News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
REPRESENTATIVE JACK BROOKS, Democrat of Texas. Colonel North, in your work at the N.S.C., were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster? SENATOR DANIEL K. INOUYE, Democrat of Hawaii. I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch upon that. MR. BROOKS. I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed, by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American Constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was the area in which he had worked. I believe that it was, and I wanted to get his confirmation. MR. INOUYE. May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon, at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I'm certain arrangements can be made for an executive session.
Note: Why was the chairman not allowing a discussion of the fact that plans were being made in the event of an emergency for the suspension of the U.S. Constitution? To watch a two-minute video which includes this testimony, click here.
It is the Wall Street equivalent of a perfect game of baseball — 27 up, 27 down, the final score measured in millions of dollars a day. Despite the running unease in world markets, four giants of American finance managed to make money from trading every single day during the first three months of the year. Their remarkable 61-day streak is one for the record books. Perfect trading quarters on Wall Street are about as rare as perfect games in Major League Baseball. But Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase & Company produced the equivalent of four perfect games during the first quarter. Each one finished the period without losing money for even one day. Their showing ... underscored the outsize — and controversial — role that trading has assumed at major financial institutions. It also drives home the widening lead that a handful of big banks are enjoying over lesser rivals on post-bailout Wall Street. The four banks ... reaped big rewards without necessarily placing big bets that stocks or bonds would go up or down. “This is not about hitting home runs,” said Jaidev Iyer, who runs his own risk management consulting firm, J-Risk Advisors. “This is just, as we call it, milking the market and your captive client base.”
Note: For an astounding list on the Forbes website of the richest companies in the world by assets, click here. All of the top 10 companies are banks, with collective assets of over $22 trillion! Yet we as taxpayers continue to pay to bail them out when they have problems. Is something wrong with this picture? For a graphic representation of this, click here. And for an abundance of deep reporting in major media articles on the hidden realities of Wall Street's shadowy operations, click here.
Last-minute maneuvering in the Senate allowed the Federal Reserve to sidestep legislation that would have exposed its interest-rate decision-making to congressional auditors. Pressure from the Obama administration led Senate lawmakers to alter a provision pushed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) that was gaining momentum despite opposition from the Treasury and the Fed. It would have largely repealed a 32-year-old law that shields Fed monetary policy from congressional auditors. Thursday's Senate showdown came after senators on the left and right joined forces to support Mr. Sanders' provision. "At a time when our entire financial system almost collapsed, we cannot let the Fed operate in secrecy any longer," Mr. Sanders said. "The American people have a right to know." But Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke ... said in a letter to Congress the Sanders measure would "seriously threaten monetary policy independence, increase inflation fears and market interest rates, and damage economic stability and job creation."
Note: For an abundance of deep reporting on the hidden realities of Wall Street's shadowy operations, click here.
In his new book, American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies That the Government Tells Us, former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura begins an investigative journey to prove that there is more to our national history than the government wants us to know. In this excerpt, he writes about an alleged 9/11 cover-up. Chapter 12: What really happened on September 11? Our government engaged in a massive cover-up of what really happened, including its own ties to the hijackers. Unanswered questions remain about how the towers were brought down, and whether a plane really struck the Pentagon. The Bush Administration either knew about the plan and allowed it to proceed, or they had a hand in it themselves. I certainly never expected to think that elements of the Bush Administration were complicit. Today, though, I am convinced that some people inside our government knew the attack was going to happen and allowed it to come to pass — because it furthered their political agenda. I say this after expending many hours researching things about the official story that don’t add up, and interviewing a number of witnesses with firsthand knowledge that contradicts what we were told. As a patriotic American, I say this with a heavy heart — and with an outrage that really knows no words. But it’s something we, as a nation, must come to terms with. Otherwise, it could happen again.
Note: For the questions raised by many other highly respected former government officials about what really happened on 9/11, click here.
