Category: News

Washington Post: Clinton said he authorized the CIA to kill bin Laden, and even “contracted with people to kill him.” He also said he had a plan to attack Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban and hunt for bin Laden after the attack on the USS Cole, but the CIA and FBI refused to certify that bin…

Guardian: The report surfaced in a regional French newspaper which had obtained the leaked report claiming Saudi Arabian sources were ‘convinced’ the terror chief had been killed in August. It prompted a flurry of official statements. After a remarkable day of rumour and counter-rumour, it appears the answer is that no one really knows. French…

Washington Post: “We’re not going to speculate with you today about recommendations,” Baker announced at the session, hosted by the U.S. Institute of Peace. Can the war in Iraq be won? “We’re not going to make any assessments today about what we think the status of the situation is in Iraq,” said Hamilton. Could they…

Last words of death row inmates, from the Guardian: “Statement to what. State what. I am not guilty of the charge of capital murder. Steal me and my family’s money. My truth will always be my truth. There is no kin and no friend; no fear what you do to me. No kin to you…

LA Times: I was still looking at the wounded man and blaming myself for not stopping to help. Other shoppers peered at him from a distance, sorrowful and compassionate, but did nothing. I went on to another grocery store, staying for about five minutes while shopping for tomatoes, onions and other vegetables. During that time,…

Guardian: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei yesterday accused the Pope of committing the world’s biggest Christian church to what he claimed was a “crusade” launched by President Bush against Islam. The Iranian leader’s words represented a setback to more than 25 years of Vatican diplomacy aimed at distancing Roman Catholicism from the west many Muslims regard as…

Washington Post: “It has been reported,” said Fox, that “your grandfather Felix, whom you were given your middle name for, was Jewish. Could you please tell us whether your forebears include Jews and, if so, at which point Jewish identity might have ended?” Allen recoiled as if he had been struck. His supporters in the…

Onion Radio News: The sixth grader will eventually learn everything she needs to know about sexuality two to three years from now, when she’ll be given to a 60-year-old Mormon elder in Canada. mp3, Here.

Washington Post: Gill signed his entries “Fatality666” and once called himself “Trench,” an apparent reference to the black trench coat he wore in imitation of the two teenage assailants who killed 12 students and a faculty member at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999. He was fascinated by that attack, according to his journal,…

Washington Post: Fact No. 8, probably one of the most important, notes that, contrary to what you might have heard, the prisoners actually really want to be in Guantanamo. “The mother of a detainee stated: ‘Of course they wanted to stay there. . . . They had human rights and good living standards there. They…

The New Yorker: In 2002, Abu Musab al-Suri, in his hideout in Iran, began  writing his defining work, “Call for Worldwide Islamic Resistance,” which is sixteen hundred pages long and was published on the Internet in December, 2004. Didactic and repetitive, but also ruthlessly candid, the book dissects the  faults of the jihadi movement and…

Washington Post: Intelligence officials think that bin Laden is hiding in the northern reaches of the autonomous tribal region along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. This calculation is based largely on a lack of activity elsewhere and on other intelligence, including a videotape, obtained exclusively by the CIA and not previously reported, that shows bin Laden walking…

Washington Post: Baghdad’s morgue almost tripled its count for violent deaths in Iraq’s capital during August from 550 to 1,536, authorities said Thursday, appearing to erase most of what U.S. generals and Iraqi leaders had touted as evidence of progress in a major security operation to restore order in the capital. Separately, the Health Ministry…

International Crisis Group: Eight actual or potential conflict situations around the world deteriorated in August 2006, according to the new issue of CrisisWatch,* released today. Sri Lanka saw full-scale military clashes in eastern and northern regions kill hundreds and displace some 200,000. Sudan’s Darfur region continued its slide, with the government launching a new offensive…