News ArticlesExcerpts of Key News Articles in Major Media
Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on dozens of engaging topics. And read excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
Allies of the U.S. auto industry stepped up a campaign yesterday to soften strict vehicle fuel-efficiency mandates in proposed energy legislation before the Senate, even as momentum for the tougher measures continued to build. Auto lobbyists said they were encountering stiff resistance on Capitol Hill. They said they felt like the industry was being punished for what one called the "sins of the past" -- successfully beating back attempts to make major changes to the nation's vehicle mileage laws. Yesterday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) defended the current bill, arguing that it would provide flexibility for automakers. "There are all kinds of dire warnings," Feinstein said. "The fact of matter is that Detroit has done nothing about mileage efficiency for the past 20 years, and the time has come."
Note: It is also worth noting that Congress itself has done nothing to mandate higher fuel efficiency in cars over the last twenty years. For a highly revealing article showing that while other industries have had many major breakthroughs and huge technological advances over the decades, automobile makers for some strange reason have been unable to improve car mileage since the days of the Model T, click here.
The National Rifle Association is urging the Bush administration to withdraw its support of a bill that would prohibit suspected terrorists from buying firearms. Backed by the Justice Department, the measure would give the attorney general the discretion to block gun sales, licenses or permits to terror suspects. In a letter this week to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, NRA executive director Chris Cox said the bill, offered last week by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey, "would allow arbitrary denial of Second Amendment rights based on mere 'suspicions' of a terrorist threat." A 2005 study by the Government Accountability Office found that 35 of 44 firearm purchase attempts over a five-month period made by known or suspected terrorists were approved by the federal law enforcement officials. "When I tell people that you can be on a terrorist watch list and still be allowed to buy as many guns as you want, they are shocked," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which supports Lautenberg's bill.
Mankind's second race for the moon has taken on a distinctly Cold War feel, with the Russian space agency accusing its old rival NASA of rejecting a proposal for joint lunar exploration. The charge comes amid suspicion in Moscow that the US is seeking to deny Russia access to an isotope in abundance under the moon's surface that many believe could replace fossil fuels and even end the threat of global warming. A new era of international co-operation in space supposedly dawned after the US, Russia and other powers declared their intention to send humans to the moon for the first time since 1972. But while NASA has lobbied for support from Britain and the European Space Agency, Russia says its offers have been rebuffed. While the Americans have been either coy or dismissive on the subject, Russia openly says the main purpose of its lunar program is the industrial extraction of helium-3. Some scientists say helium-3 could be the answer to the world's energy woes. As helium-3 is non-polluting and effective in tiny quantities, many countries are taking it very seriously. Germany, India and China, which will launch a lunar probe to research extraction techniques in September, are all studying ways to mine the isotope. "Whoever conquers the moon first will be the first to benefit," said Ouyang Ziyuan, the chief scientist of China's lunar program. Many in Moscow's space program believe Washington's agenda is driven by a desire to monopolise helium-3 mining. The plot, says Erik Galimov, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, would "enable the US to establish its control of the energy market 20 years from now and put the rest of the world on its knees as hydrocarbons run out".
In laboratory experiments, a team at the University of Glasgow simulated what happens in the human stomach. They found vitamin C (ascorbic acid) mopped up potential cancer-causing compounds that are made when saliva and food mixes with stomach acid. But when they added fat to the mix, the ascorbic acid could no longer convert the hazardous compounds into safe ones. Antioxidants like ascorbic acid protect against the formation of (carcinogenic) nitrosocompounds by converting the nitrosating species into nitric oxide. However, when fat is present, it reacts with the nitric oxide to reform nitrosating species, the scientists found. Bridget Aisbitt, nutrition scientist for the British Nutrition Foundation, said: ... "This research is interesting." She said fat-compatible antioxidants in the body, such as beta-carotene, could also neutralise the nitrosocompounds. This is another reason to underline the importance of a healthy balanced diet where meals high in fat should not be frequent and five portions of fruit and vegetables - our main source of vitamin C - are eaten each day.
Note: Why isn't it being widely reported the Vitatmin C and beta-carotene are effective cancer fighters? For a possible answer by one of the top physicians in the U.S., click here.
One in three people are expected not to cooperate with identity card checks, Home Office papers from 2004 suggest. The working assumptions were revealed in the documents published by the Department for Work and Pensions under the Freedom of Information laws. They show that the assumption was that the cards, due to be introduced on a voluntary basis from 2008, would become compulsory to own - though not carry - in 2014. Lib Dem MP Mark Oaten had asked for the information to be made public when he was the party's home affairs spokesman in 2004. The department had resisted his request, which came under the Freedom of Information Act. But the department was ordered to release the data by the Information Commissioner - a decision which was subsequently backed by the Information Tribunal.
