Welcome to Overnight News Digest STRIKE! TDS/TCR/Olbermann Spoiler Holiday Week Substitute! Early Edition.
Before we get to the Fake Real News let's check in with the Real Fake News,
Tonight the guests are-
Why are we hot for our boys (well except for Stephen who was rude to casperr and is ON NOTICE!)?
Take a look-
PBS- Charlie Rose (Human Sexuality) | A&E- CSI: Miami |
ABC Family- 700 Club | AMC- Young Guns |
Animal- In Search of the King Cobra | Cartoon- Futurama, Family Guy |
CNBC- Mad Money | CNN- Anderson Cooper 360 |
Court- Investigators | Discovery- Storm Chasers |
Disney- Suite Life of Zack & Cody, Hannah Montana | E!- E! News, Chelsea Lately |
ESPN- College Basketball: Maui Invitational, Sports Center | ESPNC- Bull Riding:PRCA Xtreme Bulls Tour |
ESPN2- College Basketball: CBE Classic | Food- Good Eats, Unwrapped |
Faux Noise- BillO | FX- That '70s Show, That '70s Show |
Golf- Golf With Style, Golf Central | History- American Eats |
HGTV- My House Is Worth What?, Hidden Potential | Lifetime- Will & Grace, Will & Grace |
MSNBC- Verdict: You Decide- Deadly Steps | MTV- Shot at Love With Tila Tequila |
National Geographic- Inside the Green Berets | Nick- Fresh Prince Of Bel Air, Fresh Prince Of Bel Air |
Vs.- World Extreme Cagefighting | Oxygen- Tyra Banks |
Sci Fi- Mass Effect: Sci vs. Fi, Flash Gordon | Speed- Super Bikes!, NOPI Tunervision |
Spike- CSI: Crime Scene Investigation | Style- How Do I Look |
TBS- Frank TV, Sex And The City | TCM- It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World |
TLC- Miami Ink | TNT- Cold Case |
Travel- Bizarre Foods With Andrew Zimmern | TV Land- M*A*S*H, M*A*S*H |
USA- Law & Order SVU | VH1- America's Most Smartest Model |
But if you're not watching America's Most Smartest Model and can't think of anything better to do, you might want to hear now the news-
From Yahoo News Top Stories
1 Former aide blames Bush for leak deceit
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
19 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan blames President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative.
In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recounts the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were "not involved" in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.
"There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Tuesday. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself." |
2 US agrees to new talks with Iran
By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer
24 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The United States has accepted an Iraqi proposal to hold new talks with Iran about the security situation in Iraq, the State Department said Tuesday.
The as-yet unscheduled meeting would be the fourth round of talks between Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and his Iranian counterpart. Two previous sessions ended inconclusively with Iran rejecting U.S. allegations that Iran is supporting Shia insurgent groups in Iraq by providing bombmaking material responsible for the deaths of American troops.
Amid a decline in attacks involving such devices, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Washington had responded favorably to a suggestion from the Iraqi government that it was now "the appropriate time" for another meeting at the ambassadorial level in Baghdad. |
3 Sanctuary of Rome's 'founder' revealed
By ARIEL DAVID, Associated Press Writer
54 minutes ago
ROME - Archaeologists on Tuesday unveiled an underground grotto believed to have been revered by ancient Romans as the place where a wolf nursed the city's legendary founder Romulus and his twin brother Remus.
Decorated with seashells and colored marble, the vaulted sanctuary is buried 52 feet inside the Palatine hill, the palatial center of power in imperial Rome, the archaeologists said at a news conference.
In the past two years, experts have been probing the space with endoscopes and laser scanners, fearing that the fragile grotto, already partially caved-in, would not survive a full-scale dig, said Giorgio Croci, an engineer who worked on the site. |
4 Dems say Pentagon using scare tactics
By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer
58 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - In their latest tussle with the White House on the Iraq war, two leading House Democrats said Tuesday the Pentagon was using scare tactics to try to goad Congress into passing another war spending bill.
And Reps. David Obey and John Murtha said they won't budge. Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and Murtha, D-Pa., head of the panel's defense appropriations subcommittee, said they won't support more money for the war this year unless President Bush accepts a timetable for troop withdrawals.
