Many of the most notable events in modern (and even ancient) history have provoked some form of 'conspiracy theory'. That is to say, ordinary people were not satisfied with the official story about how the event unfolded because all or some aspects of that story simply did not objectively make sense. Despite what the mainstream media would like us to believe about 'conspiracy theories', most conspiracy theories are based on objective problems with the official narrative. But note that I said 'based on'. The problem with conspiracy theories is that, while they usually reflect a more accurate overview of a major event, they are forced to rely on theory (due to deliberate with-holding of data by official sources) rather than hard evidence (which would disqualify them as theories) and are therefore open to abuse by people who tend to use their imaginations to complete the picture rather than the more critical functions of the human mind.

Compared to other similar events where many people found the official story implausible, the Sandy Hook massacre has provoked a veritable flood of conspiracy theories, and many of them are not based on any hard evidence.

A large majority of the alternative news pundits that have attempted to independently investigate the Sandy Hook massacre have engaged in some seriously irresponsible and shoddy journalism. Among the more outlandish and baseless theories, we find the claim that "actors" took the place of the parents and siblings of the Sandy Hook victims, and that no children were murdered at all because, the theory goes, if they were, "why haven't we seen any bodies?" I've already exposed the logical fallacies in a few of these theories elsewhere, but there is one theory that still refuses to go away, perhaps because it is slightly less obviously bogus, and many people are still touting it as the single fact that "busts open" the official story as a "hoax".

The theory in question is that a man named Christopher Rodia was the REAL owner of the black Honda Civic, which has been identified as the car of Adam Lanza's mother that was found outside the Sandy Hook elementary school. The basis for this erroneous belief, still held by many, is police scanner audio that was picked up from the morning of Dec. 14th and which details Connecticut State Police response to the massacre.

Forget knocking on doors. The "Grandma Brigade" in Minnesota gathers public info about other voters.

In Minnesota, Democratic volunteers scour their local newspapers each morning for letters to the editor with a political slant. They pay attention to the names of callers on radio shows. They drive through their neighborhoods and jot down the addresses of campaign lawn signs.

Then they feed the information into a state Democratic Party database that includes nearly every voter in Minnesota.

Some of the states' few dozen data volunteers are so devoted that they log into the party database daily from their home computers. Deb Pitzrick, 61, of Eden Prairie, convinced a group of her friends to form the "Grandma Brigade." These women, in their 50s, 60s and 70s, no longer want to knock on doors for the Democrats. Instead, they support the party by gathering public information about other voters.

Much of the data the Grandma Brigade collects is prosaic: records of campaign donations or voters who have recently died. But a few volunteers see free information everywhere. They browse the listings of names on Tea Party websites. They might add a record of what was said around the family Thanksgiving table - Uncle Mitch voted for Bachmann, cousin Alice supports gay marriage.

Tens of thousands Malaysians have come out to protest in the country's capital against the government calling for reforms and possible ouster of the ruling coalition. The rally comes before Malaysia's general elections, which are due by mid-2013.

According to local police, 80,000 people marched through Kuala Lumpur to the legendary Stadium Merdeka, where the current governing alliance declared independence from Britain in 1957, reported The Malaysian Insider.

Opposition estimates that the turnout was even higher, at about 100,000, according to Malaysia Kini.

Protesters' demands included better electoral and environmental laws, improved education system, abolition of student loans and fair royalty payments to oil-producing states.

The opposition argues that the country's electoral register is fraudulent and has pro-government bias.

Ex-Israeli premier Ehud Olmert has accused current PM Benjamin Netanyahu of spending $3 billion on a war with Iran that never took place.

Olmert pointed out that the current leader "wasted" the money on "harebrained adventures that haven't, and won't, come to fruition."

"We are dealing with expenditures that go above and beyond multi-year budgets," Olmert also said in an interview with Israeli broadcaster Channel 2 News. "They scared the world for a year and in the end didn't do anything."