Note: Why do you think the government was so keen on keeping this information secret? For more, click here.
Exposure to dirt may be a way to lift mood as well as boost the immune system, UK scientists say. Lung cancer patients treated with "friendly" bacteria normally found in the soil have anecdotally reported improvements in their quality of life. Mice exposed to the same bacteria made more of the brain's "happy" chemical serotonin, the Bristol University authors told the journal Neuroscience. A lack of serotonin is linked with depression in people. The scientists say more work is now needed to determine if the bacterium Mycobacterium vaccae has antidepressant properties. Lead researcher Dr Chris Lowry said: "These studies help us understand how the body communicates with the brain and why a healthy immune system is important for maintaining mental health. They also leave us wondering if we shouldn't all spend more time playing in the dirt." The work could also help experts' understanding of why an imbalance in the immune system leaves some individuals vulnerable to mood disorders like depression, he added.
The Defense Department gave the Navy permission Tuesday to keep training with sonar for another two years, a move denounced by activists who say the sound waves can harm dolphins and other marine mammals. Navy officials had sought the two-year exemption from the Marine Mammal Protection Act, allowed under the 2004 National Defense Authorization Act. The ranges are off Hawaii, Southern California and the East Coast. "We cannot stop training for the next two years," said Don Schregardus, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for the environment. "That would put our sailors in the Navy at considerable risk." Environmentalists cite incidents of whales, porpoises and dolphins that have become stranded en masse on beaches after being exposed to sonar. "The Navy has more than enough room in the oceans to train effectively without injuring or killing endangered whales and other marine species," said Joel Reynolds, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is suing the Navy over its sonar use. Navy officials said they're claiming a two-year exemption because a federal judge in California ruled last year that the Navy needed to do more detailed analysis of the effect its sonar training would have on the environment. The Navy says the new exemption will allow sailors to go ahead with 40 separate exercises over the next two years.
Note: For major media news articles on the damaging effects of certain advanced types of sonar in question on whole schools of dolphins and whales, click here.
A former National Security Council official said Monday that the White House tried to silence his criticism of its Middle East policies by ordering the CIA to censor an op-ed column he wrote. Flynt Leverett, a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, or NSC, and a former CIA analyst, said the White House told a CIA censor board to excise parts of a 1,000-word commentary on U.S. policy toward Iran that he had offered to the New York Times. He said the agency's action "was fabricated to silence an established critic of the administration's foreign policy incompetence at a moment when the White House is working hard to fend off political pressure to take a different approach." Leverett said there were two key paragraphs that the CIA board wanted to cut. The first was about U.S. cooperation with Iran concerning Afghanistan about the time of the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. The second dealt with an offer by Iran to the United States in early 2003 to discuss the possibility of a "grand bargain" that would settle several disputes between the two countries. He said both episodes had been publicly discussed by former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his former deputy, Richard L. Armitage. "There is no basis for claiming that these issues are classified and not already in the public domain," he said. Like other former CIA employees, he is required to submit manuscripts for articles, books and speeches to the agency for review.
Note: For a clip of Mr. Leverett talking about this on video, click here.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get you ... something fun for Christmas. Conspiracy Culture, at 1696 Queen St. W., offers unique "niche" shopping. "Anything conspiratorial is what's hot. People are just kind of trying to get in touch with alternative opinions and theories," said co-owner Patrick Whyte. The hot ticket for Yuletide is Terrorstorm on DVD, ($17.99) "a history of government-sponsored terrorism" that focuses on Britain and the U.S., Whyte said, adding the film's director, Alex Jones, was stopped by Canada Customs when he came to investigate a Bilderberg meeting last June. The Bilderberg Group is a shadowy elite organization (and even the non-paranoid concede this much) that holds annual invitation-only meetings of business and political leaders. Prime Minister Stephen Harper was purportedly photographed leaving one event a few years ago and likely attended last June's Ottawa meeting, although nobody is saying anything — which makes Bilderberg so conspiracy-worthy.
Note: For lots more on the highly secretive, elite Bilderberg Group, click here. To watch the Terrorstorm video free online at Google Video, click here. The first hour of Terrorstorm is absolutely awesome! It's one of the best compilations we've seen. Sadly, after the first hour it goes fairly rapidly downhill, but don't miss the first hour of it!