Last week, the House passed a $50 billion bill that would keep operations afloat for several more months, but sets a goal of bringing most troops home by December 2008. After Bush threatened to veto the measure, Senate Republicans blocked it. |
5 Al-Maliki lashes out at Sunni leader
By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 35 minutes ago
BAGHDAD - Iraq's prime minister lashed out at the country's Sunni Arab vice president in an interview published Tuesday, drawing attention to a bitter rift between two key politicians from rival sects at a time the U.S. is pressing for Iraqi unity.
A U.S. military helicopter, meanwhile, crashed Tuesday near Salman Pak southeast of Baghdad, killing two soldiers and wounding 12, the military said. It said initial reports indicated the crash was not a result of hostile fire. The military did not give the type of helicopter or the nationalities of the victims.
The outburst by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, printed in a newspaper read throughout the Arab world, occurred as American officials are urging the Iraqis to take advantage of a downturn in violence to resolve their differences before next year's planned drawdown of U.S. force. |
6 Freddie Mac loses $2B, seeks new capital
By MARCY GORDON, AP Business Writer
2 hours, 56 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The mortgage crisis intensified Tuesday as Freddie Mac, the nation's No. 2 buyer and guarantor of home loans, posted its largest quarterly loss ever and warned that it may need to curtail its business unless it can raise fresh capital.
Freddie Mac lost $2 billion in the third quarter, much more than Wall Street was expecting, primarily because it needed to set aside $1.2 billion to account for bad home loans. Freddie Mac also said it may slice in half its quarterly dividend of 50 cents per share — which would be its first dividend cut since becoming a public company in 1989.
That double dose of bad news sent Freddie Mac's shares skidding 28.7 percent, the largest decline in the two decades its shares have traded in public markets.
It also sent a shudder through the mortgage market since Freddie's loss was even larger than the $1.4 billion quarterly deficit of Fannie Mae, its bigger government-sponsored competitor. Shares of the nation's largest mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial Corp., dropped on worries that one of its main sources of sales could dry up. |
7 Moussaoui judge questions government
By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Writer
17 minutes ago
McLEAN, Va. - A federal judge expressed frustration Tuesday that the government provided incorrect information about evidence in the prosecution of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and raised the possibility of ordering a new trial in another high-profile terrorism case.
At a post-trial hearing Tuesday for Ali al-Timimi, a Muslim cleric from Virginia sentenced to life in prison in 2004 for soliciting treason, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said she can no longer trust the CIA and other government agencies on how they represent classified evidence in terror cases.
Attorneys for al-Timimi have been seeking access to documents. They also want to depose government witnesses to determine whether the government improperly failed to disclose the existence of certain evidence. |
8 No U-turn says Sarkozy, as pressure mounts from street
by Hugh Schofield AFP
2 hours, 5 minutes ago
PARIS (AFP) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed to stand by his economic reforms Tuesday despite a strike that has shuttered much of the rail network and sent hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets.
Speaking before an assembly of mayors, the president said that he had been elected in May to bring in a "clean break" from the past and that he would honour the mandate -- even as a transportation strike threatened to enter its eighth day Wednesday.
"We will not yield and we will not retreat," Sarkozy said. |
From Yahoo News Most Popular, Most Recommended
9 Concerns persist over Chinese anti-satellite test: US military
AFP
1 hour, 43 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US concerns about China's military buildup have only been heightened by a Chinese anti-satellite test in January that has yet to be explained, the top US military leader said Tuesday.
Admiral Michael Mullen, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he raised the test with Chinese leaders when he visited the country in August, as have other senior US officials.
"It speaks to a higher level of concern that many of us in the United States have about what is the strategic intent of the investment, the high tech investment the Chinese government is making with respect to its military capability in the future," Mullen said. |
From Yahoo News Most Popular, Most Viewed
10 Social Networking Sites May Foster Same Old Divisions
LiveScience Staff, LiveScience.com
Tue Nov 20, 4:15 PM ET
The social networking site of choice is related to a student's race, ethnicity and parents' education, a new survey indicates.
