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.
Randy Pausch, the charismatic young college professor who chronicled his battle with pancreatic cancer in a remarkable speech widely-known as the "Last Lecture," has died at the age of 47. Pausch's lecture and subsequent interview was one of the most powerful accounts of hope, grace and optimistism ABC News has ever featured, and drew a worldwide response. "I'd like to thank the millions of people who have offered their love, prayers and support," [his wife] Jai Pausch said in a statement. "Randy was so happy and proud that the lecture and book inspired parents to revisit their priorities, particularly their relationships with their children. The outpouring of cards and emails really sustained him." It all began with one, age-old question: What would you say if you knew you were going to die and had a chance to sum up everything that was most important to you? That question had been posed to the annual speaker of a lecture series at Carnegie Mellon University, where Pausch was a computer sciences professor. For Pausch, though, the question wasn't hypothetical. Pausch, a father of three small children with his wife Jai, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer -- and given six months to live. Friends and colleagues flew in from all around the country to attend his last lecture. And -- almost as an afterthought -- the lecture was videotaped and put on the Internet for the few people who couldn't get there that day. The lecture was so uplifting, so funny, so inspirational that it went viral. So far, 10 million people have downloaded it. And thousands have written in to say that his lecture changed their lives.
Note: For an inspiring 12-minute video by Prof. Randy Pausch about his impending death and gratitude for life, click here. For the entire, amazing 1 hour and 15 minute lecture, click here.
The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff: Limit cell phone use because of the possible risk of cancer. The warning [came] from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. Herberman is basing his alarm on early unpublished data. He says it takes too long to get answers from science and he believes people should take action now — especially when it comes to children. "Really at the heart of my concern is that we shouldn't wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later," Herberman said. [His] advice is sure to raise concern among many cell phone users and especially parents. In the memo he sent to about 3,000 faculty and staff, he says children should use cell phones only for emergencies because their brains are still developing. Adults should keep the phone away from the head and use the speakerphone or a wireless headset, he says. He even warns against using cell phones in public places like a bus because it exposes others to the phone's electromagnetic fields. Herberman cites a "growing body of literature linking long-term cell phone use to possible adverse health effects including cancer." "Although the evidence is still controversial, I am convinced that there are sufficient data to warrant issuing an advisory to share some precautionary advice on cell phone use," he wrote in his memo.
Note: For many important reports on health issues, click here.
In a new sign of increasing inequality in the U.S., the richest 1 percent of Americans in 2006 garnered the highest share of the nation's adjusted gross income for two decades, and possibly the highest since 1929, according to Internal Revenue Service data. Meanwhile, the average tax rate of the wealthiest 1 percent fell to its lowest level in at least 18 years. The figures are from the IRS's income-statistics division and were posted on the agency's Web site last week. The 2006 data are the most recent available. According to the figures, the richest 1 percent reported 22 percent of the nation's total adjusted gross income in 2006. That is up from 21.2 percent a year earlier, and is the highest in the 19 years that the IRS has kept strictly comparable figures. The 1988 level was 15.2 percent. Earlier IRS data show the last year the share of income belonging to the top 1 percent was at such a high level as it was in 2006 was in 1929, but changes in measuring income make a precise comparison difficult. The average tax rate in 2006 for the top 1 percent, based on adjusted gross income, was 22.8 percent, ... the fifth straight year of declines. The average tax rate of this group was 28.9 percent in 1996.
Note: For more on accelerating income inequality from reliable sources, click here.
In her important new book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, Jane Mayer of The New Yorker devotes a great deal of space to David Addington, ... the lead architect of the Bush administration’s legal strategy for the so-called war on terror. In the view of Mr. Addington and his acolytes, anything and everything that the president authorized in the fight against terror — regardless of what the Constitution or Congress or the Geneva Conventions might say — was all right. That included torture, rendition, warrantless wiretapping, the suspension of habeas corpus, you name it. Ms. Mayer wrote: "The legal doctrine that Addington espoused — that the president, as commander in chief, had the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries — rested on a reading of the Constitution that few legal scholars shared." Ms. Mayer mentioned a study conducted by attorneys and law students at the Seton Hall University Law School. "After reviewing 517 of the Guantánamo detainees’ cases in depth," she said, "they concluded that only 8 percent were alleged to have associated with Al Qaeda. Fifty-five percent were not alleged to have engaged in any hostile act against the United States at all, and the remainder were charged with dubious wrongdoing, including having tried to flee U.S. bombs. The overwhelming majority — all but 5 percent — had been captured by non-U.S. players, many of whom were bounty hunters." The Dark Side is essential reading for those who think they can stand the truth.
