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.
A non-partisan civic organization today claimed it had hacked into the voter database for the 1.35 million voters in the city of Chicago. Bob Wilson, an official with the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project — which bills itself as a not-for-profit civic organization dedicated to the correction of election system deficiencies — tells ABC News that last week his organization hacked the database, which contains detailed information about hundreds of thousands of Chicago voters, including their Social Security numbers, and dates of birth. "It was a serious identity theft problem, but also a problem that could potentially create problems with the election," Wilson said. A nefarious hacker could have changed every voter's status from active to inactive, which would have prevented them from voting, he said. "Or we could've changed the information on what precinct you were in or what polling place you were supposed to go to," he said. "There were ways that we could potentially change the entire online data base and disenfranchise voters throughout the entire city of Chicago. If we'd wanted to, we could've wiped the entire database out."
Edwin Wilson...was hurtling into history as one of this nation's most infamous traitors until three years ago when a federal judge concluded he'd been buried with the help of government lies. Now 78 and paroled, Wilson works in his Seattle office...to prove he didn't earn the spectacular fall from skilled CIA agent to despised federal prisoner. In books about his downfall, he is the villain: a ruthless renegade who left the CIA and made himself rich by selling arms and training terrorists for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Three years ago, a federal judge in Texas threw out a major conviction...and blasted the government for covering up the truth. Wilson had finally gotten documents [proving] that despite his 1971 retirement, the CIA was still secretly using him to gather intelligence. The government had denied it for years. The people Wilson is suing—former officials in the U.S. Attorney's Office, the Justice Department and the CIA, including two men who are now federal judges—contend they can't be held liable for doing their jobs, even if his rights were violated. Wilson spent 22 years in prison. U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes found that about two dozen government lawyers were involved in hiding information from Wilson's defense attorney. In his blistering opinion, Hughes noted that the CIA had more than 80 contacts with Wilson after he left the agency, which, among other things, had used him to "trade weapons or explosives for sophisticated Soviet military equipment—like MiG-25 fighters, tanks, missiles and ocean mines—with Libya." A CIA agent had even discussed with Wilson that "sending tons—yes, tons—of explosives to a hostile power could be authorized" if the U.S. got good enough information for it, the judge wrote.
Note: For another famous case of a major "traitor" who was framed by the U.S. government, click here.
Cheryl Kagan, a former Maryland Democratic legislator, was shocked when she opened her mail [and] discovered three computer discs. The discs contained the secret source code for vote-counting that could be used to alter the votes cast through Maryland's new electronic voting machines. An independent report commissioned by the state of Maryland...shows myriad other security flaws. Computer experts and government officials have voiced serious concerns that if these machines malfunction, no paper record will exist for a recount. Even worse is the fear that an election could be hacked. Princeton University researchers using an Accuvote TS — a touch screen version of the Diebold machine — showed how easy it would be to deploy a virus that would, in seconds, flip the vote of any election. Cyber-security expert Stephen Spoonamore [says] Diebold's "system is utterly unsecured. The entire cyber-security community is begging them to come back to reality and secure our nation's voting." There is also the matter of computer glitches. In primary elections...machines malfunctioned in Texas, where 100,000 votes were added. In Maryland, screens froze and memory cards went missing. Gov. Robert Ehrlich, a Republican running for reelection, advised residents to vote by absentee ballot because he had no confidence in the machines. Electronic voting machines were supposed to be the solution to the paper ballot problems from the 2000 presidential election. But to many critics, America's voting system has gone out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Steven Jones, the Brigham Young University physics professor embroiled in controversy over his theories on the Twin Towers' collapse, is retiring Jan. 1. "I am electing to retire so that I can spend more time speaking and conducting research of my choosing," Jones said in an interview Friday. "I appreciate the wonderful opportunity I have had to teach and serve and do research at BYU for more than 21 years." In September, the university...placed Jones on paid leave in order to conduct a professional review of his controversial Sept. 11 theories. The review...has been canceled due to Jones' retirement. The professor had given several public lectures on his theories of why the World Trade Center collapsed. Jones published the paper, "Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Collapse?" online and began lecturing about his theories. Jones also recently was appointed co-chairman of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, "a nonpartisan association of faculty, students, and scholars, in fields as diverse as history, science, military affairs, psychology and philosophy, dedicated to exposing falsehoods and to revealing truths behind 9/11." He is also the co-editor of Journal of 9/11 Studies. He said he is not bitter toward BYU, and hopes to continue his research. [Jones' letter states] "Two structural engineering professors in Switzerland have recently spoken out as I have also done, declaring that explosives were with 'utmost probability' responsible for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 on Sept. 11."
