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News Corp to replace Rupert Murdoch
The American board of News Corporation - the parent company of News International - has decided to replace Rupert Murdoch as the chief executive officer of his own media empire.
The decision has been made over fears that the 80-year-old tycoon would not be able to ward off attacks over avalanche of revelations about phone hacking within his UK newspaper empire.
According to the Bloomberg business news agency in the US, chief operating officer Chase Carey could take over from Murdoch at the helm of the troubled media giant, leaving Murdoch as just chairman.
Family friends said Murdoch is struggling to cope with the revelations about the phone hacking scandal.
"I just got a call an hour ago and Rupert wanted to tell me personally that he was not okay,” said Vicky Ward, a Vanity Fair contributor.
“His voice has been cracking and the people around him are very concerned, his children are very concerned. This is a man, who is more devastated than he has ever been in his entire 80 years.”
"Ever since he met with Milly Dowler the murdered girl's parents, he hasn't felt the same," she added.
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Fines of £1,000 for leaving bin out too long
People who leave their wheelie bins out for too long could be fined £1,000 after a local authority claimed they posed a danger to blind people.
what are blind people doing leaving their homes?
The penalty, being considered by officials in Bedford, would be the largest ever imposed by a council related to the use of bins.
Letters warning of the fines have gone out to a number of homes in the borough who are deemed to be persistent offenders, despite the Government condemning such disproportionate punishments.
Householders have been told they run the risk of huge fines if they fail to remove their bins from the street within 24 hours of them being emptied.
According to the council the move is intended to make the streets safer for blind and partially sighted people who find the objects hazardous when left blocking pavements.
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DOJ casts serious doubt on its own claims about the anthrax attack
By Glenn Greenwald
Wikimedia - Bruce Ivins in 2003
Salon, July 19, 2011
Ever since the FBI claimed (for a second time) that it had discovered in 2008 the identity of the anthrax attacker -- the recently-deceased-by-suicide Army researcher Bruce Ivins -- it was glaringly obvious, as I documented many times, that the case against him was exceedingly weak, unpersuasive and full of gaping logical, scientific, and evidentiary holes. So dubious are the FBI's claims that serious doubt has been raised and independent investigations demanded not by marginalized websites devoted to questioning all government claims, but rather, by the nation's most mainstream, establishment venues, ones that instinctively believe and defend such claims -- including the editorial pages of the nation's largest newspapers, leading scientific journals, the nation's preeminent science officials, and keypoliticians from both parties (led by those whose districts, or offices, were most affected by the attacks). To get a sense for the breadth and depth of the establishment skepticism about Ivins' guilt, just click on some of those links.
Since that initial wave of doubt, the FBI's case against Ivins has continuously deteriorated even further. In February of this year, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences released its findings solely regarding the bureau's alleged scientific evidence (independent investigations of the full case against Ivins have been successfully blocked by the Obama administration), and found -- as The New York Times put it -- that "the bureau overstated the strength of genetic analysis linking the mailed anthrax to a supply kept by" Ivins; the Washington Post headline summarized the impact of those findings: "Anthrax report casts doubt on scientific evidence in FBI case against Bruce Ivins."Salon, July 19, 2011
Ever since the FBI claimed (for a second time) that it had discovered in 2008 the identity of the anthrax attacker -- the recently-deceased-by-suicide Army researcher Bruce Ivins -- it was glaringly obvious, as I documented many times, that the case against him was exceedingly weak, unpersuasive and full of gaping logical, scientific, and evidentiary holes. So dubious are the FBI's claims that serious doubt has been raised and independent investigations demanded not by marginalized websites devoted to questioning all government claims, but rather, by the nation's most mainstream, establishment venues, ones that instinctively believe and defend such claims -- including the editorial pages of the nation's largest newspapers, leading scientific journals, the nation's preeminent science officials, and keypoliticians from both parties (led by those whose districts, or offices, were most affected by the attacks). To get a sense for the breadth and depth of the establishment skepticism about Ivins' guilt, just click on some of those links.
But the biggest blow yet to the FBI's case has just occurred as the result of an amazing discovery by PBS' Frontline, which is working on a documentary about the case with McClatchy and ProPublica:
The Justice Department has called into question a key pillar of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins. . . . On July 15 [], Justice Department lawyers acknowledged in court papers that the sealed area in Ivins' lab -- the so-called hot suite -- did not contain the equipment needed to turn liquid anthrax into the refined powder that floated through congressional buildings and post offices in the fall of 2001.
The government said it continues to believe that Ivins was "more likely than not" the killer. But the filing in a Florida court did not explain where or how Ivins could have made the powder, saying only that the lab "did not have the specialized equipment’" in Ivins' secure lab "that would be required to prepare the dried spore preparations that were used in the letters."
The government's statements deepen the questions about the case against Ivins, who killed himself before he was charged with a crime. Searches of his car and home in 2007 found no anthrax spores, and the FBI's eight-year, $100 million investigation never proved he mailed the letters or identified another location where he might have secretly dried the anthrax into an easily inhaled powder. . . .
In excerpts from one of more than a dozen depositions made public in the case last week, the current chief of of the Bacteriology Division at the Army laboratory, Patricia Worsham, said it lacked the facilities in 2001 to make the kind of spores in the letters.
read on...
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lissynote: if they let somone cream him, is that enough of a public flogging to stop the people of the world wanting blood......??
Rupert Murdoch attacked with shaving-cream pie over hacking scandal; Rebekah Brooks testifies
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2011/07/19/2011-07-19_rupert_murdoch_scandal_media_titan_at_parliament_in_phone_hacking_scandal.html#ixzz1SdRWnrxA
British lawmakers ready to cream Rupert Murdoch ended up apologizing to him instead Tuesday after a protester smacked the aging tycoon in the face with a pie.
Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng, leapt to her husband's defense, her windmilling arms slapping at the pie-thrower with elan.
Then, for good measure, she picked up the pie plate and tried to hit the attacker with it.
"Mr. Murdoch, your wife has a very good left hook," remarked Labour Party MP Tom Watson, failing to notice she swung with her right.
News Corp. lawyer Janet Nova also jumped to her boss' defense, blocking most of the shaving cream pie from hitting Murdoch.
Police arrested Jonathan (Jonnie Marbles) May-Bowles, a comedian who turned what was billed as the dramatic climax of the mushrooming Murdoch scandal into a silly circus.
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Sean Hoare, the phone hacking whistleblower who was found dead at his home on Monday, had accused Andy Coulson, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s former communications chief, of “actively” encouraging phone hacking at News of the World.
In September 2010, Hoare said in an interview with the New York Times that Coulson was fully aware of phone hacking practices and that Coulson would even listen to recordings of hacked messages.
Coulson, former News of the World deputy editor, fired Hoare in 2005. Hoare said he was making the revelations because he had thought it was unfair to blame the whole scandal on former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman who was jailed in 2007, over phone hacking and corruption allegations, after he pleaded guilty.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4′s PM programme, in September 2010, Hoare said that getting the story was “the most important thing” as he spoke of “the culture of dark arts.”
Hoare said that Coulson had lied to Parliament when he said he had no knowledge of phone hacking at News of the World. “I’ve stood by Andy and been requested to tap phones, to hack into them and so on. He was well aware that the practice exists. To deny it is a lie. It’s simply a lie,” said Hoare.
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'Spain will recognize Palestinian state on 1967 lines'
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH05/30/2011
The Palestinian Authority announced on Thursday that Spain has decided to recognize a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines before September. A spanish diplomat told Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath that Spain would support making the state of Palestine a UN member.
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