News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
The Petraeus scandal is receiving intense media scrutiny. Several of the emerging revelations are genuinely valuable, particularly those involving the conduct of the FBI and the reach of the US surveillance state. The FBI investigation began when Jill Kelley - a Tampa socialite friendly with Petraeus (and apparently very friendly with Gen. John Allen, the four-star U.S. commander of the war in Afghanistan) - received a half-dozen or so anonymous emails that she found vaguely threatening. She then informed a friend of hers who was an FBI agent, and a major FBI investigation was then launched that set out to determine the identity of the anonymous emailer. What is most striking is how sweeping, probing and invasive the FBI's investigation then became, all without any evidence of any actual crime - or the need for any search warrant. The FBI traced all of [Paula] Broadwell's physical locations, learned of all the accounts she uses, ended up reading all of her emails, investigated the identity of her anonymous lover (who turned out to be Petraeus), and then possibly read his emails as well. They also discovered "alleged inappropriate communication" to Kelley from Gen. Allen, who is not only the top commander in Afghanistan but was also just nominated by President Obama to be the Commander of US European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe (a nomination now "on hold"). This is a surveillance state run amok. It also highlights how any remnants of internet anonymity have been all but obliterated by the union between the state and technology companies.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government surveillance, click here.
Three of the military's most senior leaders are embroiled in ethics scandals. The latest, Marine Gen. John Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, is under investigation for more than 20,000 pages of material including e-mails sent to Jill Kelley, the woman involved in the scandal that forced David Petraeus to resign as CIA director. Allen succeeded Petraeus in Kabul. An Associated Press report ... called the e-mails "flirtatious." Experts speculate that these lapses stem from the sense of entitlement in the upper reaches that exists not just in the armed services. "It's an old narrative that those at the top often become poisoned by their power," said Peter Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution. Two other members of the top brass face ethics probes of their own. Adm. James Stavridis, head of European Command, was criticized last week in an Pentagon inspector general report that cited his use of military aircraft for personal business, including a trip to a Burgundy wine-tasting society. Earlier this year, Army Gen. William "Kip" Ward, then head of U.S. Africa Command, was hammered by another inspector general report for lavish travel and improper use of military transportation and staff. The report said Ward and his wife had staff pick up their laundry and do their shopping. [Allen] had been scheduled for a Senate confirmation hearing this week for his new post: succeeding Stavridis as chief of European Command. That hearing has been postponed.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on military corruption, click here.
Late TV presenter Jimmy Savile, who may have abused as many as 300 children, was so close to Prince Charles that he advised him on the appointment of one of his most senior aides. In an indication of the power and privilege extended to Savile by the royal family, Charles asked the DJ and television presenter for advice before selecting Sir Christopher Airy to be his private secretary in 1990. The revelation shows the close friendship between the heir to the throne and the television presenter, who the prince grew to rely on in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The two men became unlikely friends after meeting in the late 1970s while working with wheelchair sports charities. Former palace aides have described how Savile inveigled his way into the royal family, dropping in to see Charles when it suited him. While the prince seemed amused by Savile's eccentricity, Diana, Princess of Wales seemed more cautious. Despite this, the friendship between Charles and Savile grew closer over the years, in part due to Savile's charity work. In 1990, Charles brought Savile into his home in an attempt to help smooth over his relationship with Diana when it became clear their marriage was beginning to fall apart. Charles even dispatched the presenter to help the Duchess of York keep a low profile as her marriage to his brother Prince Andrew deteriorated. Savile's tasks also included helping Charles pick his private secretary. After consultation with Savile, Airy was appointed private secretary and treasurer to the prince and Diana. When Savile died last year, Charles led the tributes to him, saying his death had left him "incredibly saddened".
Note: This article requires payment to view in its entirety on the Times website. To read the full article on another website, click here. If you want to understand how these sex scandals reach to the highest levels of government with impunity, don't miss the Discovery Channel's powerful documentary Conspiracy of Silence available here. For lots more from reliable sources on the Savile case and other major sexual abuse scandals, click here.
