Rupert Murdoch takes over the Daily Mirror, a Sydney tabloid, in May 1960. Sometimes soft-spoken, but invariably hard-driving, Murdoch acquired major papers in every Australian state. He bought TV stations and established the first truly national daily.
Credit Rob Griffith / AP
News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch delivers the Boyer Lectures in Sydney, Australia, on Nov. 2, 2008.
Ultimately, all roads lead home for Rupert Murdoch.
"The story of our company is the stuff of legend: from a small newspaper in Adelaide to a global corporation based in New York, with a market capitalization of about $44 billion," he said last October, when he addressed a News Corp. shareholders meeting in Los Angeles.
Australiansview the company's history differently.
A wobbling of the Earth on its axis about 20,000 years ago may have kicked off a beginning to the end of the last ice age. Glaciers in the Arctic and Greenland began to melt, which resulted in a warming of the Earth, a new study says. Above, Greenland's Russell Glacier, seen in 1990.
The last big ice age ended about 11,000 years ago, and not a moment too soon — it made a lot more of the world livable, at least for humans.
But exactly what caused the big thaw isn't clear, and new research suggests that a wobble in the Earth kicked off a complicated process that changed the whole planet.
Ice tells the history of the Earth's climate: Air bubbles in ice reveal what the atmosphere was like and what the temperature was. And scientists can read this ice, even if it's been buried for thousands of years.
Cleveland resident Cedric Cowan was asleep on an overcast spring morning when the roaring sounds of splintering wood and falling rubble jolted him awake.
Cowan lives in a neighborhood hit hard by foreclosures. He initially thought someone was moving into the house on the other side of Fairport Avenue.
Instead, he woke that morning to find a crew tearing down the two-family house.
Over the course of three hours, an excavator smashed, crushed and ripped apart the abandoned house while a worker sprayed the rubble with a hose to keep the dust down.
Six-term Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana is facing his first primary challenge since winning the job in the 1970s. The race is attracting big money from outside groups and superPACs, and is seen as a test of the strength of the Tea Party movement versus the power of incumbency.
Selina Gray of Sanford, Fla., shows her sign at a rally protesting the death of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teen shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer. Authorities have cited the state's "stand your ground" law as a reason charges have not been filed in Martin's death.
Two of America's best-known companies, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, have dropped their memberships in the American Legislative Exchange Council, a low-profile conservative organization behind the national proliferation of "stand your ground" gun laws.
This room, known as the Cenacle on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, is venerated as the site of Jesus' Last Supper. Jews and Muslims also consider the building to be a holy site, and it has been a source of contention for years. Israel and the Vatican may be nearing an agreement.
If there's one building in Jerusalem that represents the city's tangle of religions, this is it. The ground floor is a Jewish holy site said to house the tomb of the biblical King David. The second floor is the Cenacle, a Christian holy site, the room believed to be the site of Jesus' Last Supper. On the roof, there's an old minaret from when this place was marked a Muslim holy site.
One building, three religions, decades of property disputes. And the fight isn't over.
Twenty years ago this week, the Bosnian war began with the siege of Sarajevo, the capital. In this photo, smoke billows from a building in downtown Sarajevo, April 22, 1992, after a Serbian mortar attack.
Credit Peter Andrews / Reuters /Landov
A man carries a bag of firewood across a destroyed bridge near the burnt library in Sarajevo, in this picture taken January 1, 1994 (top), while a man carries a box over the same bridge, now repaired, April 1, 2012, in this combination picture made April 4, 2012.
Credit Mike Persson / AFP/Getty Images
On April 6, 1992, a Bosnian special forces soldier (third from right) returns fire from Serbians opposed to Bosnian independence as civilians seek cover in downtown Sarajevo. The day marked the beginning of the 44-month siege of Sarajevo, which left 100,000 dead.
Credit Oleg Popov / Reuters /Landov
A Bosnian teenager carrying containers of water walks in front of destroyed trams at Skenderia square in the besieged Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, in this picture taken June 22, 1993 (top), and a woman passes through the same square, April 1, 2012.
Credit Tom Stoddart / Getty Images
In this photo from 1992, women run across "Sniper Alley" under the sights of Serb gunmen during the siege of Sarajevo.
April 6 marks the 20th anniversary of the start of the Bosnian war and the siege of Sarajevo. It was the longest siege of a capital city in modern history, and produced the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II.
Over three-and-a-half years of war, 100,000 people were killed, and half of Bosnia's population of 4.4 million — made up of a plurality of Muslims — fled their homes.
Virginia Klausmeier (left) makes her pitch for Garage Technology Ventures to invest in her clean diesel fuel company, Sylvatex, to Bill Reichert and Joyce Chung, two of the firm's general partners.
Credit Courtesy of Arthur Rock
Credit Courtesy of Arthur Rock
Arthur Rock in the 1970s. In 1968, he helped Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce found Intel — the only company he invested in that he was certain would succeed, he says. Rock was later a founding investor in Apple Computer.
