NEW YORK (AP) - Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, said Tuesday it received an unsolicited bid from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to buy the company for $5 billion, but it was unclear whether the family that controls the company would sell.
Dow Jones issued a brief statement confirming that its board had received the offer from News Corp. to buy the company at $60 a share, either in cash or a combination of cash and News Corp. stock. News of the... (more)
When Um Noor’s husband was blown to pieces by a car bomb last year, she drew comfort from the thought that she and her five children could at least depend on their close-knit community for support.
But Um Noor, a fragile figure barely 5ft tall, was a Sunni in the predominantly Shi’ite Baghdad district of Amil, and sectarian strife was taking the city by storm.
Soon her brother was murdered by a Shi’ite gang that spotted him in the street and chased... (more)
There is not one person I know who has not been affected and whose life has not been altered, read - forever changed by so much "liberation".
You don't even have to be an Iraqi. This "liberation" has served as a perfect mirror reflecting the moral bankruptcy of some and the resilience of others...
Those who are faithful to Iraq - the concept of it - (now we are talking about concepts since the Reality of what was Iraq... (more)
How will historians characterize our time? The question never fails to fascinate me. There are many designations that might be applied, but recent events suggest to me that maybe this era might come to be known as the Age of Hubris, or, perhaps, the Triumph of Scientism.
I was reading recently of the death of George Washington, at age 69. The general died of an acute infection of his upper respiratory tract, perhaps epiglo... (more)
It's been said often that while everyone is entitled to his own opinion, no one is entitled to his own facts. Today, we hear misstatements all the time. Some of them are deliberate lies. Some of them are just mistakes.
A House committee has just exposed the terrible fact that Army officials fabricated a story about the death of Pat Tillman and lied through their teeth. The Army knew from Day One that Tillman died from so-called friendly fire, but it was five weeks before Army off... (more)
This is how our code-breakers at Bletchley must have felt when a fully operational Enigma machine fell into their hands. After months of guesswork, we finally understand the enemy's intentions. This single providential discovery could represent the turning point of the entire campaign.
I am clutching in my hot, trembling hands the most extraordinary document I have come across in eight years of Euro-politics. It is a letter from the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to her fellow ... (more)
Japan's abhorrent practice of enslaving women to provide sex for its troops in World War II has a little-known sequel: After its surrender -- with tacit approval by U.S. occupation authorities -- Japan set up a similar "comfort women" system for American GIs.
An Associated Press review of historical documents and records -- some never before translated into English -- shows that American authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite internal reports that wom... (more)
"Read my lips...." used to be a figurative saying. Now the British government is considering taking it literally by adding lip reading technology to some of the four million or so surveillance cameras in order identify terrorists and criminals by watching what everyone says.
Electronic Design is reporting that the Home Office is interested in a project being pursued by a senior lecturer in computer vision at the University of ... (more)
Surveillance cameras in schools are meant to keep children safe and in-line, but a kiss, a camera and a controversy have Gig Harbor High School in Washington in an uproar.
A security camera captured two girls kissing, but it's what happened next that sparked a surveillance debate. With Warren County schools having surveillance cameras not only in the high schools but in the middle school and elementary schools as well, you'll want to read on because reporter... (more)
A school has admitted handing out 345 morning-after pills to teenage girls without telling their parents.
The figure for contraceptives distributed at Lutterworth Grammar School and Community College over four years is believed to be the highest in England and Wales.
Parents and family groups were outraged at the "disgusting" and "wicked" scheme which they say encourages promiscuity and could put children at risk of contracting sexually-transmitted diseases.
... (more)
The "deathbed confession" audio tape in which former CIA agent and Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt admits he was approached to be part of a CIA assassination team to kill JFK was aired this weekend - an astounding development that has gone completely ignored by the establishment media.
Saint John Hunt, son of E. Howard Hunt, appeared on the nationally syndicated Coast to Coast AM radio show on Saturday night to discuss the revelations contained in... (more)
A former CIA analyst claims that falsified documents which were meant to show that Iraq's Saddam Hussein regime had been trying to procure yellowcake uranium from Niger can be traced back to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Appearing on MSNBC's Tucker Carlson Show, Ray McGovern who served in the CIA for twenty-seven years, said, "the [forged] memo leads right back to the doorstep of the Vice President of the United States."
