A kinkajou, 1886. WikiLeaks released 391,832 U.S. ArmyIraq War field reports. The documents revealed the rampant burning, lashing, and execution of detainees by Iraqi army and police officers; U.S. suspicions that Shiite Iraqi militants were being trained by Iran; the increasing reliance on private contractors to augment the dwindling ranks of soldiers; and approximately 15,000 previously unreported civilian casualties. “This is all classified secret information never designed to be exposed to the public,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell. “Now you will have virtually half a million classified secret documents in the public domain which our enemies clearly intend to …

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 …

A Christian martyr. Federal judge Vaughn Walker ruled that California’s Proposition 8, which sought to ban gay marriage, violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution. “Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians,” the judge said in his opinion. “The evidence shows that, by every available metric, opposite-sex couples are not better than their same-sex counterparts.” Conservative groups opposed to the ruling claimed Walker�??s own sexual orientation influenced his decision. “Here we have an openly gay federal judge,” explained chairwoman of The National Organization for Marriage, Maggie Gallagher, “substituting his …

An American cattleman. In one of the largest spy swaps since the Cold War, ten Russian agents who pleaded guilty to espionage in the United States were flown to Vienna, where they were exchanged for four men who had been found guilty of spying for America and Britain. Asked whether the United States has any spies as “hot” as 28-year-old agent Anna Chapman, who was included in the swap, Vice President Joseph Biden said, “Let me be clear, it wasn’t my idea to send her back.”BBCBBCPresident Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Washington, D.C., where they …

An American cattleman. A van filled with 1,650 pounds of explosives rammed into a NATO convoy in Kabul, killing 18 people, including five Americans, and bringing the total number of American dead in Afghanistan to more than 1,000. “What do you want me to do with this?” an Afghan soldier carrying a bloody bag of brains asked an ambulance driver who had already carried off six bodies. “Do you want me to bury it, or do you want to take it?”New York TimesNew York Daily NewsCommentators declared that a wave of “outsiders” was toppling incumbents in the Senate, as Democratic …

An American cattleman. An 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck central Chile, killing at least 700 people and displacing more than 2 million. At least 100 aftershocks followed, including one that measured 6.1 on the Richter scale, and a Pacific-wide tsunami alert was issued for the first 24 hours after the quake. A four-inch wave struck Japan.New York TimesHeavy downpours (beginning several weeks before Haiti’s traditional rainy season) triggered floods that killed at least eight Haitians; storm system Xynthia killed more than 45 people in Portugal, Spain,Germany, and France; and following a blizzard that left New York City covered with more than 2 …

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 …

The Obama Administration abandoned its quest for a public, government-run health-care option for the uninsured. Protesters waved signs that read “Death to Obama” and depicted the president with an Adolph Hitler mustache at “town hall” meetings hosted by senators; at one such event, a conservative University of Colorado student challenged President Obama to an “Oxford-style” debate. Obama declined the invitation but did grant an hour-long interview on bullying and school lunches to an 11-year-old named Damon Weaver, ultimately agreeing to be Weaver’s homeboy. Senator Arlen Specter arrived at his town hall meeting with extra security to guard him from irate …

An American cattleman. President Barack Obama visited Cairo and addressed the Muslim world in a 55-minute speech that the White House arranged to be televised, text-messaged in four languages, and posted to Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter. Obama quoted from the Koran, spoke in Arabic, recognized Palestine, and said that “the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.” He visited the Sphinx and pyramids, then spent a night at the desert stallion farm of Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, who presented him with the King Abdul Aziz Order of Merit, a thick gold chain with a very large …

An American cattleman. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control declared a public-health emergency over an outbreak of swine flu that has infected at least 20 people in California, Kansas, New York, Ohio, and Texas. The virus is believed to have originated in Mexico City, where more than 149 people, all aged between 20 and 40, have died, and at least 1,300 people have gotten sick. Mexico‘s government closed all schools, universities, and zoos, canceled church services, soccer games, and bullfights, and banned visits to beauty salons and juvenile detention centers. Swine flu has been found in Canada, China, France, Israel, …

Israel extended its occupation of the Gaza strip, sending in ground forces and cutting the territory in two. Hamas fired 32 missiles at Israel. The Palestinian health ministry reported that more than 500 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including 21 children, have been killed so far; the Israeli military stated that 80 percent of the Palestinian dead were members of Hamas. “We don’t intend neither to occupy Gaza nor to crush Hamas, but to crush terror,” explained Israeli President Shimon Peres. “And Hamas needs a real and serious lesson.” “We have restrained ourselves for a long time,” said Israeli Defense …

Barack Obama announced Joe Biden, the senior senator from Delaware, as his running mate, even though Biden voted for the war in Iraq and for NAFTA and once said that Obama was “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”Information WeekThe Washington PostThe Obama campaign denied that there was anything wrong with Biden’s signing a 2005 bill that eliminated many bankruptcy protections for consumers after Biden’s lobbyist son Hunter was retained for $100,000 a year by the financial-services giant MBNA, employees of which have donated $214,000 to Biden over the years.The New York …

Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf said that the country will hold parliamentary elections in January but refused to give a date for ending his emergency decree or stepping down as head of the military. Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was placed under house arrest when she tried to attend a political rally. President George W. Bush said that General Musharraf has been an “indispensable ally.”NY TimesBBCnews.comBurma’s military junta permitted pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years, to meet with her party.BBCnews.comAt an Ibero-American summit in Chile, Venezuelan President Hugo …

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 …