The Lighter Side of North Korea's Forced Rallies
A fascinating report from the Associated Press introduces us to some of the individuals within the tightly choreographed crowds North Korea trots out to celebrate its national solidarity.
A carjacking suspect being chased by police in Phoenix suddenly got out of the car and shot himself on live television, prompting Fox News's Shepard Smith to apologize after the network aired the footage.
A fascinating report from the Associated Press introduces us to some of the individuals within the tightly choreographed crowds North Korea trots out to celebrate its national solidarity.
He's long been officially ambivalent about the Defense of Marriage Act, but President Barack Obama made it clear in his remarks at a Ricky Martin-hosted fundraiser in New York Monday night that repealing DOMA is now a goal for him.
Covering Ron Paul just wouldn't be the same without the (sometimes vociferous) input from readers loyal to him.
One manufacturer of the beef byproduct that's been dubbed "pink slime" said on Monday it was laying off 86 employees, the start of a planned 650-person layoffs after demand bottomed out as customers decided they just couldn't stomach the "finely textured beef."
You can't marry your same-sex partner in Rhode Island, but as of Monday if you marry him or her in another state, the Ocean State will fully recognize the marriage.
A hunger strike among Palestinian prisoners in Israel has been growing of late, to the point where as many as 2,000 of the more than 4,500 Palestinians being held by Israel have been refusing to eat, but on Monday they agreed to end the strike.
President Barack Obama gave his commencement speech at Barnard College, and rather than make any big news, he mostly kept to the mix of light jokes and advice more typical of graduation speeches.
China won't say why it refused to renew Al Jazeera English correspondent Melissa Chan's visa, but Chan has some guesses, which she shared with The Los Angeles Times in her first interview since leaving Beijing.
Police closed a Washington, D.C. street thanks to a suspicious package at the Saudi embassy, but the package turned out to be "nothing particularly suspicious" after all.
Sometimes it's the simple points that we need to be reminded of most, which commenters demonstrated in their responses to Jen Doll's post on that "attachment child" featured Friday morning on The Today Show.
Any news buff would want to sit down with Washington Post reporter Jason Horowitz to hear how his story of Mitt Romney's high school days came together, but in case you don't have his number the next best thing is his account to Capital New York.
After frustrated Greek voters largely ousted the country's two major parties in elections over the weekend, the far-left and far-right politicians suddenly in office had to come up with a coalition government, and on Friday they decided they couldn't.
Things just went from bad to worse for JP Morgan Chase. Losing $2 billion is bad enough, but now it turns out the SEC is looking into the bank's trading practices as possible "civil violations" in addition to the "egregious mistakes" CEO Jamie Dimon has already conceded.
It's been a while, but Somali pirates are officially back in action, with a spate of attacks over the last few days culminating in the capture of a huge oil tanker in the Arabian sea.
It's the SEC's job to police Wall Street, but who will police the SEC? One serious-sounding dude who wants to bring a gun to work would have been your answer until this week, but he's just been banned from the SEC office.
Chen Guangcheng has good reason to fear for the safety of his family, as his nephew has already been charged with a crime that it's not clear ever happened, and could face the death penalty.
Any party that sends you home with a $15 million goody bag can be considered a successful bash, but the fundraiser George Clooney hosted for Barack Obama Thursday night sounds like it was actually an enjoyable evening, which is an added bonus.
As the focus of the Leveson Inquiry shifts from phone hacking to the relationship between journalists and politicians, former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks described a friendly relationship with David Cameron that also sounded pretty awkward.
Nothing gets commenters going like a TSA outrage story: Responses to Alex Abad-Santos' post about an 18-month-old who made the no-fly list ranged from snarky to serious, but the two that made us snort imagined the baby as an actual terrorist.
The odd thing about the news that the United States Postal Service will soon ban overseas shipments of iPads, Kindles, or similar electronics with lithium batteries is how little a splash it seems to be making among electronics fans.
On Wednesday she said it was a "non-story" but on Thursday, Michele Bachmann's office said the congresswoman had written to the Swiss Consulate to withdraw her dual Swiss citizenship, so it must have been some kind of story, right?
It's been almost four years since the United States posted a monthly budget surplus, so we should be celebrating that it did so in April, right?
The Justice Department has been threatening since at least December to sue Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio for civil rights violations against Latinos if he and his officers didn't clean up their act, and on Thursday the feds finally did.
