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News Corporation chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch, 74, with daughter Grace, 3, at Sun Valley resort in Idaho. >>>>>
Murdoch steps out with Grace
Just another pretty-in-pink American pre-school heiress hand in hand with her septuagenarian billionaire dad.
This image of former Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch, 74, with daughter Grace, 3, is a rare glimpse of Murdoch the family man at Sun Valley, Idaho, attending the annual Allen and Co. investment bank retreat for international media players, investors and technology gurus.
Murdoch, who has six children by three wives, including another daughter younger than Grace, is rarely interviewed and has said little publicly about his third marriage, to Wendi Deng, the dynamic former employee of his Asian satellite TV company, STAR TV.
Since their wedding in 1998, Ms Deng, a tall, enigmatic Chinese woman who was a vice-president at STAR in Hong Kong just two years after completing an MBA at Yale, has had two children - Grace, who was born in November 2001, and Chloe, who is nearly two.
The transition from a long marriage to Anna Murdoch, a former reporter at Sydney's Daily Mirror whom Murdoch wooed and married in 1967, to a new wife was achieved with barely a disturbance to Mr Murdoch's company, which has revenue of $30 billion. Anna stepped down from the News Corporation board and quietly remarried someone around her own age, while Rupert embarked on a third marriage with a woman 36 years his junior.
Soon after his wedding to Ms Deng, Mr Murdoch - who is physically fit but looks his age and suffers hearing loss - was diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer. Now, more than four years in remission, he has given no hint of wanting to step down from his position as the world's most powerful media figure.
The arrival of two more children, Grace and Chloe, into the Murdoch dynasty has done nothing to clarify the lines of succession in this family-dominated public company. Mr Murdoch's obvious immediate successor is son Lachlan - whose own son, Kalan, is barely younger than Murdoch's latest children - but James and Elisabeth from Murdoch's marriage to Anna are still in the wings, and his first-born, Prue MacLeod, recently took up a position on the board of Advertiser Newspapers in Adelaide, replacing Mr Murdoch's sister, Helen Handbury, who died in November.
The Age ~ Penelope Debelle ** Murdoch steps out with Grace
cheeky
Klein's 'Truth About Hillary' Hits N.Y. Times Again; Paper Lashes Out
Edward Klein's book "The Truth About Hillary" has made the New York Times best-seller list for the second week in a row - a development that has the Times book review spitting mad.
As NewsMax reported over a week ago, Klein debuted on the Times list this week in the No. 2 slot.
Despite an orchestrated campaign to keep Klein off major TV talk shows, NewsMax has learned that the best-selling author will be on the Times list next week as well, in the No. 4 position.
The liberal Gray Lady apparently doesn't like the fact that one of its own - Klein is former editor of the New York Times Magazine - penned a biting biography of one of the paper's icons, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The Times has yet to review the book, but took the unusual step in Sunday's book section to publish a disclaimer attacking the book from pillar to post in a sidebar column adjacent to the best-seller list.
"'The Truth About Hillary' has united [no easy task] literary critics," Timesman Dwight Garner fumed, adding "it is easily this year's most vilified book."
Then Garner promptly joined in the vilification:
"Writing in the Book Review in 1988, Joyce Carol Oates coined the term 'pathography' to describe hatchet jobs like Klein's. Reading Oates's taxonomy of that genre today, it sounds as if she somehow had an advance copy of Klein's book rotting at her elbow."
Rotting?
Still - in what must have been a gut-wrenching admission for the paper - Garner lamented, "That hasn't stopped Klein's book from landing on beach blankets; it makes its debut at No. 2 on this week's hardcover nonfiction list."
The paper's vitriol against Klein contrasts with its first-class treatment of Kitty Kelley's works, including her recent hit book on the Bush family. Kelley's book on Nancy Reagan - in which Kelley alleged that Ronald Reagan engaged in date rape, among numerous other scurrilous allegations - made Page One coverage in the Times.
Shall we call that liberal "pathocoverage"?
Klein, a veteran journalist and editor with credentials well beyond anything Kelley has to offer, said he isn't bothered by the elite media's disdain for his book.
"My book's staying power on The Times list is testimony to the power of the Internet and conservative talk radio," he told NewsMax on Saturday. "The mainstream liberal media no longer have a monopoly on what's news and what isn't, and that's a healthy thing for America."
More healthy still, "The Truth About Hillary's" best-seller status shows that readers were willing to defy the media blockade orchestrated by the Clintons.
Hours after speaking to NewsMax, Klein told WABC Radio's Monica Crowley:
"Hillary and her people have called up ... all the TV networks and the newspapers and said to them that if you give Ed Klein exposure, we're not going to be very happy about it." The result: "I've been canceled on many of the TV shows that I was booked on," Klein said, "and have not had my book reviewed by any of the major media."
Klein appeared on Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes" the day his book was released on June 21, but the network quickly canceled three scheduled interviews with the author.
A wave of other cancellations followed, and CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" and Sinclair Broadcasting's News Central were the only other programs to interview the author.
But the media censorship may be working in Klein's favor. Not only is his book a certified New York Times best seller, it also debuts this week on the Publisher's Weekly best-seller list in the No. 4 slot.
silly
chatty
California Attorney General Files Lawsuit to Remove Redistricting Initiative From Ballot
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - California Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed a lawsuit Friday to remove Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's redistricting initiative from the November ballot, saying supporters violated the state Constitution when they significantly changed the measure's wording.
The measure asks voters to change the way district boundaries are drawn for members of Congress and the state Legislature, which is dominated by Democrats. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, wants to take redistricting power away from the state lawmakers and give it to a panel of retired judges, a process he said would create more competitive elections.
