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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped up pledges to curb Jewish zealotry in Israel on Sunday after an 8-year-old girl complained of being menaced by ultra-Orthodox men who deemed her dress immodest. While his conservative government insists such incidents are fringe phenomena in the mostly secular country, Netanyahu's repeated announcements on the matter reflected concern about widening religious and political schisms. "In a Western, liberal democracy, the public realm is open and safe for all, men and women both, and neither harassment nor discrimination have any place there," he told his cabinet in broadcast remarks. Netanyahu said he had ordered law...

The days of unbiased reporting are well behind us. What we have now are news agencies who are bent on furthering a political agenda. Proof positive comes in the form of a Reuters story with a somewhat confusing title: “Alabama immigration law decried, applauded as some flee state.” (Click here for original story) The title is somewhat ambiguous as to who is “decrying” and who is “applauding” but the article leaves little doubt as to the ideological leanings of the author(s): (Reuters) – A climate of fear and panic has taken hold in Alabama’s immigrant community since a federal judge...

Obama said the U.S. recovery suffered setbacks this year due to problems around the world, including the Arab Spring uprisings that drove up energy prices and worries about the financial health of European countries. "They have not fully healed from the crisis back in 2007 and never fully dealt with all the challenges that their banking system faced. It is now being compounded with what is happening in Greece," Obama told an audience of about 400 in Mountain View in California's Silicon Valley. "So they are going through a financial crisis that is scaring the world and they are trying...

Feinstein campaign sues bank, ex-treasurer over missing fundsBy Mary Slosson LOS ANGELES | Fri Sep 23, 2011 9:59pm EDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Senator Dianne Feinstein's campaign sued its former treasurer and the First California Bank on Friday, seeking the return of millions of dollars in missing funds the campaign believes were embezzled. Campaign officials said the action came after the bank failed to provide the campaign access to its own account records when a tangle of unauthorized money transfers and co-mingling of funds was unearthed. The irregularities were spread across 400 bank accounts and dozens of organizations over a...

President Barack Obama on Tuesday hailed the end of the policy banning gays from serving openly in the armed forces, as the Pentagon vowed "zero tolerance" for harassment of homosexuals in the military. "Today, the discriminatory law known as 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is finally and formally repealed," Obama said in a statement. "As of today, patriotic Americans in uniform will no longer have to lie about who they are in order to serve the country they love." The repeal went into effect on Tuesday, ushering in a new era in the armed forces. The law had allowed gay men...

Congress approved and President Barack Obama signed a deal to raise the government's debt ceiling on Tuesday after the Senate passed it by a 74-26 vote. Here is a list of how each Republican (R), Democratic (D) and Independent (I) senator voted:

New disagreement erupted late on Saturday between congressional Democrats and Republicans over the timetable for increasing U.S. borrowing authority, possibly jeopardizing efforts to avert a default. Democratic and Republican leaders escalated their fight despite instructions from President Barack Obama earlier to produce a budget plan by Monday that would clear the way for Congress to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling by August 2. Saying he was "deeply disappointed" by the lack of progress toward a deal to raise the credit limit built around deficit cuts, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said Republican "intransigence" was "pushing us to the brink...

Reuters) - A Yemeni man yelled "God is greatest" in Arabic as he tried to barge into the cockpit of an American Airlines flight over the weekend, a federal prosecutor told a judge in the case on Tuesday. Rageh Al-Murisi, 28, has been charged with interfering with a flight crew for the incident on Sunday aboard American Airlines flight 1561, which was bound for San Francisco from Chicago with 162 people on board.

The top oil exporter and U.S. ally is an absolute monarchy that does not tolerate any form of public dissent, does not have an elected parliament or any political parties. Saudi Islamists and opposition activists this month launched a political party called the "Islamic Umma" in a rare challenge to authority inspired by unrest triggering regime change in Tunisia and Egypt... New York-based Human Rights Watch demanded the release of the activists, some of whom have been campaigning for several years for greater political freedom in Saudi Arabia.

(Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve's journey to the outer limits of monetary policy is raising concerns about how hard it will be to withdraw trillions of dollars in stimulus from the banking system when the time is right. While that day seems distant now, some economists and market analysts have even begun pondering the unthinkable: could the vaunted Fed, the world's most powerful central bank, become insolvent? Almost by definition, the answer is no. As the monetary authority, the central bank is the master of the printing press. It can literally conjure up money at will, and arguably did...

WikiLeaks' next assault on Washington may highlight U.S. government reports on suspected militants held at Guantanamo Bay, which some U.S. officials worry could show certain detainees were freed despite intelligence assessments they were still dangerous. The leaks could be an embarrassment to President Barack Obama's administration, already angered over WikiLeaks document dumps of U.S. State Department cables, as it seeks to fulfil a 2-year-old pledge to close the prison and either release the foreign terrorism suspects or move them elsewhere.

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil (Reuters) – Years after India broke into the hi-tech business with information technology and China by way of manufacturing, Brazil may find its entrance in an unusual place -- a cow's ear. The South American giant is preparing to use its first locally-designed microchip in cattle earrings, a device that could eventually help authorities crack down on destruction of the Amazon rain forest caused by roaming herds. Produced by state-funded firm Ceitec, the "Chip do Boi" or "Cow Chip" is part of home-grown innovation efforts that Brazil hopes will help it overcome challenges in its sprawling economy...

President Barack Obama tried to revive his common touch on Thursday with a mainly light-hearted appearance on daytime television where five women hosts grilled him about his Blackberry, Lindsay Lohan and the Afghan war. His appearance was the first by a sitting U.S. president on a daytime talk show. It allowed Obama to appeal directly to a targeted audience as he fights flagging poll numbers while he and his fellow Democrats try to avoid big losses in the November congressional election. "The View" typically draws 3-4 million viewers and is particularly popular with women who are home at its late-morning...

(Reuters) - Chelsea Clinton's hush-hush wedding may as well be classified but one thing is no secret: There will be tears. The only child of former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will marry longtime boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky this month in a ceremony that has withstood leaks better than many secrets in Washington. "You should assume that if he makes it down the aisle in one piece it's a major accomplishment," Hillary Clinton said of her husband in comments to NBC broadcast Monday from Pakistan.

Reuters didn’t mean to crop Israeli soldiers’ blood and the knives of their attackers out of its photographs from the Gaza flotilla incident. It’s just that Reuters have a policy of “cropping at the edges which conveniently removed these things. Israeli officials, facing criticism for boarding an aid flotilla bound for the Gaza strip, stress that their troops used deadly force in self-defense. News that Reuters had cropped two images of armed “peace” activists, including one with bleeding Israeli soldiers surrounded by armed flotilla crews supports the Israeli position and threatens Reuters with scandal.

The British-based Reuters news agency has been stung for the second time by charges that it edited politically sensitive photos in a way that casts Israel in a bad light. But this time Reuters claims it wasn’t at fault. The news agency reacted to questions raised by an American blogger who showed that Reuters' photo service edited out knives and blood traces from pictures taken aboard the activist ship Mavi Marmara during a clash with Israeli commandos last week. Nine people were killed and scores were injured in the clash. The pictures of the fight were released by IHH, the...

The photo with the knife was published in a Turkish newspaper. They are also accused of hiding the soldier's (or a soldier's) blood by cropping it out of a photo. Both photos below.

A letter was sent to Reuters chief Tom Glocer on Monday expressing the "grave concern of the government of Israel" over the cropping of photographs taken from the Turkish Mavi Marmara ship last week by Minister of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs MK Yuli Edelstein. The photos, which were published on Sunday in the Turkish Hurriyet daily, showed images of the commandos, their fatigues stained with blood, subdued by passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara ship but excluded the knives held by the aid activists.

OK, come on now. I mean, really. One picture cropped to remove a knife might be explained as incompetence or a simple mistake. But now we have two pictures from the “peace activists” that were cropped by someone at Reuters to remove knives in the hands of the activists, as they attempted to take soldiers hostage.

