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Astrophysicist Slava G. Turyshev has explained away decades of exotic speculation over the Pioneer anomaly, the puzzling slowdown of two NASA probes

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One of News Corp’s former top executives, Rebekah Brooks, has been formally charged in court proceedings with phone hacking. News Corp CEO, Rupert Murdoch , has been strangely silent on the matter, which can’t inspire …

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Earlier today I asked whether American news outlets would do their due diligence in evaluating the content of the newly-released batch of “Climategate” emails hacked from the University of East Anglia two years ago. It didn’t take long for our esteemed print outlets to disappoint. Writing on the Washington Post’s website, Juliet Eilperin quotes an email exchange that she said was about “whether the IPCC has accurately depicted the temperature rise in the lower atmosphere”: In one round of e-mails, researchers discuss whether the IPCC has accurately depicted the temperature rise in the lower atmosphere. An official from the U.K. Met Office, a scientific organization which analyzes the climate, writes to the Climate Research Unit’s former director Phil Jones at one point, “Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary ” Later, the official adds, “I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.” Astoundingly, Eilperin does not tell readers that these email exchanges took place in February 2005 and were about the first draft of a chapter of the IPCC report released two years later. The emails depict the authors of the chapter hashing out what should be included — exactly what you would expect this process to look like. After providing comments on the draft, then-Met Office official Peter Thorne wrote: “I’m pretty sure we can reconcile these things relatively simply. However, I certainly would be unhappy to be associated with it if the current text remains through final draft – I’m absolutely positive it won’t.” So were his concerns addressed in the final draft? If only we had reporters who asked these questions. For his part, The Hill’s Ben Geman simply repeats what Eilperin reported, while admitting that he hasn’t even “been able to view the newly released emails.”

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Faced with allegations that its employees had hacked into a competitor’s password-protected website and stolen proprietary information, a News Corp. marketing firm responded by launching a woefully inadequate internal investigation that “failed to perform any” of the “basic steps” necessary to identify the culprits, according to forensic expert hired by the competing competing company. The inept U.S. inquiry seems to mirror the inept inquiry News Corp. launched in the wake of British phone-hacking allegations in 2007. Claims of computer hacking in the United States continue to haunt Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., coming as they do in the wake of the unraveling phone-hacking scandal; a scandal the chairman is desperate to keep out of the American arena. However, any suggestion Murdoch’s company responded to stateside computer hacking claims with an incompetent investigation that covered up wrongdoing would likely be of interest to U.S. investigators currently reviewing News Corp.’s business practices.     This Murdoch headache has been a decade in the making.  In 1996, a New Jersey start-up company, Floorgraphics (FGI), was created to sell large advertising decals placed on the floors of grocery stores. In 1999, FGI’s founders  met with Paul Carlucci, CEO of News America Marketing, an in-store advertising division of News Corp. At lunch, after FGI founders rebuffed Carlucci’s offer to buy the company, Murdoch’s man allegedly threatened to “ destroy ” FGI. Years later, FGI executives discovered the company’s’ secure website had been broken into nearly a dozen times in a three-month period and confidential information had been obtained. They alleged Murdoch’s marketing company was spreading lies about FGI and using its proprietary information to steal away clients. After failing to convince   Chris Christie’s team at the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s office to pursue the hacking charges, FGI filed a civil lawsuit . In preparation of the trial, FGI hired forensic examiner Luke Cats to review the internal investigation News Corp. conducted to find out who the hackers were. Cats’ report concluded News Corp.’s investigation was completely lacking. Bloomberg News reported on Cats’ report last month. Here’s why the report now may be of added significance: In the wake of the British phone-hacking scandal, federal investigators are taking a broad look of News Corp.’s practices in the United States and trying to determine if there is a larger pattern of corporate corruption. The FGI case may indicate there is a streak of criminality within News Corp., and that breaking the law in order to obtain crucial information was not restricted to tabloid reporters hacking voice mails in Britain.

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