The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf. Those approvals, federal records show, include one for the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and resulting in thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the gulf each day. The Minerals Management Service, or M.M.S., also routinely overruled its staff biologists and engineers who raised concerns about the safety and the environmental impact of certain drilling proposals in the gulf and in Alaska, according to a half-dozen current and former agency scientists. Those scientists said they were also regularly pressured by agency officials to change the findings of their internal studies if they predicted that an accident was likely to occur or if wildlife might be harmed. “M.M.S. has given up any pretense of regulating the offshore oil industry,” said Kierán Suckling, director of the Center for Biological Diversity, ... which filed notice of intent to sue the agency over its noncompliance with federal law concerning endangered species. “The agency seems to think its mission is to help the oil industry evade environmental laws.”
Note: For lots more from reliable souces on government corruption and collusion with industries it is supposed to be regulating, click here.
The amount of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico may be at least 10 times the size of official estimates, according to an exclusive analysis conducted for NPR. At NPR's request, experts examined video that BP released Wednesday. Their findings suggest the BP spill is already far larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska, which spilled at least 250,000 barrels of oil. BP has said repeatedly that there is no reliable way to measure the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by looking at the oil gushing out of the pipe. But scientists say there are actually many proven techniques for doing just that. Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the seafloor gusher using a technique called particle image velocimetry. A computer program simply tracks particles and calculates how fast they are moving. Wereley put the BP video of the gusher into his computer. He made a few simple calculations and came up with an astonishing value for the rate of the oil spill: 70,000 barrels a day — much higher than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day. The method is accurate to a degree of plus or minus 20 percent. This new, much larger number suggests that capturing — and cleaning up — this oil may be a much bigger challenge than anyone has let on.
Note: For lots more from reliable souces on government corruption and collusion with industries it is supposed to be regulating, click here.
Pope Benedict XVI on [May 11] issued his most forceful remarks on the sexual abuse crisis sweeping the Catholic Church. He called it �truly terrifying� and, in a marked shift in tone, suggested that its origins lay with abusive priests and with highly placed church officials who for decades concealed or minimized the problem. The problem, he said, was �the sin inside the church,� and by implication not accusations from victims or the media. �Forgiveness is not a substitute for justice,� he said, in remarks that underscored the Vatican�s recent if fitful efforts to break with a longstanding practice of handling abuse cases inside the church, rather than reporting abuse to civil authorities for prosecution. Victims groups said they were still waiting for concrete action more than words, and the Vatican has not yet announced whether it will change its norms for handling abuse. Benedict ... has been criticized for not acting aggressively enough against allegations of abuse as archbishop of Munich and later as the head of a powerful Vatican office.
As recently as 2007, 98 percent of Irish schools were run by the Catholic Church. Schools for troubled youth have been rife with barbaric corporal punishments, psychological abuse and sexual abuse. In October 2005, a report sponsored by the Irish government identified more than 100 allegations of sexual abuse by priests in Ferns, a small town 70 miles south of Dublin, between 1962 and 2002. Accused priests weren't investigated by police; they were deemed to be suffering a "moral" problem. In 2009, a similar report implicated Dublin archbishops in hiding sexual abuse scandals between 1975 and 2004. Pope Benedict's so-called apology takes no responsibility for the transgressions of Irish priests. His letter states that "the Church in Ireland must first acknowledge before the Lord and before others the serious sins committed against defenceless children." What about the Vatican's complicity in those sins? Benedict's infamous 2001 letter to bishops around the world ordered them to keep sexual abuse allegations secret under threat of excommunication -- updating a noxious church policy, expressed in a 1962 document, that both priests accused of sex crimes and their victims "observe the strictest secret" and be "restrained by a perpetual silence."
In one of the most dizzying half-hours in stock market history, the Dow plunged nearly 1,000 points before paring those losses. According to multiple sources, a trader entered a "b" for billion instead of an "m" for million in a trade possibly involving Procter & Gamble, a component in the Dow. Sources tell CNBC the erroneous trade may have been made at Citigroup. The massive selloff, which began shortly after 2 p.m. ET, amplified concerns about the spreading European debt crisis as the approval of austerity measures by the Greek Parliament sparked renewed rioting in Athens. According to a person familiar with the probe, one focus is on futures contracts tied to the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index, known as E-mini S&P 500 futures, and in particular a two-minute window in which 16 billion of the futures were sold. Amid the sell-off, Procter & Gamble shares plummeted nearly 37 percent to $39.37 at 2:47 p.m. EDT, prompting the company to investigate whether any erroneous trades had occurred.
