Human Rights Watch, a highly regarded non-governmental organization, has accused the Ukrainian government of using cluster bombs against Russian-speaking separatists in eastern Ukraine. Cluster bombs are regarded by many as weapons that violate the laws of war since they release thousands of tiny bomblets that cannot discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. There is a 2010 Convention governing the use of cluster bombs but many countries–including Ukraine, China, Russia, the United States, Israel, Syria, India, Pakistan and Brazil–have not signed the convention banning the use of cluster bombs. Kiev denies using cluster bombs.
The Pew Research Center has released its poll of the most distrusted news sources in the US. I reproduce the chart below simply for information purposes (no quiz questions on this subject). Interesting tidbit: more people mistrust The New York Times than Al Jazeera.
Distrust of News Sources
% of respondents saying they distrust each source
| Source | Overall | Consistently liberal | Mostly liberal | Mixed | Mostly conservative | Consistently conservative |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rush Limbaugh Show | 39% | 75% | 47% | 33% | 21% | 7% |
| Fox News | 37% | 81% | 54% | 28% | 11% | 3% |
| Glenn Beck Program | 24% | 59% | 30% | 16% | 13% | 4% |
| MSNBC | 22% | 9% | 9% | 15% | 40% | 75% |
| Sean Hannity Show | 21% | 54% | 26% | 13% | 7% | 5% |
| CNN | 20% | 12% | 11% | 14% | 33% | 61% |
| NBC News | 19% | 6% | 7% | 15% | 35% | 62% |
| Daily Show | 18% | 4% | 11% | 18% | 31% | 34% |
| ABC News | 17% | 6% | 8% | 14% | 27% | 52% |
| CBS News | 17% | 6% | 9% | 11% | 32% | 51% |
| Huffington Post | 17% | 10% | 12% | 13% | 26% | 44% |
| New York Times | 17% | 3% | 6% | 13% | 33% | 50% |
| Al Jazeera America | 16% | 8% | 8% | 11% | 25% | 47% |
| Colbert Report | 16% | 6% | 11% | 15% | 25% | 30% |
| Yahoo News | 16% | 9% | 15% | 20% | 15% | 19% |
| Washington Post | 14% | 6% | 6% | 10% | 26% | 39% |
| USA TODAY | 13% | 11% | 10% | 8% | 18% | 30% |
| PBS | 12% | 2% | 5% | 12% | 20% | 34% |
| Google News | 11% | 4% | 8% | 16% | 10% | 12% |
| New Yorker | 10% | 4% | 8% | 7% | 17% | 27% |
| Wall Street Journal | 10% | 14% | 6% | 9% | 11% | 17% |
| Drudge Report | 9% | 27% | 8% | 5% | 3% | 3% |
| NPR | 9% | 1% | 2% | 5% | 17% | 39% |
| Bloomberg | 8% | 5% | 5% | 5% | 12% | 20% |
| BuzzFeed | 8% | 11% | 8% | 8% | 7% | 6% |
| BBC | 7% | 2% | 3% | 9% | 11% | 17% |
| Mother Jones* | 5% | 3% | 2% | 3% | 6% | 19% |
| Politico | 5% | 4% | 1% | 3% | 10% | 20% |
| Ed Schultz Show* | 5% | 4% | 3% | 2% | 10% | 19% |
| Breitbart | 4% | 16% | 3% | 1% | 0% | 1% |
| Guardian | 4% | 7% | 4% | 4% | 4% | 4% |
| TheBlaze | 3% | 6% | 2% | 1% | 4% | 1% |
| Daily Kos* | 3% | 3% | 2% | 2% | 5% | 10% |
| Slate | 3% | 4% | 1% | 2% | 4% | 8% |
| Economist | 2% | 2% | 2% | 2% | 2% | 3% |
| ThinkProgress* | 2% | 2% | 1% | 1% | 4% | 6% |
Source: American Trends Panel (wave 1). Survey conducted March 19-April 29, 2014. Based on all Web respondents (representative of the 89% of Americans with internet access). (Overall N=2,901; see About the Study for sample sizes of each ideological group.) Respondents were asked which (of 36 sources for news about government and politics) they have heard of, trust, distrust and got news from in the past week. Ideological consistency based on a scale of 10 political values questions. To see audience profiles, click each source. *Note that ThinkProgress, Daily Kos, Mother Jones and The Ed Schultz Show do not have audience profiles because the sample sizes for these audiences are too small to analyze.
For those of you who have a strong biology background, you might be interested in this article, which summarizes the findings of a disease modelling firm which did a model of the potential spread of the Ebola virus. I do not fully understand the article (so don’t panic–I would never ask a question on the quiz about something this technical). But I often rely on the expertise of others who can explain specialized material to me. I have a simple question: should I freak out now?
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