Talks with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, grew tense after Barack Obama called for the country’s pre-1967 borders to be the starting point for peace negotiations with Palestinians. Netanyahu rejected the proposal, saying, “Remember that before 1967, Israel was all of nine miles wide; it’s half the width of the Washington Beltway. These were not the boundaries of peace. They were the boundaries of repeated wars.” President Obama resolved to continue pressuring the Israelis, but stated, “Obviously there are some differences between us in the precise formulations and language, and that’s going to happen between friends.”CNNThe world failed to end, …

A Christian martyr. Osama bin Laden was reported to have been killed during a joint mission by U.S. Navy SEALs and CIA agents in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Crowds gathered to celebrate in front of the White House, and at Times Square and the World Trade Center site in New York. “I don�??t know if it will make us safer,” said one reveler, “but it definitely sends a message.” “If this means there is one less death in the future, then I�??m glad for that,” said Harry Waizer, who was in the center�??s north tower on 9/11, “but I just can�??t find …

A kinkajou, 1886. Less than an hour and a half before a budget-negotiation stalemate would have necessitated the first U.S. government shutdown since 1995, Democrats and Republicans worked out a compromise. The stopgap agreement, which will fund government operations until Thursday, April 14, proposes a $38-billion reduction in annual spending, the largest ever budget cut, achieved by slashing mainly health and education allocations, including public housing, as well as Pell grants for low-income college students. The military, however, would receive $5 billion more than it did last year.NYTProtesters had planned a demonstration during which they would deposit trash outside the …

The Sri Lankan government declared an end to their 26-year war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Tamil Tigers, after a final battle in which Tiger leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran was killed along with hundreds of other rebel fighters. More than 70,000 people died in the course of the conflict. “This battle has reached its bitter end,” said a rebel spokesman. “We have decided to silence our guns.” Observers questioned the methods of Sri Lanka’s military, and foreign ministers of European Union nations said they were “appalled” by reports of high civilian death counts. A spokesman for the U.N.’s …

An American cattleman. After much bargaining with the largest banks in the United States,Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced the results of the Treasury’s “stress tests,” studies that estimate how the banks will fare if the economic crisis deepens. Ten banks, said Geithner, including Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo, must collectively raise $75 billion in extra capital by November; the rest, however, are fine. Analysts questioned Geithner’s conclusions, which assume a worst-case unemployment rate of 10.3 percent when the current rate is 8.9 percent, and which, after banks complained, ended up measuring bank-capital levels with standards more forgiving than …

A Christian martyr. On the sixth anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s fall from power, tens of thousands of Iraqis loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr protested the continued U.S. occupation. “When America came, they didn’t do anything for Iraq,” said one protester. “This is not democracy.”Christian Science MonitorIn Moldova, thousands of young people, angry over the parliamentary victory of the Communist Party in recent elections, destroyed government buildings and clashed with police in a protest organized using Twitter and Facebook. “If it would have been planned in advance,” said one Moldovan, “they would have used Molotov cocktails.” The Associated PressProtesters in Tbilisi …

A Christian martyr. Two days after three candidates and two campaign workers were kidnapped and murdered, Iraqis voted in the first national elections since 2005, choosing between 14,000 candidates running for 440 provincial offices. Two men were shot and wounded at a polling place in Sadr City, and some voters were turned away when their names could not be found on voting rolls dating from food ration lists held over from Saddam Hussein’s reign. CNN“This day is a victory for all Iraqis,” said an Iraqi general in Kirkuk. “I don’t know whom to vote for,” said an inmate at Basra’s …

President George W. Bush gave a radio address for Memorial Day weekend, invoking the sacrifice of 4,071 U.S. soldiers in Iraq and 432 in Afghanistan. Later, for the last time in his capacity as President, he placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.APBloomberg.comTen thousand Iraqi troops met little resistance as they took control of Mahdi Army-controlled Sadr City under the terms of a cease-fire agreement.Oil rose above $130 a barrel,APand Barack Obama won the Democratic primary in Oregon, while Hillary Clinton won in Kentucky.CNNPolitics.comClinton insisted that her candidacy was still viable. “My husband …

Responding to rocket attacks on Ashkelon, once the largest seaport of Canaan, Israel sent tanks, troops, and fighter jets to northern Gaza. Fifty-four Palestinians�??eight of them children and sixteen of them militants�??and two Israeli soldiers died in one day of fighting; Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said that the Palestinians were risking a “shoah,” the Hebrew word for “big disaster.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas described Israeli raids as “more than a holocaust” and, as the number of Palestinian dead rose to about 100, suspended contact with Israel.BBC NewsWikipediaBBC NewsBBC NewsThe U.S. Navy fired missiles into southern Somalia, targeting …

The Cloaca Maxima, 1872 Friday marked Mexico‘s Day of the Dead, which was celebrated as hundreds of thousands of people attempted to flee the flooded state of Tabasco by boat, helicopter, jet ski, tractor, or by swimming through murky, snake-infested currents.AP via Yahoo! The town of Orme, Tennessee, which has suffered from a prolonged drought, announced that it had run out of water.APFormer FEMA director Michael D. Brown, who now works for a disaster recovery company, was made available for comment regarding the wildfires raging in California,.PR Newswireand the ten-year-old boy who started a fire that spanned 60 square miles …