Note: For an abundance of deep reporting on the hidden realities of Wall Street's shadowy operations, click here.
The Obama administration’s decision to authorize the killing by the Central Intelligence Agency of a terrorism suspect who is an American citizen has set off a debate over the legal and political limits of drone missile strikes, a mainstay of the campaign against terrorism. The notion that the government can, in effect, execute one of its own citizens far from a combat zone, with no judicial process and based on secret intelligence, makes some legal authorities deeply uneasy. To eavesdrop on the terrorism suspect who was added to the target list, the American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is hiding in Yemen, intelligence agencies would have to get a court warrant. But designating him for death, as C.I.A. officials did early this year with the National Security Council’s approval, required no judicial review. “Congress has protected Awlaki’s cellphone calls,” said Vicki Divoll, a former C.I.A. lawyer who now teaches at the United States Naval Academy. “But it has not provided any protections for his life. That makes no sense.” But like the debate over torture during the Bush administration, public discussion of what officials call targeted killing has been limited by the secrecy of the C.I.A. drone program.
Note: Obama is the first president to publicly order the assassination of an American citizen. Neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney asserted such a power on the part of the president. For an analysis, click here.
A case about pollution, big business and the movies has reopened longstanding debates about who is a journalist and how far parties to a lawsuit can reach when seeking ammunition for their side. The case involves a documentary, “Crude,” that tells the story of a long-running legal battle in which Ecuadorean plaintiffs are suing Chevron over the pollution of the Amazon rain forest. As part of its defense, Chevron demanded 600 hours of outtake footage from “Crude,” saying it could help the company show corruption and misconduct by the plaintiffs. The filmmaker argued that his work was protected by journalist privilege, which protects reporters and others in the newsgathering business from being compelled to reveal confidential sources or divulge confidential material. On [May 6], Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court in New York granted the request for the subpoena. The judge’s decision sparked outrage among documentary filmmakers, who said it endangered their form of journalism. The filmmaker Michael Moore said the decision could have “a chilling effect.” “If something like this is upheld, the next whistle-blower at the next corporation is going to think twice about showing me some documents if that information has to be turned over to the corporation that they’re working for,” Mr. Moore said.
Note: For lots more from reliable souces on government corruption and collusion with industries it is supposed to be regulating, click here.
Jason Brannigan's eyes widened as he relived the day he says prison guards pepper-sprayed his face at point-blank range, then pulled him through the cellblock naked, his hands and feet shackled. "I can't breathe! I can't breathe!" Brannigan recalled gasping in pain and humiliation during the March 2007 incident. "They're walking me on the chain and it felt just like ďż˝ slaves again," said the African American inmate, interviewed at the Sacramento County jail. "Like I just stepped off an auction block." Brannigan, 33, said the incident occurred in the behavior modification unit at High Desert State Prison in Susanville, where he was serving time for armed assault. He is one of more than 1,500 inmates who have passed through such units in six California prisons. A Bee investigation into the behavior units, including signed affidavits, conversations and correspondence with 18 inmates, has uncovered evidence of racism and cruelty at the High Desert facility. Inmates described hours-long strip-searches in a snow-covered exercise yard. They said correctional officers tried to provoke attacks between inmates, spread human excrement on cell doors and roughed up those who peacefully resisted mistreatment. Many of their claims were backed by legal and administrative filings, and signed affidavits, which together depicted an environment of brutality, corruption and fear.
