Dispel the Illusion

Abbott, Blackwater, BP, Chiquitta, Countrywide, ExxonMobil, Gen Re, Murray Energy, Purdue Pharma, SAIC.

Tony Blair has said he wants to spend the rest of his life bringing the religions of the world together. On the eve of the launch of his “faith foundation”, the former prime minister also said faith had given him the courage to make unpopular decisions he knew were right during his 10 years in office. In an interview with Time magazine, Mr Blair said faith could be “a civilising force in globalisation”, bringing different peoples together to solve the world’s problems.

If there ever was a time for men to avoid the cinema, this weekend is it. The Sex And The City film had its UK release last night with many cinemas full to the brim of extremely excited women - and hardly a man to be seen. Such is the frenzied excitement surrounding the popular TV show’s celluloid offering that cinemas across the UK are booked up for weeks.

The fund's managing partner, Steven Milloy, opposes a coalition led by the Rockefeller family that is calling on Exxon to pay more attention to global warming. "They're not bona fide shareholders," Milloy says. "They're not shareholders who are invested in Exxon because they think it's a good investment - they're shareholders who want to use Exxon to advance their social and political agenda."

To say that Henry Kissinger is the most controversial of twentieth-century American Secretaries of State would be an understatement. No other holder of that office has inspired opprobrium of the sort heaped on Kissinger by journalists such as Seymour Hersh and Christopher Hitchens. The latter’s polemic, The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2002), for example, accuses Kissinger of having “ordered and sanctioned the destruction of civilian populations, the assassination of inconvenient politicians, the kidnapping and disappearance of soldiers and journalists and clerics who got in his way”.

The Supreme Court of Canada has chosen not to hear an appeal by the Saskatchewan Association of Licensed Practical Nurses (SALPN), whose decision to fine and revoke the license of a pro-life and pro-family practical nurse was judged unconstitutional by a lower court ... The refusal of the Supreme Court to hear SALPN’s appeal means that the case is closed definitively in Bill Whatcott’s favour. According to the normal procedures of the Supreme Court, three judges examined the material in the case and declared that it was not in the public's interest to pursue.

Emma Jean Butler, mother of Shantese Butler, is suing Planned Parenthood for $50 million dollars in damages. Butler took her daughter to the D.C. Planned Parenthood on September 7, 2006 to abort a child conceived in rape. During the abortion, Shantese sustained severe abdominal bleeding, severe vaginal injury, severe injury to the cervix, significant uterine perforation, and a small bowel tear. In addition, parts of the child were found inside Shantese's abdomen on September 8, 2006. Because of these injuries, Shantese will be infertile for the rest of her life.

A proposed constitutional amendment that gives legal protections to people from the moment of conception and takes direct aim at Roe v. Wade has officially qualified for the ballot in Colorado, giving citizens there a historic opportunity this November to grant legal status to the unborn.

In our contemporary version of Orwellian Newspeak, those who defend a position in logic and morals, that might well be unassailable, with any degree of passion, are "emotive" and deserve to be ignored. Whereas, those who advocate the most monstrous crimes in a cool and dispassionate spirit deserve, at the very least, to be spared the inconvenience of explaining their motives.

It's not scary. It's terrifying. Like a Kurt Vonnegut Ice Nine effect, Monsanto's GMO market penetration looks to turn the world to mono-culture and potential environmental catastrophe. Rather than feed the planet, says Robin in this essential wake-up call, Monsanto is well on the road to ruining it.

A mother of two has stunned doctors by apparently coming back from the dead. Velma Thomas's heart stopped beating three times and she was clinically brain dead for 17 hours. Her son had left the hospital to make funeral arrangements, having been told she would not survive. But ten minutes after her life support system was shut down and doctors were preparing to take her organs for donation, the 59-year-old woke up.

For more than three years, he would not surrender. He endured more than 100 surgeries and procedures. He learned to live with pain, to stare at a stranger's face in the mirror. He learned to smile again, to joke, to make others laugh. He became known as the "Miracle Man." But just when it seemed he would defy impossible odds, German lost his last battle this spring — an unexpected final chapter in a story many imagined would have a happy ending.

The average audience for “The Oprah Winfrey Show” has fallen nearly 7 percent this year, according to Nielsen Media Research — its third straight year of decline. “Oprah’s Big Give,” an ABC philanthropic reality show ... steadily lost nearly one-third of its audience during the rest of its eight-week run, according to Nielsen. The circulation of O, The Oprah Magazine, has fallen by more than 10 percent in the last three years.

Spurred by claims that vaccinations can be linked to autism, increasing numbers of parents are raising questions about whether vaccines, far from panaceas, are actually harmful to children ... Just last month the U.S. government, which has always stood by the safety of vaccines, acknowledged that a 9-year-old Georgia girl with a preexisting cellular disease had been made worse by inoculations she had received as an infant, which "significantly aggravated" the condition, resulting in a brain disorder with autism-like symptoms.

A significant number of Canadian hospitals are reusing single-use medical devices and the vast majority of those that do sterilize them in-house – a practice fraught with risk, infection control experts say ... Among devices being reused are biopsy forceps used in stomach and bowel surgery, membrane scrapers used in eye surgery, breast pump kits and tools used to bore through bone.