Washington Post: Health Care Legislation Would Allow Employers to Raise Costs for Workers Who Fail Medical Tests
Need Some Gold? Head Over to Harrods Department Store
ABC's Kelly Belknap reports from London: The London department store Harrods is expecting a gold rush this season and is stocking its shelves accordingly. Harrods began selling pure gold bars and coins at its main Harrods store yesterday in an...
White House vs. FOX News: Round four
by Mark Silva
Bring it on, Rupert Murdoch suggests.
The News Corp. chairman today told his stockholders that all the White House criticism of his FOX News Channel's commentators is "tremendously'' boosting their ratings.
"There were some strong remarks coming out of the White House about one or two of the commentators on FOX News," Murdoch told the annual meeting of News Corp. shareholders. "And all I can tell you is that it's tremendously increased their ratings.''
Initially, the White House was challenging some of FOX's commentators, but then the White House communications director made a broader argument on a rival cable network, CNN, that FOX in general has become a subsidiary of the Republican Party.
The White House's Web-site had taken FOX's Glenn Beck to task for some of his comments about the Olympics, during the president's ultimately unsuccessful attempt to help secure the 2016 summer games for Chicago.
Then Communications Director Anita Dunn issued a broader complaint Sunday on CNN's Reliable Sources:
"The reality of it is that Fox often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.... They're widely viewed as a part of the Republican Partytake [the GOP's] talking points, put'em on the air, take [the GOP's] opposition research, put'em on the air. But let's not pretend that they're a news network the way CNN is.''
Which only provided new fodder for Beck, who dug up some video of Dunn telling high-schoolers that one of her most admired philosophers is Mao Zedong.
"She is the woman that the White House put in charge of monitoring this show, because we're smearing them, we're lying, we're making things upwe're 'the arm of the Republican Party,''' Beck complained. "I just opened up Mao's little book here... How about this one: "A revolution is not a dinner party... a revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence, in which one party overthrows another'.... Mao Zedong, the little red book, led to millions of deaths... and she is not the only one in the White House.''
The chairman of the company that owns the FOX broadcast and cable networks and the Wall Street Journal reiterated an upbeat company forecast for the fiscal year ending in June 2010. In August, News Corp. said adjusted operating profit will increase by a high-single-digit percentage -- up from $3.44 billion last year.
Murdoch also made it clear that he will be charging more of his newspapers' readers money for what they read online. "We intend to charge for our content on the Web," Murdoch said. "As I've said many times in the past good journalism comes at a price...In the future successful newspapers will charge for their content and aggregators will largely be excluded.''
The chairman also had some words for the Obama administration.
"We're worried about the business climate and whether it will discourage the formation of new companies," he said. "There is a public perception, certainly, that this government is anti-business. I'm not saying it's a correct perception, but there is a perception and I think this perception is hurting the economy.
Future Unlikely For Kyoto Climate Treaty
Despite dissent from developing countries, the U.S. and Europe seem to be abandoning the idea of extending or revising the Kyoto climate treaty when it expires in 2012. Instead they will form a new treaty, but some doubt it will be ready in December, when diplomats meet in Copenhagen.
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