TV News LIES

An attack on a Shia Muslim family living near Baghdad has left at least 16 people dead, Iraqi officials say.

Six children and five women were among those killed when the neighbouring homes of two brothers in the town of Latifiya, 40km (25 miles) south of the capital, were targeted overnight.

The UK has become the drug and alcohol "addictions capital of Europe", a think tank has warned. The Centre for Social Justice - set up by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith - said drink and drug abuse cost the UK £36bn a year.

Its report warned that the UK has become a hub for websites peddling potentially dangerous "legal highs".

The CSJ also criticised the government for failing to tackle heroin addiction and cheaply available alcohol.

A journalist’s partner who was detained carrying thousands of British intelligence documents through Heathrow airport was also holding the password to an encrypted file written on a piece of paper, the government has disclosed.

In a written statement handed to the High Court in London, a senior Cabinet Office security adviser said it showed “very poor judgment” by David Miranda and other people associated with him.

The Arab League on Tuesday declared the Syrian regime “fully responsible” for an alleged chemical weapons attack, giving the Obama administration symbolic regional cover to proceed with a punitive offensive that could begin within days.

Two U.S. defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity so as to discuss sensitive military plans, told McClatchy that military commanders were ready to execute a sea-based strike but were awaiting orders from the White House. The officials said the attack would be carried out exclusively by the four destroyers currently based in the eastern Mediterranean and would not include airstrikes to supplement the expected missile barrage.

United Nations officials on Monday reacted to the latest leaks about U.S. National Security Agency spying with a reminder to the Obama administration of its legal obligation to respect the "inviolability" of diplomatic missions on U.S. soil.

The German news magazine Der Spiegel reported over the weekend that the NSA, already under fire for reported intelligence gathering on private phone calls and emails around the world, had also infiltrated the U.N. video-conferencing network to eavesdrop on diplomatic missions in New York.

The German magazine Der Spiegel says the U.S. National Security Agency secretly monitored the U.N.'s internal video conferencing system by decrypting it last year.

The weekly said Sunday that documents it obtained from American leaker Edward Snowden show the NSA decoded the system at the U.N.'s headquarters in New York last summer.