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.
The world of modern eavesdropping, or signals intelligence ... for many years ... operated in the shadows. The Puzzle Palace, the 1983 best seller by James Bamford that remains the benchmark study of the N.S.A., first pulled back the curtain to provide a glint of unwanted sunlight on the place. As each operation has come to light, an anxious public has wanted to know whether this powerful new surveillance model was undermining traditional notions of privacy and civil liberties. Just whom is the government watching? And who is watching the watchers? It has been left to outsiders — journalists, authors, civil rights advocates and privacy groups — to keep tabs on the watchers and to bring public scrutiny to once-secret programs. For the spymasters, this spotlight was decidedly unwelcome. Mike McConnell, a director of intelligence in the Bush administration, ... is one of the recurring characters in The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State by Shane Harris. Mr. Harris, with some success, does what Mr. McConnell and others in the intelligence world have found so objectionable: he watches the watchers. At its best The Watchers provides an insightful glimpse into how Washington works and how ideas are marketed and sold in the back rooms of power, whether the product being peddled is widgets or a radical model for intelligence gathering.
Note: For more insights into the activities of Big Brother, click here.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has issued a report that is supposed to clinch the case that a lone scientist mailed anthrax-laced letters in 2001, terrorizing a country already traumatized by the 9/11 attacks. The agency cites voluminous circumstantial evidence ... but its report leaves too many loose ends to be taken as a definitive verdict. The scientist — Dr. Bruce Ivins, an Army biodefense expert — killed himself in 2008 as the investigation moved ever closer to an indictment. That means the evidence and the F.B.I.’s conclusion that he was the culprit and acted alone will never be tested in court. Problematic is the investigative work that led the F.B.I. to conclude that only Dr. Ivins, among perhaps 100 scientists who had access to the same flask, could have sent the letters. The case has always been hobbled by a lack of direct evidence tying Dr. Ivins to the letters. No witnesses who saw him prepare the powdered anthrax or mail the letters. No anthrax spores in his house or car. No incriminating fingerprints, fibers or DNA. No confession to a colleague or in a suicide note, just opaque ramblings in e-mail that the F.B.I. interprets as evidence of guilt. The F.B.I. has a troubling history of building a circumstantial case against suspects who are later exonerated. We ... agree with Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, who is calling for an independent assessment to validate the findings.
Note: For a recent Wall Street Journal report on the unsolved anthrax attacks, click here.
Five robed radicals on the Supreme Court have pushed money-infused politics in the wrong direction by overturning a century's worth of campaign spending laws. Voters should prepare for the worst: cash-drenched elections presided over by free-spending corporations. The 5-to-4 ... majority's thinking is based on absolutist vision of free speech and belief that corporations and unions have the same constitutional protections as individuals when it comes to basic rights. This viewpoint is "a rejection of the common sense of the American people," said Justice John Paul Stevens, who read his angry dissent out loud. Corporations "are not themselves members of 'We the People,' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established." It's hard to overstate the legal sweep of the decision. It rejects two recent court rulings, one that barred corporations and unions from dipping into their treasuries to pay for candidate ads and the second that restricted these so-called independent expenditure efforts. The five-member majority didn't just blaze new ground; it torched the court's own past record. In practical terms, the decision amounts to a political earthquake. Big-money issues such as health care, cap-and-trade pollution controls and Wall Street regulations will drive attack ads against politicians who refuse to do the bidding of particular special interests.
Note: To join the over 40,000 who have already signed a petition to stop corporations from have legal personhood status in elections, click here. For more deep insights into the flaws in the US electoral system, click here. To read about the wonderful defender of elections free from corporate influence, Granny D, who recently passed away at the age of 100, click here.