Programming errors and inexperience dealing with electronic voting machines frustrated poll workers in hundreds of precincts Tuesday, delaying voters in several states and leaving some with little choice but to use paper ballots instead. In Indiana's Marion County, electronic optical-scan machines that read paper ballots initially weren't working right in more than 100 precincts. Election officials in Delaware County, Ind., and Lebanon County, Pa., extended polling hours because of early machine troubles blamed on bad programming. Republicans in Passaic County, N.J., complained a ballot had been pre-marked on some machines with a vote for the Democratic Senate candidate. In Colorado, Democratic Party officials said they would ask a state judge to keep Denver polling places open an extra two hours Tuesday because of long lines. A national Election Protection coalition logged 9,000 calls by noon on [their elections] hotline. In one case, a poll worker unintentionally wiped the electronic ballot activators. Some machines...jammed when they were turned on. One location suspended voting for 45 minutes because it received the wrong machine. But voting equipment companies said they hadn't seen anything beyond the norm and blamed most of the problems on human error. Nearly half of all voters were using optical-scan systems. Thirty-eight percent were casting votes on touchscreen machines that have been criticized as susceptible to hackers. Many states established voter registration databases for the first time and found problems matching drivers' license and Social Security data with voter rolls, sometimes simply because of a middle initial.
The U.S.'s new voting systems are only as good as the people who program and use them. In one week, more than 80 million Americans will go to the polls, and a record number of them—90%—will either cast their vote on a computer or have it tabulated that way. There are going to be problems. Some will be machine malfunctions. Some could come from sabotage by poll workers. But in a venture this large, trouble is most likely to come from just plain human error. Four years after Congress passed a law requiring every state to vote by a method more reliable than the punch-card system that paralyzed Florida and the nation in 2000, the 2006 election is shaping up into a contest not just between Democrats and Republicans but also between people who believe in technology and those who fear machines cannot be trusted to count votes in a closely divided democracy. Princeton computer scientist Edward Felten and a couple of graduate students this past summer tested the defenses of a voting machine made by Diebold. They were able to quickly infect the device with a standard memory-access card in which they had installed a preprogrammed chip. Other computer scientists have also breached electronic voting machines. Congressman Vernon Ehlers, a Michigan Republican who has been holding hearings this fall, says manufacturers "have produced machines that are very vulnerable, not very reliable and I suspect fairly easy to hack." Concerns about fraud are heightened by the fact that with some electronic voting machines, there is no such thing as a real recount [i.e. paper trail].
Note: For a highly important 12-minute video of the court witness testimony of a computer expert who was personally involved in the manipulation of votes, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEzY2tnwExs. For more on this, click here. For a three-minute Fox News clip showing how easy it is to infect a voting machine with a virus which secretly changes the elections results: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JESZiLpBLE.
The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk. The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and that their release -- even to the detainees' own attorneys -- "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage." The battle over legal rights for terrorism suspects detained for years in CIA prisons centers on Majid Khan, a 26-year-old former Catonsville resident who was one of 14 high-value detainees transferred in September from the "black" sites to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The government, in trying to block lawyers' access to the 14 detainees, effectively asserts that the detainees' experiences are a secret that should never be shared with the public. An attorney for Khan's family, responded in a court document yesterday "the executive is attempting to misuse its classification authority...to conceal illegal or embarrassing executive conduct." Khan's family did not learn of his whereabouts until Bush announced his transfer in September, more than three years after he was seized. Joseph Margulies, a Northwestern University law professor who has represented several detainees at Guantanamo, said the prisoners "can't even say what our government did to these guys to elicit the statements that are the basis for them being held. This is 'Alice in Wonderland.'"
Note: Interesting that not only the government documents, but even this article avoids mentioning the word torture, when that is clearly what this is all about.
Federal health officials have decided to forgo gathering detailed data on whether children in 22 big cities are receiving recommended immunizations and instead will survey teenagers, who are the target of several new vaccines. The decision is drawing protests from local health officials, who say the soon-to-be-lost information is essential to their efforts to make sure that infants and toddlers, many from poor families, are protected against childhood infections. Each year, the CDC contracts a polling company to get data on vaccination rates in various age, demographic and income groups nationwide. "We need to know if the new vaccine has helped, or had no change, or hurt [coverage], and we cannot really make those judgments without the NIS data," [one health official] said. CDC officials said they are redirecting about $3 million to survey adolescents. The only way to pay for the 22-city sampling would be to use money now used to help states buy vaccine, they added. The decision comes at a time when the government is spending record amounts on public health. The CDC's budget has risen 42 percent since 2001 and is now $8.73 billion.
Note: This unusual decision makes sense if you consider that the powerful pharmaceutical industry doesn't want tracking on toddler vaccinations, as it may show what they have long denied -- that there is a link between autism and childhood vaccinations. The mercury-derivative Thimerosal was largely taken out of childhood vaccinations just a few years ago. The much-awaited data needed to prove or disprove a link will now be more difficult to obtain.