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner and some high-tech entrepreneurs are competing to provide credit to the world’s poor. In November, 2004, [eBay founder Pierre Omidyar,] Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google, and other leaders of the high-tech community gathered at the San Francisco home of the venture capitalist John Doerr for a weekend session with Muhammad Yunus, who is considered the godfather of microcredit. Yunus...is a highly gifted interlocutor between the extremely poor in the developing world and the West. This December, he will go to Oslo to receive [the Nobel Peace Prize]. During the famine of 1974 in Bangladesh...Yunus, an economics professor at Chittagong University, found the theories he was teaching maddeningly irrelevant; so he went into a neighboring village and began talking to the poor. He lent twenty-seven dollars to a group of forty-two villagers. Before long he became convinced that he had a remedy for their condition: providing very small individual loans to the impoverished to start activities ranging from making bamboo stools to buying a dairy cow. In 1976, after local banks refused his entreaties to make the loans...he founded the Grameen Bank. In early May, representatives from eight microfinance institutions around the world were invited to a three-day event at the Gates Foundation’s headquarters, in Seattle. At one point, the group met with Melinda and Bill Gates, and with Warren Buffett, too.
Note: If you want to be inspired by the amazing microfinance movement, which is transforming the face of poverty in our world, read this highly engaging, informative article. To be a part of this exciting global transformation, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/051023microcredit
The House Appropriations Committee has let go about 60 private contractors who made up most of an investigative unit that was auditing billions of dollars in government spending, including the $62 billion federal relief package for Hurricane Katrina. The investigators...were released during the past week. The shake-up — which leaves only 16 full-time employees in the investigative unit — comes about a year after the Appropriations Committee's chairman, Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., launched the Katrina review by saying the unit would "conduct a wide-ranging assessment and analysis of disaster spending." At the time, Lewis said the unit had a tradition of "comprehensive" reporting. It's unclear how the departures will affect the work of the unit, whose contract staff is made up of former employees of the FBI, CIA and other government investigative services. Some of them had worked for the unit for several years. Scofield said he could not identify the specific work being done by investigators because much of the unit's inquiries involve classified information. Established in 1943, the investigative unit has focused mainly on defense and intelligence spending programs.
The Republican Party will begin airing a hard-hitting ad this weekend that warns of more cataclysmic terror attacks against the U.S. homeland. The ad portrays Osama bin Laden and quotes his threats against America dating to February 1998. "These are the stakes," the ad concludes. "Vote November 7." The ad displays an array of quotes from bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri, that include bin Laden's Dec. 26, 2001 vow that "what is yet to come will be even greater." The ad also cites al-Zawahri's claim to have obtained "some suitcase bombs," followed by a scene that appears to show a nuclear explosion. Despite al-Zawahri's claim, portable nuclear devices are believed to be particularly difficult to produce and elusive to rogue regimes and terror groups.
Note: Promoting fear is the easiest way to cause people to feel powerless and surrender their freedoms and tax dollars to those in power. Click here for more.
Several government doctors say drug maker Eli Lilly & Co. subtly orchestrated medical guidelines for treatment of an often lethal blood infection, hoping to boost sales of a drug whose value is being debated. “This company is trying to insinuate its drug into many aspects of patient care that industry really shouldn’t be involved in,” said Dr. Naomi O’Grady, a critical care specialist at the National Institutes of Health. Three of her NIH colleagues claim in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine that Lilly worked through medical societies to influence standards for treating the blood infection, sepsis. Ultimately, Xigris was incorporated into the guidelines. Both the guidelines committee and a larger information campaign on sepsis were heavily funded by [Lilly]. Dr. Phil Dellinger, who helped lead the guidelines committee, said...“We’ve been catching grief because we’ve been taking a lot of Lilly money — and we’re appreciative of Lilly giving it.” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Xigris in 2001, despite an evenly split vote by its advisory committee. The lead author of Thursday’s journal article, Dr. Peter Q. Eichacker, voted against approval. Some critics are unhappy that the drug, which works only for the sickest patients, was approved on the basis of a single experiment. Academic officials acknowledged in the published guidelines that Lilly gave more than 90 percent of $861,000 in grants for the campaign and medical recommendations. O’Grady, of NIH, said a panel of disease experts that she headed refused to endorse the sepsis guidelines largely because Lilly “convened the whole panel.”
Note: For lots more on how the powerful pharmaceutical industry endangers our lives, click here.
