NATO convened an emergency meeting today after a Syrian mortar attack that apparently left five Turkish civilians dead. Turkey retaliated with an artillery strike on Syrian military targets, and for a few brief minutes that afternoon we were all, like, "UHHHH."
"MUSLIM RAGE," screams Newsweek's new cover story about last week's violent anti-American protests. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the well-known anti-Islam activist, is here to tell "us" (The_West) how to "end it." And it's true, isn't it? All Muslims are constantly raging about everything. So to pay tribute to Ali's article — which describes the protesters as "the mainstream of contemporary Islam" — and the subtle, smart cover that accompanies it, we've collected 13 striking, powerful images of MUSLIM RAGE.
An explosion on a bus carrying Israeli youth in the Bulgarian resort town of Burgas killed as many as seven people and injured at least 20 at around 5:20 p.m. local time. It's unclear what happened — apparently some are claiming it was a female suicide bomber, while the Israeli Foreign Ministry says it wasn't a suicide bombing but rather a bomb in the trunk — but Bulgaria has been increasing security on resort towns frequented by Israelis since the January discovery of a suspicious package on an Israeli tourist bus.
"You can't fuck the elephants while you're covering the circus" is an old journalistic maxim—often attributed to the Washington Post's Ben Bradlee the New York Times' Abe Rosenthal—delineating the boundaries of appropriate reporter-source relationships. Sleep with whomever you want, in other words, with the exception of the people you write about. If recently released email exchanges between the Wall Street Journal's Gina Chon and a former National Security Council official turn out to be as real as they seem, then it looks like Chon fucked a big ol' elephant.
The Antarctic region is losing its glaciers to global warming, but now comes evidence humans are helping erode the ice masses in a more direct way: Chilean authorities arrested an entrepreneur for making off with five and a half tons of the Jorge Montt glacier in Patagonia.
Our old pal to the South, retired Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, has been watching these Republican debates, including the most recent one in which the candidates talked about Fidel Castro going to Hell. He has not been impressed, writing in an editorial that "the selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is - and I mean this seriously - the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been." But what if Mitch Daniels jumps in?
It must be that Rick Perry's too scared to go home and face the constant howling mockery of every person in Texas for the rest of his life, because there's no reason for him to be in this presidential race anymore. That is, unless he wants to ruin whatever political stature he has left with increasingly desperate and insane comments? If so, that's his business. Our (every other human's) business, though, is to avoid a World War III or nuclear winter anytime soon, and Rick Perry wingin' it at debates with maniacal jingoistic death talk is detrimental to this end.
Hackers in China have reportedly gained total access to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's computer systems, including six weeks of emails relating to the lobbying group's Asia policy. After the FBI alerted the Chamber to the breach, the pro-business group hired private computer investigators to fix the problem. But the free market has been utterly helpless to stop this communist menace.
Now this is strange. What compels a Speaker of the House, as he's (supposed to be) trying to reach a deal to preserve various expiring government goodies before Congress recesses for the year, to move a resolution that would "commission the placement of a bust of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the Capitol"? Here he is, talking about it, softly crying, of course, but not in full Boehner Bawl mode. Winston Churchill, he was one helluva a guy. Anyway, this is all about race.
Steve Jobs could fairly be remembered as either a madman or as a business deity. If this seven-foot-tall, 485-pound bronze statue out of Hungary is any indication, he'll be worshipped as the latter rather than mocked as the former.
What's wrong with you, America? While you leer at "hoochie mamas" on VH1 and use "sext messages" on your "crackberries," a very real international crisis is being ignored across the ocean: Norway is running out of butter.
Iranian students stormed the British embassy compound today, possibly taking hostages (who may have later been freed), and, in a brutal blow to the British psyche, stealing those two great symbols of the United Kingdom: a picture of the Queen, and a Pulp Fiction poster.
President Obama and fellow Pacific leaders didn't don any "silly shirts" — a.k.a. "festive local garb" — at last week's APEC conference in Hawaii, breaking from the conference's proud tradition of dressing powerful global leaders in clown costumes. "I got rid of the Hawaiian shirts because I looked at pictures of some of the previous APEC meetings," he explained, "and... I thought this may be a tradition that we might want to break." The War on Fun never ends with this guy. Fortunately, his hosts at his latest stop in Bali have forced him to wear a silly shirt anyway.
