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.
JEFFREY BROWN: Does the amount of wealth you have affect the kind of person you are? NewsHour economics correspondent PAUL SOLMAN: In California, you're supposed to stop for a pedestrian at a crosswalk. And, in a recent study, some 90 percent of drivers did, except for those driving luxury cars. They were almost as likely to run the intersection as wait for the person to cross the street. PAUL PIFF, University of California, Berkeley: Drivers of those BMWs, those Porsches, those Mercedes were anywhere from three to four times more likely to break the law, than drivers of less expensive, low-status cars. WOMAN: Oh, by the way, there's candy there. It's actually for children for another study, but you're welcome to take a few pieces if you want to. [Other] WOMAN: Thank you. PAUL SOLMAN: That's the script an experimenter recited to every subject. And the results? PAUL PIFF: Wealthier participants took two times as much candy from children as did poor participants. PAUL SOLMAN: So, experimental evidence that rich people are more likely to break the law while driving, help themselves to candy meant for children, cheat in a game of chance, also to lie during negotiations and endorse unethical behavior, including stealing at work. The academic paper that resulted made headlines everywhere, the Wall Street Journal article leading with the question, "Ready the Pitchforks?" PAUL SOLMAN: Psychology professor Dacher Keltner is Paul Piff's [co-author]. DACHER KELTNER: We publish these studies in relatively obscure scientific journals, and literally the next day we're getting hundreds of e-mails from around the world, and a lot quite hostile.
Note: Don't miss the fascinating video at the link above, which is also available here. Note that it is not about rich people being unethical, it's about human behavior. People tend to become more unethical the more money they have. For more on income inequality, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Group of 20 nations, [which account] for almost 90 percent of the global economy, “fully endorse the ambitious and comprehensive” plan presented by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to prevent the largest companies from using complicated ownership structures and transfer pricing to avoid paying taxes where they do most of their business. Strategies used at U.S. companies including Google, Apple and Yahoo! have been targeted in legislative hearings as governments look to improved tax collection to fill state coffers. Low tax rates paid by large multinational companies means smaller businesses and individuals are left with a disproportionately larger burden, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria told reporters yesterday. The OECD published its 40-page report as deficit-laden governments attempt to increase revenue collected from profitable enterprises. It follows hearings in the U.S. and U.K. that revealed how companies have avoided billions in taxes by attributing profits to mailbox subsidiaries in places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. Under current law, such offshore subsidiaries can take credit for profits arising from patents developed in countries like the U.S. and U.K. -- generally with cash the parent companies provided. Mountain View, California-based Google has avoided as much as $2 billion in worldwide income taxes annually by attributing profits to a subsidiary in Bermuda that holds the rights to its intellectual property for sales outside the U.S..
Note: For more on corporate corruption, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
The year following Indonesia's 1965 coup saw the murder of more than a million "communists" (in fact, enemies of the military, including ethnic Chinese, intellectuals, [and] union members). Anwar [Congo], head of a gang of killers called the Frog Squad, dispatched about 1,000 himself. He is the subject of "The Act of Killing", a documentary that invites Anwar and his friends to dramatise their crimes, to boast about their starring roles in a genocide. Director Joshua Oppenheimer began the film a decade ago by interviewing survivors. But when, at the suggestion of one of them, he turned his camera on the perpetrators, he found they were more than eager to reveal the history themselves. The killers simply adapted a story they had been telling each other for decades: that they were the ruling class, so their acts were heroic. For gangsters like Anwar, Oppenheimer was offering the chance to make a "beautiful family film" – a celebration of their rise, inspired by the Hollywood movies they loved. "They're desperately trying to run away from the reality of what they've done," says Oppenheimer, a 38-year-old Harvard graduate now based in Copenhagen. "You celebrate mass killing so you don't have to look yourself in the mirror in the morning and see a murderer. You keep your victims oppressed so that they don't challenge your story. When you put the justification – the celebration – under a microscope, you don't necessarily see a lack of remorse, but you start to see an unravelling of the killers' conscience. So what appears to be the symptom of a lack of remorse is in fact the opposite. It's a sign of their humanity."
Note: The filming of "The Act of Killing" actually helped these mass murderers to feel some remorse for all the pain and suffering they caused. For lots more on this powerful film, click here.