Three years after the Food and Drug Administration first hinted that it might permit the sale of milk and meat from cloned animals...the agency is poised to endorse marketing of the mass-produced animals for public consumption. The decision...is based largely on new data indicating that milk and meat from cloned livestock and their offspring pose no unique risks to consumers. On Thursday, advocacy groups filed a petition asking the FDA to regulate cloned farm animals one type at a time, much as it regulates new drugs, a change that would drastically slow marketing approval. "The available science shows that cloning presents serious food safety risks, animal welfare concerns and unresolved ethical issues that require strict oversight," the petition states. "The government talks about being science-based, and that's great, but I think there is another pillar here: the question of whether we really want to do this," said Carol Tucker Foreman, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America. Each clone is a genetic replica of the animal that donated the cell from which it was grown. It was October 2003 when the FDA released its first draft document concluding that clones and their offspring are safe to eat. But an agency advisory panel and the National Academies, while generally supportive, raised flags, citing a paucity of safety data. Clonal meat or milk would be impossible to authenticate, since there is no way to distinguish them from conventional products. "That you can go online today to any number of different Web sites and purchase semen from cloned bulls tells you there are cloned sires out there fathering calves in the food supply."
Note: For an ABC article on this, click here. If you believe that government agencies are unbiased on matters of public health, I most highly urge you to read our summary at http://www.WantToKnow.info/deception10pg
Only a tiny fraction of Americans – 7 percent, according to a recent survey by The Ponemon Institute – change any behaviors in an effort to preserve their privacy. Few people turn down a discount at toll booths to avoid using the EZ-Pass system that can track automobile movements. And few turn down supermarket loyalty cards. Privacy will remain in the headlines in the months to come, as states implement the federal government’s Real ID Act, which will effectively create a national identification program by requiring new high-tech standards for driver’s licenses and ID cards. The “right to be left alone” is a decidedly conservative -- even Libertarian -- principle. People are now well aware there are video cameras and Internet cookies everywhere, [yet] there is abundant evidence that people live their lives ignorant of the monitoring. People write e-mails and type instant messages they never expect anyone to see. Just ask Mark Foley or even Bill Gates, whose e-mails were a cornerstone of the Justice Department’s antitrust case against Microsoft. It is also impossible to deny that Americans are now being watched more than at any time in history. But there is another point in the discussion about which there is little disagreement: The debate over how much privacy we are willing to give up never occurred.
The U.S. Marine Corps has threatened to punish two members of the military legal team representing a terrorism suspect being held at Guantanamo Bay if they continue to speak publicly about reported prisoner abuse, a civilian lawyer from the defense team said Saturday. The action directed at Lt. Col. Colby Vokey and Sgt. Heather Cerveny follows their report last week that Guantanamo guards bragged about beating detainees. The order has heightened fears among the military defense lawyers for Guantanamo prisoners that their careers will suffer for exposing flaws and injustices in the system. Defense lawyers for Guantanamo prisoners say the personal stakes are high and point to the Navy's failure to promote Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift after he successfully challenged the legitimacy of the Pentagon's war-crimes commissions. Two weeks after the Supreme Court ruled the commissions unconstitutional and lacking in due process, Swift was passed over for advancement and will be forced by the Navy's up-or-out policy to retire by summer. At least three other military defense lawyers for the 10 charged terrorism suspects have also been passed over for promotion in what some consider a subtle reprimand of their vigorous defense of their clients.
Bangladeshi microcredit pioneer Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for their work in advancing economic and social opportunities for the poor, particularly women. The economist and the bank he founded will share the prize. They were cited for their efforts to help "create economic and social development from below" ... by using innovative economic programs such as microcredit lending. Grameen Bank has been instrumental in helping millions of poor ... improve their standard of living by letting them borrow small sums to start businesses. Loans go toward buying items such as cows to start a dairy, chickens for an egg business, or mobile phones to start businesses where villagers who have no access to phones pay a small fee to make calls. "Every single individual on earth has both the potential and the right to live a decent life. Across cultures and civilizations, Yunus and Grameen Bank have shown that even the poorest of the poor can work to bring about their own development," the Nobel Committee said in its citation. Microcredit is the extension of small loans, typically US$50 to US$100, to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. The bank claims to have 6.6 million borrowers, 97 percent of whom are women, and provides services in more than 70,000 villages in Bangladesh.
Note: If the above CNN link does not work, click here. To make a real difference in the world and to help reduce poverty in a dramatic way, see our empowering summary of this inspiring worldwide movement.
