This Day in News

Today I felt like visiting my news sites again. News-searching is bothersome because it is exactly that; one has to search for news. I have to sift through celebrity baby news, the latest statement by some politician about Iran, statements by politicians in general, the latest spates of car bombing in Iraq, domestic news, etc., before I finally get to the important items. Even then I have to go to at least three sites to know a good cross-regional selection of news.

One shortcut is the New York Times website's "World Briefings." (Link to today's version) Here are four more important international news articles that I found in the French daily Le Monde:

En deux mois, le choléra a tué 500 personnes en Angola
Le président Idriss Déby lance la campagne électorale et poursuit la chasse aux rebelles
L'Ouganda appelle à un effort collectif contre la LRA
L'ONU accuse les pays riches de bafouer le droit d'asile

Anyway, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan is retiring! (Link to article) The reason why I am deliriously happy is that last year I read his press briefings daily; the way he answered reporter's questions without even understanding them or ever answering them directly (unless they were "yes" or "no" questions) was tormenting. So I'm not in the least apologetic for my schadenfreude. Also, Bush's approval ratings are "hovering around 35%" -- the implication of height in the word "hovering" being inaccurate -- and congressional elections are coming up! Hahahahaha!

Other good election news: today the Italian supreme court declared Romano Prodi victorious in Italy's elections! (Link to article)

And to counterbalance my evident distaste for the current US government, here is an article about the generosity of private US citizens: "America's aid iceberg" .

I was also very pleased to read an op-ed article in the New York Times about the Israel lobby in the United States, where Tony Judt (of whom I've read articles in the New York Review of Books) writes about the controversy surrounding this lobby's power, and about whether one should criticize it. Mr. Judt writes more or less that this lobby does clearly exist, that it does clearly have a lot of power but that -- as the title suggests -- it really is a lobby and not a conspiracy, and that people have every right (and reason) to discuss it and criticize it without having to fear that they will be labelled as anti-Semitic.

Finally, here are a few other articles:

Politics: Another country (about Somaliland, a peaceful, democratic region in Somalia that wants its independence)
Archaeology/Politics: Babylon Awaits an Iraq Without Fighting
Health: A Slight Change in Habits Could Lull You to Sleep

. . . and, as a patriotic, monarch-loving Canadian, I will end by linking to an article about the Queen's birthday: Happy birthday to all!