When used correctly Photoshop has the ability to make people appear thinner and more beautiful, as well as the power to give millions an inferiority complex. It seems every image in every magazine has been Photoshopped these days, and this has led to what must be amateurs being let loose on images that are going to print... 20 Worst Photoshop Mistakes15 More Worst Photoshop Mistakes

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Consumers who opt for organic foods often believe they are improving their health, but there is currently no strong evidence that organics bring nutrition-related health benefits, a new research review finds. A "disappointingly small" number of well-designed studies have looked at whether organic foods may have health benefits beyond their conventional counterparts', according to the review, by researchers with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Health in the UK. Moreover, they found, what studies have been done have largely focused on short-term effects of organic eating -- mainly antioxidant activity in the body --...

WikiLeaks has declared that American forces engaged with armed elements of the Mahdi Army during the 2007 surge are guilty of “collateral murder.” Part of that claim is based upon the fact that two Reuters employees, embedded with a band of armed militants, were destroyed by 30mm cannon fire from Apache helicopters. The Apaches were providing support for ground forces that had been under sporadic rifle and RPG fire throughout the morning. Wikileaks would have us hold the pilots responsible for not discerning the armed militiamen from the identically dressed Reuters employees that so comfortably moved with them. WikiLeaks would...

Such is the nature of how we see photographs in the age of Photoshop. Thanks to Adobe and the four employees who created the piece of software, we are able to become digital artists in almost no time flat; because of this amazing democratization of technology, though, almost nothing we see on the internet is trustworthy. From a skinnier Kardashian to a prescient preview of what Brett Favre would look like in a Viking uniform, anything’s possible....

U.S. right-wing groups, militias surge: study 8 mins ago PHOENIX (Reuters) – The number of right-wing "Patriot" groups that see the U.S. government as their enemy more than doubled in the last year, fanned by anger over the economy and a backlash against the policies of President Barack Obama, according to a study published this week. The report by the Southern Poverty Law Center said 512 anti-government Patriot groups were active in the United States last year, a leap from 149 in 2008. The "Rage on the Right" report (www.splcenter.org) found that militias, the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement,...

The lead story at DrudgeReport.com as of 11:30 a.m. this morning was "**REUTERS: Backdoor taxes to hit middle class." But Reuters withdrew the article last night. Drudge noted the change and wrote: "**REUTERS pulls tax story..." then added another link to the top left margin: "Largest-ever federal payroll to hit 2.15 million employees..." So what happened? According to a Reuters rep, the was withdrawn "due to significant errors of fact." "The story was wrong on multiple points and should not have gone out," she emailed us. A formal withdrawal will issued will address specific points that were incorrect later today....

Two Chicago men have been arrested and charged for allegedly plotting to attack a Danish newspaper that published cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed, the U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday. U.S. authorities arrested and charged David Headley on conspiracy charges to commit an act of terrorism and Tahawwur Hussain Rana on a single count of conspiracy, the Justice Department said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States blasted ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya for his "irresponsible and foolish" return from exile before a settlement was reached in the Central American country's political crisis. At an emergency meeting of the Organization of American States to discuss the Honduran face-off, Lewis Anselem, the U.S. ambassador to the OAS, also criticized Honduras' de facto government for its "deplorable" action in barring entry of an OAS mission and declaring a state of siege on Sunday. Anselem also criticized Zelaya for fueling violence by slipping back into Honduras last week and holing up in the Brazilian...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House called Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the "elected leader" of Iran on Tuesday when asked whether President Barack Obama recognized the Iranian president after the country's disputed election. "This was a decision and a debate ongoing in Iran by Iranians, they were going to choose their leadership," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. "He's the elected leader."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. employers cut 539,000 jobs last month, the fewest since October, according to government data on Friday that signaled the economy's steep decline may be easing. The unemployment rate, however, soared to 8.9 percent, the highest since September 1983, from 8.5 percent in March and job losses in March and February were a combined 66,000 steeper than previously estimated, the Labor Department said. A big 72,000 jump in government payrolls tempered the overall job-loss figure. Private sector employment fell by 611,000 in April after a 693,000 job decline in March.