Scientists at Sandia National Labs, seeking a means to create cheap and abundant hydrogen to power a hydrogen economy, realized they could use the same technology to "reverse-combust" CO2 back into fuel. Researchers still have to improve the efficiency of the system, but they recently demonstrated a working prototype of their "Sunshine to Petrol" machine that converts waste CO2 to carbon monoxide, and then syngas, consuming nothing but solar energy. The device, boasting the simple title Counter-Rotating-Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (we'll go with "CR5") sets off a thermo-chemical reaction by exposing an iron-rich composite to concentrated solar heat. The composite sheds an oxygen molecule when heated and gets one back as it cools, and therein lies the eureka. The cylindrical metal CR5 is divided into hot and cold chambers. Solar energy heats the hot chamber to a scorching 2,700 degrees, hot enough to force the iron oxide composite to lose oxygen atoms. The composite is then thrust into the cool chamber, which is filled with carbon dioxide. As it cools, the iron oxide snatches back its lost oxygen atoms, leaving behind carbon monoxide.
Note: For many inspiring reports on promising new energy developments, click here.
Thirty-three-year-old Salman Khan recently quit his job as a hedge fund analyst to devote himself to an unpaid job teaching math on the Internet. He has posted 1,200 lessons on YouTube, which appear on an electronic blackboard, and range in subject from basic addition and advanced calculus to science and finance. And they are free. Khan lives in California's Silicon Valley with his wife, a rheumatologist in training at Stanford, and their new baby. He got the idea for Khan Academy four years ago, when he taught a young cousin how to convert kilograms to grams. Many American students have trouble with math, and studies show they lag behind their counterparts in Asia and Europe in both math and science. With Khan's help, his cousin got good at math, and he eventually had a new career tapping into anxieties around the world. Now he records his lessons from a converted closet in the back of his bedroom. Internet instruction, be it the Khan Academy or taped university lectures, could revolutionize education in remote Third World locations, where access to high-quality instruction is frequently unavailable.
Note: To visit the Khan Academy website, click here.
1. Cost of the Manhattan Project (through August 1945): $20,000,000,000. 2. Total number of nuclear missiles built, 1951-present: 67,500. 3. Estimated construction costs for more than 1,000 ICBM launch pads and silos, and support facilities, from 1957-1964: nearly $14,000,000,000. 4. Total number of nuclear bombers built, 1945-present: 4,680. 5. Peak number of nuclear warheads and bombs in the stockpile/year: 32,193/1966 6. Total number and types of nuclear warheads and bombs built, 1945-1990: more than 70,000/65 types 7. Number currently in the stockpile (2002): 10,600 (7,982 deployed, 2,700 hedge/contingency stockpile) 8. Number of nuclear warheads requested by the Army in 1956 and 1957: 151,000 9. Projected operational U.S. strategic nuclear warheads and bombs after full enactment of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty in 2012: 1,700-2,200 10. Additional strategic and non-strategic warheads not limited by the treaty that the U.S. military wants to retain as a "hedge" against unforeseen future threats: 4,900
Note: The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project was completed in August 1998 and resulted in the book Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 edited by Stephen I. Schwartz. To understand how these huge amounts of money affect our world, see what a top US general had to say about what he learned at this link.
The Ministry of Defence will destroy all future UFO reports it receives so it does not have to make them public, a previously secret memo reveals. Britain's official UFO investigation unit and hotline were closed down at the start of December. Since then reports of strange sights in the skies sent to the MoD have been kept for 30 days before being thrown out, the newly released policy document shows. This stance was adopted so defence officials would not have to publish the information in response to freedom of information (FoI) requests or pass it to the National Archives. The MoD recorded 634 UFO sightings in 2009, the second highest annual total after 1978, when there were 750, according to UFO expert Dr David Clarke. This compares with an average of about 150 reports a year over the past decade. The document includes as an annex a printout from the US Department of Defence website explaining that the American government stopped collecting reports of UFO sightings in December 1969.
Note: For a concise summary of key testimony on UFO sightings by highly-credible government and military officials, click here. For astonishing media reports revealing the existence of UFOs, click here.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, suggested [that] the organization might one day be called on to provide countries with a global reserve currency that would serve as an alternative to the U.S. dollar. "That day has not yet come, but I think it is intellectually healthy to explore these kinds of ideas now," he said in a speech on the future mandate of the 186-nation Washington-based lending organization. Strauss-Kahn said such an asset could be similar to but distinctly different from the IMF's special drawing rights, or SDRs, the accounting unit that countries use to hold funds within the IMF. It is based on a basket of major currencies. He said having other alternatives to the dollar "would limit the extent to which the international monetary system as a whole depends on the policies and conditions of a single, albeit dominant, country." Several countries, including China and Russia, have called for an alternative to the dollar as a reserve currency.
