SLEEP IN HEAVENLY PEACE

Politically motivated killings, repression and rights abuses have made a worrying return to Burundi where several opposition leaders have fled the country or gone into hiding, UN officials said Thursday...

The chairman of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Kabardino-Balkaria, Anas Pshikhachev, was murdered on December 15 in the republic’s capital, Nalchik...

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), speaking from the Senate floor Friday, said many of his Republican colleagues may vote against the New START nuclear treaty with Russia if Democrats move forward with a plan to vote on "don't ask, don't tell" repeal Saturday...

The Senate is in a spat over working through Christmas. Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, the No. 2 Republican, complained Wednesday that Democrats are stacking up a nuclear-arms treaty with Russia, the budget, tax cuts and other weighty matters against the holiday. Keeping lawmakers in session that long is disrespectful to Christians, he said. Majority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, retorted that he doesn't need "sanctimonious lectures" about the meaning of Christmas. Reid said senators should be willing to work up to the holidays like millions of other Americans...

If notMmanny Pacquiao, Mayweather can fight cotto, Clottey and Margarito as a warm up to the fight of the decade. This may end the speculation...


Republicans Prepare for Looming Budget Battle Next Year
After derailing Senate Democrats' $1.2 trillion spending measure, Republicans' plan to cut spending next year...

North Korea has predicted "disaster" if South Korea goes ahead with a live-fire artillery exercise on a border island bombarded by the communist state last month. The North has threatened an even deadlier attack on the South if the one-day drill scheduled for between December 18 and 21 is staged on Yeonpyeong island near the disputed Yellow Sea border...

Two States Sue Bank of America Over Mortgages
Arizona and Nevada contend the bank misled customers about their eligibility for mortgage...

Pakistani journalist Karim Khan filed a police complaint Monday alleging that his brother and son were killed when a missile fired from a CIA drone hit their home in Nhe orth Waziristan in December 2009...

U,S. unemployment rate jumped to 9.8 percent in November from 9.6 percent, marking the highest jobless rate since April. The Labor Department reported that the economy created 39,000 jobs last month, falling short of analysts’ expectations...
The report shows that hunger is increasing at an alarming rate in the United States, and...

Violent crime increased last year, and many cities experienced double-digit or even triple-digit percentage increases in homicides...

The most effective and diabolical lie of the year - PolitiFact has now bestowed its much-coveted award for lie of the year on the idea that health reform constituted a "government takeover" of our health care system...

Bradley Manning has spent many months in military detention. He remains in a Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia. His case has not yet gone to military tribunal, and he has not yet been convicted of a crime. But we now know that for most of his months in detention, both in Virginia and in the military facility in Iraq, Manning has been held in solitary confinement...

With repeatedly extended projected withdrawal dates, the latest is 2014, although even that has been characterized by Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell as merely "aspirational," the campaign in Afghanistan and over the past two years in neighboring Pakistan has marked Asia as the center of U.S. global military strategy and operations...

But American democracy is not so corrupt or dysfunctional that a tiny portion of the population, driven purely by selfish greed, can capture so many elected officials and bamboozle so many voters...

Scientists still can't account for most of the four million barrels of oil that spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP oil well. Samantha Joye from the University of Georgia says a lot of it ended up on the seafloor...

A leaked email has revealed a Fox News editor telling his staffers to refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed or cooled in any given period without immediately pointing out that such theories are based upon questionable data. Critics say such a directive mischaracterizes the issue of global warming as an even-sided scientific debate when in fact the concept is accepted by a vast majority of researchers...

Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre suffered a concussion in Monday's home loss to Chicago at TCF Bank Stadium...

Associated Press (AP) reports today that “not a cent of the $1.15 billion the U.S. promised for rebuilding has arrived” to Haitians who badly the need the aid. This summer, both the House and the Senate passed a bill that would make $917 million available for Haiti reconstruction aid. Yet Congress must also pass an authorization bill that directs exactly how the money will be spent, and thus far, the U.S. Senate has failed to do. The AP conducted its own investigation of why the Senate has failed to pass the authorization bill, and it discovered that a single senator “pulled it for further study.” After calling dozens of senators’ offices, the AP discovered that the senator holding up the bill is Tom Coburn (R-OK). Coburn spokeswoman Becky Berhardt explained that the reason he is holding up the bill is because he objects to the creation of a senior Haiti coordinator — a position that would cost a paltry $5 million over five years — when the United States currently has an ambassador to the country...

Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas show no signs of budging. U.S. envoys George Mitchell and Dennis Ross have returned to the Middle East in a new attempt to break the deadlock but Netanyahu...

Coalition fatalities per month since the start of the war.[1]Coalition deaths in Afghanistan by country
USA: 1,361*
UK: 346
Canada: 152*
France: 52
Germany: 48
Denmark: 39
Italy: 34
Spain: 30*
Netherlands: 25
Poland: 22
Australia: 21
Romania: 17
Norway: 9
Estonia: 8
Georgia: 5
Sweden: 5
Hungary: 4
Czech Republic: 3
Latvia: 3
Portugal: 2
South Korea: 2
Turkey: 2
Belgium: 1
Finland: 1
Jordan: 1
Lithuania: 1
New Zealand: 1

TOTAL: 2,193...