The prospect of Britain repatriating the Libyan it jailed for blowing up a U.S. airliner is seen in Tripoli as a success ~snip~ ....Gaddafi's transition from international pariah once accused by the United States of building banned weapons ~snip~

MIAMI (Reuters) - Right-wing extremists in the United States are gaining new recruits by exploiting fears about the economy and the election of the first black U.S. president, the Department of Homeland Security warned in a report to law enforcement officials. The April 7 report, which Reuters and other news media obtained on Tuesday, said such fears were driving a resurgence in "recruitment and radicalization activity" by white supremacist groups, antigovernment extremists and militia movements. It did not identify any by name. DHS had no specific information about pending violence and said threats had so far been "largely rhetorical."

MIAMI (Reuters) - Right-wing extremists in the United States are gaining new recruits by exploiting fears about the economy and the election of the first black U.S. president, the Department of Homeland Security warned in a report to law enforcement officials. The April 7 report, which Reuters and other news media obtained Tuesday, said such fears were driving a resurgence in "recruitment and radicalization activity" by white supremacist groups, antigovernment extremists and militia movements. It did not identify any by name. DHS had no specific information about pending violence and said threats had so far been "largely rhetorical." But it...

The House of Wisdom By Jonathan Lyons Bloomsbury / 272 pages / $26 Dust will never gather on Jonathan Lyons' lively new book of medieval history - the opening page of his The House of Wisdom cites a cleric scandalized by the Crusader ladies of Antioch and their penchant for the plunging neckline and the bejeweled merkin. If this is the Middle Ages, thinks the reader, bring it on! But this pleasure gradually gives way to another beguilement, to be found in Lyons' subtitle: "How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization." That phrase suggests a brave viewpoint for a historian nowadays,...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. civil rights activist Al Sharpton weighed into a fight over an Arizona sheriff's immigration sweeps on Tuesday, accusing him of racially profiling Hispanics and urging him to step down. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has dispatched deputies into Hispanic communities in the Phoenix area, where they stop people and arrest anyone who cannot prove he or she is a legal U.S. resident. Under a deal allowing them to enforce federal immigration laws, the deputies have arrested more than 1,500 people who they determined were in Arizona illegally, triggering street protests and condemnation from Latino activists...

BERLIN (Reuters) - German police have launched a nationwide search of more than 200 homes and businesses of people suspected of belonging to the country's extreme right, the Federal Crime Office (BKA) said Wednesday. "The primary aim of the concerted action by crime fighting authorities is to seize and confiscate prohibited items like music in order to move effectively and extensively against the spread of right wing extremism," the BKA said in a statement.

The United States will not attend a United Nations conference on racism that critics say will be a forum to criticize Israel and will no longer attend planning sessions for it, a U.S. official said on Friday. "We will not attend," the official said. A U.S. delegation attended consultations earlier this month on the World Conference Against Racism, scheduled for April in Geneva, Switzerland, although Israel has called for a boycott and Canada has said it will not attend.

Introduction: ...At the outset of a book chapter describing the 2001 analysis from this project (Paterson, 2005), I asked if media convergence and the migration of news consumers to the Internet democratise information flow - as conventional wisdom suggests - or simply disguise a steady reduction in information diversity. Here I seek to approach the problem more definitively. The hypothesis of reduction of information diversity saw preliminary support from my 1999 and 2001 data, and other academic and industry reports. And so I pose the following hypothesis for testing through longitudinal analysis: In the last five years, international news flow...

Abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply since President Barack Obama took office as prison guards "get their kicks in" before the camp is closed, according to a lawyer who represents detainees. Abuses began to pick up in December after Obama was elected, human rights lawyer Ahmed Ghappour told Reuters. He cited beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-forcefeeding detainees who are on hunger strike. The Pentagon said on Monday that it had received renewed reports of prisoner abuse during a recent review of conditions...

Between the end of Bennett Mornings and the beginning of the Laura Ingraham show, XM166 (America Right) ran AP Radio News with John Belmont. The last or next to last item was a live report with a female AP reporter at the Mardi Gras by the name of Foster. Belmont asked how parade participants could show up at 6 am and last till midnight. Foster laughed and responded that she had to get up at 4am at the hotel so that they could, "...put on our blackface and Afro wigs."