Note: For a treasure trove of reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities behind the world financial and economic crisis, click here.
President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension of several provisions in the nation's main counterterrorism law, the Patriot Act. Provisions in the measure would have expired on [February 28] without Obama's signature [the day before]. The act, which was adopted in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, expands the government's ability to monitor Americans in the name of national security. Three sections of the Patriot Act that stay in force will: -- Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones. -- Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations. -- Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group. Obama's signature comes after the House voted 315 to 97 Thursday to extend the measure. The Senate also approved the measure, with privacy protections cast aside. Thrown away were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government's authority to spy on Americans and seize their records.
Note: Remember that the PATRIOT Act was passed by Congress immediately after weaponized anthrax attacks on two key senators opposed to the legislation, a crime that the FBI has closed the books on without solving. Congress continues to support the Act despite its widespread unpopularity with the US public. Why? For lots more from major media sources on the increasing government threats to civil liberties, click here.
The introduction of a genetically modified potato in Europe risks the development of human diseases that fail to respond to antibiotics, it [has been claimed]. German chemical giant BASF this week won approval from the European Commission for commercial growing of a starchy potato with a gene that could resist antibiotics – useful in the fight against illnesses such as tuberculosis. Farms in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic may plant the potato for industrial use, with part of the tuber fed to cattle, according to BASF, which fought a 13-year battle to win approval for Amflora. But other EU member states, including Italy and Austria and anti-GM campaigners angrily attacked the move, claiming it could result in a health disaster. During the regulatory tussle over the potato, the EU's pharmaceutical regulator had expressed concern about its potential to interfere with the efficacy of antibiotics on infections that develop multiple resistance to other antibiotics, a growing problem in human and veterinary medicine. Drug resistance is part of the explanation for the resurgence of TB, which infects eight million people worldwide every year.
Note: For an excellent summary of the threats to health from genetically-modified foods, click here.
Six years after the intense fighting began in the Iraqi town of Fallujah between US forces and Sunni insurgents, there is a disturbingly large number of cases of birth defects in the town. Fallujah is less than 40 miles (65km) from Baghdad, but it can still be dangerous to get to. As a result, there has been no authoritative medical investigation, certainly by any Western team, into the allegations that the weapons used by the Americans are still causing serious problems. The Iraqi government line is that there are only one or two extra cases of birth defects per year in Fallujah, compared with the national average. But in the ... Fallujah General Hospital ... we found a paediatric specialist, Dr Samira al-Ani, who told us that she saw two or three new cases every day. Most of them, she said, exhibited cardiac problems. The specialist, like other medical staff at the hospital, seemed nervous about talking too openly about the problem. But it is impossible, as a visitor, not to be struck by the terrible number of cases of birth defects there. We heard many times that officials in Fallujah had warned women that they should not have children. We went to a clinic for the disabled, and were given details of dozens upon dozens of cases of children with serious birth defects.
Note: There is strong evidence that the US military was experimenting with dangerous weapons like white phosphorus in Fallujah. For more on this, click here.
Flying Toblerones, mysterious illnesses and silky-white substances are among hundreds of close encounters described in previously top-secret files released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). More than 6,000 pages of material spanning from 1994 to 2000 holds hundreds of other-worldly experiences with unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and apparent aliens across Britain. Aircraft of all shapes and sizes have been witnessed flying over a wide range of locations. One man told police he was physically sick and developed a ''skin condition'' after an eerie ''tube of light'' enveloped his car in Ebbw Vale, in Wales, at 10.40pm on January 27 1997. Other highlights include: -- A man arrived at his Birmingham home at 4am on March 20, 1997, to discover an illuminated blue triangle hovering over his garden. The craft shot off leaving behind a ''silky-white'' substance on the tree-tops, which he collected in a jam-jar. -- A UFO sighted by Boston and Skegness police, in Lincolnshire, was captured on film. The police reported the sighting to the coastguard, who in turn alerted ships in North Sea - where a crew saw more UFOs. -- A letter from senior MoD official Ralph Noyes in which he describes seeing a film of UFOs captured by RAF fighter pilots in 1956. Mr Noyes claims the footage was shown at a secret underground screening arranged for Air Defence staff at the MoD Main Building in 1970.
