By Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul, guardian.co.uk, 26 Dec. 2012

A suicide bomber driving a minibus full of explosives has attacked a base in eastern Afghanistan used by Nato troops and CIA operatives, killing three Afghan civilians and a security guard and injuring at least seven others.

The attacker struck when his vehicle was detained at a checkpoint a short distance from the east gate of the base in Khost province [....]

The provincial police chief, General Abdul Qayoum Bakaizoi, confirmed the attack had happened at around 8am near one of two main gates to Forward Operating Base (FOB) Chapman.

The attack came almost exactly three years after a much more devastating suicide bomber hit US intelligence officers operating out of FOB Chapman. A Jordanian doctor and militant posing as a double agent, he killed the station chief and six other CIA employees as well as a Jordanian intelligence official [....]

News Desk @ newyorker.com, Dec. 24, 2012

Here’s one last exercise in democracy for 2012: a collection of the most popular magazine stories on the site this year, as determined by the combined clicks of the Internet electorate.

WEBSTER, N.Y. - Two firefighters are dead and two more injured after being shot while battling a blaze in upstate New York on Monday morning, reports CBS affiliate WROC.

Police Chief Gerald Pickering says "one or more shooters" fired at the firefighters when they arrived at the scene of the blaze near the Lake Ontario shore just east of Rochester at around 6 a.m.

Police have surrounded the neighborhood and are searching for the shooter....

Wayne La Pierre - "Have a SWAT team sweep and secure the area before firefighters are dispatched to fight a fire. If this killer didn't have a gun, he could have dug booby traps with poisoned punji sticks made of sharpened bamboo to do the same thing, are we going to ban shovels?"

CNN:

...For hours, the gunfire stopped firefighters from working to extinguish the fire and forced police SWAT teams to evacuate homes in the area.

Firefighters first arrived before 6 a.m., said Rob Boutillier, Webster's fire marshal. By 9 a.m., flames had engulfed three houses and a vehicle, he said.

"It's still an active crime scene," Pickering said. "We have firefighters there at the location. It took a while to make it safe ... to put out the fires."...

the more damning response to the foolish point that "more people with guns are the best way to stop mass shootings" is found in this 2009 ABC video showing how people with guns, and training, actually react when confronted by something like a sudden, surprise shooting. Watch the results of the experiment --- using some folks with relatively little gun training as well as some who are trained marksmen --- to see how well that whole "if only someone was armed during these shootings they could have stopped the shooter!" argument holds up...

By Connor Simpson, The Atlantic Wire, Dec. 22, 2012

Since when did Politico become the media's biggest shot thrower? In this morning's Playbook email, Politico's Mike Allen took some shots at the Wall Street Journal for their big fiscal cliff story. [....]

This is just the latest round of shot-firing from the outlet that is trying to take down Nate Silver. It's Dylan Byers who usually acts as the enforcer there. Allen is one of the company's biggest attractions. It is he (and Jim VandeHei) who Salon's Alex Pareene put on the top of his annual hack list, after all. A word of advice for Allen: this is a bad look for you. Stars don't act as enforcers. Gretzky never fought anyone. He had Semenko and McSorley for that. (Not that we're comparing you to Gretzky in any other way.) Leave the shots to Byers. This makes you look jealous. [....]

Dawn.com, Dec. 22, 2012

[....] Speaking to Dawn.com from an undisclosed location, a spokesman for the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Ehsanullah Ehsan, claimed responsibility for the blast and Bilour’s assassination.

“We claim responsibility for killing Bashir Ahmed Bilour. It is revenge for the martyrdom of our elder Sheikh Naseeb Khan,” TTP spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP.

[....]

The bombing follows last week’s attack on Peshawar airport, when nine people including five attackers died in a car bomb, rocket and gun attack.

Earlier this month, the Pakistani Taliban had attacked an ANP rally in Charsadda scheduled to be addressed by ANP Chief Asfand Yar Wali Khan.

The Taliban spokesman had vowed to intensify attacks against political gatherings of “the secular ANP and MQM”, the biggest political party in Karachi, Pakistan’s commercial capital.

Spokesman Ehsan had said the ANP and MQM would be on their hit-list because of their secular views and their enmity towards the Taliban [....]

By Hannah Roberts, Daily Mail Online, Dec. 20, 2012

Here you want to click to see the pictures and captions, they are jaw-dropping. The text is just a teaser, it starts like this:

When you have £16billion in the bank, a Cessna is simply not an option.

Instead, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud is about to take delivery of an Airbus A380, the world’s biggest private jet.

The same model is used by Singapore Airlines and Emirates and can fly 800 passengers 8,000 miles before refuelling. But the Saudi prince doesn’t need 800 seats, so he will have them removed to make room for an opulent, marble-finished Turkish bath and a parking space for his Rolls-Royce [....]

Hagel has become the neocons' new target of opportunity after emerging as a likely choice to become Defense Secretary. He is a bete noire to the neocons because he is viewed as disturbingly independent of Israel's preferences for what U.S. foreign and military policy must be.

Boehner chickens out!

There will be no vote on Plan B.

By Timothy Pratt, New York Times, Dec. 19/20, 2012

[....] “Wear Pants to Church,” an event on Sunday, was meant to draw attention to the role of women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, using attire as a symbolic first salvo in a larger struggle over gender inequalities.

Though the Mormon Church has no official policy against women wearing pants to church, many say they feel peer pressure to wear a dress, particularly in the Western United States, organizers said. So on Sunday, thousands of Mormon women arrived at church in pants in places like Cambridge, England; Heidelberg, Germany; Austin, Tex.; the Marshall Islands; and Kotzebue, Alaska. A number of the women posted their photos on Facebook and other Web sites. [....]

Joanna Brooks, a professor at San Diego State University and the author of “The Book of Mormon Girl: A Memoir of an American Faith,” called it “the largest concerted Mormon feminist effort in history.”

A church spokesman, Eric Hawkins, declined to comment on the event.

Organizers hope the dialogue will now expand to include issues like the ordination of women, or women taking on more responsibilities at church events. [....]

Dirk Lammers, Associated Press, last night

............

The boys, both 16, were classmates at Riggs High School.

A 16-year-old witness who was hanging out with the boys told detectives that Williams and the other boy began to wrestle around jokingly after arguing about a paintball game.

The accused shooter then retrieved a semi-automatic shotgun, walked into the kitchen area and pointed it at the witness, according to the arrest affidavit.

The witness said he heard the gun click, then saw the accused shooter take a shotgun shell from a drawer, load the gun and point it at him again. The witness said he then heard another click, according to the affidavit.

The witness told police he was trying to leave the house through a sliding glass door when Williams stepped in between him and the accused shooter. The witness told detectives that the gun fired and he observed a splatter, according to the affidavit.

...........