In a move that will stoke a battle over the future of the Internet, the federal government plans to propose regulating broadband lines under decades-old rules designed for traditional phone networks. The decision, by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, is likely to trigger a vigorous lobbying battle, arraying big phone and cable companies and their allies on Capitol Hill against Silicon Valley giants and consumer advocates. He wants to adopt "net neutrality" rules that require Internet providers like Comcast Corp. and AT&T Inc. to treat all traffic equally, and not to slow or block access to websites. Internet giants like Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc., which want to offer more Web video and other high-bandwidth services, have called for stronger action by the FCC to assure free access to websites. Cable and telecommunications executives have warned that using land-line phone rules to govern their management of Internet traffic would lead them to cut billions of capital expenditure for their networks, slash jobs and go to court to fight the rules. Consumer groups hailed the decision ..., an abrupt change from recent days, when they [had] bombarded the FCC chairman with emails and phone calls imploring him to fight phone and cable companies lobbyists.
At a warehouse in New Jersey, 6,000 used copy machines sit ready to be sold. Almost every one of them holds a secret. Nearly every digital copier built since 2002 contains a hard drive ... storing an image of every document copied, scanned, or emailed by the machine. In the process, it's turned an office staple into a digital time-bomb packed with highly-personal or sensitive data. If you're in the identity theft business it seems this would be a pot of gold. "The type of information we see on these machines with the social security numbers, birth certificates, bank records, income tax forms," John Juntunen said, "that information would be very valuable." Juntunen's Sacramento-based company Digital Copier Security developed software called "INFOSWEEP" that can scrub all the data on hard drives. He's been trying to warn people about the potential risk - with no luck. All the major [digital copier] manufacturers told us they offer security or encryption packages on their products. One product from Sharp automatically erases an image from the hard drive. It costs $500. But evidence keeps piling up in warehouses that many businesses are unwilling to pay for such protection, and that the average American is completely unaware of the dangers posed by digital copiers.
Note: For lots more from reliable sources on threats to privacy, click here.
As a presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter claimed to have seen a UFO. As president, Ronald Reagan mused openly on how petty differences among nations might evaporate in the face of an extraterrestrial threat. And no one has done more to turn up the speculative heat than retired Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, who held a slew of top intelligence posts, including deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In a Learning Channel documentary, Inman said – but has since repeatedly and vigorously denied – that the military is attempting to use technology from unspecified "recovered vehicles." The most perplexing UFO mystery of all began in the desert north of Roswell, NM. Ideas of what happened here during the first week of July 1947 range from the simple – a weather balloon crash – to the downright silly – Earth was being scouted for an intergalactic invasion. The latest official government explanation – there have been three thus far – is that the recovered debris came from a Project Mogul balloon that was carrying instruments to detect Soviet nuclear tests. After interviewing witnesses who had seen and handled crash-site debris, and reviewing [classified documents], we have concluded that there really was a crashed disc, dead bodies and a secret that could have been politically deadly to presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Note: If the above link fails, click here or here. This well researched article raises more questions than it answers, yet it leaves virtually no doubt that there was a major cover-up. For lots more intriguing media articles suggesting a major cover-up of UFOs and related phenomena, click here.
Someone on Wall Street just made a killing. That was the subject of so much chatter among professional investors once the smoke cleared from the sudden panic and recovery on Thursday [May 6] that briefly knocked some stocks down to a penny or two a share. Who had kept his cool during those terrifying minutes and scooped up some dreamlike bargains? One thing, however, is certain: By luck, savvy, lightning speed or all three, there was money — gobs of it — to be made from the bargains that came and went in an instant. On Friday the blogosphere was alight with conspiracy theories suggesting that perhaps the whole thing had been instigated by a big bank or a hedge fund looking to make a quick profit. Some investment pros surely made a fortune from the trillion-dollar market swing. “Somebody got Accenture at a penny. They’re ready to announce their retirement,” joked Daniel Seiver, a finance professor at San Diego State University. Investors who owned gold or United States Treasuries ... saw big gains as global investors sought havens. But even those gains were small compared with those won by options traders who had placed bets on an index that rises in value when volatility increases. “The guys who probably made the most money in this were options players,” said Larry Tabb, chief executive of the Tabb Group, a financial services consulting firm.
Note: This article refers to the record-breaking 1,000 point intra-day drop in the Dow Jones index on May 7. For an abundance of deep reporting on the hidden realities of Wall Street's shadowy operations, click here.
