Category: News

This is an Open Thread: No Rumpelstiltskin’s Here

Saturday’s Headlines: Baghdad Embassy Is Called A Fire Risk: U.S. attorney’s office accused of anthrax case leaks: Suitcase of Cash Entangles U.S. and 2 Latin Nations: Syria Rebuilds on Site Destroyed by Israeli Bombs: Less craic and more crackdown as Ireland takes a sober look at drinking: ‘Real’ Bhutto heir denounces family business

Iran Encounter Grimly Echoes ’02 War Game

WASHINGTON – There is a reason American military officers express grim concern over the tactics used by Iranian sailors last weekend: a classified, $250 million war game in which small, agile speedboats swarmed a naval convoy to inflict devastating damage on more powerful warships.

In the days since the encounter with five Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz, American officers have acknowledged that they have been studying anew the lessons from a startling simulation conducted in August 2002. In that war game, the Blue Team navy, representing the United States, lost 16 major warships – an aircraft carrier, cruisers and amphibious vessels – when they were sunk to the bottom of the Persian Gulf in an attack that included swarming tactics by enemy speedboats.

This is an Open Thread: Hiding in Spider Holes Not Allowed

Friday’s Headlines:Young Feminists Split: Does Gender Matter?: Kerry backs Obama to ‘turn new page’ in US politics: The rotten heart of Italy: See Naples and die (of the stench): Bush Outlines Mideast Peace Plan: Japan PM forces navy bill through

Public senses economy going south

Table talk among average Americans mirrors the anxiety reflected on the campaign trail and in Washington: times are getting tougher.

SEDALIA, COLO. — The numbers stopped adding up some time ago, and every month, Shane Covelli gets angrier.

He sells heavy equipment on commission, and construction firms aren’t buying. Covelli has sold his Corvette, stopped taking his wife out to dinner, pulled his son from the ski team. He has withdrawn nearly $50,000 from his retirement accounts and started taking extra work, laying carpet and pouring concrete evenings and weekends. Still, he owes more than he earns, and he can’t seem to fix it.

“It’ll take the country four or five years to dig out of this,” said Covelli, 44. “By then, I’ll be bankrupt.”

President Bush this week set aside months of sunny talk to warn that the nation’s economy faces challenges. “Many Americans are anxious,” he said.

This is an Open Thread: Call Anytime

Thursday’s Headlines: Millions of youths use cold meds to get high: Ashcroft Deal Brings Scrutiny in Justice Dept.: Chinese man killed after filming protest: Bodyguard testifies against Taylor at war crimes trial

For U.S., The Goal Is Now ‘Iraqi Solutions’

Approach Acknowledges Benchmarks Aren’t Met

In the year since President Bush announced he was changing course in Iraq with a troop “surge” and a new strategy, U.S. military and diplomatic officials have begun their own quiet policy shift. After countless unsuccessful efforts to push Iraqis toward various political, economic and security goals, they have decided to let the Iraqis figure some things out themselves.

From Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to Army privates and aid workers, officials are expressing their willingness to stand back and help Iraqis develop their own answers. “We try to come up with Iraqi solutions for Iraqi problems,” said Stephen Fakan, the leader of a provincial reconstruction team with U.S. troops in Fallujah.

The Morning News is an Open Thread

1 NH voters come out in large numbers

By CALVIN WOODWARD and PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writers

18 minutes ago

This is an Open Thread: Welcome to Dixville Notch

Headlines For Tuesday: Their last bids for the first primary: Violent Crime Down In First Half of 2007: New Leaders Of Sunnis Make Gains In Influence: German rail operator attacked over track fees for ‘Holocaust train’

Justices Weigh Injection Issue for Death Row

With conservative justices questioning their motives and liberal justices questioning their evidence, opponents of the American manner of capital punishment made little headway Monday in their effort to persuade the Supreme Court that the Constitution requires states to change the way they carry out executions by lethal injection.

Donald B. Verrilli Jr., the lawyer for two inmates on Kentucky’s death row who are facing execution by the commonly used three-chemical protocol, conceded that theoretically his clients would have no case if the first drug, a barbiturate used for anesthesia, could be guaranteed to work perfectly by inducing deep unconsciousness.

