Category: News

From the Washington Post: Bush has been a major critic of leaks of classified information, and his aides have repeatedly said they want to “get to the bottom” of who leaked the name of Wilson’s wife, covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, to the media, which touched off Fitzgerald’s investigation . But in the past 33…

From the Washington Post: Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he did not know what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was talking about when she said last week that the United States had made thousands of “tactical errors” in handling the war in Iraq, a statement she later said was meant figuratively. Here.

From the New York Times: The shifting priorities illustrate the trade-off between combat and reconstruction that the American military is still grappling with, but especially in remote regions like this one, where the Iraqi government is still almost nonexistent. The Marines’ effort is also a test of the Bush administration’s declaration that it will focus…

From the Washington Post: The new Hamas-led government is broke and failed to pay tens of thousands of Palestinian public workers on Saturday, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Wednesday. It was the first time the radical Islamic group had admitted that it would have difficulty running the West Bank and Gaza Strip without massive foreign…

From the Washington Post: Two weeks later, Hansen suggested to an audience at the New School University in New York that his counterparts at NOAA were experiencing even more severe censorship. “It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States,” he told the crowd. Here.

From Reuters: That was one of the few points of agreement between journalists, a professional blogger and a U.S. military spokesman gathered in New York to discuss media in Iraq. Here.

From the New York Times, more Liberia: According to local legend, recounted by the Africa scholar Stephen Ellis in his book “The Mask of Anarchy,” a baby born in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, miraculously spoke English straight from the womb. It told its mother that a rain of death would fall Christmas Day, and that it…

From the New York Times, Helene Cooper recounts a Liberian story featuring Charles Taylor’s wigged thugs: The group came upon a burning house. A female Taylor fighter walked up to Janice and admired Logosou. “Oh, what a fine baby!” she cooed. “I’ve killed two like him today.” Here.

From the New York Times: One elaborate tattoo posted shortly after his blog’s inception in late 2004 means “power piglet,” according to Mr. Tang’s translation. Another, on a woman’s lower back, says “motherly beast blessing.” Marquis Daniels, of the Dallas Mavericks, thought he was getting his initials in Chinese characters but what his arm actually…

From the Washington Post: The unwitting end of the hunt comes at a time when al-Qaeda sympathizers like Irhabi 007 are making explosive new use of the Internet. Countless Web sites and password-protected forums — most of which have sprung up in the last several years — now cater to would-be jihadists like Irhabi 007.…