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rt.com | Ron Paul fever is spreading across the country.

Lawmakers are investigating whether a top government investigator was involved in producing a report that erroneously suggested certain scientists approved a drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The moratorium cost thousands of jobs throughout the region and created a decline in energy production. Seven members of the National Academy of Engineers later rebuffed the action.

The target of the probe, Mary Kendall, the Interior Department’s acting inspector general (IG), told a House oversight panel in 2010 she was not investigating the error because it was the subject of a lawsuit.

“I was not involved in the process of developing that report, and I think it would be inappropriate for me to comment on it,” Kendall told lawmakers.

The IG later revealed that the White House was involved in editing that specific language but blamed it on a drafting error.

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, says newly obtained documents show Kendall actually played a role in developing the report and that she participated in key meetings.

“This apparent involvement also raises new questions about the acting IG’s independence and impartiality in conducting the investigation of the drilling moratorium report, whether it was appropriate for her to oversee this investigation in the first place, and whether she should have disclosed her involvement and recused herself from all matters concerning the investigation,” Hastings said.

Kendall told USA Today she attended the meetings but only as “an active listener.”

“I was not an active participant in these meetings,” Kendall said.

Schedules show Kendall was a “required invitee” to meetings discussing the peer reviews, and in emails she described that work as “enormously impressive.”

 

A 48-year-old man dies after the boat he and two others were fishing off capsizes near Greenock on the Firth of Clyde.

Olympic torch has first motorbike ride on Isle of Man

knoxweekly.com.au | Fresh legal moves to stop his extradition to Sweden to face questioning over rape allegations.

While much of the world’s attention is focused on the Assad regime’s appalling assaults against Syrian citizens, with more than a hundred dead in this week’s massacre in Houla alone, another human rights atrocity occurring on a much larger scale garners far less attention.

North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong-Eun, has done what few expected when he assumed power after his father’s death last December. Instead of loosening control in the most totalitarian nation in the world, Kim Jong-Eun has actually expanded the number of North Koreans subject to forced labor, torture, starvation and death in the totalitarian nation’s prison camps.

The camps, known as kwan-li-so, form a hidden gulag where those accused of crimes against the state are imprisoned. An estimated 200,000 people serve in these camps. The regime imposes sentences, often without even the pretense of a show trial, like those that took place in the Stalinist Soviet Union. Summary executions occur regularly in the camps. Although the sentences may be for ten years or less, most prisoners die in the kwan-li-so before completing their terms.

Prisoners work 12-18 hours a day under inhumane and dangerous conditions in mines, quarries, and factories. Accidents maim and kill many, but more often starvation takes an unimaginable toll. The average prisoner receives only 100-200 grams of food a day — the equivalent of about one cup of white rice — with virtually no protein. But even rice, a staple of the Asian diet, is often unavailable. Corn is the usual substitute, which leads to pellagra, a disease that brings on skin lesions, mental confusion and eventually dementia.

But perhaps the most heinous aspect of the camps is that not only are those accused of “crimes” but their entire families imprisoned. The founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Kim Il-Sung, justified the practice by claiming, “The seed of factionalists or class enemies, whoever they are, must be eliminated through three generations.” So, spouses, children, siblings, even elderly parents often serve sentences along with the accused.

Now Kim Jong-Eun, the latest in the Kim dynasty that has ruled the DPRK since 1948, has expanded this barbaric practice. The young Kim has now instructed that both older and younger relatives of anyone caught trying to flee the country will be sent to the kwan-li-so.

Even knowing the horrific consequences, North Koreans will continue to try to leave. Since the devastating famine in the mid-’90s when as many as 2.5 million people starved to death, some 15,000 North Koreans have reached safety in South Korea or third countries.

Many more live secretly in China, where their plight is not much better than in the DPRK. These refugees are under constant threat of being turned over to North Korean authorities by the Chinese government or even being kidnapped and forcibly returned by DPRK agents who cross the border for that purpose.

Yet most people in the West either are unaware of what is going on in North Korea or choose to ignore it. And the U.S. government reserves what little outrage it displays on the rogue nation’s nuclear program.

It may become more difficult to avert our gaze, however, as new information leaks out about exactly how bad conditions are in the kwan-li-so. An updated report of the Committee for Human Rights in Korea, “The Hidden Gulag: The Lives and Voices of Those Who Are Sent to the Mountains,” now includes eyewitness testimony from 60 former prisoners along with 30 pages of satellite images of the camps.

In addition, a new book focuses attention on the plight of those who have survived the terror of the camps. Blaine Hardin’s “Escape from Camp 14″ details the life of Shin Dong-hyuk, a young man born in the camp who escaped, but only after turning in his mother and brother, whom he regarded as traitors and rivals for food, and witnessing their execution. But there have been other books that told similar stories — “The Aquariums of Pyongyang,” by former prisoner Kang Chol-hwan, and “The Long Road Home,” by Kim Yong — yet neither provoked sufficient interest and outrage to mobilize Americans to want to do something.

Unless that changes, North Korea will continue to starve, torture, and kill its people while we look the other way.

Casey Stoner storms to pole position in Catalunya as Cal Crutchlow qualifies in a career-best third spot.

A US appeals court gives the state department four months to decide whether the MEK Iran dissident group should remain on the US terror blacklist.

businessinsider.com | Goldman Sachs alum makes grim predictions about the markets and the economy.

SINGAPORE (AP) -- From this island nation in the South China Sea, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta sent a message Saturday that America's new military focus on the Asia-Pacific is not intended to raise tensions in the region or threaten Beijing....

SINGAPORE (AP) -- From this island nation in the South China Sea, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta sent a message Saturday that America's new military focus on the Asia-Pacific is not intended to raise tensions in the region or threaten Beijing....

SINGAPORE (AP) -- From this island nation in the South China Sea, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta sent a message Saturday that America's new military focus on the Asia-Pacific is not intended to raise tensions in the region or threaten Beijing....

SINGAPORE (AP) -- From this island nation in the South China Sea, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta sent a message Saturday that America's new military focus on the Asia-Pacific is not intended to raise tensions in the region or threaten Beijing....

TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) -- The first sign of change came as our convoy of food aid and medicine pulled up to the last northern town held by the Malian army. The atmosphere was tense as the heavily armed troops searched our car and baggage. Even my toothbrush was apparently suspect....

TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) -- The first sign of change came as our convoy of food aid and medicine pulled up to the last northern town held by the Malian army. The atmosphere was tense as the heavily armed troops searched our car and baggage. Even my toothbrush was apparently suspect....

CAIRO (AP) -- Egypt's top prosecutor is appealing the verdicts in the trial of Egypt's ousted president and others, acquitting Hosni Mubarak and his two sons on corruption charges and clearing senior police officers of complicity in killing protesters, an official said on Sunday....

Suzannah Hills | Found guilty of being complicit in the killings of protesters during the country's uprising.

Infowars.com | No rest for the globalist criminal cartel hiding inside the Marriott in Virginia.

CAIRO (AP) -- Egypt's longtime leader Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison Saturday for failing to stop the killing of protesters during the uprising that forced him from power last year. The 84-year-old was the first Arab Spring leader to be tried in his own country, but he is not the only ruler in the Middle East to be caught up in the uprisings that have swept across the region since early last year. Here's a look at the fate of other Arab leaders:...

The Queen has arrived at Epsom Derby, driving on the race course, to kick off the first major event of her Diamond Jubilee weekend.