The finding "suggests there's less intermingling of users from varying backgrounds on these sites than previously believed," said study leader Eszter Hargittai of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University in Illinois.
Hargittai surveyed more than 1,000 freshmen from the University of Illinois, Chicago. |
From Yahoo News Most Popular, Most Emailed
11 Brain differences detected in migraine sufferers
By Will Dunham, Reuters
Mon Nov 19, 4:11 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who get migraines have structural differences in their brains notably in the cortex area that processes pain and other sensory information from the body, scientists said on Monday.
The researchers, whose findings were published in the journal Neurology, said it is unclear whether these brain differences actually cause migraines or are themselves caused by these severe, recurrent headaches.
The researchers performed brain scans on 24 people who had a long history of frequent migraines -- about four per month for 20 years -- and 12 people who did not get migraines. |
From Yahoo News World
12 Musharraf frees foes, seeks Saudi help
By PAUL HAVEN, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 16 minutes ago
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - President Gen. Pervez Musharraf freed thousands of opponents from jails Tuesday in a sign he is rolling back a wave of repression under emergency rule and flew to Saudi Arabia to talk about the future of an exiled rival, Nawaz Sharif.
Saudi officials said there were efforts to arrange a meeting between Musharraf and Sharif, who was ousted as prime minister by the general's 1999 coup. However, a Pakistani official said Musharraf's goal was to prevent Sharif from returning before parliamentary elections Jan. 8.
Back home, the political cauldron continued to boil, with dozens of journalists detained for several hours after clashing with police during a protest and newly freed opposition lawyers vowing to keep up their agitation. |
13 Critical Cuban elections in January
By ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Writer
Tue Nov 20, 4:22 PM ET
HAVANA - Cuba announced Tuesday it has set Jan. 20 for national elections that are part of the process of determining whether ailing leader Fidel Castro continues as president.
The ruling, signed by interim leader Raul Castro and read on state television, set the date for elections to provincial and national assemblies — voting that is held every five years.
There was no explicit mention of Fidel Castro, but the 81-year-old leader of the Cuban Revolution must be re-elected to the national parliament before he could repeat as president of the Council of State to remain in full power. |
14 Ukraine mine blast relatives bury dead
By Yuri Kulikov, Reuters
Tue Nov 20, 1:24 PM ET
SHCHEGLOVKA, Ukraine (Reuters) - Weeping relatives gathered in cemeteries around Donetsk, heart of the Donbass coalfield, on Tuesday to bury the dead from Ukraine's worst mining accident.
Flags in the ex-Soviet state were adorned with black ribbons and flew at half mast on a national day of mourning for at least 89 people killed in Sunday's methane blast.
Coffins draped in maroon cloth were lowered into four graves at the vast, dusty Shcheglovskoye cemetery, a resting place for victims of previous disasters and lying within sight of the Zasyadko mine. |
15 Former child soldier becomes UNICEF ambassador
By Walter Brandimarte, Reuters
2 hours, 2 minutes ago
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former child soldier in Sierra Leone's civil war was named an ambassador for the U.N. children's agency on Tuesday, vowing to be an advocate for children worldwide, not just in African war zones.
Ishmael Beah lost his family in a rebel attack at about age 12, was kidnapped by Sierra Leone's national army and forced, along with other captured children, to fight a deadly war.
His memoir "A Long Way Gone" was a best-seller this year, recounting his remorse over the war and how he eventually found support from a UNICEF rehabilitation program and from a new adoptive family in the United States. |
16 IAEA and India to meet Wednesday on nuclear accord
By Mark Heinrich
21 minutes ago
VIENNA (Reuters) - India's nuclear energy chief will meet the International Atomic Energy Agency director on Wednesday, the IAEA said, after domestic opposition to pursuing a safeguards accord with the U.N. watchdog eased.
To launch a controversial nuclear supply deal with the United States, New Delhi must put its declared civilian atomic reactors under IAEA monitoring and then win the approval of a multilateral group controlling sensitive nuclear trade.
