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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 "Today, the discriminatory law known as 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is finally and formally repealed," Obama said in a statement.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....