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.
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
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
President Bush's frequent use of signing statements to assert that he has the power to disobey newly enacted laws is "an integral part" of his "comprehensive strategy to strengthen and expand executive power" at the expense of the legislative branch, according to a report by the non partisan Congressional Research Service. The research service said the Bush administration is using signing statements as a means to slowly condition Congress into accepting the White House's broad conception of presidential power, which includes a presidential right to ignore laws he believes are unconstitutional. The administration has suggested repeatedly that the president has exclusive authority over foreign affairs and has an absolute right to withhold information from Congress. Such assertions are "generally unsupported by established legal principles," the report said. Last week...Bush signed the 2007 military budget bill, but then issued a statement challenging 16 of its provisions. Bush has used signing statements to challenge more than 800 laws that place limits or requirements on the executive branch, saying they intrude on his constitutional powers. The American Bar Association called signing statements "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers." It said presidents cannot sign bills and then declare parts of them unconstitutional because a president has only two choices -- to sign a bill and enforce it as written, or to veto it and give Congress a chance to override the veto.
A new congressional analysis shows the Iraq war is now costing taxpayers almost $2 billion a week -- nearly twice as much as in the first year of the conflict three years ago and 20 percent more than last year -- as the Pentagon spends more on establishing regional bases. The total cost of military operations at home and abroad since 2001...will top half a trillion dollars. The spike in operating costs -- including a 20 percent increase over last year in Afghanistan, where the mission now costs about $370 million a week -- comes even though troop levels in both countries have remained stable. [A] major factor...is "the building of more extensive infrastructure to support troops and equipment in and around Iraq and Afghanistan," according to the report. Based on Defense Department data, the report suggests that the construction of so-called semi-permanent support bases has picked up in recent months, making it increasingly clear that the US military will have a presence in both countries for years to come. The United States maintains it is not building permanent military bases in Iraq or Afghanistan. "You would expect [operating costs] to level off if you have the same level of people," said the report's principal author, Amy Belasco, a national defense specialist at the Congressional Research Service. "It's a bit mysterious." The Pentagon has not provided Congress with a detailed accounting of all the war funds, making it impossible to conduct a full, independent estimate.
Note: Many hundreds of billions of dollars have been reported missing by top media sources. Do you think it's possible there might be some corruption going on here?
The Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, The New York Post, may have just impeded an FBI investigation into terroristic threats. I know this because I was a recipient. The Bureau asked us not to report any of the details so that the person or persons responsible would not know any of the threats had been received by any of the targets -- and we of course complied. I still cannot confirm many of the specifics -- again in order to make the jobs of the FBI and the New York Police Department a little easier. But I find it necessary to respond to the genuinely shocking tone with which Murdoch's paper reported the event, and the string of factual errors they made either through negligence or a premeditated disregard for the truth. “Powder Puff Spooks Keith," reads the headline. The article then gives the details of the event which we were asked not to divulge. Also, a New York Post reporter attempted to gain access to me by falsely identifying herself as a friend of mine. And, most relevantly, the New York Post never called NBC News or MSNBC seeking any comment. They would have been told that the FBI had requested we try to keep this quiet. But of course that would have interfered with the New York Post making fun of a terror threat. It's almost melodramatic to ask why the New York Post would choose the side of domestic terrorism, rather than choose the side of the FBI. It's interesting too that Murdoch's paper was able to get a jump on this story so quickly -- nearly as quickly, as if they'd known it was coming.
Note: MSNBC's prime time news anchor Keith Olbermann is one of the very few in the media who have had the courage to report some of the major cover-ups going on with elections, 9/11 and more. Isn't it interesting that he would be the target of an anthrax threat and that no media made a serious attempt to report any of this?
China has secretly fired powerful laser weapons designed to disable American spy satellites by "blinding" their sensitive surveillance devices. The hitherto unreported attacks have been kept secret by the Bush administration for fear that it would damage attempts to co-opt China in diplomatic offensives against North Korea and Iran. Sources told the military affairs publication Defense News that there had been a fierce internal battle within Washington over whether to make the attacks public. In the end, the Pentagon's annual assessment of the growing Chinese military build-up barely mentioned the threat. "After a contentious debate, the White House directed the Pentagon to limit its concern to one line," Defense News said. The document said that China could blind American satellites with a ground-based laser firing a beam of light to prevent spy photography as they pass over China. According to senior American officials: "China not only has the capability, but has exercised it." American satellites like the giant Keyhole craft have come under attack "several times" in recent years.
Note: Why are so few major media picking up this important news? A Google news search shows that the New York Sun is the only major media to have reported this news in the U.S.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.