Sharp disagreement over the future of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp dominated the first Senate hearing on the issue in four years. The meeting [on July 24] of a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee, held in the wake of a high-profile hunger strike by inmates ... made clear that deep partisan divisions remain over whether keeping the prison open is a threat to national security or a necessity. Opened at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, Guantanamo was established by President George W. Bush to hold detainees suspected of connections to global terrorism organizations. Allegations of abuse and torture of inmates have led to repeated calls for Guantanamo's closure, and Obama has campaigned twice on the issue, though Congress has passed repeated measures to keep the prison open. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who is chairman of the panel, urged Congress to support Obama's efforts, which would end the indefinite detention of prisoners without trial and either release them or charge them in American courts. "The risk of keeping it open far outranks the risk of closing it." Retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, who trained the Iraqi armed forces from 2003 to 2004, testified that by continuing to violate human rights and American law, the practices at Guantanamo proved more harmful to the U.S. national security interests. "Guantanamo is a terrorist-creating organization," he said to a reporter after the hearing. "It's a terrific recruiting tool."
Note: Whether or not detainees were truly terrorists before they were imprisoned at Guantanamo, how do you think they feel about the US government after years there? You have to wonder if this isn't being done to create terrorists, just as many prisons become training grounds for criminals.
Almost 300 current and former female Mounties have come forward to join a class-action lawsuit alleging harassment within the ranks of the RCMP. Documents filed in [British Columbia] Supreme Court ... in support of class-action certification say the action now includes 282 women from all territories and provinces across Canada. The civil suit was filed last year by Janet Merlo, a former RCMP officer. Merlo, who alleges she suffered bullying and verbal abuse throughout a career that began in March 1991 and ended in March 2010, says she is overwhelmed by the number of other women who have come forward. In her claim, Merlo describes a number of humiliating incidents that she alleges occurred during the course of her 19 years with the force. The alleged incidents described in Merlo's affidavit range from receiving verbal propositions, to facing gender-based comments challenging her ability to perform her duties, to witnessing differences in how male and female officers were accommodated at her workplace.
Note: Inside sources have revealed to WTK that rogue factions within the RCMP are responsible for many destructive programs, including mind control.
The Attorney General is to examine whether disgraced former BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall’s 15-month sentence for indecent assault was “unduly lenient”. The 83-year-old former BBC sports presenter was sent to jail on Monday after admitting a series of indecent assaults on girls as young as nine, but may only serve half of his sentence. Despite initially telling police his victims were all lying ... the former It’s a Knockout host admitted his guilt ... and was jailed on 14 counts of indecent assault. But MPs and campaigners last night reacted with anger at what they felt was a light sentence. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Emily Thornberry, Labour’s shadow Attorney General, said the sentence “surely cannot be strong enough for the seriousness and circumstances of the crime”. She added: “15 months is not just a lenient sentence, it is unduly lenient. Harriet Harman, the shadow Deputy Prime Minister, wrote on Twitter: “18 years offending and Stuart Hall gets less than 18 months.” One victim, who was just 13 when Hall sexually assaulted her, said yesterday that she knew of more girls who had not yet spoken out, including one who was just eight when the alleged abuse took place. Hall ... was described as an “opportunistic predator” who targeted his victims between 1967 and 1987. For half a century he was a much-loved, light entertainer who could often be found unable to contain his laughter on television. But ... his career as one of the country’s most prominent figures in British broadcasting ending in disgrace after string of sexual abuses were first revealed last year.
Note: For more on child sexual abuse, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
As if they weren't already well-connected enough, the world's two greatest dynasties joined forces yesterday as Europe's Rothschild banking clan bought a stake in the Rockefeller group's wealth and asset management business to gain a foothold in the US. The patriarchs of the two families – 96-year-old David Rockefeller and Jacob Rothschild, 76 – cemented a five-decade acquaintance as the younger man's London-based Ł2bn RIT Capital investment trust bought a 37 per cent stake in the American's business. In addition to bringing together the two doyens, the deal will considerably expand the vast networks of both families. To give a taste: Lord Rothschild's son, Nat Rothschild, is a well-known entrepreneur with stakes in a range of companies such as Genel, the Kurdistan-focused oil producer ... and Bumi, the Indonesian mining group. He was also linked with George Osborne and Peter Mandelson at a notorious party on an oligarch's yacht off Corfu in 2008. Lord Rothschild's niece Kate is married to Ben Goldsmith, brother of Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith and Jemima Khan and son of the late billionaire business tycoon Sir James Goldsmith. On the Rockefeller side, for starters, David's granddaughter Ariana is a successful fashion designer who married the construction heir Matthew Bucklin in 2010. The Rothschilds bought the stake in Rockefeller from French banking group Société Générale for an undisclosed sum.
Is it natural for humans to make war? Is organised violence between rival political groups an inevitable outcome of the human condition? New research suggests not. A study of tribal societies that live by hunting and foraging has found that war is an alien concept and not, as some academics have suggested, an innate feature of so-called primitive people. Douglas Fry and Patrik Sderberg of Abo Akademi University in Vasa, Finland, studied 148 violently lethal incidents documented by anthropologists working among 21 mobile bands of hunter-gatherer societies, which some scholars have suggested as a template for studying how humans lived for more than 99.9 per cent of human history, before the invention of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. They found that only a tiny minority of violent deaths come close to being defined as acts of war. Most the violence was perpetrated by one individual against another and usually involved personal grudges involving women or stealing. Only a tiny minority of cases involved more organised killing between rival bands of people, which could fall into the definition of war-like behaviour. Most of these involved only one of the 21 groups included in the study. In short they found that some of the most primitive peoples on Earth were actually quite peaceful compared to modern, developed nations. These findings imply that warfare was probably not very common before the advent of agriculture, when most if not all humans lived as nomadic foragers, Kirk Endicott, an anthropologist at Dartmouth College told the journal Science, where the study is published.
Note: For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
Hangar 19 at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport is host to one unique airplane: the Solar Impulse. The sun-powered plane made history by becoming the first aircraft to fly across America day and night without fuel. The Solar Impulse finished its two-month journey from NASA's Moffett Field in Mountain View, Calif. to JFK airport on July 6, where it is currently parked. The aircraft is powered by 11,628 solar cells, has an average flying speed of about 43 miles (70 kilometers) per hour and its maximum altitude is about 27,900 feet. Although its wingspan rivals a 747, the actual body of the plane is a lot smaller, with a cockpit that can only fit one person. The groundbreaking trip may seem too slow to be practical, but chairman and pilot Bertrand Piccard thinks there is a bigger picture behind the project. "We believe if we can demonstrate this in the air, where it is the most difficult to do, people will understand that they can also use the same technologies for their daily lives," Piccard [said]. Piccard shared piloting the plane with the company's co-founder and CEO Andre Borschberg. The two flew in 24-hour shifts across America, and made stopovers in Phoenix, Dallas-Fort Worth, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Dulles. Some of the key advances used on the Solar Impulse include carbon fiber sheets that weigh 0.8 ounces per 11 square feet, solar cells that are about the thickness of a human hair and batteries with a high energy density. While the technologies are impressive, the creators emphasize that they didn't re-invent the wheel. They believe that pieces of the puzzle already exist, but needs to be put together in a different way.
Note: For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
While still a teen, Bay Area-based activist Sejal Hathi founded the non-profit, Girls Helping Girls. Encouraging social change, the NGO raised money for scholarships, shared curricula across borders, and combated sex trafficking. Tara Roberts authored two critically acclaimed young adult books, What Your Mama Never Told You and Am I the Last Virgin? exploring social issues facing today’s black youth. And as an editor for the likes of Essence and CosmoGirl, one of her job responsibilities was to track down and nominate candidates for an annual magazine award acknowledging the outstanding social accomplishments of teens. Girltank [is] an online model intended to engage young entrepreneurs in various stages of their ventures—from the idea stage to the launch and scaling stages. Girltank has three main components—connect, inspire, and fund. Girltank sets up a forum for girls interested in similar causes to find each other and collaborate, and is supported by a variety of workshops that encourage the exchange of ideas. For the second component, inspire, Tara produced an eclectic database of clips featuring girls and women both in the U.S. and abroad discussing vulnerabilities and issues they face with their respective projects. It’s an inspiring resource for anyone looking to get started. The third and all-important component is its crowd-funding platform poised to funnel financial support from its partners to the most promising ventures. To date, girltank’s community, comprised of women of all ages, represents more than 105 countries and every economic, racial, and religious background.
Note: For a treasure trove of great news articles which will inspire you to make a difference, click here.