Note: For lots more on the realities behind the "war on terror", click here.
The Dark Side, Jane Mayer’s gripping new account of the war on terror, is really the story of two wars: the far-flung battle against Islamic radicalism, and the bitter, closed-doors domestic struggle over whether the president should have limitless power to wage it. The war on terror, according to Ms. Mayer, ... was a "political battle cloaked in legal strategy, an ideological trench war" waged by a small group of true believers whose expansive views of executive power she traces from the Nixon administration through the Iran-contra scandal to the panicked days after 9/11. Ms. Mayer’s prime movers and main villains are Vice President Dick Cheney and his legal counsel (now chief of staff) David Addington, who after the terrorist attacks moved to establish "a policy of deliberate cruelty that would’ve been unthinkable on Sept. 10." As the leader of the self-styled "war council," a group of lawyers who took the lead in making the rules for the war on terror, Mr. Addington startled many colleagues with the depth of his fervor and the reach of his power. The war council settled on a "pre-emptive criminal model," in which suspects would be used — more or less indefinitely — to gather evidence of future crimes rather than held accountable for previous ones. There would be minimal oversight from Congress. The C.I.A. would take the lead, developing aggressive new interrogation methods that would be described as “enhanced,” “robust,” “special.” What they were not, a series of secret memos issued by John Yoo and others at the Office of Legal Council would attempt to certify, was “torture.”
Note: For lots more on the realities behind the "war on terror", click here.
The list of those who subscribe to the theory that alien life forms and UFOs have visited Earth amid a massive government cover-up is long and varied. But a Nasa astronaut who has walked on the moon? The profile of Edgar Mitchell does not conform to that of your common or garden UFO aficionado. He holds two Bachelor of Science degrees and a doctorate in aeronautics from the prestigious and not exactly tree-huggy Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Along with Alan Shepard, he holds the record for the longest moon walk - for nine hours on February 9 1971 as part of the Apollo 14 mission, making him the sixth man to walk on the moon. "There's not much question at all that there is life throughout the universe. I'm totally sure we are not alone." Mitchell said he had intelligence "that we have been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomenon is real - though it's been covered up by governments for the last 60 years or so". In a [NASA] statement, the agency said: "Nasa does not track UFOs. Dr Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinion on this issue."
Note: For an engaging Reuters video report on this, click here. For more detailed testimony of Dr. Mitchell on UFOs, click here. For a powerful summary of evidence for UFOs presented by highly credible government and military professionals, click here.
Timothy Good is considered one of the world's leading experts on the UFO phenomenon. For more than 40 years he has studied the controversial subject, having interviewed thousands of witnesses worldwide, many from military, governmental and scientific backgrounds. Timothy has written numerous best-selling books on UFOs and aliens - which he calls 'the most highly classified subject on earth' - and has acted as a consultant to several US Congress investigations into the phenomenon. An international lecturer, in January 1989 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Timothy became the first UFO researcher from the west to be interviewed on Russian television. With UFO fever sweeping Britain, Timothy Good spoke live to BBC WM on Wednesday 9th July 2008. In highlights, Timothy discussed: * The declassification of thousands of government documents relating to UFO's on May 2008 and what this means. * His belief that aliens are here on earth - in bases dotted around the planet - and how world governments have been - and may still be - in liaison with them. * How the west has secretly developed advanced weaponry to deal with a possible interstellar threat. * How the United States and British governments have secretly spent millions of pounds attempting to solve the UFO mystery and that it is 'the most highly classified subject on earth'.
Note: The 14-minute audio excerpt available at the link above is quite good.
