“Ten U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq on Tuesday, one of the bloodiest days of the war for American forces outside of major combat operations.” At least 68 soldiers have been killed in October, on pace to “make it the deadliest month for U.S. forces since January 2005.”
“Gerry Studds, the nation’s first openly gay congressman, pushed the country to another landmark development when he died Saturday: the federal government for the first time will deny death benefits to a congressman’s gay spouse.” Studds and Dean Hara were partners for 15 years and legally married in Massachussetts in 2004.
23: Percentage of Americans who approve of job Congress is going, according to a new Gallup poll. Only 30 percent are satisfied with the country’s direction. “Both figures are on the low end of what Gallup has measured historically.”
Federal agents are investigating ties between Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) and Bogoljub Karic, “a wealthy Serbian businessman who had been barred from visiting or trading with the United States because of his close ties to former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.”
Larry Diamond, a former advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and a member of the Iraq Study Group, warned the U.S. “could have just weeks, not months, to avoid an all-out civil war.” “The civil war is already well along,” Diamond said. “We have no way of knowing if it’s too late until we try a radically different course.”
A Government Accountability Office report found the Homeland Security Department “ignored its own tests” showing radiation detectors at ports and border crossing “could not meet a standard of detecting enriched uranium 95 percent of the time.” “When the nuclear material was shielded, detection rates ranged from 17 percent to 53 percent.”
A University of Wisconsin study of TV coverage found that Midwest broadcasters “allocated an average of less than 30 seconds per 30-minute news broadcast to election coverage” compared to “two minutes for crime stories, seven minutes for sports and weather, and 10 minutes for advertising.”
One in four children around the world still live in extreme poverty. The “share of children now living in extreme poverty ranges from 5 per cent in some SEE (South Eastern Europe) countries to a startling 80 per cent in the poorest Central Asia countries.”
Dr. O’Reilly will see you now. “On his radio show, Bill O’Reilly falsely claimed that it ‘is never the case’ that a ‘mother’s life is in danger’ during pregnancy because ‘you can always have a C-section and do those kinds of things.’”
And finally: In his new book, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) “recalls a meet-and-greet encounter at the White House with George W. Bush, who warmly shook his hand, then ‘turned to an aide nearby, who squirted a big dollop of hand sanitizer in the president’s hand.’ (‘Good stuff,’ he quotes the president as saying, as he offered his guest some. ‘Keeps you from getting colds.’)”
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