The president has...managed to kill the writ of habeas corpus. Tonight, a special investigation, how that, in turn, kills nothing less than your Bill of Rights. Because the Mark Foley story began to break on the night of September 28...many people may not have noticed the bill passed by the Senate that night. Congress passed the Military Commission’s Act to give Mr. Bush the power to deal effectively with America’s enemies—those who seek to harm the country. He has been very clear on who he thinks that is. GEORGE W. BUSH: For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America. That fact that we’re discussing this program is helping the enemy. OLBERMANN: So, the president said it was urgent that Congress send him this bill as quickly as possible, not for the politics of next month’s elections, but for America. One bit of trivia that caught our eye was the elimination of habeas corpus, which apparently used to be the right of anyone who’s tossed in prison to appear in court and say “Hey, why am I in prison?” COUNTDOWN has obtained a copy of [the] “Constitution” of the United States, and sources tell us it was originally sneaked through the constitutional convention and state ratification in order to establish America’s fundamental legal principles. There’s only one reference to habeas corpus: “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”
A Florida law that bars exit polling near voting places violates the press' rights under the First Amendment, a lawsuit filed by The Associated Press and five television networks alleges. The lawsuits...contend that state laws that prohibit asking a voter a "fact" or "opinion" within 100 feet of a polling place is unconstitutional. The AP and the five television networks - ABC, CNN, CBS, Fox News and NBC - formed a consortium to collect exit-polling data in Florida and other states. The news organizations had also challenged a 2004 directive by Ohio's elections chief against exit polling within 100 feet of a voting place. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson ruled the verbal order by Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell before the 2004 presidential election violated the press' rights under the First Amendment. A federal judge ruled in 1988 that a Florida law prohibiting exit polling within 150 feet of polling places was unconstitutional.
Note: A university study of exit polls in the 2004 election showed strong evidence of elections manipulations. Could this be why certain powerful individuals want to limit exit polls?
Scientists are boldly going where only fiction has gone before to develop a Cloak of Invisibility. It isn't quite ready to hide a Romulan space ship from Capt. James T. Kirk or to disguise Harry Potter, but it is a significant start and could show the way to more sophisticated designs. In this first successful experiment, researchers from the United States and England were able to cloak a copper cylinder. It's like a mirage, where heat causes the bending of light rays and cloaks the road ahead behind an image of the sky. "We have built an artificial mirage that can hide something from would-be observers in any direction," said cloak designer David Schurig, a research associate in Duke University's electrical and computer engineering department. Cloaking used special materials to deflect radar or light or other waves around an object, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream. The new work points the way for an improved version that could hide people and objects from visible light. Conceptually, the chance of adapting the concept to visible light is good, Schurig said in a telephone interview. But, he added, "From an engineering point of view it is very challenging." The cloaking of a cylinder from microwaves comes just five months after Schurig and colleagues published their theory that it should be possible. In an ideal situation, the cloak and the item it is hiding would be invisible. An observer would see whatever is beyond them, with no evidence the cloaked item exists.
Note: Remember that technologies developed in top-secret military, intelligence, and other government projects are generally at the very least 10 years in advance of anything being developed in the public domain.
Police and prosecutors are facing allegations that they misled a judge and grossly exaggerated evidence against the only man to be detained in Britain over September 11. There is renewed scrutiny on two fronts of the role played by Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service in making unfounded claims that Lotfi Raissi trained the 9/11 hijackers. The Independent Police Complaints Commission has opened an investigation into the conduct of the Anti-Terrorist Branch detectives who arrested Mr Raissi in 2001 and prepared the evidence against him. The alleged terrorist link was one of a number of false allegations made against Mr Raissi. Prosecutors claimed in court that he was the “lead instructor” for the main hijackers who crashed aircraft into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. The FBI was said to have video material showing him in the company of Hani Hanjour, one of the hijack pilots. However, all the evidence was shown to be unsubstantiated and, in February 2002, District Judge Timothy Workman ordered Mr Raissi’s release. Mr Raissi has since made several unsuccessful attempts to obtain an official apology from the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police. Successive Home Secretaries have resisted his request for an acknowledgment that he was wrongfully arrested. Mr Raissi said: “My life has been ruined. I lost my freedom, my reputation and my career. The courts have said I am innocent — why does the Home Secretary not accept this?”