The decades-old footage of a full-grown lion joyously embracing two young men like an affectionate house cat has made myriad eyes misty since it recently landed on YouTube. What is it about the old, grainy images that has attracted millions of clicks around the globe? Is it simply that a lion, whimsically named Christian, remembered the two men who raised it and then released it into the wild? It may be something more: the indelible image of a creature that could kill a man in seconds behaving like a pussycat with two men it obviously loves, smack in the middle of the African bush. The video is the work of Anthony “Ace” Bourke and John Rendall, two Australians who in 1969 were living in ... London. Nearly 40 years later, Rendall expressed astonishment that one video of his reunion with his former pet had drawn more than six million hits as of this writing. “Oh, my God,” Rendall exclaimed from Australia when told how popular the video has become. “If it’s made people more aware and more interested in conservation and the protection of the environment, we’re very pleased.” Back in ’69, Rendall was living on King’s Road, in the Chelsea section of London. The center of London’s counterculture at the time, King’s Road seethed with creativity and fashion. When a friend came back from a trip to Harrods, London’s famous department store, and told a story about her trip to the pet department, Rendall was understandably fascinated. “Harrods has always claimed that they could find anything,” he explained. “Anything you’d want, Harrods could get for you. ... There were these beautiful lion cubs.”
Note: To watch this highly inspiring three-minute clip, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adYbFQFXG0U.
The United States of America is becoming less united by the day. A 30-year gap now exists in the average life expectancy between Mississippi, in the Deep South, and Connecticut, in prosperous New England. Huge disparities have also opened up in income, health and education depending on where people live in the US, according to a report published yesterday. The American Human Development Index has [issued a report] measuring well-being ... with shocking results. The US finds itself ranked 42nd in global life expectancy and 34th in survival of infants to age. Suicide and murder are among the top 15 causes of death and although the US is home to just 5 per cent of the global population it accounts for 24 per cent of the world's prisoners. The report points to a rigged system that does little to lessen inequalities. "The report shows that although America is one of the richest nations in the world, it is woefully behind when it comes to providing opportunity and choices to all Americans to build a better life," the authors said. Some of its more shocking findings reveal that ... Asian-American males have the best quality of life and black Americans the lowest, with a staggering 50-year life expectancy gap between the two groups. Using official government statistics, the study points out that because American schools are funded primarily from local property taxes, rich districts get the best state education. The US has no federally mandated sick pay, paternity leave or annual paid vacation.
Note: For lots more on health issues from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.
The Justice Department's former top criminal prosecutor says the U.S. government's terror watch list likely has caused thousands of innocent Americans to be questioned, searched or otherwise hassled. Former Assistant Attorney General Jim Robinson would know: he is one of them. Robinson joined [with] the American Civil Liberties Union on Monday to urge fixing the list that's supposed to identify suspected terrorists. "It's a pain in the neck, and significantly interferes with my travel arrangements," said Robinson, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division during the Clinton administration. He believes his name matches that of someone who was put on the list in early 2005, and is routinely delayed while flying — despite having his own government top-secret security clearances renewed last year. He [said] "I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list who find themselves inconvenienced." [The watch list] was created after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to consolidate 12 existing lists. Audits of the watch list over the last several years ... have concluded that it has mistakenly flagged innocent people whose names are similar to those on it. More than 30,000 airline passengers had asked the Homeland Security Department to clear their names from the list as of October 2006. The ACLU predicted the watch list would include 1 million names as early as Monday. The civil liberties group reached that number by citing the 700,000 records on the watch list as of last September and adding 20,000 names each month, as forecast by the Justice Department's inspector general.
Note: For many disturbing reports on threats to civil liberties, click here.
