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Mr. Fish
$90
By Oded Shenkar
$17.13
$21
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AP photo
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As more details of the devastation left by Cyclone Nargis in Burma emerge, it’s becoming clear that the storm is one of the worst disasters in years. The Burmese government is being criticized for responding inadequately and too slowly to the crisis, and President Bush, himself no stranger to this kind of criticism, is calling on Burma’s “military junta ... [to] allow our disaster assessment teams into the country” in order to help.
Posted on May 6, 2008
3 COMMENTS 
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Here’s a sobering moment that could happen only with the aid of today’s technology: Sandie and Jeff Petee of Otis, Ore., were recently given a scary dose of reality in the form of a brief message on their answering machine when Sandie’s soldier son, Stephen Phillips, accidentally dialed their number during a battle in Afghanistan.
Posted on May 6, 2008
1 COMMENT
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Whether it’s just window dressing or the opening salvo of a serious effort to court the Latino vote, John McCain has launched a Spanish-language Web site. While McCain was once a champion of immigration reform, he did a substantial bit of pandering during the Republicans-only leg of the campaign. In fact, he even said at one point that he wouldn’t vote for his own immigration bill.
Posted on May 6, 2008
1 COMMENT
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Flickr / John Edwards 2008
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As North Carolinians head to the polls, John Edwards, their former senator, has disclosed that after months of being politically courted he will not endorse any candidate in the Democratic primaries. The two-time presidential contender and his wife, Elizabeth, recently sat down with People magazine to explain what they like—and don’t like—about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
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Deborah Jean Palfrey, whose Washington, D.C.-based call-girl ring earned her notoriety and the nickname the “D.C. Madam,” left two suicide notes behind when she (apparently) hanged herself last Thursday behind her mother’s Florida home.
Posted on May 5, 2008
6 COMMENTS
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Flickr / BohPhoto
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A day before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, most polls agree that Barack Obama will win North Carolina and Hillary Clinton will win Indiana. A week later, the candidates face off in West Virginia, where Clinton holds a sizable lead. It remains nearly impossible, however, for her to catch up in the pledged delegate count.
Posted on May 5, 2008
3 COMMENTS
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The Burmese government prepared for an influx of international aid Monday as the death toll from Saturday’s cyclone passed 10,000, according to Foreign Minister Nyan Win. That number suggested a far greater disaster than the 351 deaths reported earlier that same day.
Posted on May 5, 2008
5 COMMENTS
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AP photo / Elise Amendola
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Monday found Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama working furiously to draw distinctions between their stances on key issues like rising gas prices and America’s strained relations with Iran—and, of course, to take shots at their opponent’s positions in the remaining hours before Tuesday’s Indiana and North Carolina primaries.
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Flickr / Lauras512
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Raul Castro would like to see his island produce more food. Currently, Cuba imports the vast majority of its basic food products, at increasing expense, despite plenty of arable land. Private farmers and collective growers are hoping new reforms make it easier to produce food more efficiently, and that’s not just good news for Cuba. With rice rationing at Costco, that’s good news for the world.
Posted on May 5, 2008
7 COMMENTS
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As the Democratic convention draws closer, the candidates are making their cases more and more directly to the superdelegates. On the Sunday before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton each made hour-long appearances on morning talk shows that few voters actually watch. It’s the party insiders who never miss a “Meet the Press” who probably will decide the nomination, and the candidates know it.
Posted on May 4, 2008
3 COMMENTS
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AP photo / Brian Bohannon
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File this under just plain weird: Hillary Clinton picked Eight Belles, the only filly in the race, to win the Kentucky Derby. She came in second, behind Big Brown, and, sadly, had to be euthanized on the track because she broke two ankles after crossing the finish line.
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AP photo / Mike Wintroath
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Emergency response teams faced a busy weekend helping Arkansas residents cope with the aftermath of another round of severe weather that pounded the Southern state Friday with heavy thunderstorms and tornadoes. Eight lives were lost, raising the state’s storm-related death toll for the year to 24.
Posted on May 3, 2008
1 COMMENT
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AP photo / Mary Altaffer
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In a bid to clarify his stance on the (current) Iraq war, as well as just how long he’d be “fine” with maintaining a U.S. military presence in the region, Sen. John McCain held one of those town hall meetings that are so de rigueur among campaigning politicians these days, this time in Denver, where he performed some semantic gymnastics for his audience at the Robert E. Loup Jewish Community Center.