The Cloaca Maxima, 1872 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, hailed by his countrymen as the “Socrates of the Third Millennium” for “disarming other speakers through his sharp reasoning,” gave a speech on Monday in which he claimed that Iran had no homosexuals and disavowed reports of his nuclear ambitions. “Let me tell a joke here,” Ahmadinejad said. “I think the politicians who are after atomic bombs, or testing them, making them, politically they are backward, retarded.” On Tuesday he met with Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, addressed the United Nations (where he announced that he would disregard any resolutions adopted by the …

An American cattleman. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned.New York TimesThe CIA’s inspector general released a report recommending that former CIA director George Tenet and other senior officials be held accountable for failing to prepare for the threat of Al Qaeda before the September 11 attacks,New York Timesand the Pentagon announced it would close Talon, the database created after September 11 to monitor and store information about security threats and peace activists. Washington PostGrace Paley died.New York TimesIn a motion filed by the Justice Department, the Bush Administration argued that the White House Office of Administration is not subject to the …

“Into the palace parlor they stepped; her hand in his paw the old bruin kept,” 1875 In Tal Afar, Iraq, a truck bomb killed 152 people, making it the deadliest attack of the war. Two hundred and fifty more people died in other bombings carried out against Shiite targets.Reuters via China PostPresident George W. Bush asserted that withdrawing from Iraq would be disastrous and supported his claims by citing two Baghdad bloggers.AP via BreitbartThe newly appointed U.S. ambassador to Iraq spoke of “encouraging signals of progress,”Reuters via China Postand the British Ministry of Defence found that a study which had …

The Cloaca Maxima, 1872 The U.S. House of Representatives passed a timetable for ending the Iraq war by a six-vote margin. The bill mandates American withdrawal in September 2008 if the Bush Administration meets certain benchmarks, earlier if it does not. Several Democrats voted against the timetable because it was not sufficiently antiwar, and Republicans derided the inclusion of domestic provisions benefiting spinach growers, citrus farmers, salmon fishermen, and peanut storers. “What does throwing money at Bubba Gump, Popeye the sailor man, and Mr. Peanut have to do with winning a war?” asked Representative Sam Johnson of Texas. “I will …

Caught in the Web, 1860. Congress continued its inquiry into the role of the Bush Administration in last year’s firing of eight U.S attorneys. D. Kyle Sampson, the chief of staff for U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, resigned after claiming, in an apparent attempt to save Gonzalez from the charge of lying to Congress, that he did not tell his superiors at the Justice Department that the White House wanted to fire the prosecutors. The Justice Department released a March 2005 email from Sampson to then-White House counsel Harriet Miers, in which he ranked all 93 U.S. attorneys on their …

An audit by the inspector general of the United States Justice Department charged that the FBI has engaged in “serious misuse” of the USA Patriot Act to collect the confidential phone, bank, and credit records of U.S. citizens without first obtaining a search warrant.CNN.comThe scandal surrounding the firing of eight federal prosecutors continued to unfold as it became clearer from congressional testimony that the attorneys had resisted political pressure from the White House to subordinate law enforcement priorities to partisan politics. Karl Rove admitted that he had passed along complaints from the New MexicoRepublican Party chairman about U.S. Attorney David …

An American cattleman. An appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the writ of habeas corpus does not apply to prisoners in the American concentration camp at Guant�namo Bay,Cuba.Washington PostAmericans celebrated the 275th birthday of George Washington, and President George W. Bush compared the War on Terror to the American Revolution: “General Washington understood that the Revolutionary War was a test of wills, and his will was unbreakable.”Washington PostBritish Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that he would bring home more than 1,600 of the 7,100 British troops in Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney said that the withdrawal was “an affirmation …

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki called initial stages of the new security crackdown in Baghdad a “dazzling success.” Later, six explosions in three markets killed 127 people, and suspected insurgents shot six people in the head in a public garden.NYTNYTNYTAmerican forces, targeting Taliban fighters, launched artillery rounds into Pakistan.BreitbartPresident George W. Bush expressed “certainty” that the Iranian government has been supplying Iraqi insurgents with weapons and extended the deployment of 3,200 soldiers so close to the end of their tour that their uniforms and supplies had already been packed for shipment.CBS4DenverNYTBush suggested that he was not particularly interested in …

Federal agents in Missouri found two kidnapped adolescent boys in the apartment of Michael Devlin, a 41-year-old pizzeria manager. “I still feel like I’m in a dream, only this time it’s a good dream, not the nightmare I’ve had to live for the past four-and-a-half years,” said the mother of one of the boys. New York TimesThe Bush Administration announced plans to increase U.S. forces in Iraq by 20,000 troops,New York TimesAmericans in Erbil arrested six Iranians working at a diplomatic office, New York Timesand Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D., Del.) asserted that the authority Congress granted the Bush …

United States forces succeeded in killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, with two five-hundred-pound bombs that were dropped on a safe house north of Baghdad. Zarqawi reportedly survived the bombing at first and even tried to get away but was strapped to a stretcher, where he died. The U.S. military denied reports that American soldiers had beaten the dying terrorist. “He died while American soldiers were attempting to save his life,” said General George Casey. Al Qaeda promised to respond with “major attacks.”New York TimesBloombergNew York TimesTom DeLay, the former Republican majority leader who was …