Most parents have never heard of him, but Joseph Biederman of Harvard may be the United States' most influential doctor when it comes to determining whether their children are normal or mentally ill. In 1996, for example, Biederman suggested that drugs like Ritalin might serve 10 percent of American kids for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. By 2004, one in nine 11-year-old boys was taking the drug. Biederman and his team also are more responsible than anyone for a child bipolar epidemic sweeping America (and no other country) that has 2-year-olds on three or four psychiatric drugs. The science of children's psychiatric medications is so primitive and Biederman's influence so great that when he merely mentions a drug during a presentation, tens of thousands of children within a year or two will end up taking that drug, or combination of drugs. This happens in the absence of a drug trial of any kind - instead, the decision is based upon word of mouth among the 7,000 child psychiatrists in America. That's why [the] recent revelation that Biederman did not declare $1.6 million in drug company consulting fees is so important, scary and tragic. American medicine, with psychiatry the most culpable, has fallen back to a time more than 100 years ago. Now once again, drug company money is corrupting medical practice and the maintenance of our country's health. Virtually all doctors who receive drug company money say they are not influenced, but every independent study examining the effects of such money says they are.
Note: For lots more on health issues from reliable, verifiable sources, click here.
LARRY KING: Bob Salas is a former captain [of the] U.S. Air Force. He was at Malstrom Air Force Base in 1967, where there were claims that a UFO caused missiles to malfunction. SALAS: I was on duty as a missile launch officer. First, I get one call saying that they're seeing strange lights flying in the sky. About five minutes later ... the flight security controller calls down and says he's looking at a glowing red object, very large, hovering over the front gate. Within seconds of that call, my missiles start shutting down. I recall losing all 10 of them. KING: Bob Jamison you were there too, right? JAMISON: My job as a target officer was to bring them back up. KING: Is it possible they just malfunctioned? JAMISON: Very rarely does a missile malfunction. Much more rare would be two at the same time. But never ten. DR. BOB JACOBS: I was in charge of optical instrumentation at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Our job was to photograph ... every missile launch. [One day] we photographed an Atlas missile raising up out of the fog cover. The next day I was called into the office. Major Mansmann [turned on] the projector. I recognized it as the film that we had shot ... the previous day. Toward the end of the flight ... everything was flying along and suddenly ... at about 8,000 miles an hour, an object came into the frame, shot a beam of light at the warhead, flew up to the top, shot another beam of light at the warhead ... and then flew out the same way it came in. Major Mansmann said ... were you guys screwing around up there? I said, no, sir. And he said then tell me what that was. And I said we got a UFO. And he said, lieutenant, you are never to speak of this again. As far as you're concerned, this didn't happen. KING: Our latest Associated Press poll shows 14 percent of Americans claim they've seen a UFO.
Note: For a more detailed description of the experience of both Capt. Salas and Dr. Jacobs, click here. For a two-page summary of other riveting testimony on UFOs from top officials, click here. For a ten-minute video clip of this show, click here. For our resource-filled UFO Information Center, click here.
LARRY KING: Tonight, UFOs over Texas -- where were they heading? Radar shows something was headed very fast in the direction of Crawford. Could it have been an alien aircraft or a super secret military mission? What the heck has been going on in the skies over Stephenville, Texas? It's a small town not too far from President Bush's Crawford ranch. And earlier this year, Stephenville became ground zero for the biggest mass UFO sighting since the 1997 lights over Phoenix phenomenon. A guest in Stephenville is Constable Lee Roy Gaitan. CONSTABLE LEE ROY GAITAN: It was already dark ... as I'm returning back into the house, off to the southwest sky I see a red orb. The red orb was round, very large, I'd say probably 500 yards away. As I focused, it disappeared. To my surprise, it reappeared seconds later. Again, I just saw it for just a couple of seconds and it vanished. I knew it wasn't normal. I looked in the direction of the southwest sky. I no longer could see these red orbs. Instead, I saw nine to 10 flashing lights up a little further west, I'd say probably 3,000 feet up in the air. These lights were bouncing around, not staying still. They were very bright. I went to the car and got my binoculars. These lights shot off to the southeast sky at a blazing speed. They were out of sight within two or three seconds. I don't know what I saw. I do know that shortly after seeing these lights disappear, I did see two jets fly over, traveling in the path of these lights. I don't know if it was part of an experiment, military or what. But I clearly saw and heard the jets. I didn't hear any sound when I saw the lights.
Note: To watch the video of this interview, click here.
