TV News LIES

Last week, the New York Times reported that, despite making $14.2 billion in profits, General Electric, the largest corporation in the United States, paid zero U.S. taxes in 2010 and actually received tax credits of $3.2 billion dollars. The article noted that GE’s tax avoidance team is comprised of “former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.”

After not paying any taxes and making huge profits, ThinkProgress has learned that General Electric is expected to ask its nearly 15,000 unionized employees in the United States to make major concessions.

P.J. Crowley told the BBC's "HARDtalk" program the alleged harsh treatment of the accused WikiLeaks source was undermining his "legitimate" prosecution. Manning is in solitary confinement in Quantico, Va., under conditions his supporters call cruel and abusive.

The factory was the city's largest garment manufacturer, making "shirtwaist" blouses, as many as 500 workers, working from 7:30 a.m. to as late as 9 p.m. during the busy season, six days a week, earning between $1 and $12 an hour. On average, wages seem to have been somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.00 to $3.50 an hour in today's dollars, inflation-adjusted.

A grimly fascinating "oral history" of former worker Pauline Newman can be found at History Matters, including audio. Here's an excerpt:

An order of US Catholic priests has agreed to pay $166.1m (£103.3m) to hundreds of Native Americans sexually abused by priests at its schools. The former students at Jesuit schools in five states of the north-western US said they were abused from the 1940s through the 1990s.

Under a settlement, the Society of Jesus, Oregon Province, will also apologise to the victims. The order had argued paying out abuse claims would cause it to go bankrupt.

A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers. The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.

The team's mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.

A third man has filed a civil lawsuit charging officials from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia covered up sexual assault allegations against a priest who molested him. The lawsuit filed Wednesday in the city's Court of Common Pleas says the man was assaulted as a boy by a priest from St. Francis Xavier parish and Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia.

Francis Finnegan, 49, said he was molested by the Rev. John Kline at the age of 7, when the priest accompanied his family on a trip to the New Jersey shore in 1968 or 1969. He said he had repressed the traumatic event and only began to remember the abuse three years ago.