Bankrupt Patriot Coal Corp. agreed [on November 15] to become the first U.S. coal operator to phase out and eventually stop all large-scale mountaintop removal mining in central Appalachia, under an agreement reached with three environmental groups that sued over pollution from several West Virginia operations. St. Louis-based Patriot said the proposed agreement allows it to postpone as much as $27 million in expenses into 2014 and beyond, improving its liquidity and the likelihood it can successfully emerge from Chapter 11 protection as a viable business. Mountaintop removal is a highly efficient but particularly destructive form of strip mining unique to West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Coal companies blast apart mountain ridge tops to expose multiple coal seams. The resulting rock and debris is dumped in streams, creating so-called valley fills. Patriot is one of the largest mountaintop removal operators in the region. Presented to U.S. District Judge Robert Chambers in Huntington for consideration, the agreement came out of water pollution lawsuits filed by the Sierra Club, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and West Virginia Highlands Conservancy. Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, called the agreement a historic moment in the fight against what he called an "abhorrent" form of mining. "Patriot Coal may be the first company to cease mountaintop removal mining, but because of the tireless efforts of committed volunteers and community organizations, it certainly won't be the last," he said.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on energy issues, click here.
October's record-setting jump in gasoline prices cost Californians $320 million, and yet state officials lack some of the basic information needed to ensure that refineries aren't playing games with the fuel market. That was the testimony [on November 15] at a hearing that explored the causes of the price spike, which saw the state's average price for a gallon of regular reach $4.67. The hearing could lead to legislation. With its own specialized gasoline blends made by just a handful of refineries, California has long been prone to price spikes. But four of the most severe on record happened in 2012. The October price spike began after an electrical outage suddenly shut down an ExxonMobil refinery in Los Angeles County. Fuel supplies in California had already been strained by the Aug. 6 fire at Chevron Corp.'s Richmond refinery, as well as the closure of a crude-oil pipeline in the Central Valley. Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute in Berkeley, noted that the state's reliance on just a few refining companies gives those businesses significant power over the market, even if they don't conspire to raise prices. No pipelines connect California to refineries in the Midwest or on the Gulf Coast, leading many analysts to label the state an "energy island." "Unfortunately, we've created a situation in the California market where because we're an island and because it's pretty concentrated, we actually do have companies that are in a pretty strong position to raise prices by putting less (gas) on the market. There is no law against them doing that," [Borenstein said].
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate corruption, click here.
Drivers in the San Francisco Bay Area have become the first motorists in the nation to fill up their gas tanks with an algae-based biofuel. Biodiesel B20 is made from 20 percent algae and 80 percent petroleum, and can be used by any vehicle that runs on diesel. Advocates say it is the first in a wave of clean fuel to hit the marketplace. "We are putting a stake in the ground," said Matt Horton, chief executive officer of Propel Fuels, as he prepared to fill the first tank with the algae-based product at a Valero station in Redwood City. The fuel's algae was grown by South San Francisco-based Solazyme Inc. and already has been used in trials by the military and industrial companies. It was sold for about $4.25 a gallon at the Redwood City station, about the same as the average price for diesel fuel in California. Horton said most diesel vehicles could run on 100 percent algae fuel, but doing so would result in higher costs for consumers. He added that many automakers oppose allowing a mix higher than 20 percent.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on new energy developments, click here.
Uruguay’s [president] José Mujica ... has shunned the country’s Residencia de Suárez for the cozy but modest quarters of his small home on the outskirts of the capital, Montevideo. Dubbed by many media organizations as the world’s “poorest” president, Mujica and his wife keep house on a small farm surrounded by other tiny homes and guarded by only two police officers and his three-legged dog, Manuela. "I've lived like this most of my life," Mujica told the BBC. "I can live well with what I have." Unlike his forebears and counterparts around the world who live in comfort and are chauffeured around in limousines, Mujica donates 90 percent of his $12,000 monthly salary to charity organizations benefiting the poor and small businesses, and his means of transport is a beat-up 1987 Volkswagon Beetle worth about $1,800 – or the equivalent of his annual personal wealth declaration. This year he bumped his wealth declaration up to $215,000 – only after declaring his wife’s assets of land, tractors and a house – which still pales in comparison to Vice-President Danilo Astori's declared wealth and former President Tabare Vasquez’s bank account. “I'm called 'the poorest president,' but I don't feel poor. Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle, and always want more and more," Mujica said. "This is a matter of freedom. If you don't have many possessions then you don't need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them, and therefore you have more time for yourself."