LARRY KING: On July 8th, 1947, Colonel William H. Blanchard, commanding officer of the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell Army Air Field released a press statement that a flying saucer had crashed ... and that the Army had recovered the disk within hours. A second press release was issued claiming that it was nothing more than a weather balloon. Carlene Green['s] father was stationed [there]. GREEN: He said, "Don't let anybody tell you that the incident at Roswell did not happen. I was there. I saw the spacecraft." They were told, don't talk about it. SCHMITT: [They] threatened physical violence if they should ever talk about this. KING: Frankie Rowe. Her father was a fireman in Roswell. [He] reported to his family that in addition to a crashed saucer, he saw two full body bags and one living little person. ROWE: He said that they tried to help it. KING: We are now joined by ... Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the Apollo XIV astronaut, sixth man to walk on the moon. MITCHELL: All of my experience comes from what I call the old timers. Because I lived in the area ... and because I was an astronaut, some of them wanted to get it off their chest before they passed on. I eventually went to the Pentagon and asked for a meeting with the Intelligence Committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A vice admiral said ... I don't know about that but I'm going to find out. [He] called a few weeks later and said he had found the source of the black budget funding for this project and that he was going to subsequently investigate. [Yet he was later] told, I'm sorry, admiral, you do not have need to know here. We knew many of the people, including the ranch where this was discovered, and in spite of all of the security oaths, etc, the talk in the community was ... that it was an alien craft.
Note: Watch video clips of this CNN report. Read more detailed, fascinating testimony on the existence of UFOs from Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon. Explore our resource-filled UFO Information Center. For other revealing news articles on UFOs, see this webpage.
Eleven years after the last major effort to balance the federal government's books, advocates of fiscal integrity are seeking to make a comeback. Most notable is Pete Peterson, a son of Greek immigrants and Wall Street chieftain who has vowed to invest $1 billion of his personal fortune to alert Americans that their government is going broke. He has lured former U.S. comptroller general David Walker to his fledgling Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which will finance advertising, lobbying and grass-roots efforts designed to pressure the next president and Congress. The situation has gotten much worse since past presidents and Congress negotiated deficit-reduction deals in 1990, 1993 and 1997. The federal deficit is estimated at $357 billion. The national debt, as calculated by the Treasury Department, is more than $9.3 trillion. Future liabilities, from government pensions to elderly entitlements, bring the total to $53 trillion — $175,000 per person, according to Peterson and Walker. Both men say a comprehensive fix will need to include overhauls of the nation's health care and tax systems. At the core of the effort is Peterson, 82, a founder of the Concord Coalition fiscal watchdog group, who has preached the danger of federal budget deficits for decades. He and Walker spoke Tuesday at a House Budget Committee hearing and met privately with congressional backers of balanced budgets. Peterson is retiring this year as senior chairman of the Blackstone Group, which he co-founded. [He is a] former secretary of Commerce in the Nixon administration and chairman of Lehman Brothers.
Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis. The study – carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas – has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields. Professor Barney Gordon, of the university's department of agronomy, said he started the research – reported in the journal Better Crops – because many farmers who had changed over to the GM crop had "noticed that yields are not as high as expected even under optimal conditions". He added: "People were asking the question 'how come I don't get as high a yield as I used to?'" He grew a Monsanto GM soybean and an almost identical conventional variety in the same field. The modified crop produced only 70 bushels of grain per acre, compared with 77 bushels from the non-GM one. The GM crop – engineered to resist Monsanto's own weedkiller, Roundup – recovered only when he added extra manganese, leading to suggestions that the modification hindered the crop's take-up of the essential element from the soil. The new study confirms earlier research at the University of Nebraska, which found that another Monsanto GM soya produced 6 per cent less than its closest conventional relative, and 11 per cent less than the best non-GM soya available.
Note: For many important reports on genetically modified organisms from major media sources, click here.
