looking for, identifying, and monitoring criminals, and responding to unusual or dangerous events that were beyond the control of ordinary folks. We appreciated those officers and were proud to say, “he is OUR Cop!” We knew that we could talk to him, kid him, see him play adult softball, and sit across from him in church.
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, warned David Miliband that America would consider cutting security co-operation with the UK if a British court releases information about a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, two judges have been told.
Mrs Clinton personally told the Foreign Secretary that the US government would consider the dramatic step if a short summary of the treatment of Binyam Mohamed is placed in the public domain, the High Court was told.
Far-right activists distributed fliers to fresh draftees at the Israel Defense Forces induction center in Tel Hashomer on Tuesday urging them not to confide in their commanders and to refrain from cooperating with investigators if they physically abuse Palestinians in the territories.
The notice was intended for enlistees into the Kfir infantry brigade, most of whose operations take place in the territories.
The chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission signaled Tuesday that his agency is likely to limit financial speculators' ability to drive up prices for oil and other fuels.
Excessive speculation, suggested CFTC chief Gary Gensler, drove the price of oil to a record $147 a barrel a year ago, making it unnecessarily more expensive for Americans to heat their homes and fuel their cars.
The food dye that gives blue M&Ms their colour can help mend spinal injuries, researchers have claimed after tests on rats.
The compound Brilliant Blue G blocks a chemical that kills healthy spinal cord cells around the damaged area - an event that often causes more irreversible damage than the original injury. BBG not only reduced the size of the lesion but also improved the recovery of motor skills, the rodent tests showed.
There is no doubt using a sunbed or sunlamp will raise the risk of skin cancer, say international experts.
Previously, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) assessed sunbeds and sunlamps as "probably carcinogenic to humans". But it now says their use is definitively "carcinogenic to humans".
Page 919 of 1166