Posted on May 3, 2008
7 COMMENTS
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AP photo / Alastair Grant
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To say it was a politically interesting week would be a case of British understatement: London gained a new mayor—Boris Johnson, who beat incumbent Ken Livingstone to become the first Conservative to win the office—and Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour Party took a drubbing in local elections across the U.K. on May Day.
Posted on May 2, 2008
6 COMMENTS
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mcclatchydc.com
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Sami al-Haj, a cameraman for Al-Jazeera, was released Thursday evening after spending almost seven years in U.S. custody, six of those as an inmate at Guantanamo Bay. Haj was never charged with any crime, nor was any evidence against him ever revealed.
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vox.com
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Tyson Foods was ordered by a judge Thursday to cease a false multimillion-dollar ad campaign promoting its claim that its chickens are “raised without antibiotics.” The key question centers on the word raised and whether the egg stage can be considered to be outside the process of raising chickens.
Posted on May 2, 2008
8 COMMENTS
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nettavison.no
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The election for Zimbabwe’s presidency made one reluctant step forward Friday as poll results were finally announced after over a month of intimidation, violence and other acts of political thuggery. Opposition candidate Morgan Tsangirai managed to beat out incumbent-for-life Robert Mugabe but failed to receive more than 50 percent of the ballots, forcing a second round of voting.
Posted on May 2, 2008
3 COMMENTS
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Flickr / Nrbelex
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If Hillary Clinton becomes the next president, her administration will have a hell of a time improving relations with Iran, a country that has a few cards to play when it comes to stability in Iraq and the price of oil. That’s because Clinton recently threatened Iran’s annihilation and it turns out that the Iranian government pays attention to these things.
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AP photo / Karim Kadim
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April was the cruelest month in seven months in terms of the numbers of both civilians and U.S. troops who lost their lives in Iraq. A spate of deadly bombings on Wednesday killed four U.S. soldiers, bringing the monthlong total of American dead to 50, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s crackdown on Shiite followers of Moqtada al-Sadr made for more intense violence, particularly in Basra and Sadr City, which contributed to a reported 969 Iraqi civilian deaths.
Posted on May 1, 2008
4 COMMENTS
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Flickr / azrainman
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Exxon Mobil made $10.9 billion last quarter, but investors were disappointed that the world’s biggest oil company had only its second-biggest quarter ever. With a product that is harder and harder to find, shareholders who demand even bigger windfalls and consumers who are about ready to revolt, you almost have to feel sorry for the oil companies. No, you really don’t.
Posted on May 1, 2008
9 COMMENTS
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Flickr/ Captian Giona
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Imagine going to the Internet and being able to see how much everyone in the United States, including you, earned and paid in taxes. The outgoing Italian government just made everyone’s private business public. Needless to say, Italians were outraged as they rushed to the Web to see the income of their neighbors and the rich and famous.
Posted on May 1, 2008
2 COMMENTS
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The U.S. military carried out an overnight airstrike in Somalia, targeting the country’s primary al-Qaida cell—and by Thursday morning the man considered the group’s leader, Aden Hashi Ayro, was confirmed dead, along with 10 others.
Posted on May 1, 2008
4 COMMENTS
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flickr.com
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Looks like there may be life after the campaign trail. Presidential hopeful Ron Paul, who has kept swinging long after media types started calling Sen. John McCain “the Republican presumptive nominee,” has a best-seller on his hands with his new book, “The Revolution: A Manifesto”—at least according to Amazon.com’s list of top titles.
Posted on May 1, 2008
4 COMMENTS
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Flickr / openDemocracy
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According to a newly released State Department report, Pakistan experienced twice as many terrorist attacks against nonmilitary targets in 2007 than it did in 2006, killing 1,335 people. That kind of instability would be pretty frightening if Pakistan had dozens of nuclear weapons. Oh, wait a second, it does.
Posted on Apr 30, 2008
5 COMMENTS
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nytimes.com / Monica Almeida
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After an internal investigation of over 300 complaints of racial profiling, the Los Angeles Police Department announced Tuesday that not even one accusation of profiling it received last year had merit. Even more ridiculous is the fact that 2007 marks the sixth consecutive year that the LAPD has failed to find any example of race-based misconduct within its ranks.
Posted on Apr 30, 2008
5 COMMENTS
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Huckabee’s Major Misfire