This is a bloody photo exhibit of the blood letting mourning ritual of the Shiites. The photos are graphic.

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, December 30, 2008 “I have not seen such hatred in this country since Selma. That was when I really just shuddered and thought–they (the pro-Hamas-niks) are taking away our country.” (See below for her report, just in). FT. LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA. December 30, 2008 “This is not Gaza, or London, or Paris, or even Detroit. This is downtown Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.” Tom Trento is describing the intense demonstration against Israel that just took place. He made the video by quietly and bravely circulating among the pro-Palestine demonstrators so that we can easily hear their chants. At red-hot levels...

HONOLULU (Reuters) - The resort and much of the island of Oahu where President-elect Barack Obama is vacationing was hit by a major blackout on Friday evening but it was not immediately clear if his compound had a backup source of electricity.

BERLIN (Reuters) - The odds of a "white Christmas" in temperate parts of the northern hemisphere have diminished in the last century due to climate change and will likely decline further by 2100, climate and meteorology experts said. Even though heavy snow this year will guarantee a white Christmas in many parts of Asia, Europe and North America, an 0.7-degree Celsius (1.3 Fahrenheit) rise in world temperatures since 1900 and projected bigger rises by 2100 suggest an inexorable trend. "The probability of snow on the ground at Christmas is already lower than it was even 50 years ago but it...

Kennedy hires insider to soothe critics By BEN SMITH & GLENN THRUSH | 12/15/08 7:19 PM EST Caroline Kennedy’s trial balloon candidacy for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate seat was springing a few leaks over the past few days — so she’s made her ambitions more explicit and hired one of New York’s top political consultants to gain some altitude. After a week of coy courtship and low-key feelers, Kennedy began working the phones in earnest Monday — and signed up major Democratic fixer Josh Isay, who has deep connections to New York powerhouses Sen. Charles Schumer, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and...

Mon Dec 15, 2008 5:34am EST ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani newspapers gave prominent coverage on Monday to a British media report that a retired general gunned down in Islamabad last month planned to blow the whistle on fellow generals' dealings with the Taliban. Jang, Pakistan's biggest selling Urdu-language newspaper, ran a story on its front page headlined: "Gen. Alavi was against pacts with Taliban, Musharraf had sacked him." The reports in Jang and other Pakistani dailies were based on a story published in Britain's Sunday Times, and written by Carey Schofield. Major-General Amir Faisal Alavi, a brother-in-law of Nobel prize-winning...

Apparently, if one calls an Arab-American an A** H*le, Reuters and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee want all Americans to know that this is to be considered a "violent hate crime." At least that is what it seems when looking over the very lose and sloppy definition of "violent hate crimes" in a recent story on the falling numbers of such crimes against Arab-Americans in the U.S. While ostensibly a good story -- discrimination against Arab-Americans has decreased -- it is still odd that Reuters allows this Muslim advocacy group to define even name calling as a "hate crime" and "violent"...

We've seen some major cases of left leaning bias in the media, especially during the late presidential campaign. Many of these cases have been blatant and over-the-top in style but, while covering the brazen cases of such bias, it is easy to forget that there are every day cases of the more subtle bias to the left in the media. Today, we have a perfect example of a more subtle left leaning bias in the media with a Reuters story headlined "Obama likely to push courts away from right." In it there are lies, distortions and tricky wording all used...

(REUTERS/Jim Bourg)(REUTERS/Jim Bourg)< (AP Photo/Seth Wenig) (REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton)

Saddam Hussein was hanged for killing 148 Shi'ite men and boys in Dujail in 1982. But today, some people in this town on the Tigris say they miss life under the Iraqi dictator because they felt more secure. Even some of those from Dujail whose family members were murdered and imprisoned during Saddam's iron-fisted rule seemed seduced by the idea of a strong leader after years of chaos, bloodshed and deprivation since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. "If someone like Saddam came back, I'd not only support him, I'd invite him to dinner. My uncle was killed in 1982 in...

Are these decent pictures of Gov. Sarah Palin published by Reuters and Associated Press?