A day after a harrowing plunge in the stock market, federal regulators were still unable on Friday [May 7] to answer the one question on every investor’s mind: What caused that near panic on Wall Street? The cause or causes of the market’s wild swing remained elusive, leaving what amounts to a $1 trillion question mark hanging over the world’s largest, and most celebrated, stock market. The initial focus of the investigations appeared to center on the way a growing number of high-speed trading networks interact with one another and with venerable exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange. Most investors are unaware that these competing systems have fractured the traditional marketplace and have displaced exchanges like the Big Board as the dominant force in stock trading. In a joint statement issued after the close of trading, the S.E.C. and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said they were ... looking particularly closely at how different trading rules on different exchanges, which temporarily halted trading on some markets while activity in the same stocks continued on other markets, might have contributed to the problem. The pressure in the less-liquid markets was amplified by the computer-driven trades, which led still other traders to pull back.
Note: For more information on the impact of the new high-speed computer-driven trading methods, click here.
It is the hot new thing on Wall Street, a way for a handful of traders to master the stock market, peek at investors’ orders and, critics say, even subtly manipulate share prices. It is called high-frequency trading — and it is suddenly one of the most talked-about and mysterious forces in the markets. Powerful computers, some housed right next to the machines that drive marketplaces like the New York Stock Exchange, enable high-frequency traders to transmit millions of orders at lightning speed and, their detractors contend, reap billions at everyone else’s expense. These systems are so fast they can outsmart or outrun other investors, humans and computers alike. And after growing in the shadows for years, they are generating lots of talk. Nearly everyone on Wall Street is wondering how hedge funds and large banks like Goldman Sachs are making so much money so soon after the financial system nearly collapsed. High-frequency trading is one answer. And when a former Goldman Sachs programmer was accused this month of stealing secret computer codes — software that a federal prosecutor said could “manipulate markets in unfair ways” — it only added to the mystery. Goldman acknowledges that it profits from high-frequency trading, but disputes that it has an unfair advantage. Yet high-frequency specialists clearly have an edge over typical traders, let alone ordinary investors.
Note: For a wealth of deep reporting on the hidden realities of Wall Street's shadowy operations, click here.
Federal regulators warned offshore rig operators more than a decade ago that they needed to install backup systems to control the giant undersea valves known as blowout preventers, used to cut off the flow of oil from a well in an emergency. The warnings were repeated in 2004 and 2009. Yet the Minerals Management Service, the Interior Department agency charged both with regulating the oil industry and collecting royalties from it, never took steps to address the issue comprehensively, relying instead on industry assurances that it was on top of the problem, a review of documents shows. In the intervening years, numerous blowout preventers and their control systems have failed, though none as catastrophically as those on the well the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig was preparing when it blew up on April 20, leaving tens of thousands of gallons of oil a day spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. Agency records show that from 2001 to 2007, there were 1,443 serious drilling accidents in offshore operations, leading to 41 deaths, 302 injuries and 356 oil spills. Yet the federal agency continues to allow the industry largely to police itself. Critics say that, then and now, the minerals service has been crippled by this dependence on industry and by a climate of regulatory indulgence.
Note: For lots more from reliable souces on government corruption and collusion with industries it is supposed to be regulating, click here.
Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico. The waivers were granted despite President Barack Obama’s vow that his administration would launch a “relentless response effort” to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the gulf. One of them was dated Friday — the day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was temporarily halting offshore drilling The exemptions, known as “categorical exclusions,” were granted by the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) and included waiving detailed environmental studies for a BP exploration plan to be conducted at a depth of more than 4,000 feet and an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. exploration plan at more 9,000 feet. “Is there a moratorium on off shore drilling or not?” asked Peter Galvin, conservation director with the Center for Biological Diversity, the environmental group that discovered the administration’s continued approval of the exemptions. “Possibly the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history has occurred and nothing appears to have changed.”
Note: For lots more from reliable souces on government corruption and collusion with industries it is supposed to be regulating, click here.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.