Yesterday, we reported on the fundraisers that lobbyists hold for Congressmen every day in Washington. Today, we hear what happens inside those events. The stories are part of our series on money in politics.
King Juan Carlos of Spain is discharged from Hospital San Jose in Madrid on Wednesday after undergoing hip replacement surgery. He fractured his hip during a recent elephant hunting trip to Botswana. The trip cost nearly $60,000 and has caused a furor in the country, which is suffering record unemployment and is being squeezed by austerity measures.
Credit Lauren Frayer for NPR
Members of the animal-rights group Igualdad Animal protest outside the Madrid hospital where Spanish King Juan Carlos was recovering after hip surgery this week. The king, who went elephant hunting in Africa, is the honorary president of the World Wildlife Fund in Spain.
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.
An extraordinary special investigation by a federal judge has concluded that two Justice Department prosecutors intentionally hid evidence in the case against Sen. Ted Stevens, one of the biggest political corruption cases in recent history.
A blistering report released Thursday found that the government team concealed documents that would have helped the late Stevens, a longtime Republican senator from Alaska, defend himself against false-statements charges in 2008. Stevens lost his Senate seat as the scandal played out, and he died in a plane crash two years later.
