KHARTOUM, Sudan (CNN) — A Sudanese court found a British teacher guilty of insulting religion and sentenced her to 15 days in prison Thursday for allowing a teddy bear to be named “Mohammed,” British authorities and her lawyer reported. Gibbons, 54, was arrested Sunday after she asked her class of 7-year-olds in Khartoum to name the stuffed animal as part of a school project, the British Foreign Office said. She had faced charges under Article 125 of Sudan’s constitution, the law relating to insulting religion and inciting hatred. Appearing somber and dazed, Gibbons arrived at the central courthouse in Khartoum […]

BY AMY Z. QUINN You know how people like me always point out that New Yorkers hated Rudy Giuliani up until 9/11? And how many hearts softened toward him after, but it didn’t make anyone trust him more? That’s partly because everything the right wing hated about Bill Clinton in the ’90s — the two faces, the skirt-chasing, the marriage nobody could figure out — Giuliani was living, the whole time, back in the Empire State. So now it’s an hour before the CNN/YouTube GOP debate and the Giuliani camp is surely backstage scrambling to script some responses to this, […]

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BY JONATHAN VALANIA Before we get started I should tell you in the interest of full disclosure that the bitchin logo above is actually for the band Blackwater, not the mercenary army controversial independent security contractor we are about to discuss. However, A.) it is a bitchin logo, and B.) I am pretty sure these guys are too high or drunk to notice or care. So, let’s move on. This story is very convoluted and you really have to read the whole article to get your bearings on this, but in a nutshell: Long before the ongoing FBI probe into […]

Earlier this year, using the clout that only major broadcast networks seem capable of mustering, CBS News contacted the governments of all 50 states requesting their official records of death by suicide going back 12 years. They heard back from 45 of the 50. From the mountains of gathered information, they sifted out the suicides of those Americans who had served in the armed forces. What they discovered is that in 2005 alone — and remember, this is just in 45 states — there were at least 6,256 veteran suicides, 120 every week for a year and an average of […]

THE POLITICO: The announcement took Capitol Hill by surprise because Lott, the former majority leader, seemed to be relishing his job as minority whip, the second-ranking GOP leadership job. He had regained a post in leadership after he resigned following racially insensitive remarks at a birthday party for the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.). A Lott friend said part of the reason, and a factor in the timing, is a new lobbying regulation, signed by President Bush in September, extending the existing lobbying ban for former members of Congress from one to two years. The lobbying ban takes effect at […]

TIP OF THE ICEBERG: Northeastern detail, CLICK HERE to see full map. FROM the 1880s to the 1960s, at least 4,700 men and women were lynched in this country. The noose remains a terrifying symbol, and continues to be used by racists to intimidate African-Americans (who made up more than 70 percent of lynching victims). In the past decade or so, only about a dozen noose incidents a year came to the attention of civil rights groups. But since the huge Sept. 20 rally in Jena, La., where tens of thousands protested what they saw as racism in the prosecution […]