You've given them more than $1 billion. They've given almost nothing to the needy. The 50 worst charities in America devote less than 4 percent of donations raised to direct cash aid. Some charities give even less. Over a decade, one diabetes charity raised nearly $14 million and gave about $10,000 to patients. The worst charity in America operates from a metal warehouse behind a gas station. Every year, Kids Wish Network raises millions of dollars in donations in the name of dying children and their families. Every year, it spends less than 3 cents on the dollar helping kids. Most of the rest gets diverted to enrich the charity's operators and the for-profit companies Kids Wish hires to drum up donations. In the past decade alone, Kids Wish has channeled nearly $110 million donated for sick children to its corporate solicitors. An additional $4.8 million has gone to pay the charity's founder and his own consulting firms. But Kids Wish is not an isolated case, a yearlong investigation by the Tampa Bay Times and The Center for Investigative Reporting has found. These nonprofits adopt popular causes or mimic well-known charity names that fool donors. Then they rake in cash, year after year. Even as they plead for financial support, operators at many of the 50 worst charities have lied to donors about where their money goes, taken multiple salaries, secretly paid themselves consulting fees or arranged fundraising contracts with friends. One cancer charity paid a company owned by the president's son nearly $18 million over eight years to solicit funds.
Note: For lots more excellent reporting on this important subject, click here. For a webpage which shows that many of those who call asking you for donations (including Firefighters Charitable Foundation, International Union of Police Associations, and National Veterans Service Fund) are not using your money for the causes they claim to represent, click here.
Pop quiz: Name a state residential school where children were enrolled in medical experiments over an almost 20-year period, in which they were unknowingly fed a steady diet of radioactive isotopes, subjected to regular blood draws, and placed in solitary confinement if they refused to cooperate. Answer: the Walter E. Fernald State School in Waltham [Mass.} during the mid 20th century. Unfortunately, as Allen Hornblum, Judith Newman, and Gregory Dober painfully describe in their chilling new book, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America, Fernald was not the only institution in the country, or even in the state, where children were conscripted into sometimes deadly medical experiments. These were conducted by ambitious physicians and scientists whose belief in what they were trying to accomplish often blinded them to the potentially horrific consequences of their actions. “Against Their Will’’ opens with an overview of the eugenics movement in the United States, which found sympathizers among many luminaries of American medicine in the 19th and early 20th centuries. With its disdain for the disabled, who were considered genetically inferior, the movement paved the way for use of “defective’’ children in research. The book then provides multiple examples of medical experiments perpetrated on developmentally delayed and physically disabled children at multiple institutions across the country over the course of decades, often reading like case studies straight out of the 1947 Nazi doctors’ trial.
Note: For a long list of verifiable incidents where unknowing citizens were used as guinea pigs on a massive scale, click here.
Seventeen years ago, a nervous-sounding woman rang and asked me to publicise a top-secret report. She was not the whistleblower, she explained, but a go-between. She would not give me her name: “It’s safer if you don’t know.” That secret report revealed the extensive rape and savage beating of countless children in North Wales children’s homes. It was titled “Child Abuse: An independent investigation commissioned by Clwyd County Council, period 1974-1995”. Last week, John Jillings’ report on the Clwyd scandal was finally published. But Flintshire county council – successor to Clwyd – has heavily censored it. I dug out the original and discovered, unsurprisingly, that the cover-up continues. At least one paper and a news channel independently acquired the report: clearly, others whistle-blew. The coverage was widespread, and the whistleblowers’ drip-feed strategy worked: no one was arrested or sued. Clamour mounted, and the Government announced a public inquiry. The late judge, Sir Ronald Waterhouse, took evidence over three years, and in 2000 produced a report, “Lost in Care”. His tribunal had cost millions and ultimately achieved little, other than fat fees for lawyers. It amplified the horrors described by Jillings but it did not lead to arrests or managers being disciplined or struck off. The authorities had issued such stern libel threats to Jillings’s panel that it only named a few of the accused staff who were allowed to resign unpunished. But he exposed the excuses of the jobsworths who allowed sadists to control these terrible homes. This is the real censored dynamite in the report.
Note: For more on sex abuse scandals, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
The American Civil Liberties Union is warning that law enforcement officials are using license plate scanners to amass massive and unregulated databases that can be used to track law-abiding citizens as their go about their daily lives. In a new report, "You Are Being Tracked: How License Plate Readers Are Being Used to Record Americans' Movements," the ACLU discusses the data culled from license plate scanners - cameras mounted on patrol cars, overpasses and elsewhere to record your license plate number and location at a given time. There are tens of thousands such cameras now in operation, according to the group, with the data in some cases being stored indefinitely. The ACLU report is the result of an analysis of 26,000 pages of documents from police departments around the country, obtained through nearly 600 [FOIA] requests. It finds that while some jurisdictions keep the information gleaned from the scanners for a short time ... many hold onto the data for years. The organization complains that there are "virtually no rules in place" to keep officials from tracking "everybody all the time." The ACLU also warns that the data is being fed into larger databases, with the private National Vehicle Location Service now holding more than 800 million license plate records. The group's database is used by more than 2,200 law enforcement customers. The [ACLU] report warns that the data can be used in an official capacity to spy on protesters or target communities based on their religious beliefs, or unofficially by a police officer who wants to keep an eye on a romantic rival.
Note: For more on privacy, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
A Florida medical examiner’s office said [on July 16] that the FBI has ordered the office not to release its autopsy report of a Chechen man fatally shot by a Boston FBI agent in May. The medical examiner’s office said it completed the autopsy report on Ibragim Todashev, a friend of [a] suspected Boston Marathon bomber, on July 8 and that the report was “ready for release.” The agent shot and killed Todashev on May 22 in his Orlando apartment during an interrogation related to the Boston Marathon bombings. Critics have called for an independent inquiry, questioning the blanket of secrecy surrounding the case. The FBI and the Massachusetts State Police sought out Todashev after the Marathon bombings, but have refused to release details of the shooting. Media reports have provided conflicting accounts: Some said Todashev attacked the agent with a blade during an interrogation, while others said Todashev was unarmed. Another said he lunged at the agent with a metal pole or a broomstick. The agent shot Todashev multiple times, according to family members who released photos of Todashev’s dead body as part of their call for an inquiry into his death. Family members and advocacy groups have questioned the media accounts, pointing out that Todashev had repeatedly cooperated with the FBI. The Council on American-Islamic Relations and the ACLU have called for independent inquiries into the shooting. According to CAIR in Florida, which is conducting its own investigation into Todashev’s slaying, Todashev had spoken to the FBI at least three times at their offices after the Marathon bombings.
Note: What are they hiding here?
A cadre of six government and non-government experts who served the National Transportation Safety Board when that independent federal agency investigated the explosion of a Boeing 747 off the coast of Long Island in July 1996 ... are the protagonists of a new documentary, "TWA Flight 800". After four years of investigation, the NTSB claimed the cause of Flight 800's explosion was a mechanical defect, but the new documentary, written and directed by journalist Kristina Borjesson, claims the FBI, NTSB and other government agencies may have covered up that the plane was brought down by a missile strike. Participants in the film have called on the NTSB to reopen the case based on altered physical evidence, suppressed data, and unexamined testimony from hundreds of eyewitnesses. [The] book Attention All Passengers: The Airlines’ Dangerous Descent—and How to Reclaim Our Skies ... published last year ... thanked “the brave men and women who are Federal Aviation Administration, Transportation Security Administration, and airline whistleblowers.” These whistleblowers confirmed such problems as defective airline maintenance outsourcing, FAA oversight failures, TSA waste, and many other important findings. After watching the documentary, I believe there are enough smoking guns to warrant an unbiased reexamination. Last week one major news site was in near hysterics about the documentary, employing the term “conspiracy” ten times. Kristina Borjesson ... wasn’t surprised, noting that reexamining hot topics “discredits previous reporting.”
Note: Kristina Borjesson is a long-time supporter of WantToKnow.info who has written a great piece on Flight 800, which we have posted at this link. She's also the editor of what may be the best book ever on media corruption and manipulation, Into the Buzzsaw. You can find an excellent two-page summary of the book at this link. For the engaging trailer to this film, click here.