The Senate's No. 2 Democrat says he knew that the American public was being misled into the Iraq war but remained silent because he was sworn to secrecy as a member of the intelligence committee.
"The information we had in the intelligence committee was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn't believe it," Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said Wednesday when talking on the Senate floor about the run-up to the Iraq war in 2002.<... (more)
This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. ~ T.S Eliot
The news story and accompanying photo were quite startling. According to the report, Sony – a dominant firm in the electronic industry – held a party to announce a new computer game it was putting on the market. As part of this soirée, a goat was decapitated, with the photo showing its not fully severed head hanging over the table on which it ... (more)
Every American who voted Republican shares responsibility for the great evil America has brought to the Middle East.
The evil that America brought to Iraq transcends the tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed and maimed in the conflict. The evil goes beyond the destruction of ancient historical artifacts and the civilian infrastructure of a secular state and the decimation of the lives, careers, a... (more)
"If you can't say something positive about someone, don't say anything." My Irish grandmother drummed this into me and, as was the case with most of her admonishments, it has stood me in good stead. On occasion, though, it has been a real bother - as when I felt called to comment on George Tenet's apologia, In the Center of the Storm, coming soon to a bookstore near you.
On the verge of despair, I ran into an old classmate of Tenet's from PS 94 in Little Neck, Queens. Help at last... (more)
When teenager Kyle Little growled and barked at two labradors, the dogs' owner thought he was just being "a daft young lad".
But two police officers who witnessed the incident had other ideas - and arrested the 19-year-old for committing a public order offence.
Little was subsequently charged and convicted at magistrates court of causing harassment, alarm or distress. He was fined £50 and ordered to pay £150 costs.
An eyewitness who evacuated WTC 7 before its collapse reported an explosion inside the building, before exiting via the lobby which had been almost completely destroyed - before either of the twin towers had collapsed nearly 400 yards away in the WTC complex.
This testimony severely undermines the flawed explanation that Building 7 collapsed as a result of the damage it sustained following the collapse of the towers, since the structure was seemingly being gu... (more)
After one year, the set of fifteen red light cameras installed in Providence, Rhode Island have failed to produce any measurable safety benefits -- contrary to the promises made when the devices were installed. Although the number of accidents at intersections has not declined, Providence intends to add even more cameras to city streets for safety reasons.
As Mayor David N. Cicilline stated in a March 23, 2006 press release, the program's initial goal was, "deterring people from c... (more)
Guns are deeply rooted within Swiss culture - but the gun crime rate is so low that statistics are not even kept.
The country has a population of six million, but there are estimated to be at least two million publicly-owned firearms, including about 600,000 automatic rifles and 500,000 pistols.
This is in a very large part due to Switzerland's unique system of national defence, developed over the centuries.
Police arrested four Harvard University students last night for heckling FBI Director Robert Mueller prior to his speech on the "Balance of National Security and Civil Liberties," witnesses said.
Harvard spokesman Joe Wrinn confirmed that four Harvard students were arrested outside the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He could not verify their identities or the circumstances under which they were apprehended.
Harvard senior Austin Guest, who was outside the eve... (more)
Lawyers representing some of the hundreds of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay have angrily condemned efforts by the Bush administration to make it more difficult for them to visit their clients. The lawyers say restrictions already in place make their jobs all but impossible.
The US Justice Department has requested that a federal court impose tighter restrictions on the lawyers, claiming their visits with prisoners have "caused intractable problems and threats to security at Guant... (more)
A federal watchdog agency insists that its investigations clearly show the US government is facing serious long-term funding shortfalls, while federal contractors, doctors and medical suppliers, regularly receiving federal Medicare money, owe billions in unpaid taxes.
Earlier this month, Comptroller General David M. Walker of the US General Accountability Office opened one of his critical summary presentations to a Defense Department acquisition conference with: "The federal g... (more)
This week, Congress finalized the controversial $124 billion Iraq emergency supplemental spending bill, with the House and Senate both voting in favor of final passage. The majority of my Republican colleagues and I voted against this measure, and the president has vowed to veto the legislation.
In this final version, the House leadership retained billions of dollars in pork meant to attract skeptical votes, retained a wa... (more)
