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 …

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 Christian martyr. The congressional supercommittee assigned to devise a plan for reining in the federal deficit failed to reach an agreement, triggering $1.2 trillion in budget cuts that will take effect in 2013, including cuts to defense spending and Medicare. Senate Democrats planned to follow up the failed talks by introducing $400 billion in new spending legislation over the coming weeks, while Republicans indicated that they would try to reconfigure the automatic cuts in order to spare defense programs. “The knives,” said Senator Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), “are over our heads.”Los Angeles TimesThe HillReuters via NBCPoliticoProtesters with the Occupy …

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,” …

The wire master and his puppets, 1875. President Barack Obama announced that the government would not release pictures of Osama bin Laden’s mutilated corpse, saying, “We don’t need to spike the football.”CBS NewsThe Associated Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all photos and video shot during the raid on the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden was hiding, and reporters discovered cabbage, potatoes, and marijuana growing around the property. National Press Photographers AssociationSarah Palin tweeted that President Obama was “pussy-footing around,” and the White House released footage found in the compound showing bin Laden watching himself …

A Small Family. While being questioned about his abuses of power, ousted 82-year-old Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak reportedly suffered a heart attack and was rushed to a hospital in the beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. GuardianMubarak’s sons, Gamal and Alaa, were taken for questioning from the hospital, in a police van that was pelted with stones, bottles, and flip-flops; they joined former Egyptian ministers in Tora Farm prison. “Bear in mind they are very broken,” said a prison officer of the influx of inmates, who added that Tora Farm was known as a “five-star prison” only because “those who come …

One of the busiest vacation weekends of the year was marred by Hurricane Earl, which prompted evacuations from Puerto Rico to North Carolina, a suspension of Amtrak service between New York and Boston, and the cancellation of dozens of airline flights. Yet the storm waned quickly and moved out to sea, and weekend weather was pleasant. NYTimesNYTimesPresident Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and the leaders of Jordan and Egypt to urge them all to talk to one another. NYTimesNYTimesJames Lee, 43, was shot and killed by police after entering the offices of …

Two thousand seven hundred twenty-two days after U.S. troops crossed the Kuwaiti border into Iraq, U.S. combat operations there officially ended. Vice President Joseph Biden arrived to usher in ”Operation New Dawn,” during which the nearly 50,000 American troops remaining in the country will still be available for combat missions when requested by Iraqi forces. Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for coordinated attacks in 13 towns and cities that killed at least 56 people, many of them members of the Iraqi police and security forces, calling the assaults “the wings of victory sweeping again over a new day.”New York …

A Christian martyr. A U.S. government panel announced that since April 20 between 20,000 and 40,000 barrels of oil (1.7 million gallons) have leaked from a BP wellhead into the Gulf of Mexico every day. (The government’s original estimate, made a week after the spill began, was 5,000 barrels a day.) The size of the BP spill now exceeds that of the “Exxon Valdez” disaster by a factor of eight, and several experts on the panel acknowledged that the actual rate of leakage could be even higher. After its first effort to install a containment cap failed, BP successfully installed …

A kinkajou, 1886. After President Barack Obama promised to issue an executive order guaranteeing that federal funds will not be used for abortions, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 219-212 to approve the Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act. The 2,400-page health-care plan lacks a public option but does provide for state-run health-care “exchanges,” to open in 2014, at which point the uninsured–barring Indian tribes and the very poor–will face fines if they do not have health insurance. The bill also introduces a 10 percent excise tax on indoor tanning salons. Representative Paul D. Ryan (R., Wis.), called the bill …

President Obama appeared likely to surge 40,000 troops into Afghanistan, thus adopting the key military tactic that the Bush Administration defined as successful in Iraq.NY TimesIn Afghanistan, a country with no duly elected president, citizens were turning to Taliban “shadow courts” for justice, and, in a series of unannounced government actions, an additional 13,000 U.S. military engineers, medical personnel, military police, and intelligence officers were already deploying.VOA NewsmNY TimesWashington PostThe Pakistani military embarked on its own escalation, sending 28,000 troops into South Waziristan in a failed attempt to defeat entrenched Taliban militants.NY TimesThe White House was at war with the …