Note: For more on this unusual and inspiring president, click here.
Computer problems, as well as human ones, have drawn complaints across the US as millions of Americans go to the polls. One Pennsylvania voter highlighted a problem with voting machines on YouTube, complete with video, in which a touchscreen changed his choice from President Barack Obama to Republican Mitt Romney. "I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted," the man wrote. "I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney." This was not the first allegation of foul-ups with electronic machines. In Ohio, some Republicans claimed machines were changing Romney votes to Obama, while Democrats accused Republican state officials of installing untested "experimental" software at the last minute. In Florida, The Tampa Bay Times reported that hundreds of voters received automated "robo-calls" telling them the election was on Wednesday. An official told the paper a glitch in the phone system allowed the calls to go through early on Tuesday, telling voters the election was "tomorrow". A similar glitch was reported in the US capital Washington. The Arizona Republic reported that robo-calls directed voters to the wrong polling stations, and that Democrats claimed it was an intentional effort by Republicans to misdirect people amid a tight Senate race.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on elections corruption, click here.
Karl Rove and his investors were the biggest losers on Election Day. The Republican strategist created the model for outside money groups that raised and spent more than $1 billion on the Nov. 6 elections -- many of which saw almost no return for their money. Rove, through his two political outfits, American Crossroads and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, backed unsuccessful Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney with $127 million on more than 82,000 television spots. Down the ballot, 10 of the 12 Senate candidates and four of the nine House candidates the Rove groups supported also lost their races. The Election Day results showed Rove’s strategy of bringing in huge donations from a few wealthy benefactors and spending that money almost completely on television advertising failed. The Center for Responsive Politics estimates the two Crossroads groups spent about $176 million, making them the top non-candidate and non-party spender of the election. Rove has bragged of raising more than $300 million for his groups. American Crossroads, a super-political action committee, discloses its contributors and spending to the Federal Election Commission. Its affiliate, Crossroads GPS, is organized as a nonprofit social-welfare group that conceals its donors and reports only a fraction of its political activities. The return on investment for American Crossroads donors was 1 percent, according to an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based group that advocates for open government.
Note: This article fails to mention Rove's highly disturbing involvement in clandestine manipulation of the vote count, which has been documented by excellent researchers such as Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman. For more on this most important news that never got reported in the major media, click here and here. And for an excellent, incisive essay showing how the elections integrity movement helped to protect the recent U.S. elections, click here.
Ending some but not all of the mystery behind an anonymous $11 million donation, an Arizona group revealed under court order ... that the money it pumped into California's ballot wars was funneled through two groups -- one tied to David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who have played a huge role in spreading anonymous political cash around the country. The two conservative groups, Americans for Job Security and the Center to Protect Patient Rights, are part of a tangled web of so-called dark donors who operate largely out of public view, shielded by their status as nonprofit advocacy groups that are supposedly not involved primarily in politics. While the groups have been identified, however, individual donors who have bankrolled them remain a mystery. "This isn't going to stop here," said Ann Ravel, chairwoman of the Fair Political Practices Commission, the state's political watchdog. "They admitted to money laundering." The FPPC determined that the Arizona group, Americans for Responsible Leadership, had violated California campaign law. Money laundering -- sending money through multiple sources to conceal the original donor -- is a misdemeanor. But a conspiracy to commit money laundering is a felony. The donation, the largest anonymous contribution to a ballot measure campaign in California history, was made to the Small Business Action Committee, a conservative PAC running a campaign for Proposition 32, the measure that would curb labor's ability to collect political cash, and against Proposition 30, Gov. Jerry Brown's tax-hike initiative.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on elections corruption, click here.
The secret vote was, in its time, a great idea. Before the secret ballot was popularized, it was standard practice to intimidate and threaten voters. But few know that America hasn't always had secret ballots. Indeed, the secret ballot didn't even originate in the US – the system we use is known, actually, as the "Australian ballot". The majority of US states did not move to that system – in which publicly-provided, printed ballots with the names of the candidates are marked in secret – until after 1884. By now, reams of solid reporting have documented the aberrations, high jinks, missing hard drives, voting machines that weirdly revert to one candidate, voting machines owned by friends of the candidate of one party, and other aspects of systematic corruption that attend America's voting. Solid reporting on the war on voting, and on the corruption of the voting infrastructure, continues to mount. It is crazy to ask Americans to have pure faith that the system is incorruptible, and to ask them to just drop their votes into a black hole and trust in the Lord – or Diebold. Here is my modest proposal: let us end the secret ballot, because we have reached a point, with the internet, in which transparency and accountability is more important than absolute secrecy. The votes get tallied and posted – with their corresponding numbers – online on a public site, and major media reproduce the lists. And I can check my number (unidentifiable to anyone else) to check whether my vote was correctly registered. This would allow, in one sweep, all citizens to watch the watchers.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on elections corruption, click here.
Although a ballot initiative to label foods containing genetically modified organisms failed in California, the organizers behind the measure say their movement is better organized and larger than ever before. Supporters of California’s Proposition 37 are not giving up the fight after Tuesday’s rejection. In fact, they’re saying that the organizing around the initiative helped forge a diffuse group of individuals interested in healthy food into a powerful, organized movement. “The Organic Consumers Association is a million strong," said Ronnie Cummins, the founder and director of that group said. "We have 5 million people on our email list and we’re looking forward to continuing this battle.” While the initiative won urban coastal counties such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, it lost in the state’s central valleys. “We just didn't have the funds to compete on the air” in those regions, said Stacy Malkan, media director at California Right to Know. “Many of those voters were getting their news from TV and we couldn't compete with them.” Companies like Monsanto, DuPont, and Pepsi poured nearly $50 million dollars into opposing the measure—about seven times what its supporters were able to raise—and spent most of the money on television and radio ads. Throughout the campaign, the truthfulness of advertisements opposing the measure came into question. At one point, the No on 37 campaign ran an ad that identified Henry I. Miller, an opponent of the measure, as a professor at Stanford University. The campaign was forced to pull the ad after Stanford announced that Dr. Miller was not a professor there.
Note: Though polls have shown 90% of Americans want their food labeled if it contains GMOs, huge spending by big industry managed to defeat this California proposition by a narrow margin. Sometimes money does have a hugely disproportionate role in politics. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on elections corruption, click here.
Barbara Starr, CNN's Pentagon reporter (more accurately known as: the Pentagon's reporter at CNN), has an exciting exclusive today. Exclusively relying upon "three senior officials" in the Obama administration (all anonymous, needless to say), ... the CNN report on this incident is revealing indeed. Every paragraph - literally - contains nothing but mindless summaries of the claims of US government officials. There is not an iota of skepticism about any of the assertions, including how this incident happened, what the drone was doing at the time, or where it took place. Most notably, CNN does not even bother with the pretense of trying to include the claims of the Iranian government about what happened. There is no indication that the self-described news outlet even made an effort to contact Tehran to obtain their rendition of these events or even confirmation that it occurred. It simply regurgitates the accusations of anonymous US officials that Iran, with no provocation, out of the blue decided to shoot at a US drone in international airspace. (Although CNN does not mention it, last December Iran shot down a US drone which, it claims (and the US does not deny) was in Iranian air space). That CNN's prime mission is to serve the US government is hardly news. [The Christian Science Monitor, however, noted]: "There was no way to independently confirm the Pentagon's account, and correct facts have not always been initially forthcoming in past US-Iran incidents in the Persian Gulf." It then detailed several historical events when the US government's claims about Iran were proven to be false.
Note: Iran denies that the drone was in international airspace, as claimed by the US. For more on this, click here.
Italy banned the sale and use of anti-influenza vaccines produced by Novartis ... pending tests for possible side effects, prompting authorities in Switzerland to also take precautionary steps. The Italian Health Ministry advised citizens not to buy or use the drugs Agrippal, Fluad, subunit Influpozzi and adjunvated Influpozzi until further notice. The move came after the Italian Pharmaceutical Agency decided further tests on the products may be necessary following indications of possible side effects. Switzerland's drug watchdog then also raised a precautionary red flag for flu vaccines Agrippal and Fluad. Preliminary investigations had shown Italy's ban came after the discovery of white particles in the injections, which could suggest some of the components of the vaccine had clumped together.
Note: Canada pulled these vaccines, as well, as you can read in this CBC article. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on dangers posed by the corrupt vaccines industry, click here.
A University of Missouri professor has resurrected his two-decade-old work in the contested field of cold fusion. In 1991, Mark Prelas was part of a research team that conducted a fusion experiment that emitted a burst of millions of neutrons. The work stopped when funding was cut off. At the time, cold fusion claims had been dismissed as junk science. Prelas shifted to other work. But his neutron-producing experiment resumed this year, and he presented his findings at a cold fusion conference in August in South Korea. Prelas, now a professor in the university's Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute, received funding from the Sidney Kimmel Institute for Nuclear Renaissance at MU. In the original experiment, the team created an emitted neutron-recording device and expected to count about 10 neutrons a second. They reached a million neutrons in a second. With SKINR funding, [Prelas] re-created the experiment. More technologically advanced equipment has allowed for a better counting system, and in one run, his research team saw neutron emissions at similar levels to the 1991 observation. Rob Duncan, MU's vice chancellor of research, said ... "We've got to understand what this is. The focus clearly has to be on an opportunity to discover new physics and to understand new science. That really is our aim here at SKINR.”
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on new energy inventions, click here.
A genetically modified cow whose milk lacks a substance that causes allergic reactions in people has been created by scientists in New Zealand. In their first year of life, two or three in every hundred infants are allergic to a whey protein in milk called BLG. The researchers engineered the cow, called Daisy, to produce milk that doesn't contain the protein. While the genetic alteration slashed levels of BLG protein in the cow's milk to undetectable levels, it more than doubled the concentrations of other milk proteins called caseins. The cow was created with the same cloning procedure that led to Dolly the sheep in 1996. Most of the differences between cow and human milk do not cause problems for people who consume it, but BLG or beta-lactoglobulin protein, which is found in milk from cows and other ruminants, is a major cause of allergic reactions. To make Daisy, scientists took a cow skin cell and genetically modified it to produce molecules that block the manufacture of BLG protein. The nucleus of this cell was then transferred into a cow egg that had its own nucleus removed. The reconstituted egg was grown in the lab until it formed what is called a blastocyst, a ball of around 100 cells, and then transplanted into the womb of a foster cow. The cloning technique is not efficient. Of around 100 blastocysts the scientists implanted into cows, more than half of the pregnancies failed early on, and only one live calf, Daisy, was born. One question the New Zealand team is working on now is why Daisy was born without a tail. The cloning process is most likely to blame for the birth defect.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), click here.
Dr. Shinya Yamanaka invented a time machine. That's how he and his colleagues sometimes describe their work. They take full-grown cells from humans and they regress them - they send them back in time, to their earliest, embryonic state - and then they coax them into the future, into totally new types of cells. Last week, Yamanaka was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his work creating induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells - cells that are genetically engineered into blank slates, allowing them to be transformed into any type of cell in the body. His technique could allow scientists to explore human diseases like they never have before, or help doctors regenerate tissue lost to injury or illness. Using his technology, scientists can now take a skin cell and transform it into a heart cell that will actually beat in a lab dish. Yamanaka's IPS cells, developed just six years ago, have the potential to revolutionize medical research, his peers say. Labs that never were able to access stem cells before can now make them, and the cells themselves could be used to treat patients someday. They are already helping scientists study complex human diseases like Alzheimer's and autism. "Everything was turned upside down with Shinya Yamanaka's work," said Dr. Arnold Kriegstein, director of stem cell research at UCSF. "It really has transformed the field. It made it possible for laboratories all over the world, with very little investment, to start making stem cells."