This Reuters article ... purports to summarize an interview I gave to the daily newspaper La Nacion of Argentina. Like everything in the matter of these NSA leaks, this interview is being wildly distorted to attract attention away from the revelations themselves. I made three points in this La Nacion interview, all of which are true: 1) The oft-repeated claim that Snowden's intent is to harm the US is completely negated by the reality that he has all sorts of documents that could quickly and seriously harm the US if disclosed, yet he has published none of those. When he gave us the documents he provided, he repeatedly insisted that we exercise rigorous journalistic judgment in deciding which documents should be published in the public interest and which ones should be concealed on the ground that the harm of publication outweighs the public value. 2) The US government has acted with wild irrationality. The current criticism of Snowden is that he's in Russia. But the reason he's in Russia isn't that he chose to be there. It's because the US blocked him from leaving: first by revoking his passport (with no due process or trial), then by pressuring its allies to deny airspace rights to any plane they thought might be carrying him to asylum (even one carrying the democratically elected president of a sovereign state), then by bullying small countries out of letting him land for re-fueling. 3) I said that [forcing his plane down] would be completely counter-productive given that ... such an attack could easily result in far more disclosures than allowing us as journalists to vet and responsibly report them, as we've [been] doing.
Note: The above article was written by brave journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the Snowden story. For more on the NSA surveillance scandal, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
The [UK] Government has issued more than 3,000 export licences for military and intelligence equipment worth a total of Ł12.3bn to countries which are on its own official list for human rights abuses. The existence of one licence to Israel and the Occupied Territories [is] worth Ł7.7bn. The scale and detail of the deals emerged after a forensic investigation by a committee of MPs, who also discovered that strategically controlled items have been sent to Iran, China, Sri Lanka, Russia, Belarus and Zimbabwe – all of which feature prominently on the Foreign Office’s list of states with worrying civil rights records. There are even three existing contracts for Syria, notwithstanding the fact that the UK is sending equipment to rebels fighting the Assad regime and is considering arming them. There are also 57 for Argentina, which is not on the list, but which remains in confrontation with Britain over the Falklands. The Government had stated that it would not issue export licences for goods “which might be used to facilitate internal repression” or “might provoke or prolong regional or internal conflicts”. However, the report by the Committees on Arms Export Controls found there were 62 licences for selling to Iran, ... overwhelmingly cryptographic equipment. This also features heavily in the 271 licences for Russia, along with biotechnology equipment, sniper rifles, laser weapons systems, weapon sights and unmanned air vehicles (drones).
Note: For more on war profiteering, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Law enforcement officials announced [on July 15] that a recent five-week sweep snared more than 250 suspected child predators, including nine teachers and three clergymen. Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement John Morton said that 255 child predators were arrested and 61 child victims were rescued in so-called "Operation iGuardian," which targeted online sexual abusers as well as those who possess, produce or trade child pornography. Morton said that the international investigation, which ran from May 28 to June 30, revealed that online sexual abuse is pervasive and growing. The majority of the rescued child victims were girls, Morton said. Twenty-two of the victims were 9 years old or younger -- including four under the age of 3. The remaining 39 children were between the ages of 10 and 17. Of those arrested, 20 people were charged with online sexual enticement of a minor, with the remaining 235 people charged with child pornography production, possession or distribution of child pornography, traveling with the intent to have sex with a minor, or other offenses, including rape. Only four of the suspected predators nabbed in the investigation were women. Investigators have arrested 1,674 people in similar investigations this fiscal year alone, ICE officials said.
Note: For more on sex abuse scandals, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
Call it high-tech hijacking. Thieves now have the capabilities to steal your credit card information without laying a hand on your wallet. It’s new technology being used in credit and debit cards, and it’s already leaving nearly 140 million people at-risk for electronic pickpocketing. It all centers around radio frequency identification technology, or RFID. It’s supposed to make paying for things faster and easier. You just wave the card, and you’ve paid. But now some worry it’s also making life easier for crooks trying to rip you off. In a crowd, Walt Augustinowicz blends right in. And that’s the problem. “If I’m walking through a crowd, I get near people’s back pocket and their wallet, I just need to be this close to it and there’s [their] credit card and expiration date on the screen,” says Augustinowicz demonstrating how easily cards containing RFID can be hacked. Armed with a credit card reader he bought for less than $100 on-line and a netbook computer ... for about an hour he patrolled Beale Street, looking for RFID chips to read, and credit card information to steal. Even scarier, Augustinowicz says bad guys could work a crowd, stealing numbers and then e-mail them anywhere in the world. It’s not just your credit and debit cards at-risk. While they are harder to hack, all US passports issued since 2006 contain RFID technology that can be read, and swiped. “It gives me a lot of personal information like your date of birth, your photo if I wanted to make some sort of ID,” said Augustinowicz demonstrating with his reader.
Note: For an excellent video showing how easy it is for someone to hijack your credit card information if the card has an RFID, 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.