NEW YORKER: The real-life murder mystery unfolding at the highest ranks of the Chinese government—featuring, so far, homicide, MI6, poison, Party infighting, and a police chief whose hobby involves organ transplantation—is not only a political opera that makes Berlusconi’s antics look like community theatre. It’s also the largest Communist Party convulsion since the arrival of the Web, and the juxtaposition between Party orthodoxy and today’s information culture has laid bare a fault line in the future of “enlightened authoritarianism.” Leninist systems are built on secrecy, on a monopoly on information to prevent the wrong ideas from leading the people down […]

CBS NEWS: The neighborhood watch volunteer who shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was arrested and charged with second-degree murder Wednesday after months of mounting tensions and protests across the country. George Zimmerman, 28, could get up to life in prison if convicted in the slaying of the unarmed black teenager. He is expected to enter a not guilty plea. Special prosecutor Angela Corey announced the charges but would not discuss how she arrived at them or disclose other details of her investigation, saying: “That’s why we try cases in court.” Second-degree murder is typically brought in cases when there is a […]

MOTHER JONES: McDonald’s, it turns out, isn’t the only fast-food giant to have cut ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council, the corporate-funded organization that writes up model bills for thousands of state lawmakers nationwide. Wendy’s joins a handful of other major food and beverage companies—McDonald’s, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Kraft—in ditching ALEC. Intuit, which makes the Quicken personal finance software, has also ended its ALEC membership.Wendy’s said on its official Twitter feed on Tuesday night that it, too, had left ALEC. “We decided late 2011 and never renewed this year. It didn’t fit our business needs,” the company tweeted. Wendy’s is […]

ABC NEWS: A special prosecutor promised “new information regarding the Trayvon Martin shooting death investigation” within 72 hours, prompting speculation that the alleged shooter, George Zimmerman, could be charged soon. special prosecutor promised “new information regarding the Trayvon Martin shooting death The announcement that the prosecutor, State Attorney Angela Corey, would soon hold a news conference came just hours after Zimmerman’s lawyers said they would no longer represent him. […] The lawyers said they had not spoken to Zimmerman since Sunday, after they set up a website with his father for his legal defense. The following day, Zimmerman announced a […]

NEW YORK TIMES: Rick Santorum suspended his presidential campaign on Tuesday, bowing to the inevitability of Mitt Romney’s nomination and ending his improbable, come-from-behind quest to become the party’s conservative standard-bearer in the fall. “We made a decision over the weekend, that while this presidential race for us is over, for me, and we will suspend our campaign today, we are not done fighting hating,” Mr. Santorum said. MORE ASSOCIATED PRESS: From obscure former senator driving a pickup truck across Iowa, Rick Santorum made a surprising — he calls it miraculous — leap to become the most formidable threat to […]

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Jurors in a landmark church sex-abuse trial were presented with documents Tuesday outlining the troubled clerical career of a priest who was convicted of child pornography charges yet remained in ministry for years despite similar and repeated complaints. Prosecutors presented years of correspondence from mental health facilities, therapists and church officials regarding Edward DePaoli when he was a priest. The documents, kept in the archdiocese’s secret archives, outlined how DePaoli, after being convicted in federal court of child pornography charges in 1986, went through psychological treatment, rounds of therapy, and a half dozen church assignments for two decades […]

THE GUARDIAN: A leading US conservative magazine, the National Review, has fired a prominent contributor over an online column advising his children to protect themselves by avoiding African Americans, to closely scrutinise black politicians and to accept that white people are more intelligent. John Derbyshire wrote the offending article, The Talk: Nonblack Version, as a response to widespread debate over “the talk” that many African American parents give their teenage sons about racism in America following the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida. Derbyshire’s column appeared in another publication, Taki’s Magazine, run by the rightwing Greek socialite Taki Theodoracopulos, who […]

2411 Kensington Avenue, 4:34 AM, by JOE KACZMAREK RELATED: Two firefighters who were battling a massive blaze at an abandoned warehouse Monday were killed when an adjacent furniture store they were inspecting collapsed, burying them in a pile of debris, authorities said. It took about two hours to extract the bodies of Lt. Robert Neary, 60, and firefighter Daniel Sweeney, 25, because of all the debris, Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers said at a news conference. Two other firefighters were rescued and taken to a hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries. The blaze in the city’s Kensington section started around 3:15 a.m. and […]

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