Imagine being able to convert water into a boundless source of cheap energy. That's what BlackLight Power, a 25-employee firm in Cranbury, N.J., says it can do. The only problem: Most scientists say that company's technology violates the basic laws of physics. Such skepticism doesn't daunt Dr. Randell Mills, a Harvard-trained physician and founder of BlackLight, who recently claimed that he has created a working fuel cell using the world's most pervasive element: the hydrogen found in water. Mills says he has a market-ready product: a fuel cell that produces a chemical reaction to alter hydrogen atoms. The fuel cell releases heat that turns water into steam, which drives electric turbines. The working models in his lab generate 50 kilowatts of electricity - enough to power six or seven houses. But these, Mills says, can be scaled [up] to drive a large, electric power plant. The inventor claims this electricity will cost less than 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, which compares to a national average of 8.9 cents. Mills developed the patented cocktail that enables the reaction - a solid fuel made of hydrogen and a sodium hydride catalyst - only a year ago. (He recently posted instructions on the company's Web site, blacklightpower.com). Now that the device is ready for commercialization, he says, BlackLight is negotiating with several utilities and architecture and engineering firms. The business, Mills says, has attracted $60 million in funding from wealthy individuals, investment firms ... and it is no longer seeking money. BlackLight's board of directors reads like a Who's Who of finance and energy leaders.
Note: For two New York Times articles showing the viability of this amazing technology, click here and here. And for the latest on this exciting technology, click here. For many other exciting major media news articles on new energy inventions, click here.
A woman claims to have undergone a complete "personality transplant" after receiving a new kidney. Cheryl Johnson, 37, says she has changed completely since receiving the organ in May. She believes that she must have picked up her new characteristics from the donor, a 59-year-old man who died from an aneurysm. Now, not only has her personality changed, the single mother also claims that her tastes in literature have taken a dramatic turn. Whereas she only used to read low-brow novels, Dostoevsky has become her author of choice since the transplant. [Ms] Johnson, from Penwortham, in Preston, Lancs, said: "You pick up your characteristics from your donor. My son said when I first had the transplant, I went stroppy and snappy - that wasn't me. I have always loved books but I've started to read classics like Jane Austen and Dostoevsky. I found myself reading Persuasion."
Faith was curled up on the carpet beside her agent, Mike Maguire, who kept reaching down to hand her pieces of his chicken sandwich, when their waitress gave him an easy one. "What kind of dog is that?" asked Alicia Weedon, 16. With a flair honed in scores of such encounters, Maguire, a sports agent from Fairfax County, said simply, "A two-legged dog." The chow mix jumped up, her haunches tight and six-pack abs working, and began to walk. She's been on Oprah and Montel. She's been on Japanese and Korean TV and is scheduled to fly to Istanbul next month. Faith has that kind of effect on people. The 5-year-old was born with a shriveled left leg that flopped behind her and had to be removed and a legless, partial right paw with two nails she still hates getting clipped. There is an industry of rolling aids for disabled pets. But peanut butter on the end of spoon and tossed gummy bears got Faith up off her chest. Faith's owner, Jude Stringfellow, 46, said she gave up her job as a teacher in Oklahoma to take Faith on the road. Her son found Faith as a puppy, and the dog has grown into a calling and a job, Stringfellow said. She's considered starting a charity, but the idea has stalled, she said. She said that she does not keep records but that the money has been minimal and that she has passed it on to other charities. Her focus, she said, is spreading Faith's message. "I want people to understand that you can be imperfect physically and still be perfect through your soul, through your spirit," she said.
Note: For an inspiring five minute video of this amazing pup, click here.
Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes, according to a new book on counterterrorism efforts since 2001. The book says that the International Committee of the Red Cross declared in the report, given to the C.I.A. last year, that the methods used on Abu Zubaydah, the first major Qaeda figure the United States captured, were "categorically" torture, which is illegal under both American and international law. The book says Abu Zubaydah was confined in a box "so small ... he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position" and was one of several prisoners to be "slammed against the walls," according to the Red Cross report. The C.I.A. has admitted that Abu Zubaydah and two other prisoners were waterboarded, a practice in which water is poured in the nose and mouth to [cause near] suffocation and drowning. The book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, by Jane Mayer ... offers new details of the agency’s secret detention program, as well as the bitter debates in the administration over interrogation methods. Citing unnamed "sources familiar with the report," Ms. Mayer wrote that the Red Cross document "warned that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted."
Note: For lots more on war and war crimes, 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.