Despite threats from the U.S. State Department last summer that Kim Jong-il would no longer be able to buy jet skis and Iranian caviar, he's still shelling out millions of dollars on everything from Rolex watches to Gucci handbags for his top officials and he's even having McDonald's delivered by airplane from China, according to the Korea Herald.
Hey politically inclined ladies, do you have what it takes to join Putin's Army? By that we mean, are you willing to rip your clothes off in public to support the studly Vladimir Putin in his quest to become Russia's President again? If so, you might even win an iPad2!
It's a good day to be an enterprising heroin dealer in southern Afghanistan. Ahmed Wali Karzai, half-brother of President Hamid Karzai, was shot and killed by a family bodyguard at his home in Kandahar, where he was the chief of the provincial council. The deceased is said to have been the owner of truckloads of heroin over the years, but to be fair, in a 2008 interview with the New York Times he said, "I am not a drug dealer, I never was and I never will be." So take that for what's it worth?
Oh, the things they say about us in Indian call centers. About Americans, about Australians — it's terribly insulting stuff. It's also kinda true!
The riots spread from Hamburg to Wuppertal, but the terror reigns over an entire nation. Or a municipality, at least: Lower Saxony could ban Facebook parties following a string of violent incidents involving open party invitations.
The House of Representatives will actually hold two votes today on war funding. This is quite something: One vote to defund military action in Libya, another to authorize it for a year. Finally, many months after the Obama administration went into another MENA country with little-to-no strategy, we're having something akin to a congressional authorization process. This is healthy.
Apple is becoming a major diplomatic player. The company agreed to remove an iPhone app devoted to Palestinian insurrection, eliciting praise for "swift action" from Israel's public diplomacy minister. This sort of app removal is going to get tricky.
Two and a half months after his imprisonment on charges of tax evasion, internationally-renowned artist Ai Weiwei was released by Chinese authorities because (according to state news agency Xinhua) "of his good attitude in confessing his crimes as well as a chronic disease he suffers from" (likely diabetes or hypertension).
President Obama plans to give a White House address tomorrow night regarding his future plans for the Afghanistan war. What will the troop drawdown be? 10,000? 30,000? Two soldiers and a dog?
What is Pakistan doing with the $2 billion in military aid we gave it last year, and the additional $2 billion we'll be spending on it over the next five years? Oh, just arresting people who helped the CIA kill Osama bin Laden, like the soldier who secretly recorded the license plate numbers of cars entering his Abbottabad compound. I guess we need to give them more money.
The "World Map of Social Networks" has long made a game of Risk from the global competition between Facebook, MySpace, Orkut and other social networks. Facebook is, at last, sweeping the board. Just check out the latest map.
Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi took some time out of his busy schedule hiding from NATO bombs, fighting a war against his own people, and getting so high to play a game of chess with the president of the World Chess Federation, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov yesterday in Tripoli. Russian news agency Interfax reports that Qaddafi and one of his sons went with the Sicilian Defense — a chess opening that is described as "combative." How fitting. He also said there's no way he's leaving Libya.
Embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh traveled to Saudi Arabia on Saturday following an attack on his compound, leaving Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi in control of the government. According to a spokesman, Saleh is in Saudi Arabia for "simple check-ups," but "western diplomatic sources" tell CNN that the president is undergoing neurosurgery and had suffered "severe burns to his face and chest." It's unclear what Saleh's departure means for the ongoing protests and clashes between government forces and opposition groups, but opposition leaders say they will not allow Saleh to return to the country. The attack on Saleh's compound was originally blamed on a "rebel tribe"; the Yemeni government now believes it may have been Al Qaeda. [CNN; image via AP]
China and North Korea are the happiest nations on Earth, while people in the United States are utterly miserable, according to a completely objective survey by North Korean researchers. Groundbreaking.
For the past two weeks, President Obama has not had the legal authority from Congress to use military action in Libya. I know I'm being a stickler, but if we're going to get further and further involved in a third war with no plan in both the short and long term, then Congress should at the very least sign off on it as the law requires it to. The other option for Congress is to use its authority to end this altogether — which it appeared willing to do yesterday, before the Republican leadership pulled the vote from the floor.
