TV News LIES

In what passes for a mausoleum here, the body of Saddam Hussein lies in the middle of a marble octagon, under a giant twinkling chandelier and purple, orange and blue blinking lights. His grave is covered with Iraqi flags, candies thrown from children and bundles of plastic flowers.

It has been four years since the former Iraqi leader was executed, and over that period it has been rare to see any more than a trickle of Iraqis show up to pay tribute in his home town, just outside Tikrit  But over the past few months, the crowds have begun to grow.

Reporters Without Borders is saddened to learn that Anton Hammerl, a well-known photographer with South African and Austrian dual nationality who had been missing in Libya for more than six weeks, was killed shortly after disappearing in the east of the country on 4 April.

It had been assumed that Hammerl was alive and was being held by pro-Gaddafi forces. "The civil war in Libya has been particularly deadly for photographers," the press freedom organization said. "It is time this stopped. Reporters have been paying too high a price in this war. The authorities in Tripoli and those in Benghazi should give their troops clear directives to respect the work of journalists."

Buried in FBI laboratory reports about the anthrax mail attacks that killed five people in 2001 is data suggesting that a chemical may have been added to try to heighten the powder's potency, a move that some experts say exceeded the expertise of the presumed killer.

The lab data, contained in more than 9,000 pages of files that emerged a year after the Justice Department closed its inquiry and condemned the late Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins as the perpetrator, shows unusual levels of silicon and tin in anthrax powder from two of the five letters.

Look what a few hundred demonstrators can do in a day: 1948 is on the agenda. The breach of the fence in the Golan Heights was enough to breach a far older and more complex fence, bringing 1948 to center stage in the political discussion.

We're still screwing things up and babbling ourselves to death about 1967 - will or won't Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu utter the words "1967 borders," as if it makes a difference what he says. We're still babbling that the evil from the north, which may actually be good, is approaching, and the discussion has suddenly changed direction.

An independent study concludes that the West Virginia coal mine explosion that killed 29 men last year was the result of safety failings by owner Massey Energy Co.

"The disaster at Upper Big Branch was man-made and could have been prevented had Massey Energy followed basic, well-tested and historically proven safety procedures," investigators wrote in the study, which was released today.

An Afghan detainee at the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has died in an apparent suicide, the US military said. The prisoner, identified as Inayatullah, a 37-year-old accused of being a member of al-Qaeda, was found dead by guards conducting routine checks at the facility on Wednesday.

"An investigation is under way to determine the exact circumstances of what happened," Navy Commander Tamsen Reese, a spokeswoman at the Guantanamo Bay US naval base, said.

For years, women have been told that early detection of cancer saves lives.  Not always. A definitive new study finds that screening healthy women for ovarian cancer — one of the deadliest and most-feared of malignancies — actually does more harm than good.

In an 18-year study of 78,216 women, those randomly assigned to be screened for ovarian cancer died at the same rate as women who weren't, according to research released Wednesday in advance of the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Japanese playwright Oriza Hirata, who serves as a special adviser to the Cabinet, claimed in a recent lecture given in Seoul that the dumping of low-level radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean followed a "strong request" from the United States, a person who attended the lecture said Wednesday.

Hirata's remarks, made Tuesday, that the release was not carried out based on Tokyo's independent judgment but rather on a request from Washington is likely to ignite a debate.