On Sept. 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks that devastated our nation, a man crashed his car into a building in Davenport, Iowa, hoping to blow it up and kill himself in the fire. No national newspaper, magazine or network newscast reported this attempted suicide bombing, though an AP wire story was available. Cable news (save for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann) was silent about this latest act of terrorism in America. Had the criminal, David McMenemy, been Arab or Muslim, this would have been headline news for weeks. But since his target was the Edgerton Women's Health Center...media have not called this terrorism - even after three decades of extreme violence by anti-abortion fanatics. Abortion providers and activists received 77 letters threatening anthrax attacks before 9/11, yet the media never considered anthrax threats as terrorism until after 9/11, when such letters were delivered to journalists' offices and members of Congress. Is McMenemy a lone nutcase, or a member of that network of violent extremists? We don't know, because journalists haven't investigated. Nor have they reported that just last year, nearly one in five abortion clinics experienced gunfire, arson, bombings, chemical attacks, assaults, stalking, death threats and blockades. The feds have taken over McMenemy's case, charging him with arson against a business affecting interstate commerce. Yet as of Oct. 5, no news outlet on Nexis reported this, despite a second AP story. As we continue national debates on how to keep America safe from terrorism, journalists do us...no good pretending that the threats come only from radical Muslims outside our borders.
Note: MSNBC's prime time news anchor Keith Olbermann recently received a threatening letter with white powder, yet this received virtually no coverage. Could it be because Olbermann has been quite critical of the current administration lately? For one of the very few articles on this, click here. For MSNBC article, click here
Have you ever thought about someone for no apparent reason, and then that person rang on the telephone? Have you felt you were being watched, and turned round to find someone staring at you? Recent surveys show that a majority of the population in Britain have had these experiences. There is a growing body of evidence that telepathy and the sense of being stared at are real, with an active discussion of these topics in scientific journals. Telepathy [is] expressed in domesticated animals, many of which seem to be able to detect the feelings and intentions of their owners. For example, many dogs seem to know when their owners are coming home, and go to wait at a door. In a series of videotaped tests...dogs still went and waited at the door when the owners returned at times randomly selected by the experimenter. About 80 per cent of the population claim to have had experiences in which they think of someone for no apparent reason, then that person calls; or they know who is calling when the phone rings, before picking it up. [Researchers] have investigated telephone telepathy experimentally in hundreds of controlled trials. [In one experiment] volunteers were asked to give us the names and telephone numbers of four people. By chance, participants would have been right about one time in four. In fact, 45 per cent of the guesses were correct. This research has been replicated at the University of Amsterdam. Emotional closeness, rather than physical proximity, seemed to be the most important factor. Our minds may extend far beyond our brains, stretching out through fields that link us to our environment and to each other. Mental fields could help to explain telepathy, the sense of being stared at and other widespread but unexplained abilities.
Note: This research is very much in alignment with the message of one of the PEERS websites. Take a look at http://www.weboflove.org for some exciting ideas on opening to greater interconnectedness with those around us. And for some amazingly inspiring videos which move us to deeper connection, see our inspiring videos page at http://www.WantToKnow.info/051204inspiringvideos.
Election results were held up for six days in Cuyahoga County last May, testing the patience of voters and damaging their confidence. Ohio's most populous county will hold its second election in November using touch-screen voting machines made by North Canton-based Diebold Inc. The first attempt at electronic voting during the May primary was marred by problems, including poll workers who were not prepared to operate the machines and memory cards that were misplaced or lost. Vote counts were delayed six days when roughly 18,000 improperly printed absentee ballots had to be hand-counted because they couldn't be scanned by Diebold's optical scan machines. The county...isn't alone nationally. In Cook County, Ill., results were delayed a week because of mechanical and human failures connected to new voting machines. At a recent meeting, where a kitchen timer ticks off each speaker's allotted five minutes during the public comment period, voter Daniel Kozminski of Solon questioned the integrity of Diebold's machines, citing various reports. He also scoffed at the board's refusal to post results from individual precincts on the Web to help verify vote totals. Diebold has defended its machines from several disparaging studies, including one by a Princeton University computer science professor which claims the company's machines are vulnerable to hacking. On the net - Black Box Voting: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
Note: Memory cards were lost? That would mean hundreds—if not thousands—of votes could go uncounted. Why is this not getting more press coverage? For more: http://www.WantToKnow.info/electionsinformation
Witold Bialokur...can run 10 kilometers, or 6.2 miles, in less than 44 minutes. While Mr. Bialokur’s performance would be the envy of most young men, he is not young. Mr. Bialokur is 71. It is one of the persistent mysteries of aging, researchers say. Why would one person, like Mr. Bialokur, remain so hale and hearty while another, who had seemed just as healthy, start to weaken and slow down? Rigorous studies are now showing that seeing, or hearing, gloomy nostrums about what it is like to be old can make people walk more slowly, hear and remember less well, and even affect their cardiovascular systems. Positive images of aging have the opposite effects. The constant message that old people are expected to be slow and weak and forgetful is not a reason for the full-blown frailty syndrome. But it may help push people along that path.
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.