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on genetic engineering, click here.
At 93, Dr Charles Eugster cuts a dapper figure in his navy suit and matching silk handkerchief and tie. But he looks just as good in the Lycra gym suit he has on underneath, ready to spring into action like a nonagenarian superhero. This former dentist took up bodybuilding just six years ago, aged 87, yet looks very at home surrounded by the whirring fitness machines. His reasons for picking up weights in his 80s are simple. "The idea is to turn the heads of the sexy young 70-year-old girls on the beach," he says. He now works out three to four times a week, often for two hours at a time, with his regime varying depending on his goals. Sometimes this involves a "heavy session of muscle building or rowing on the lake". And his vigorous training has clearly paid off. At a recent championship he achieved 57 dips, 61 chin-ups, 50 push-ups and 48 abdominal crunches, each in 45 seconds. Dr Eugster is no stranger to competitions. Since starting his bodybuilding training he has won several world titles for fitness and picked up many rowing medals. For 30 years while working long hours as a dentist he didn't manage to exercise regularly and began to realise his body wasn't what he wished it to be. "I'm extremely vain and I noticed I was getting fat," he said. "In my opinion anybody can do it. But obviously it is like trading in your old car for a new one. Ageing has become something for me, an enormous pleasure, a delight, a joy."
Note: For two amazing one-minute videos of a highly inspiring 86-year-old gymnast, click here.
Gymnast Johanna Quaas, 86, displays a grace and agility that belies her years as she takes to the parallel bars in a pre-Olympics German gymnastics event. Quaas performed an impressive parallel bar and floor demonstration after finals concluded at Germany's Cottbus Challenger Cup. Displaying balance, strength and flexibility that would be the envy of someone a quarter her age, Quaas's floor routine included a handstand forward roll, cartwheel, backward roll and headstand while on the bars she performed a full planche, holding her body taught and parallel to the ground. A multiple time senior champion of artistic gymnastics in Germany, Quaas, from Halle in Saxony only took up gymnastics when she was 30, putting paid to the belief that the sport is the preserve of the young.
Note: Don't miss the amazing video of this highly inspiring woman at the link above. And this Washington Post article shows she's still going at age 91.
Alma Deutscher is already an accomplished musician; shes mastered the piano and the violin. Now she can add composing her own opera to the list and shes only seven years old. Like so many other child prodigies, she plays beautifully. But what sets her apart is her ability to write, and improvise, classical music. Deutscher can sit at the piano and create music that sounds as if it had been written for her. Robert Gjerdingen, professor of music theory and cognition at Northwesterns Bienen School of Music, ... has been helping the Deutscher family teach Alma in a classic style that encourages her ability to improvise. Usually prodigies excel in reproducing music, not in creating it. The young musician hails from the country town of Surrey, England, and has always showed a passion for the arts. It was striking that when she was about three, she heard a lullaby by Richard Straus, says her mother, Janie Deutscher. And she came to us and said, How can music be so beautiful? She was so struck by the beauty of it. For her most recent project, Alma composed a seven-minute opera called The Sweeper of Dreams. She woke up one morning with a musical theme in her head and with the help of her father, who is also an amateur musician, she recorded the theme on the piano. She later fashioned the theme she recorded into a seven-minute mini-opera for a competition held by the English National Opera, which praised her work. Normally when I try to think of ideas, it doesnt come, she said. But when Im improvising, then I have lots of ideas.
Note: For deeply inspiring reports from major media sources, 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.