Think of the most technologically innovative companies of the past 50 years, such as Intel, Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter. Each company has a Silicon Valley address — and each one got backing from venture capitalists. Over the past decade, more than 35 percent of the nation's venture capital has gone to Silicon Valley startups.
High-tech and venture capital go hand and hand in the valley where technology and venture capital grew up together.
A final report from Los Angeles coroner is shedding some light on Whitney Houston's last hours.
According to the report, the pop super star complained of a sore throat and an assistant suggested she take a bath. By the time the assistant got back to the room after running an errand, she found Houston lying face down on in the tub "in approximately 13-inches of water," People Magazine reports.
What's plentiful in upstate New York? Cows and prison inmates, to name a few things.
Reformists in the two communities don't make natural allies, but organizer Lauren Melodia is trying to do just that.
"I was living in this prison town, and at the same time, the dairy industry was in a lot of turmoil," Melodia tells The Salt. "We thought this [dairy] might be the perfect ally in trying to build a different economy in upstate New York, and shift some of the economic dependency away from the prison system."
Much of the Republican political establishment, many GOP voters and political analysts were telling Rick Santorum that the time had come for him to end his quest for his party's presidential nomination even before Tuesday when he failed to win any of three primaries.
Those calls had only increased by Wednesday as Santorum fell further behind Romney in the delegate count.
A Hispanic woman walks down a street in Union City, N.J. In a new study, the Pew Hispanic Center asked Hispanic-Americans how they identify themselves.
Just over half of Americans of Spanish-speaking origin have no preference between the terms "Hispanic" and "Latino," according to new data from the Pew Hispanic Center.
Of those with a preference, 33 percent preferred "Hispanic," versus the 14 percent who said "Latino" better describes them.
This NASA map shows the size of aerosol particles in the atmosphere. Green areas indicate larger, more naturally occurring particles like dust. Red areas indicate smaller aerosol particles, which can come from fossil fuels and fires. Yellow areas indicate a mix of large and small particles.
The Atlantic Ocean, especially the North Atlantic, is peculiar: Every few decades, the average temperature of surface water there changes dramatically.
Scientists want to know why that is, especially because these temperature shifts affect the weather. New research suggests that human activity is part of the cause.
Scientists originally thought that maybe some mysterious pattern in deep-ocean currents, such as an invisible hand stirring a giant bathtub, created this temperature see-saw.
The "Taxi of Tomorrow" has arrived in New York City. On Tuesday night, officials unveiled the Nissan-designed cab that, over the next 10 years, will gradually replace the country's largest taxi fleet. It's the first New York taxi to be designed for the job since the city's iconic Checker cab.
For Nissan's designers, the process of putting the new cab together involved months of riding in taxis and talking to cab owners, drivers and passengers about what they did and didn't like.
Ambulances are parked outside the Mogadishu National Theatre on Wednesday after a suicide attack in the Somali capital. A young woman strapped with explosives blew herself up on at a ceremony in the Somali national theater attended by the prime minister and other officials.
Just as things had begun to seem peaceful in the Somali capital, a bomb exploded in the newly reopened National Theater. And it happened as the prime minister gave an address.
The New York Times reports that the bombing shattered what had been a tenuous calm in Mogadishu, which has been the center of a fierce civil war for the past 21 years.
The brains of people who grow up speaking two languages are wired differently, and those differences protect them from dementia as they age.
That's the news from two studies out this month from a scientist in Canada who has spent decades trying to figure out whether being bilingual is bad or good. "I've been doing this for 25 years," Ellen Bialystok, a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, tells Shots. "Suddenly people are interested. I figure it's because everybody's scared about dementia."
Former Child Star Fatigue. Many of us have suffered it, given the drug problems, the meltdowns, the awful nude photos.
But then there's Fred Savage, who starred in the ABC show The Wonder Years from 1988 through 1993. Now he's a successful, slightly offbeat 35-five-year-old television producer and director. He works on wicked, slightly warped comedies including Party Down, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and as of today, Best Friends Forever. His first network sitcom premieres tonight on NBC.
A worker monitors the loading of containers on to a ship at a harbor in China's Shandong province. Under a new U.S. law, Chinese food exporters will now have to share more food safety information with American food importers.
Locavores, a word with you. Local food may be gaining traction in all kinds of ways, but a report out today from the Institute of Medicine serves as a stark reminder of just how globalized our food system truly is.
"Political fundraiser" has a fancy ring to it — tuxedos, famous singers, billionaires. In fact, most political fundraisers aren't that glamorous.
Think instead of a dozen lobbyists eating breakfast with a Congressman in a side room at some DC restaurant. Off in a corner, someone who works for the Congressman is holding the checks the lobbyists brought to get in the door.
Kaniehtakeron Martin's work site at 54th Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan, which will someday be an office building.
