New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Thursday it was bringing civil charges against senior Bank of America executives, including former company CEO Ken Lewis, for their role in the company’s controversial purchase of Merrill Lynch. Read the rest of this entry »

First, there was Pepsi Vanilla. Then there was Pepsi Lime. Now, exclusively at Walgreens, you can get the latest special flavor of Pepsi: Pepsi H1N1. It is also available in frozen pizza, Buffalo wing, and ice cream form.

Fortunately, if you’re not yet infected, Coke bottles offer the vaccine. Read the rest of this entry »

Germany’s Bayer (BAYGn.DE) was ordered by a jury in the United States to pay $1.5 million in damages to three farmers for losses they incurred because of contaminations of Bayer’s genetically modified rice, the second in about 500 similar cases pending.

The jury’s ruling in a St. Louis court against Bayer’s CropScience division follows a related case in December, in which Bayer was ordered to pay $2 million, the chemicals- and drugmaker said on Friday after the close of trading in Germany. Read the rest of this entry »

Many people in this country are aware of the atrocious conditions and treatment of adult prisoners in the U.S. war of terror. These prisoners have been held at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, and other hellholes run by the U.S. But few are aware that thousands of children have also been taken by the U.S. and its allies in this war of terror.

A few of these children have been held at Guantanamo and have received some publicity, but most have been held in prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan and have received very little notice from U.S. media. What has and is happening to these children victims of the U.S. war?

As late as May 2008 U.S. authorities reported to the U.N. that they were holding at least 513 Iraqi children in U.S.-run prisons as “imperative threats to security. Read the rest of this entry »

The Bank of the Vatican has been accused of laundering USD 200 million by proxy through an Italian creditor, a report indicates.

The allegation of the Vatican bank’s financial corruption has been made by an Italian magazine that pointed to the financial institute’s purported involvement in stealth fiscal transactions —via several accounts —with Italy’s UniCredit Bank, Russia Today television network quoted the Panorama magazine as reporting.

“This corruption is continuing on a regular basis in the Vatican,” claimed Janathan Levy, a lawyer familiar with the bank. Read the rest of this entry »

“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
Plato, ancient Greek philosopher
…“The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.”

Alex Carey, Australian social scientist Read the rest of this entry »

It has been a little over a week since the devastating earthquake hit just outside Port au Prince, Haiti. Since that day, I have watched in horror as the Haitian people and their society have quickly submerged into a quagmire of social unrest and political grandstanding.Once I observed the mass-murder posse of Team Obama, Bush and Clinton begin circling the wagons and the rapid US militarization of Port au Prince, including the occupation of the Presidential Palace, to the tune of now almost 10,000 US boots on the ground, I began to get suspicious.Call me crazy. I know of the sad history of Haiti imposed upon the tiny former slave nation by one imperial power after the next. Read the rest of this entry »

Three types of Monsanto genetically modified corn are under scrutiny in the wake of a new study published by the International Journal Of Biological Sciences which found that rats ingesting the corn were subject to statistically significant amounts of organ toxicity. These three types — Mon 863, insecticide-producing Mon 810, and Roundup® herbicide-absorbing NK 603 — have been approved for consumption in the US and several countries in Europe. Read the rest of this entry »

Iran has signed a one-billion-euro (1.44-billion-dollar) deal with a German firm to build 100 gas turbo-compressors, an industry official said in newspapers on Wednesday.

The contract provides for the unnamed German firm to transfer the know-how to build, install and run the equipment needed to exploit and transport gas, said Iran’s Gas Engineering and Development Company head, Ali Reza Gharibi.

The German company has already delivered 45 such turbo-compressors to Iran, Gharibi said, according to Iran Daily. Industry experts said he was apparently referring to Siemens.

But the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) denied the signing of a deal. Read the rest of this entry »

Greece’s most influential think tank warned on Thursday of a social crisis unless the government takes rapid action to repair the damaged economy, including unpopular austerity measures.It urged the socialist government to move faster in applying tough fiscal measures while its approval rating was high, to avoid public unrest later.

“Conditions require immediate action and drastic measures,” said the IOBE economic think tank. “If the negative developments are not reversed … the economic crisis risks becoming a social crisis.”

The warning, made in an open letter to the prime minister, came as the government struggles to contain the worst economic crisis in decades, which is shaking the euro currency and was sparked by the biggest budget deficit in the euro zone.

Analysts have said that social unrest could pose the biggest risk to the Socialist government’s efforts to cut spending Read the rest of this entry »