TV News LIES

Barack Obama is expected to claim solid progress in the war in Afghanistan tonight. The review will contradict far gloomier findings by his own intelligence agencies that the war cannot be won while Pakistan refuses to close militant safe havens.

The review is tipped to reaffirm a US-troop drawdown from July next year with a final handover to Afghan security forces in 2014 - a plan endorsed last month by NATO to allow coalition forces sufficient time to improve local military and law enforcement capacity.

The U.S. Air Force is blocking its personnel from using work computers to view the websites of the New York Times and other major publications that have posted classified diplomatic cables, people familiar with the matter said.

Air Force users who try to view the websites of the New York Times, Britain's Guardian, Spain's El Pais, France's Le Monde or German magazine Der Spiegel instead get a page that says, "ACCESS DENIED. Internet Usage is Logged & Monitored," according to a screen shot reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The notice warns that anyone who accesses unauthorized sites from military computers could be punished.

The Obama administration has abandoned its feckless effort to induce Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to accept a 90-day settlement freeze designed to kick start peace negotiations — and save Israel from suicidal settlement expansion. Any doubt that the settlements could be Israel's death warrant should have been eliminated by the recent fire that consumed northern Israel. The Minister of the Interior, an ultra-Orthodox 18th-century man - and 21st century political hack - named Eli Yishai chose funnelling resources to settlements rather than investing in firefighting equipment.

This is typical. The ultra-Orthodox settlers have little use for Israel itself. They really only care about Biblical Israel (which is mostly the West Bank). What's a fire in boring old pre-'67 Israel to a Bible-thumping fanatic like Yishai and his Shas Party? He's got Palestinians to drive out of their homes. In any case, the Obama administration had offered Netanyahu an astonishing $3.5bn for a 90-day freeze in part of the West Bank (in addition to the annual $3.5bn aid package), plus the promise to use our veto in the UN Security Council on Israel's behalf. And most importantly, the US pledged to never ever ask Israel for another settlement freeze again.

The Vatican Bank is under new scrutiny in a case involving money-laundering allegations that led police to seize €23m (£19.25m) in September.

The Vatican calls the seizure of assets a "misunderstanding" and expresses optimism it will be quickly cleared up. But fresh court documents show that prosecutors say the Vatican Bank deliberately flouted anti-laundering laws "with the aim of hiding the ownership, destination and origin of the capital". The documents also reveal investigators' suspicions that clergy may have acted as fronts for corrupt businessmen and Mafia.

In a shocking report published earlier this year, BNET exposed how WebMD's online test for depression is rigged for profit.

But that's just the beginning. A number of questions about just how 'independent' a source WebMD is have since surfaced, and the answers are not what you'd expect.

As a former sex crimes prosecutor, I'm the last person you might expect to come to the defense of the unsavory WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. But the charges that now have him sitting in a British prison reek of opportunism and political expediency, and that does women around the world no good.

That doesn't mean that I think the two women who've accused him of committing sexual offenses last August are lying. One woman said she had consensual sex with Assange, but that the condom broke and he used his body weight to hold her down, presumably to complete the act. She hosted a party for him the next evening. A few days later, Assange had sex with another woman—allegedly while she was asleep—also without wearing a condom. Both women reportedly acknowledged that they freely chose to engage in sex acts with Assange—but that some of his conduct was nonconsensual.

Elected officials and activists from around the country gathered Monday to bemoan the excesses of political partisanship and seek ways to restore civility and practical solutions to government.

The inaugural meeting of a group that calls itself No Labels drew lawmakers from across the country, including Republican-turned-independent New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York; and Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

A federal district judge in Virginia ruled on Monday that the keystone provision in the Obama health care law is unconstitutional, becoming the first court in the country to invalidate any part of the sprawling act and ensuring that appellate courts will receive contradictory opinions from below.

Judge Henry E. Hudson, who was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, declined the plaintiff’s request to freezeimplementation of the law pending appeal, meaning that there should be no immediate effect on the ongoing rollout of the law.