Murdoch isn’t just a sleaze peddler. He’s one of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet — and he has a political agenda that matters more to him, I imagine, than a random billion in cash here or there. The silent virulence of his influence on public events, more than the sensational headlines and lurid scandal-mongering he inflicts on us, is my real concern.
Big as Murdoch is in the U.S., with his 24-7 rightwing propaganda network called Fox News, in Great Britain he’s bigger than the royal family. “He’s often referred to as the country’s permanent Cabinet member,” Beth Fouhy wrote recently for Associated Press. Since the days of Margaret Thatcher, he’s been the godfather of British prime ministers, able to make them offers they can’t refuse.
		



A video uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday showed an IDF officer pointing a loaded gun at an unarmed Palestinian in the West Bank village of Beit Ummar, near Hebron, last month.
Astronomers looking for rings around Pluto have instead made an unexpected find: a fourth moon circling the dwarf planet.
Rupert Murdoch's media empire News Corp., which represents the second largest media conglomerate in the world behind the Walt Disney Company, is taking a severe beating as Murdoch himself is having to address various criminal allegations, including that his News of the World tabloid illegally hacked private phone lines and committed various other crimes 
Rupert Murdoch's News International has been found by a parliamentary committee to have "deliberately" tried to block a Scotland Yard criminal investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World, the Guardian has learned.
Voters have spoken out against recall efforts of Green Bay Democratic Senator Dave Hansen.  With 65% of the preliminary voting results in, Hansen is expected to win the recall election with more than two-thirds of the vote against Republican David VanderLeest. 
The Minnesota Republican frequently suffers from stress-induced medical episodes that she has characterized as severe headaches. These episodes, say witnesses, occur once a week on average and can “incapacitate” her for days at time.





