This is an Open Thread: For The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy

Headlines For Monday: Voter ID Laws Are Set to Face a Crucial Test: GOP Doubts, Fears ‘Post-Partisan’ Obama :Stories China’s media could not write: Party’s over: Ibiza calls time on after-hours raves

Defying U.S. Plan, Prison Expands in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON – As the Bush administration struggles for a way to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a similar effort to scale down a larger and more secretive American detention center in Afghanistan has been troubled by political, legal and security problems, officials say.

The American detention center, established at the Bagram military base as a temporary screening site after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, is now teeming with some 630 prisoners – more than twice the 275 being held at Guantánamo.

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

1 Bomber kills 11 at Iraqi army festival

By BRADLEY BROOKS, Associated Press Writer

9 minutes ago

This is an Open Thread: Throw Caution to the Wind

Headlines For January 5: Underdog Clinton Goes After Obama: How the U.S. seeks to avert nuclear terror: France finds its own Anne Frank as young Jewish woman’s war diary hits the shelves: The smog Olympics

For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets

A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

U.S. Considers New Covert Push Within Pakistan

This article is by Steven Lee Myers, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt.

WASHINGTON – President Bush’s senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The debate is a response to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are intensifying efforts there to destabilize the Pakistani government, several senior administration officials said.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a number of President Bush’s top national security advisers met Friday at the White House to discuss the proposal, which is part of a broad reassessment of American strategy after the assassination 10 days ago of the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

This is an Open Thread: That will never be closed

Headlines For Saturday January 5: Justices to Consider Death Penalty Issue: Ex-Bush official sued over terrorism memos: 46,000 Iraqis Have Left Syria: Opposition Seeks New Vote as Violence Ebbs in Kenya: Naples rubbish crisis turns nasty

Daring to Believe, Blacks Savor Obama Victory



For Sadou Brown in a Los Angeles suburb, the decisive victory of Senator Barack Obama in Iowa was a moment to show his 14-year-old son what is possible.

For Mike Duncan in Maryland, it was a sign that Americans were moving beyond rigid thinking about race.

For Milton Washington in Harlem, it looked like the beginning of something he never thought that he would see. “It was like, ‘Oh, my God, we’re on the cusp of something big about to happen,’ ” Mr. Washington said.

This is an Open Thread: Where everything is spun to the left

Headlines For Friday January 4: U.S. Curtailing Bids to Expand Medicaid Rolls: Video of Sleeping Guards Shakes Nuclear Industry: Five killed in Turkish car bomb attack: Science bows to theology as the Pope dismantles Vatican observatory

Obama Takes Iowa in a Big Turnout as Clinton Falters; Huckabee Victor

DES MOINES – Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, a first-term Democratic senator trying to become the nation’s first African-American president, rolled to victory in the Iowa caucuses on Thursday night, lifted by a record turnout of voters who embraced his promise of change.

The victory by Mr. Obama, 46, amounted to a startling setback for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, 60, of New York, who just months ago presented herself as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. The result left uncertain the prospects for John Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, who had staked his second bid for the White House on winning Iowa.

This is an Open Thread: You can caucus here pain free

Headlines For Thursday January 3: Justice Dept. Sets Criminal Inquiry Into C.I.A. Tapes: Last Pitches Before the First Vote: Iran’s Ayatollah: No smear campaigning: Malaysia’s health minister quits over sex video scandal

Kenya Topples Into Post-Election Chaos

KIAMBAA, Kenya – Daniel Kibigo said he was there, hiding in the burned cornfields nearby, as the mob gleefully stuffed mattresses in front of the church’s doors and set them on fire.

He watched women try to claw their way out of the church windows as if they were drowning as the building burned all the way down, with up to 50 people inside.

“We couldn’t do anything; there were too many,” he said of the crowd that descended on the church in the paroxysm of ethnic violence that has gripped Kenya since its deeply flawed elections last week.

This is an Open Thread: Please Relax

There’s More To Come

USA

Caucuses Bring Power Only to Some in Iowa

DES MOINES – Jason Huffman has lived in Iowa his whole life. Lately he has been watching presidential debates on the Internet, discussing what he sees with friends and relatives. But when fellow Iowans choose among presidential candidates on Thursday night, he will not be able to vote, because he is serving with the National Guard in western Afghanistan.