After months of negotiation by the bipartisan “gang of six” in the Senate, Senator Max Baucus unveiled his $776-billion health-care reform bill, which is supported by none of the gang’s three Republican members and received a lukewarm response from Democrats. Baucus’s plan, which includes member-run insurance co-operatives but no public option, would mandate that all Americans buy insurance and would provide subsidies for those who can’t afford it. The subsidies would be paid for in part by an excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” insurance plans, including those provided to firefighters, coal miners, and many other union workers. “That’s not really …

CIA director Leon Panetta admitted that the agency, initially under orders from then-Vice President Dick Cheney, kept secret from Congress the existence of a special counterterrorism program for eight years. Panetta also said that the program–intended to deploy small teams to assassinate Al Qaeda leaders–was canceled last month.New York TimesAttorney General Eric Holder was considering the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate CIAtorture (shackling, punching, beating, waterboarding with extra water, and violating the U.N. Convention Against Torture) under the Bush Administration, despite the resistance of the White House, which believes that its legislative agenda would be hindered by a …

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 …

Democrats were outvoting Republicans in all nine states that track the party affiliations of early voters, indicating a likely election victory for Barack Obama. George Mason University“It’s gonna get nasty,” Obama told a crowd in Missouri.CNNRepublicans claimed that Democrats were coercing dementia patients to cast absentee ballots,Des Moines Registerand fliers posted in black neighborhoods of Philadelphia falsely warned that voters with unpaid parking tickets would be arrested at the polls.APIt was reported that Obama‘s half-aunt Zeitun Onyango lives in a Boston housing project and is an illegal immigrant–a detail likely leaked by the Bush Administration against the procedures of the …

Colombian military commandos infiltrated a settlement operated by the guerilla group FARC and freed 15 hostages, among them three U.S. contractors and the Colombian-French politician Ingrid Betancourt. President George W. Bush called Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to congratulate him. “What a joyous occasion it must be to know that the plan had worked,” said Bush. “That people who were unjustly held were now free to be with their families.”WhiteHouse.govA federal appeals court ruled that evidence against Hozaifa Parhat, a ChineseMuslim held at Guantanamo Bay for six years, consisted of nothing more than the reassertion of his guilt in three top-secret …

Caught in the Web, 1860. The military junta in Myanmar put the official death toll from last week’s Cyclone Nargis (Urdu for “daffodil”) at 28,458, while foreign observers, taking into account that heavy rains were expected to continue, with malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, and dysentery to follow, expected that as many as 100,000 people would die. Before distributing foreign-aid packages, the junta re-labeled them with the names of its generals; a referendum on a new constitution that will perpetuate the junta’s rule was not delayed. “Let’s go cast a vote,” sang two female pop vocalists on state-run television. “With sincere …

Cyclone Nargis tore off roofs, shredded trees, overturned cars, and killed more than 10,000 people in Myanmar.Local 6Tens of thousands of Somalis rioted in Mogadishu over the high cost of food,CNNPresident Bush pledged $770 million in international food aid,BBCand an inmate awaiting trial for murder sued an Arkansas county jail for underfeeding him after he shed 105 pounds from his 413-pound frame. “About an hour after each meal,” he stated in a complaint, “my stomach starts to hurt and growl [and] I feel hungry again. We are literally being starved to death.”CBSThe sister-in-law of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian electrician accused …

President George W. Bush called for $145 billion in tax cuts, describing the measures as a “shot in the arm” for the U.S. economy, which caused stock values to plunge in Australia, Tokyo, Hong Kong, China, and across Europe. “There’s something approaching panic in the market,” said an analyst with Bank of America. “The short-term risks,” explained Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, “are to the downside.”BBC NewsNew York TimesBBC NewsResearchers found that foreigners invested $414 billion in American companies in 2007, up 90 percent from 2006. “This is a vote of confidence in the American economy,” said Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert …