Video Recordings

The girl's voice in the videotape is tiny and tentative. She is talking to a nursing aide in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bloomington, Ind. The girl wants an abortion. The aide explains that the girl will need a parent's consent because she is only 13. The girl balks; she does not want to name the father. "Cause, I mean, he would be in really big trouble," says the girl. Her boyfriend, she explains, is 31. The aide drops her head into her hands.

Could the government outlaw a hypothetical "Human Sacrifice Channel" on cable TV? That question became the focus of a Supreme Court argument Tuesday on the reach of the 1st Amendment and whether Congress can outlaw videos showing dogs fighting or other small animals being tortured and killed. Last year, a federal appeals court, citing freedom of speech, struck down a law against selling videos with scenes of animal cruelty. The law applied only to illegal acts of torturing or killing animals, not legal hunting or fishing.

The accusation was damning: U.S. soldiers were said to have tossed a grenade into a crowd of Afghans in the eastern province of Kunar on Tuesday, killing two civilians and wounding five to 50 others. American public affairs officers previously have been slow in responding. U.S. military officials here complain that Taliban leaders are often better and faster at spreading their versions of deadly events.

Accusations by a dead man have delivered Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom his most serious crisis since taking power a year and a half ago. Protesters and political foes have urged Colom to step aside while investigators look into murder allegations lodged on video by a lawyer days before he was slain by gunmen Sunday.

Forty years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were well on their way to a date with history, becoming the first men to set foot on another body in space. Events to mark the anniversary and commemorate the ever-thinning ranks of space-race veterans will include interviews with surviving Apollo astronauts and a Kennedy Center salute to the Apollo era. One highlight was the release Thursday of 15 newly digitized scenes of Armstrong taking his first steps on the moon.

Music videos from Green Day, Jay-Z and Linkin Park will begin reappearing on YouTube as soon as December, the result of a multiyear agreement reached with Warner Music Group Corp. The Internet's dominant video site and one of the world's largest music companies had been locked in a dispute over the value of music videos, some of the most popular content on YouTube, whose young viewers are coveted by advertisers. Licensing talks reached an impasse late last year, resulting in Warner's videos being pulled from the site.

An El Monte police officer is seen on TV news footage kicking a car chase suspect in the head Wednesday after the suspect appears to surrender. Video from KTTV Channel 11 News and KNBC-TV Channel 4 News shows the incident at the end of a car chase that wound through the San Gabriel Valley, ending in a collision in Pico Rivera. The suspect, whom authorities later identified as 23-year-old Richard Rodriguez of El Monte, jumped out of his car and ran.

Fifteen years ago, nearly 52,000 Holocaust survivors and witnesses began sharing their stories with a group that would come to be known as the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. The testimonies, averaging about two hours each, were documented on videotape, a format whose quality deteriorates over time.

The video images were disturbing -- a tiny white kitten singed with the flame from a lighter; a gray cat struggling beneath a woman's spiked heel; pit bulls tearing into a trapped animal. The Supreme Court has often said that freedom of speech includes ugly and foul language. But this fall the justices will be looking at video clips like these to decide whether selling films of dogfights or animal torture is protected from prosecution under the 1st Amendment. The dispute, expected to be heard in early October, has driven a wedge between traditional free-speech advocates and defenders of the humane treatment of animals.

Hollywood talent agencies pride themselves on placing their star clients into the biggest movies and TV shows. Now, add YouTube to the list. William Morris Agency, one of the largest talent firms, is in talks for a deal that would funnel its clients -- both actors and consumer brands -- into videos created for the Internet giant.