By Kirk Johnson, New York Times/Statehouse Journal, Dec. 26/27, 2012

Home page lede: One of the creators of a new majority coalition in the state Capitol in Olympia said politics had become too liberal to be representative of Washington as a whole.

Excerpt: [....] Two Democrats in the State Senate, in bolting from the party’s ranks this month to join with Republicans in creating a new majority coalition, say yes.

By Ron Rosenbaum, Smithsonian magazine, January 2013

The digital pioneer and visionary behind virtual reality has turned against the very culture he helped create

By Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing, guardian.co.uk, 25 Dec 2012

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

By Gary Marcus, News Desk @ newyorker.com, Dec. 24, 2012

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.

By Alec Wilkinson, News Desk @ newyorker.com, Dec. 24, 2012

Years ago, when I was twenty-two, I was a policeman in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, and I had a .38 Smith and Wesson. It wasn’t mine; it had been given to me on my first night of work, selected by the sergeant [....]

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. [....]

By Masha Lipman, News Desk @ newyorker.com, Dec. 21, 2012

The Magnitsky Act, passed recently by the United States Senate, may have been of little interest to Americans, but its impact and aftermath in Russia has been tempestuous.

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.

[....]

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.

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.

By Chico Harlan, Washington Post, Dec 19, 2012

SEOUL — Park Geun-hye spent part of her childhood in South Korea’s presidential palace, raised by an authoritarian father who seized power in a military coup 51 years ago. She returns now as the democratically elected president of a nation concerned about its slowing economy and mounting social problems.

By David Smith, guardian.co.uk, 19 Dec. 2012

Barack Obama has urged the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, to halt support for rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, a move welcomed by critics of Kagame's government.

By Declan Walsh and Donald G. McNeil, Jr., New York Times, Dec 19/20, 2012

LAHORE, Pakistan — The front-line heroes of Pakistan’s war on polio are its volunteers: young women who tread fearlessly from door to door, in slums and highland villages, administering precious drops of vaccine to children in places where their immunization campaign is often viewed with suspicion.

By James Montague, New York Times, Dec. 19/20, 2012

[....] “The fans were coming, sprinting after the match,” Fathi, 28, recalled last week. “I knew they hated me and all the players. All the players ran. I didn’t know what was happening outside. But something was happening outside. After this they killed the boys. Not the men, the boys.”

By James Alan Fox, The Conversation @ The Chronicle of Higher Education website, Dec. 18, 2012

[James Alan Fox is the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy at Northeastern University and the author of Violence and Security on Campus: From Preschool Through College (Praeger, 2010).]

[....]

Myth: Mass shootings are on the rise. Reality: [....]

Myth: Mass murderers snap and kill indiscriminately. Reality: [....]

By Priscillia Gilman, Guest Op-Ed, New York Times, Dec 17/18, 2012

[....] It began as insinuation, but quickly flowered into outright declaration.

USA Today, Dec. 13/14, 2012

Cooperating with investigators is one way people charged with federal crimes can escape tough prison sentences. This map shows the percentage of federal convictions from 2006 to 2011 where sentences were reduced in exchange for "substantial assistance" (SA), according to a USA TODAY investigation.

[....]