Lockyer, a Democrat, filed the lawsuit to block the initiative late Friday afternoon in Sacramento County court.
A spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, Margita Thompson, said the measure should remain on the ballot.
"The discrepancies are minimal, and the governor believes the people should be allowed to vote on the initiative," she said. "We believe the courts will uphold the rights of the over 900,000 people who signed the petition to have the initiative placed on the ballot."
The redistricting measure is one of eight on the Nov. 8 special election ballot and one of three being pushed by Schwarzenegger. His others would cap state spending and extend the time it takes teachers to get tenure.
Lockyer said in a statement: "By opting to collect signatures on a ballot measure different from the text reviewed and approved by the attorney general, the proponents violated state law and deceived voters."
Lockyer said there were numerous substantive changes, including "language emphasizing the unique ability of judges to draw competitive districts, altering the method used to identify line-drawers and modifying assorted deadlines."
sharp
Supreme Court Justices, post Sandra Day O'Connor 
U.S. Budget Deficit Tumbles, Congressional Analysts Say
WASHINGTON - Higher-than-expected tax receipts and the steadily growing economy have combined to produce an improved picture for the federal budget deficit, congressional analysts say.
The deficit for the current budget year, which runs through Sept. 30, should be "significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion," according to the Congressional Budget Office. The agency produces nonpartisan estimates for Congress and will put out a full update Aug. 15.
Thursday's new figures come as the White House is to release its midyear budget review July 13. Administration figures are also expected to show significant improvement from the $427 billion current-year deficit it predicted in January.
Last year's $412 billion deficit was a record in dollar terms, but economists say the more significant measure is against the size of the economy. In those terms, the current deficit picture - a $350 billion deficit for this year would equal 2.9 percent of gross domestic product - is significantly better than deficits witnessed in the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Then, deficits of 4 percent to 6 percent of GDP were common.
The biggest factors for the improving deficit picture are higher tax receipts from corporations and individuals. The economy is performing slightly above earlier administration expectations.
Despite the improvement projected over the short term, neither the CBO nor the administration's Office of Management and Budget is expected to dramatically overhaul its long-term deficit projections, which show a steady decline in the level of red ink through the end of the decade but anticipate a spike in the deficit soon thereafter as the baby boom generation claims its retirement benefits.
"This is good, but let's try to figure out if there's anything permanent here," said CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin.
Still, the new numbers will make it easier for the White House to credibly claim it will meet its goal of cutting the deficit in half - from the $521 billion it originally predicted for fiscal 2004 - by the time President Bush leaves office. Budget watchdog groups like the bipartisan Concord Coalition say White House budget projections are suspect since they leave out long-term costs for the war in Iraq and other factors.
"The numbers are coming out better," said White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten in an interview last month. "We had projected a very steady path of decline of the deficit, especially as a percentage of GDP, which is the right way to judge it. Right now, we're doing better than hitting that target. They'll be better because we've gotten better revenues than we originally projected."
As it addresses the deficit, the White House has focused chiefly on clamping down on domestic programs whose budgets are appropriated every year by Congress. That's only about one-sixth of the overall budget, however. Congress is also planning a five-year, $35 billion cut from automatically budgeted programs such as Medicaid and farm subsidies.
"The long-term budget issues are the mandatory programs - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Everything else is dwarfed by that," Holtz-Eakin said. He added that the current improvement in the deficit picture "looks like a pittance" when compared with the long-term liabilities.
d'oh
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The injured are lead away from the Edgware Road Tube Station, attacked by a terrorist bomb in London. >>>>>
Eyewitnesses tell of travel hell
At least 33 people have been killed and hundreds injured after a series of explosions on the London Underground network and a bus in central London.
Eyewitnesses tell what they have seen and heard from around the capital.
♠ DAVID JONES, TAVISTOCK SQUARE
There was a lot of smoke and a lot of dust, there were some areas of panic, I could hear screams. People were trying to work out what happened.
A lot of people were covered in blood.
I started walking towards Russell Square then I saw the bus. Police were running from the scene and waving people away.
I had to walk to work because I had to try and do something normal, it was all so chaotic.
It wasn't till I got to work that I realised I had a cut on my head and my clothes were covered in dust.
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The network has used Bob Schieffer, another veteran staffer, to temporarily fill the anchor spot while it ponders a new format for the program.
Moonves has made it clear that he wants CBS to rethink the approach of the broadcast, which, like other network news programs, has steadily lost viewers in the last decade.
Thus far, news executives have been vague about their plans. At a CBS affiliates meeting in Las Vegas last month, Heyward told station representatives that the broadcast was in a "process of evolution."
He told them that the revamped newscast will rely heavily on a team of correspondents and put less emphasis on "a dominant anchor surrounded by a bunch of people you don't know and don't care about."
In the meetings with the staff, Heyward said that he hopes to develop a new version of the show that plays to the network's strengths — an experienced team of correspondents and its ability to do "great storytelling."
"What people walked away with was that we still have a commitment to news — we just have to package it differently," said one of the employees, who did not want to be named discussing internal conversations.
The new broadcast Heyward proposed would dispense quickly with the news of the day and focus on deeper investigative and feature stories, modeled after the kind of storytelling done on "60 Minutes," arguably CBS' most successful news program.
He also said the newscast could provide a measure of "transparency" by providing viewers a glimpse behind the scenes. An assistant producer could use a hand-held camera to film a correspondent making calls, for example.
The new "Evening News" could also include more on-screen graphics to give viewers a quick sampling of facts about a subject, Heyward suggested.