The former leader also pointed out that the money was spent on "security delirium", and "the projects won't be carried out because 2012 was the decisive year." The ex-PM referred to the Israeli drive to toughen sanctions, and possibly engage in a military conflict, with Iran to interfere with the nuclear development in the country.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with Ehud Barak, the deputy PM and the defense minister, reacted to the ex-premier's claims in an interview with Army Radio set to be aired on Sunday, IsraelNationalNews.com reported. Netanyahu called the former PM's criticism "a bizarre, irresponsible thing to say."

The current leader also indicated, "We've done a lot to strengthen the IDF, Mossad and Shin Bet [the Israeli Security Service] in various ways."

Ry Dawson dissects AJ's latest insane rant during his appearance on CNN's Piers Morgan TV show, an appearance that was clearly intended to discredit all alternative political views as the delusions of crazed conspiracy theorists .

France's President Francois Hollande has weighed this weekend into the war of words between his government and the Catholic Church over holding discussions in schools on the planned legalisation of same-sex marriage.

He defended Education Minister Vincent Peillon on Saturday for urging Catholic schools, which teach about one-fifth of all pupils in France, to stay neutral in the debate.

Peillon's supporters and critics dominated the headlines and airwaves on Sunday, a week before a Church-backed protest in Paris that organisers say could draw as many as half a million people opposed to any change in traditional marriage.

The shrill polemics could not drown out another big news story, the growing unpopularity of Hollande and his government. One poll said 75 percent of voters doubt he can keep a New Year's promise to turn around rising unemployment this year.

Laurent Wauquiez, a former conservative higher education minister, slammed Peillon for implying that Catholic opposition to the reform was responsible for suicides of gay teenagers.

"This is a big political manipulation," he said.

France will pursue operations in Mali to prepare a subsequent African-led intervention to oust Islamist rebels and will step up anti-terrorist security measures on its own territory, President Francois Hollande said on Saturday.

As French aircraft pounded rebel fighters for a second day, Hollande said he had given instructions that the several hundred French troops sent to Mali must keep their actions strictly limited to supporting a West African ECOWAS operation.

"We have already held back the progress of our adversaries and inflicted heavy losses on them. But our mission is not over yet," Hollande said, a day after French forces launched air strikes and reinforced the capital Bamako to pre-empt a feared rebel advance towards the city.

The prime ministers of Libya, Algeria and Tunisia agreed on Saturday to enhance security along their common borders in an attempt to fight the flow of arms and drugs and organised crime in the politically turbulent region.

Meeting in the western Libyan border town of Ghadames, Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan and his Algerian and Tunisian counterparts said measures would include setting up joint checkpoints and patrols along the frontiers, which stretch for thousands of kilometres (miles) through mostly sparsely-populated desert.

They also expressed concern over the crisis in Mali, where an international campaign to crush rebels who seized the north of the country was gathering pace.

Mali does not share a border with Libya but it has been affected by the spill over of weapons and fighters from the war.

France's military intervention against Islamist fighters in northern Mali will put French citizens at risk, a spokesman for insurgent group Ansar Dine said on Saturday.

François Hollande, who had signalled a hands-off policy on ex-colonies, has allowed French troops to intervene in Mali.

During the election campaign last year, François Hollande was attacked for being too indecisive, and nicknamed "Flamby" after a dessert - not exactly in the superman category. Seven months later, the same Hollande sanctioned an operation by French commandos in Somalia to try and rescue a French hostage, and started an unpredictable war in France's former colony of Mali. He received support from mainstream opposition leaders who oppose him on almost every other issue - and from Britain too, which has agreed military assistance to help transport foreign troops and equipment to Mali.

Nothing predestined this Socialist apparatchik to become a war president, particularly after having campaigned for the early return of French troops from Afghanistan, which was completed a few weeks ago.

Soon after he was elected last May, Hollande designed a strategy for the Mali crisis, which had erupted a few months earlier when radical Islamist groups took over the northern half of the country and imposed tough sharia laws over the population. The new president didn't want to see French troops leading the battle, as has happened in the past - for example in Chad, when Libyan tanks were threatening its southern neighbour. Hollande wanted to show times had changed.

As a sign of his new, non-interventionist approach to France's former colonies, Hollande only last month refused publicly to answer calls from President François Bozizé of the Central African Republic, for French troops to come and stop a rebel advance towards its capital. Hollande said: "We are not present to protect a regime ... That time is over."