By Joseph Stepansky , Rocco Parascandola and John Lauinger, New York Daily News, Jan 17, 2012
A 7-year-old Queens student showed up for school Thursday with a handgun and ammunition in his bookbag, prompting a police investigation and a lockdown of the building.
An NYPD school safety agent discovered the handgun, a .22-caliber, shortly after the boy arrived for class at the Wave Preparatory Elementary School in Far Rockaway, police sources said. A 10-round ammunition magazine and loose bullets were also found in the bag. [....]
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey: Turkish jets have pounded Kurdish rebel hideouts in northern Iraq in the fiercest aerial campaign in years, military sources said Wednesday, the same day the bodies of three female Kurdish activists who were killed in Paris were due home.
By Rachel Rose Hartman, The Ticket @ Yahoo News, Jan. 16, 2013
Outspoken liberal Dennis Kucinich has found a new home—at the Fox News channel.
Yes, you read that right.
Following his forced retirement from Congress, the former Ohio Democratic congressman has signed on with Fox News to be a contributor, the network announced Wednesday [....]
Six attackers shot dead after detonating car bomb in assault on Kabul spy compound close to foreign embassies
By Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul, guardian.co.uk, 16 Jan 2013
A six-strong suicide squad has attacked a heavily-fortified spy compound at the heart of the Afghan capital, killing at least one commando and wounding dozens of civilians in the first major Taliban attack on Kabul this year.
By Scott Savage and Adam Nossiter, New York Times, Jan 16/17, 2013
PARIS — Islamist militants seized a foreign-operated gas field in Algeria early Wednesday and took 20 or more foreign hostages, including Americans, according to an Algerian government official and the country’s state-run news agency, in what appeared to be a retaliation for the French-led military intervention in neighboring Mali.
By Suzanne Goldenberg, guardian.co.uk, 15 Jan 2013
Cities on the United States east coast are "sitting ducks" for the next big storm because of the destruction wrought by hurricane Sandy, one of Barack Obama's top scientists warned on Tuesday.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered the arrest of Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf in a corruption case on Tuesday afternoon, in a drastic intensification of hostilities between the country’s embattled government and its opponents.
By Thomas Kaplan and Danny Hakim, New York Times, Jan 14/15, 2013
ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and lawmakers agreed on Monday to a broad package of changes to gun laws that would expand the state’s ban on assault weapons and would include new measures to keep guns away from the mentally ill.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian warplanes have killed dozens of civilians, including more than 20 children, in an intensifying campaign of anti-insurgency airstrikes across the country over the past few days, bombing some targets as families were congregating outside to enjoy a sunny break from prolonged winter storms, activists and international medical aid workers said Monday.
By Joshua Keating, Passport blog @ ForeignPolicy.com, Jan. 14, 2013
[....] "François Hollande, was it worth it?" the group's official Twitter account, HSMPress (warning: Very graphic), wrote as a caption on a picture of one of the slain soldiers. Another image takes note of the crucifix the man is wearing, with the caption, "A return of the crusades, but the cross could not save him from the sword."
SANNA --Iran is working with southern secessionists in Yemen to expand its influence and destabilize the strategic region around the Straits of Hormuz, the U.S. envoy to Yemen was quoted as saying on Sunday.
The Greek police on Saturday were looking for the people responsible for detonating makeshift bombs at the homes of five journalists in Athens, the latest in a series of actions taken against reporters in Greece that have raised questions about a deteriorating climate for media freedom.
By Anemona Hartocollis, New York Times, Jan 11/12, 2013
In a bold experiment in performance pay, complaints from patients at New York City’s public hospitals and other measures of their care — like how long before they are discharged and how they fare afterward — will be reflected in doctors’ paychecks under a plan being negotiated by the physicians and their hospitals.
Thousands of Sunni Iraqis have taken to the streets of Baghdad and other parts of the country to decry the alleged targeting of their minority, in rallies hardening opposition to the country's Shia leader.
By Joe Hagan, Daily Intelligencer @ nymag.com, Jan. 11, 2013
The next two weeks are going to get tense inside the headquarters of the New York Times.
Last month, executive editor Jill Abramson told the staff she’d have to cut 30 positions from the news division to buffer against financial losses from rapidly declining advertising revenue. Reporters and editors would be offered buyouts, she said, but if she didn't have enough takers in a month’s time, she would be “forced to go to layoffs.”
By Afua Hirsch, west Africa correspondent, guardian.co.uk, 11 Jan. 2013
French troops have arrived in Mali amid a rapid escalation of international efforts to intervene in the country, where Islamist groups are continuing to clash with the army for control of the desert north.
By Stephen Rodrick, New York Times Magazine, Jan 10/13, 2013
Hollywood reporting as an art form. (And doesn't appear to need much more work to be turned into a script for a really good movie itself, Paul Schrader as the new Willy Loman or something like that.)
Al Jazeera, Jan 12, 2013