"The New York Times offered a sharp editorial Tuesday critiquing the indisputable role of the White House in distorting the intelligence on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, and in stampeding Congressional and public opinion by spinning worst-case scenarios -- 'inflating them drastically' -- to justify an immediate invasion last March to repel an alleged imminent threat to the United States.

"A new dirty tricks campaign to embarrass the Democratic frontrunner, John Kerry, backfired ignominiously yesterday when it emerged that a widely circulated photograph of a protest against the Vietnam war was a crude forgery," reports Suzanne Goldenberg. "The photograph, falsely credited to Associated Press, combined two separate images to make it appear as if Mr Kerry shared a stage at an anti-war rally in the early 1970s with the actress, Jane Fonda." The fabricated photos are not the only recent attempt to smear Kerry.

Our 1997 book Mad Cow USA, which foresaw the emergence of the deadly dementia disease in America, is now available in a new paperback version. The Bush administration is failing to put into place the measures necessary to stop the spread of mad cow in humans and animals: a complete ban on feeding slaughterhouse waste to livestock, and testing of millions of cattle. Eight years ago British scientists announced that mad cow disease was killing young people in Britain in the form of a new variant strain of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD).