TV News LIES

The arbitrary nature of the death penalty as practiced in the US is laid bare in a new study that shows that just 2% of counties across the nation have generated most of the executions in the past 40 years.

A new report from the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington shows that of the 1,348 executions that have taken place in the US since the death penalty restarted in 1976, more than half originated in only 2% of counties. Under the US judicial system, the decision to launch a capital case lies with district attorneys at the county level.

Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with officials.

The spy agency began allowing the analysis of phone call and e-mail logs in November 2010 to examine Americans’ networks of associations for foreign intelligence purposes after N.S.A. officials lifted restrictions on the practice, according to documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor.

In West Hollywood, Calif., an ethical fashion faux pas has been cemented into law.

Over the weekend, a citywide ban on the sale of fur apparel, passed by the city council two years ago, went into effect, making the city of 30,000 the first municipality in the nation, and likely the world, to have such a ban.

Over a three-day period in June 2007, heavily armed SWAT teams, supported by tanks and helicopters, descended on Detroit's Eight Mile Road. The massive operation involved police and agents from 21 different local, state and federal branches of law enforcement, and was intended to rid the notoriously crime-ridden area of drug houses, prostitutes and wanted fugitives.

After conducting hundreds of raids, the authorities made 122 arrests, according to The Detroit News, and seized about 50 ounces of marijuana, 6.5 ounces of cocaine and 19 guns.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the FBI has morphed into a domestic surveillance agency with little accountability, a report said.

The American Civil Liberties Union Tuesday released "Unleashed and Unaccountable: The FBI's Unchecked Abuse of Authority." The group said that Congress and the Obama administration continue to support the FBI while the agency targets minority groups and abuses the rights of U.S. citizens and residents.

A new lawsuit filed by the city of San Francisco on behalf of the state of California alleges that over the past five years, the state of Nevada has dumped 1,500 mental patients onto other states by putting them them on Greyhound busses and sending them over state lines with no prior arrangements with families or other mental hospitals once they arrive.

According to the federal class action lawsuit that the city of San Francisco is spearheading, nearly all of the patients bussed to California need continuous medical care—none of which Nevada state arranged, and all of which cost the city of San Francisco at least $500,000.