Credit Stephen Nessen for NPR
Today, Martin is one of about 200 Mohawk workers building New York City skyscrapers. He lives in Brooklyn during the workweek and commutes home to Canada on weekends.
Credit Stephen Nessen for NPR
Kahnawake means "by the rapids." It's just south of Montreal, across the St. Lawrence River.
Credit Stephen Nessen for NPR
Steel beams erected in Kahnawake are a reminder of the century-long tradition of ironworking. The beams were used in competitions — participants climb to the top, assemble steel pieces, ring a bell and race down.
Credit Stephen Nessen for NPR
Back in Kahnawake, stickers show the link between the reserve and New York City. Mohawk workers helped build the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center.
Credit Stephen Nessen for NPR
Kahnawake Grand Chief Mike Delisle comes from an ironworking family. He keeps plans from the original World Trade Center and his father's wrenches in his basement.
Credit Stephen Nessen for NPR
The three spirit animals — the bear, the eagle and the wolf — adorn a fence in Kahnawake.
Credit Stephen Nessen for NPR
Martin takes a break on what will be the 27th floor of a Manhattan office building.
Credit Stephen Nessen for NPR
Kaniehtakeron "Geggs" Martin is a fourth-generation ironworker from Kahnawake, a Mohawk reservation south of Montreal.
Credit Stephen Nessen for NPR
Kaniehtakeron Martin takes a break from working on what will be the 27th floor of an office building in New York City.
Another batch of phony cancer drugs has made its way into the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration says.
U.S.-based medical practices purchased vials of counterfeit medicine labeled as Altuzan from a foreign supplier, FDA spokesperson Shelly Burgess tells Shots. She said the agency doesn't have any reports of patients having received the counterfeit drugs.
Altuzan is the Turkish brand name for Avastin, the FDA-approved blockbuster cancer drug from Swiss drugmaker Roche's Genentech unit. Altuzan is approved for use in Turkey — but not in the U.S.
The peace plan brokered by international envoy Kofi Annan and backed the United Nations has yet to curb the violence in Syria.
Reuters reports that even though a U.N. team of peacekeepers is scheduled to arrive in Damascus, today or tomorrow, opposition activists said government forces continued their attack. They said about 80 people have been killed since Tuesday.
Members of the Italian metalworkers trade union Fiom-CGIL hold a placard reading "Enough now!" during a protest in Rome on March 9.
Credit Filippo Monteforte / AFP/Getty Images
Members of the Italian metalworkers trade union Fiom-CGIL march during a protest in Rome on March 9. Thousands of trade unionists protested on a day of strikes against auto giant Fiat and the government's plans to overhaul labor laws to make it easier to fire workers.
Credit Geert Vanden Wijngaert / AP
Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, shown here during an EU summit in Brussels on March 2, is facing his biggest challenge yet over proposed changes to the country's labor laws.
Italy's technocrat prime minister, Mario Monti, came to office less than five months ago as the country's finances were in a tailspin. And now he could be facing his toughest challenge yet — pushing through changes to labor regulations.
Italian labor rules ensure job security for older workers but can condemn the younger generation to a series of insecure, temporary jobs.
Since taking office, Monti has pushed through a round of tough austerity measures, budget cuts, pension reform and some deregulation.
When 93-year-old Rachel Veitch picked up the newspaper on March 10 and realized that the macular degeneration in her eyes had developed to the point where she couldn't read the print, she knew it was time to stop driving.
But there's much more to the Orlando, Fla., woman's story.
The decision meant she would no longer be getting behind the wheel of her beloved 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente, a car she calls "The Chariot." Veitch has pampered her ride for nearly five decades and 567,000 miles.
Imagine you've scored hard-to-get tickets to the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Ga. Now, imagine you're so excited that you make big a deal out of this: You buy plane tickets, you schedule some golfing of your own, you invite three buddies. And then, one day you get home to find only chewed pieces of the tickets attached to the strings that came with them.
Suddenly, it dawns on you: "The dog ate my tickets."
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington. Romney racks up three more, the president picks a fight, and Sarah Palin offers vice presidential advice. It's Wednesday, and time for a...
SARAH PALIN: Go rogue and shake it up.
CONAN: ...edition of the Political Junkie.
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: There you go again.
VICE PRESIDENT WALTER MONDALE: When I hear your new ideas, I'm reminded of that ad: Where's the beef?
SENATOR BARRY GOLDWATER: Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
Like every parent who's watched a son or daughter fly off to Iraq or Afghanistan, David Freed worries that the next car that pulls up outside his house will carry a casualty notification team. In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, he wrote of his disdain for those in Washington, D.C. who for the most part send other people's kids off to fight and die. We want to hear from parents whose children are on active duty. What should the president and Congress consider before they send your children off to war?
Argentina invaded the British-controlled Falkland Islands in 1982. This led to a war with Britain and the death of hundreds of servicemen on both sides. Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl explains why Argentine and British leaders are sparring over the territory 30 years later.
