Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Syria for its campaign to suppress dissent and backing an Arab League plan for Bashar al-Assad to step down as Syrian leader. The vote came as the Assad regime was launching a major offensive on the city of Homs, whose residents were under mortar attack over the weekend and into Monday morning. “A couple members of this council remain steadfast in their willingness to sell out the Syrian people and shield a craven tyrant,” said the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov argued that …

An American cattleman. Francesco Schettino, captain of the Costa Concordia cruise liner whose capsizing off the Italian island of Giglio killed at least 15 people, was revealed to have deviated from the ship�??s authorized route in order to salute a former captain who lived on the island. The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera released an audio recording in which Schettino, speaking to the Coast Guard from a lifeboat, defied commands to return to the ship and direct the evacuation of passengers. “Listen Schettino, you saved yourself from the sea,” says the Coast Guard captain, “but I am going to… I …

A Small Family. Mitt Romney won the first stage of the Republican leadership race, beating Rick Santorum by eight votes, 30,015 to 30,007, in the Iowa caucus. “This has been a great victory for him,” said Romney of Santorum. Michele Bachmann, who had claimed she would stay in the race regardless of the Iowa results, suspended her campaign after receiving 5 percent of the vote.CBSThe 2008 Republican nominee, John McCain, endorsed Romney. “I am confident, with the leadership and the backing of the American people, President Obama will turn this country around,” said McCain. “President Romney,” he then corrected himself. …

U.S. military officials declared the end of the Iraq War during a 45-minute ceremony in a fortified compound at Baghdad International Airport. Iraq�??s president and prime minister did not attend, and local reporters were not invited. “To be sure, the cost was high,” said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, “in blood and treasure of the United States and also the Iraqi people.” In Fallujah, Iraqis celebrated by burning American flags. “I lost brothers and many relatives because of American bombs,” said a resident of Ramadi. “I benefited by having a good job and a salary with which I can get whatever …

Weighing the soul, 1875. Russians in nine time zones rallied to demand a revote of their country’s December 4 parliamentary elections, in which the ruling United Russia party won a slim majority. Russia�??s only independent election-monitoring group logged more than 5,000 fraud allegations, while videos posted to YouTube showed stuffed ballot boxes, voting booths supplied with erasable ink, and buses taking people to vote at multiple locations. “If someone writes the phrase �??party of swindlers and thieves�?? on a blog,” tweeted Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, “he is just a fuckface.” As many as 50,000 people protested in Bolotnaya Square across …

A kinkajou, 1886. A Second World War�??era military plane crashed into a group of spectators at the Reno National Championship Air Races in Nevada, killing 10 people, including Jimmy Leeward, 74, who became the twentieth pilot to die at the event since it began 47 years ago. “It looked like just someone sprinkled Legos in every direction,” said one witness. National Transportation Safety Board investigators refused to speculate on what brought down the plane, which was built in 1944 and had previously crashed in 1970. “Our job is to identify what caused this accident,” said NTSB member Mark Rosekind, “so …

An earthquake with a Richter magnitude of 5.9 and an epicenter in Mineral, Virginia, shook much of the East Coast, and Irene, a Category 1 hurricane, made landfall in North Carolina and continued up the Atlantic seaboard, killing at least 38 people in 10 states. The unusually large and slow hurricane caused an estimated $7 billion in damages, mostly due to flooding, and left millions of people without power. In Tuxedo Park, N.Y., Irene pushed at least 15 heating-oil trucks into the Ramapo River, spilling large amounts of fuel into the water. “An environmental disaster is floating down the river,” …

An American cattleman. Violence broke out between Israel and Gaza following an ambush near the Egyptian border that killed eight Israelis, six of them civilians. After retaliatory air strikes killed an estimated 15 people in Gaza and militants fired dozens of rockets into southern Israel, Hamas declared that all Palestinian groups had agreed to a cease-fire, including the Popular Resistance Committees, which claimed responsibility for further rocket attacks a few hours later. “If they will cease fire, there will be a cease-fire,” said Israeli president Shimon Peres.APThe Libyan forces who have been trying since mid-February to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi gained …

A kinkajou, 1886. A cholera epidemic struck refugees fleeing a famine in southern Somalia that has killed an estimated 29,000 children so far. Banadir Hospital in Mogadishu reported 181 deaths as well as symptoms in more than 4,000 people, three quarters of them under the age of five.New York TimesIRIN NewsActivists said that Syrian government forces had killed at least 50 people in five cities, antigovernment militias in Libya advanced into the cities of Zawiya and Gharyan, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis demonstrated against such social injustices as inadequate housing, despite government approval of 1,600 new units in an …

A Christian martyr. Despite criticism from both parties, Congress voted in favor of $858 billion in tax breaks, extending Bush-era tax cuts for the super-rich.Wall Street JournalSenate Democrats failed to bring to a vote a $1.1 trillion spending bill needed to fund the federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year. “A number of Republican senators told me they’d like to see this pass,” explained Senate majority leader Harry Reid, “but they can’t support it.”CNNA Virginia judge voided the provision in Obama’s health-care law requiring most Americans to obtain health insurance, insisting that forcing people to have insurance “would …

An American cattleman. Republicans took control of the House after picking up 60 seats in midterm elections, the largest gain in the House since 1948. Democrats maintained control of the Senate (though they lost six seats), and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did not lose to Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle. “Harry Reid isn’t just Dracula. He isn’t just Lazarus; he’s our leader,” said Senator John Kerry. “Our whole caucus is thrilled that he’s unbreakable and unbeatable.”TimeNew York TimesThree Iowa Supreme Court judges who ruled in favor of same-sex marriage were voted out of office, and exit polls suggested that …

A kinkajou, 1886. The developers of the proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero–whose project continues to lack a lobbyist, engineer, architect, blueprint, and, according to their most recent disclosure, $99,981,745 of the $100 million they intend to raise–did not agree to meet with Governor David Paterson, who hopes to persuade them to build somewhere else. BloombergNYOPoliticoAs Israel prepared for the drilling of the large gas reserves discovered last year off its northern coast, the parliament of Lebanon voted to outline the country’s maritime borders.EarthTimesNYTIran celebrated the opening of its first nuclear power plant, and President Obama invited Israeli Prime …

The Senate Judiciary Committee held confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan, the nominee to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens on the U.S. Supreme Court. G.O.P senators attacked Kagan by comparing her with former justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom she clerked in the 1980s. According to Republicans, Marshall, the nation’s first African-American Supreme Court judge and prior to that the civil-rights lawyer who successfully argued against segregation in Brown v. Board of Education, was a “well-known activist” and the “epitome of a results-oriented judge.” Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) asked where Kagan had been last Christmas Day, when a Nigerian terrorist …

Caught in the Web, 1860. One trillion virtual dollars vanished from the U.S. stock market in fifteen minutes, as a mysterious surge of sales triggered a chain reaction in the high-speed automatic-trading computers that account for more than half of all market activity. It was rumored that a trader had accidentally typed “b” for billion rather than “m” for million, that someone somewhere was gaming the system, and that the “flash crash” was a reaction to unrest in Greece, where 100,000 people protested spending cuts by the socialist government and three bank workers were killed by rioters. “Those riots,” said …