TV News LIES

Some 11,500 years ago one of America's earliest families laid the remains of a 3-year-old child to rest in their home in what is now Alaska. The discovery of that burial is shedding new light on the life and times of the early settlers who crossed from Asia to the New World, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

The bones represent the earliest human remains discovered in the Arctic of North America, a "pretty significant find," said Ben A. Potter of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Same-sex couples in Maryland would have the same full marriage rights as heterosexuals under a bill that cleared the Senate Thursday. If the House of Delegates approves it and the governor signs it, Maryland would be the sixth U.S. state to approve gay marriage.

Opponents, including Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, D-Calvert, promised that if it does become law that a referendum question would be on the 2012 ballot so voters have the final decision.

The Virginia General Assembly has agreed that abortion clinics should be regulated as hospitals instead of physician's offices, a move that antiabortion activists have sought for almost two decades, insisting that it would improve clinic safety.

Abortion rights advocates say it will make the state one of the most restrictive for abortions in the country and could force as many as 17 of the state's 21 abortion clinics to close.

It was an incendiary allegation — and a mystery of great intrigue in the media world: After the publishing powerhouse Judith Regan was fired by HarperCollins in 2006, she claimed that a senior executive at its parent company, News Corporation, had encouraged her to lie to federal investigators two years before.

The investigators had been vetting Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who had been nominated to become secretary of Homeland Security and who had had an affair with Ms. Regan.

The Midwest is seeing a wave of new measures intended to give additional protections to fetuses—including a growing number of bills that could make it legal to kill an abortion doctor in the name of protecting an "unborn child."

A South Dakota bill that could have allowed the "justifiable homicide" defense to be used for individuals who murder abortion providers was shelved last week after public outcry. And as my colleagues Daniel Schulman and Nick Baumann reported Thursday morning, a Nebraska lawmaker introduced a very similar bill there.

In a statement released Wednesday afternoon, the Attorney General office said, "Civility and courtesy toward all members of the public are very important to the Indiana Attorney General’s Office. We respect individuals’ First Amendment right to express their personal views on private online forums, but as public servants we are held by the public to a higher standard, and we should strive for civility."

A new website promises to shine a spotlight on "churnalism" by exposing the extent to which news articles have been directly copied from press releases.

The website, churnalism.com, created by charity the Media Standards Trust, allows readers to paste press releases into a "churn engine". It then compares the text with a constantly updated database of more than 3m articles. The results, which give articles a "churn rating", show the percentage of any given article that has been reproduced from publicity material.

Soybeans, corn, cotton and canola -- most of the acres planted in these crops in the United States are genetically altered. "Transgenic" seeds reduce the use of some insecticides. But herbicide use is higher, and respected experts argue that some genetically engineered crops may also pose serious health and environmental risks. The benefits of genetically engineered crops may be overstated.