Note: For a concise summary of key testimony on UFO sightings by highly-credible government and military officials, click here. For astonishing media reports revealing the existence of UFOs, click here. And for an excellent database compiled by a British police officer of intriguing UFO sightings reported by police, click here.
An herbicide that contaminates the tap water consumed by millions of Americans has been found to produce gender-bending effects in male frogs, "chemically castrating" some and turning others into females, a study shows. Frogs in the experiment were exposed to amounts of the weedkiller atrazine that are comparable to the levels allowed in drinking water by the Environmental Protection Agency, says lead researcher Tyrone Hayes of the University of California-Berkeley. In Hayes' earlier studies, atrazine caused male frogs to begin growing eggs in their testes. In this experiment, 10% of the males exposed to atrazine — one of the most commonly used herbicide in the world — actually changed sex; some were able to breed and lay eggs. Nearly all of the other males had low testosterone and sperm levels, which made them unable to reproduce, Hayes says. The experiment [raises] new questions about the safety of atrazine, which other studies have linked to human birth defects, low birth weight, prematurity and low sperm count. About 75% of stream water samples and 40% of groundwater samples contain atrazine, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, detected atrazine in 90% of tap water samples from 139 water systems. The European Union has banned the chemical.
Note: For many key reports from reliable sources on important health issues, click here.
An internal Republican National Committee fundraising presentation obtained by Ben Smith at Politico proposes that GOP fundraisers shake the money tree by motivating donors based on "fear" of President Obama. The document also uses the controversial image of the president made up like Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight. Part of the presentation included a slideshow explaining “RNC Marketing 101," suggesting that direct marketing is based on “Visceral Giving” in which donors can be motivated by “fear,” “Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration” and “Reactionary.” Asks another slide: "What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House, or the Senate ...?" The answer is "Save the country from trending toward Socialism!” DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse [says] "The express strategy of the Republican party is not to offer new ideas, but ‘fear.’ Republicans can no longer deny that they are peddling fear when they are literally selling it as their path back to power."
Note: The Democratic party also has made ample use of fear, particularly under the Bush administration. For a powerfully insightful essay which describes how various factions of the power elite use fear and more to manipulate the public and what we can do about it, click here.
Few politicians stray from pledging absolute fidelity to strong U.S.-Israel relations. But former South Bay Rep. Tom Campbell has come under fire for accepting $1,300 in contributions during his 2000 Senate campaign from a former Florida professor. The professor, Sami Al-Arian, pleaded guilty in 2006 to conspiring to help a terrorist organization, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Al-Arian had not been charged with a crime when he made the donation. Campbell's rivals in the race to face Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in November - Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina - hope to use his links with the professor to gain ground on Campbell, who has high name recognition and leads most polls. Campbell [has] stood behind his opinion that the United States should support Palestinians and Israel should they agree to share Jerusalem as a capital city.
Note: How rare it is that the media will actually state the obvious, that if top politicians don't support Israel, they rarely get elected? Why is this? And why is it that everyone knows Israel has nuclear bombs, yet officially Israel refused to acknowledge this and it is almost never talked about?
It's time to reflect on the immense powers Americans have ceded to the government and [the] potential for abuse by federal, state and local authorities. The global Internet and telecommunications infrastructure provides massive information on almost ... every person on the planet. One power truly stands out --- the all-encompassing reach and technological capabilities of the US National Security Agency. If you want to be secure, don't use a phone, a computer, credit card or any other technologically linked system because it guarantees that Big Brother will find you. Big Brother is not just the government. Most consumer "spying" comes from subpoenas and requests from non-terrorist-related federal, state, local agency requests and non-governmental private litigation and discovery. Simply put, a subpoena issued by a court in support of private litigation and discovery may have the same impact on an individual as the full force of the NSA. What information is typically requested from a company by say a plaintiff's lawyer during some discovery phase? Well, it's everything. In fact, it's generally a fishing expedition for every log file, every uploaded video, photo, chat session and anything else they can get their hands on.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on the continuing development of a global society under Big Brother's constant gaze, click here.
