TV News LIES

A team of researchers from Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
in Torrance, found that the drug psilocybin improved the mood of terminal cancer patients and cut their anxiety and depression. The research is believed a first step in repairing the drug’s respectability.

Psilocybin is the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms”, and is classified as an illegal drug in the U.S. In a small placebo-controlled randomized trial, Psilocybin was safe both physiologically and psychologically, according to Charles Grob, MD, of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, who led the study.

The United States expects to spend about $6 billion a year training and supporting Afghan troops and police after it begins pulling out its own combat troops in 2011, The Associated Press has learned. The previously undisclosed estimates of U.S. spending through 2015, detailed in a NATO training mission document, are an acknowledgment that Afghanistan will remain largely dependent on the United States for its security.

That reality could become problematic for the Obama administration as it continues to seek money for Afghanistan from Congress at a time of increasingly tight budgets.

But as we'll see below, this attempt to peddle magic pills to chase away the horrors of war is just one front in a long-term, wide-ranging "warfighter enhancement program" -- including the neurological and genetic re-engineering of soldiers' minds and bodies to create what the Pentagon calls "iron bodied and iron willed personnel": tireless, relentless, remorseless, unstoppable.

A top European official was accused of antisemitism tonight after declaring that there was little point in engaging in rational argument with Jews and suggesting that the latest Middle East peace talks were doomed because of the power of the Jewish lobby in Washington.

A month and a half has gone by since the doctor told Khaleda Jarrar she needed an urgent brain examination. Early tests were worrisome, but more information was needed to make an exact diagnosis. But Jarrar has not yet undergone the examination. And she knows, as do her partner and friends, the significance of each day of delay. During all the waiting, it's clear who the uber-doctor is who makes decisions about the health of the Palestinians, and the uber-doctor is not in a hurry.

Jarrar, 47, is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. She is prevented from traveling abroad for what is known, with the usual ambiguity, as security reasons.

Researchers have demonstrated tiny solar cells just billionths of a metre across that can repair themselves, extending their useful lifetime. The cells make use of proteins from the machinery of plants, turning sunlight into electric charges that can do work. The cells simply assemble themselves from a mixture of the proteins, minute tubes of carbon and other materials.

The self-repairing mechanism, reported in Nature Chemistry, could lead to much longer-lasting solar cells. The design and improvement of solar cells is one of the most vibrant areas of science, in part because sunlight is far and away the planet's most abundant renewable energy source.

Earlier this summer, a group of scientists spent two weeks in Indonesia atop a glacier called Puncak Jaya, one of the few remaining tropical glaciers in the world. They were taking samples of ice cores to study the impacts of climate change on the glacier.

Lonnie Thompson, a professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University, led the team and what he witnessed shocked him: The glacier was literally melting under their feet.

NATO commanders were overly optimistic when they predicted quick success taking the key Taliban-held town of Marjah last winter, the outgoing deputy commander said.

There are now fledgling signs of a turnaround, but burned once by Marjah's unpredictability, the military will be more restrained in forecasting success, British Lt. Gen. Nick Parker told reporters Saturday at the headquarters of the NATO-led force.