SPECIAL NEWS ALERT: Center for Public Integrity launches site tracking all false statements made prior to Iraq war

"President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses." [Full Story]

Civil war in DR Congo has claimed 5.6 million lives in 10 years, 45,000 die per month; peace deal signed in eastern DR Congo bet. rival factions...

23 January :: DR Congo death toll since 1998 now stands at 5.6 million, with 45,000 still dying each month in 10-year ongoing civil war; Democracy Now! reports that "Amidst the deadliest conflict since World War II, hundreds of international corporations have reaped enormous profits from extracting and processing Congolese minerals", speculation has long weighed the possibility that neighboring gov'ts are eager to maintain factional rivalries in order to keep DR Congo's natural resource markets open... In eastern DR Congo, a peace deal has been signed between pro-government Mai Mai militia and rebel general Laurent Nkunda's faction; gov't has sanctioned deal which BBC reports "includes an immediate ceasefire and the deployment of UN peacekeepers in 13 key locations"Hamas agents have broken through Egypt-Gaza border wall to permit flow of refugees in search of food, supplies, as border closure continues to strain territory; Bloomberg reports "Hamas militants blew 15 holes in a security fence separating the Gaza Strip and Egypt, enabling thousands of Palestinians to leave the blockaded enclave to search for food and supplies"... US Federal Reserve Bank cuts interest rates a sharp 0.75%, leading to criticism from economists at the Davos Economic Forum; FT reports "Economists at the meeting warned that the monetary easing announced on Tuesday would not succeed in boosting a sickly US economy. Moreover, they said, by reacting to turmoil in equity markets, the Fed seriously risked creating the impression that it was most concerned with ensuring investors did not lose money"...

Food prices expected to rise for prolonged period; panic selling hits world markets; US surpasses EU in green tech investment...

22 January :: British agribusiness report suggests steep rise in food prices to continue over prolonged period; environmental degradation, water scarcity and climbing fuel prices will contribute to short supply, higher cost of production... Panic selling and steep Asian drop, for second day running, have caused massive losses in stocks across the world, as fears of US recession take root; FT reports "Tumbling Asian shares – which continued to fall early on Tuesday – led European stock markets into their biggest one-day fall since 9/11 as the prospect of a US recession and further fall-out from credit market turmoil prompted near panic among investors, who rushed to the safety of government bonds", with $490 billion lost on FTSE Eurofirst 300 index... Boom in Silicon Valley venture capital investment in renewables has US poised to overtake Europe as world leader in green technologies; according to FT, "European investment in clean technology companies last year was only a third of the $3.7bn ploughed into the field in the US, according to Cleantech Group, a specialist US research firm"...

Gaza City in darkness after power plant shutdown forced by border closing; NH recount uncovers human error, overcount of votes for some candidates...

21 January :: Lights out in Gaza City, as Palestinian authorities there are forced to shut down two turbines at Gaza power plant, due to Israel cutting off fuel supplies and other imports into Gaza Strip; officials there have said hospitals and emergency services will also be affected by the blackout; Israel says its effort is designed to slow and/or halt rocket attacks allegedly coming from Gaza, that it has not cut off the 70% of Gaza's electricity supply that comes from Israel itself... "Election integrity activists in New Hampshire are finding all kinds of problems with the electronic vote count in last week's presidential primary, after a first day of recounting the Democratic vote. But the problems so far have not changed the outcome of the race that Hillary Clinton won", according to a 17 January AlterNet report; The Concord Monitor is reporting that human error played a roll in erroneous counts conducted on the day of the primary vote: "A recount of ballots cast in Nashua's Ward 5 show that Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Joe Biden received a total of 110 votes less than originally reported because of human error", though so far the ongoing recounts have not turned up any error or manipulation serious enough to cause a change in the placing of top candidates...

Touchscreen machines fail in 100% of one SC precinct in GOP primary; Clinton wins Nevada narrowly over Obama, Romney with clear GOP win...

20 January :: Electronic voting machines in Horry County, South Carolina, have reportedly failed in 100% of its precincts, creating the real possibility that South Carolina's Republican primary vote cannot be confirmed by any official means; with the machines used already known to be vulnerable to hacking and malfunction, "Late in the week poll workers picked up the iVotronic machines that they are using today. They took them home on voting machine "sleepovers" and then set up the poll sites for today's primary", reports Brad Friedman for the investigative blog BRADBLOG... John McCain declared winner of South Carolina Republican party primary, outpacing close challenger Mike Huckabee 33% to 30%, despite reports of serious problems in touchscreen voting machines, unknown numbers of voters "turned away" at polls... Hillary Clinton has been declared winner of the Nevada caucuses, with Barack Obama finishing second (50% and 45% support among caucus-goers, respectively), in the run for the Democratic nomination; Mitt Romney has reportedly taken 40% more than his nearest rivals, finishing with 55% to Paul and McCain's 13% support... The annual Davos Economic Forum has been overshadowed by concerns of growing international economic instability, and fallout from the subprime mortgage lending crisis that hit US banks in the summer of 2007; The Financial Times reports "Even Klaus Schwab, the founder of the Davos meetings, sounds downbeat: 'The discussions in Davos will certainly be very dominated by the economic challenges we have at the moment — the aftermath of the subprime crisis, the transfer of capital from energy-consuming to energy-producing countries, inflationary tendencies'"... A team of economists in Britain has suggested the EU should implement a broad-based carbon tax in order to spur market adaptation to renewable fuels, instead of setting specific targets for the use of biofuels and renewable energy; the report suggests that specific funding for a transition to the widespread use of biofuels would be "a form of state support for an environmentally and economically harmful activity designed to consolidate existing price support mechanisms for vested interest groups, most notably farmers"... MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews has apologized for "callous" remarks about Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), in which he suggested she was elected in New York because her husband, fmr. pres. Bill Clinton, "messed around"; Matthews explained that his intention was to highlight that she performed well under pressure and gained respect in the public eye and among elected officials...