Jonah Goldberg had a tough enough time on Wednesday when MSNBC.com took him to task for falsely portraying himself as a Pulitzer Prize nominee, but that was a glancing blow compared to Alex Pareene's full-body Goldberg takedown in Salon.
Sotheby's $266.6 million contemporary art auction in New York Wednesday night would have made a much bigger splash if it hadn't come a day after Christie's $388.5 million night set a record in the field.
The story of how a Washington, D.C., cyclist who recovered his stolen bike isn't the biggest news of the day, nor the most dramatic, but it's an absolute inspiration to those of us who love our bikes and fear having them stolen.
Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor who also served as British Prime Minister David Cameron's communications director, is giving testimony in the Leveson Inquiry, where he's very good at avoiding substantive answers.
It's always fascinating to get a look inside insular communities like New York's ultra-Orthodox Jews, but glimpse provided by The New York Times' Sharon Otterman and Ray Rivera Thursday is quite disturbing since it's about how child sexual abuse often goes unpunished.
Blind Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng has said he fears reprisals against his family once he leaves China, but now it looks like the Chinese government decided not to wait for him to go before starting in on what Chen calls "crazy retaliation."
We love our commenters, especially when they dive into conflicts near to our hearts like the cultural divide between New York and San Francisco, and even when their points don't make sense at first blush.
Good and bad news for snail mail fans: To save money the U.S. Postal Service won't close your local branch, but it might reduce its hours to as little two a day.
President Barack Obama told ABC News, "for me personally, it is important to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” ending his "evolution" on the topic.
A contemporary art auction at Christie's in New York Tuesday night exceeded the highest estimate of $330 million, bringing in a whopping $388.5 million and firmly establishing a new contemporary art boom that looks suspiciously familiar.
Something just seems right about Neil Strauss signing on to write Kim Dotcom's biography: They're a pair made in dweeb-turned-douche heaven.
MSNBC.com's Bill Dedman clearly had a lot of fun debunking conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg's claim on his latest book jacket that he'd been twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Logic takes us strange places sometimes, like when a judge found herself writing this little gem: "The purposeful viewing of child pornography on the internet is now legal in New York."
When The Atlantic Wire's John Hudson suggested that New York Times columnists David Brooks and Paul Krugman should settle their apparently simmering dispute once and for all, one commenter disagreed.
Not having experienced Craig Claiborne's columns for ourselves, it was a little surprising to learn from current New York Times critic Pete Wells just how many of the hallmarks of modern food criticism he's responsible for.
When you've spent seven years building up the blog of a famous left-leaning think tank, maybe the only place it makes sense for you to go next is the office of a famous left-leaning politician.
Does this sound familiar? Both sides of the Senate agree they want to extend low interest rates on student loan payments, but they disagree on how to pay for it it, and after Republicans blocked a Democratic bill extending low rates, they're set to double in July.
Someone had to take a fall in the scandal over Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson's faked company bio, and the first to go is Patti Hart, the Yahoo director who led the search that got Thompson hired in the first place.
People have good reason for freaking out about a New Jersey roofer who reportedly jumped into a vat of acid to save a co-worker, because who actually likes their co-workers that much?
Saving people's lives: So hot right now. On Tuesday, Dustin Hoffman and Mila Kunis became the latest A-listers to get plaudits for their recent acts of decency.
It's the first time China has expelled a foreign correspondent in 14 years, so whatever Al Jazeera English's Melissa Chan did to have her visa denied, it must have been pretty monumental, right?
Very sad news this morning: Maurice Sendak, the author of Where the Wild Things Are, has died at the age of 83, The New York Times reports.
One thing we did not expect to hear J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon say is that Occupy Wall Street had "legitimate complaints," especially given that he thinks the financial industry gets victimized when it comes to placing blame for the world's problems.
The plight of Chen Guangcheng made its way into domestic U.S. politics on Thursday as Mitt Romney used it in a campaign speech and U.S. Rep. Chris Smith convened an emergency hearing on Chen's fate.
Think Progress engaged in some of its more gentle criticism of Mitt Romney Wednesday when it pointed out that little "We Stand United" pins he had made for the 2002 Winter olympics in Salt Lake City were actually made in China.
It has easy-to-manipulate Web graphics, an oversimplified narrative, and hits a political hot spot: Barack Obama's new campaign tool The Life of Julia was apparently built specifically to be co-opted by right wing meme-makers.
Original document buffs, today is your lucky day: The U.S. government has finally released a trove of 17 documents declassified after the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbotabad, and you can download them in full from the Combatting Terrorism Center.
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