At a microscopic level [Aker University Hospital] is pristine. There is no sign of a dangerous and contagious staph infection that killed tens of thousands of patients in the most sophisticated hospitals of Europe, North America and Asia last year, soaring virtually unchecked. The reason: Norwegians stopped taking so many drugs. Twenty-five years ago, Norwegians were also losing their lives to this bacteria. But Norway's public health system fought back with an aggressive program that made it the most infection-free country in the world. A key part of that program was cutting back severely on the use of antibiotics. Now a spate of new studies from around the world prove that Norway's model can be replicated with extraordinary success, and public health experts are saying these deaths -- 19,000 in the U.S. each year alone, more than from AIDS -- are unnecessary. The World Health Organization says antibiotic resistance is one of the leading public health threats on the planet. A six-month investigation by The Associated Press found overuse and misuse of medicines has led to mutations in once curable diseases like tuberculosis and malaria, making them harder and in some cases impossible to treat. Now, in Norway's simple solution, there's a glimmer of hope.'
Note: For many key reports from reliable sources on important health issues, click here.
Earth's north magnetic pole is racing toward Russia at almost 40 miles (64 kilometers) a year due to magnetic changes in the planet's core. Newly analyzed data suggest that there's a region of rapidly changing magnetism on the core's surface, possibly being created by a mysterious "plume" of magnetism arising from deeper in the core. And it's this region that could be pulling the magnetic pole away from its long-time location in northern Canada. The magnetic north pole had moved little from the time scientists first located it in 1831. Then in 1904, the pole began shifting northeastward at a steady pace of about 9 miles (15 kilometers) a year. In 1989 it sped up again, and in 2007 scientists confirmed that the pole is now galloping toward Siberia at 34 to 37 miles (55 to 60 kilometers) a year. A rapidly shifting magnetic pole means that magnetic-field maps need to be updated more often to allow compass users to make the crucial adjustment from magnetic north to true North. Also, nobody knows when another change in the core might pop up elsewhere, sending magnetic north wandering in a new direction.
While many economists [have long assumed] that collective action [doesn't] work, several decades ago the Indiana University ... political scientist [Elinor Ostrom] began to study when and why it did work. [Now,] her efforts [have] won her the 2009 Nobel economics prize. "What Ostrom showed was that a lot of ordinary ... people who'd never read about free rider problems basically developed institutional arrangements," says Nancy Folbre, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Groups of fishermen figured out how to limit their catch, while farmers collaborated on irrigation problems. "Sure there's a free-rider problem, but people turn around and find ways to solve it," Folbre says. Ostrom ... looked at other institutional successes, studying group-run fisheries, pastures, woods and lakes, to conclude that "outcomes are, more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories." She "challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized," the Nobel committee said. Why did other economists miss this part of the picture? "Economists didn't pay attention to ethnography," Folbre says--that is, they didn't observe actual people at work. "Why go out in the field when you have a nice theory?"
Note: Elinor Ostrom was also the first woman to win the Nobel in economics, as described in this CNN article.
To some criminal-justice experts the violence that erupted [at a prison] located about 40 miles east of Los Angeles, was an inevitable consequence of a state prison system long hobbled by massive overcrowding, program cuts and understaffed facilities. And given the state's ongoing budget woes — with $1.2 billion in cuts mandated to the prison budget — the situation is likely to only get worse. "Overcrowding is the first issue," says Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. "You're talking about hundreds of men moved into triple bunks in what used to be gyms and cafeterias. They're not even cells. They're just empty places where we're shoving people." In addition to overcrowding, the state's corrections efforts are the nation's most expensive — and one of the least effective. The state spends $10 billion annually, or $49,000 per inmate for a year in custody, according to statistics from the nonpartisan policy-advising group Legislative Analyst's Office. Yet, California's recidivism rate is 70%, one of the worst in the country.
Note: At $49,000 per year per inmate, do you think there might be a better way to rehabilitate these people?
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.