After months of resistance over fears the deal would weaken India's sovereignty, the communist allies of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government softened last week and said steps to seal the accord could be pursued on certain conditions. |
17 Harry Potter Works Magic at School
By ALEX ALTMAN/NOTTINGHAM, Time Magazine
Mon Nov 19, 7:35 AM ET
Two hours from platform 9 3/4 at London's King's Cross station, a cluster of students in starry robes, pointed hats and rep ties are learning how plants grow, but it's not botany; they call it "herbology." In an adjacent classroom a boy with a famous lightning-bolt scar brandishes his wand, chants "Numerus Subtracticus!" and conjures the correct answer to a math problem.
Robert Mellors Primary School on the outskirts of Nottingham, England, is a long way from the verdant lawns and haunted forests of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the main setting of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books. But by borrowing elements from that fantastic realm, this once-failing school has turned itself around as if by magic dust. |
18 Pakistan's Taliban at the Gates
By ARYN BAKER/PESHAWAR, Time Magazine
Tue Nov 20, 4:30 PM ET
The local police precinct in the village of Matta has a new sign: Taliban Station. The same thing in the village of Kabal - in fact, nine of the twelve districts in the picturesque Swat Valley, 100 miles from Pakistan's capital, have been taken over by militants, who have torched music shops, barred girls from going to school, forced women to wear burqas and decreed that men must grow beards. As if to complete the flashback to Taliban-era Afghanistan, the new overlords have even attempted to blow up centuries-old Buddhist monuments.
But this is not Afghanistan, of course, or even the tribal lands of the frontier provinces. The Swat valley is Pakistan's premier tourist destination, home to its only ski slope and a haven for trout fishing. But it has become increasingly embattled in the face of an anti-government campaign, over the past five months, by the charismatic radio preacher Maulana Fazlullah, known as the FM mullah, who has spawned a wave of fundamentalist militancy that has swept from the Afghan frontier through the lawless tribal areas of Waziristan and into the settled areas far from the border. The government of President General Pervez Musharraf seems unable to do anything about it. |
From Yahoo News U.S. News
19 Water runs dry in rural Tennessee town
By Matthew Bigg, Reuters
6 minutes ago
ORME, Tennessee (Reuters) - A small town tucked away in the mountains of southern Tennessee is getting by on just a few hours of water a day because its spring has run dry in the drought sweeping the U.S. Southeast.
The worst drought to hit the region in decades prompted Georgia to impose water-use restrictions including a ban on outdoor residential watering.
It has also sparked a political battle between Georgia, Alabama and Florida over how to share water from north Georgia's Lake Lanier, which serves cities such as Atlanta as well as industries and a nuclear power plant. |
20 Hazardous toys still on U.S. store shelves: groups
By Karey Wutkowski, Reuters
Tue Nov 20, 3:54 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two consumer groups called on Tuesday for tougher toy oversight by the U.S. government's product safety agency, saying they had easily found toys in stores with high lead levels and other dangers.
Starletz tea sets, Disney Princess pencil pouches and Dora and SpongeBob bats and balls tested positive for lead despite recalls of millions of Chinese-made toys this year for lead paint and other hazards, the Center for Environmental Health told reporters by telephone.
The Starletz porcelain tea sets had the highest lead levels, 20 times what would be allowed in paint, the group said. A Dora Game Pack also tested positive for lead. |
21 US TV network's news staff vote to join writers strike
AFP
Tue Nov 20, 12:09 PM ET
NEW YORK (AFP) - News writers from US network CBS have voted to join a more than two-week-old strike by television and film screenwriters and could stop work at any time, their union said in a statement.
The vote by almost 300 CBS staff from the Writers Guild of America opens the way for them to join more than 3,000 film and television writers who stopped work on November 5 to demand a bigger cut of DVD sales and Internet downloads.
CBS news writers in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington had been working under expired contracts since April 2005, the Writers Guild of America said, adding that the two sides had not held contract talks since January. |
22 John Bolton: The Angriest Neocon
By ADAM ZAGORIN/UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK, Time Magazine
1 hour, 29 minutes ago
...
Bolton's outspoken policy views have long been familiar, but what's most interesting about his new book is the sheer enthusiasm with which he has adopted the mantle of the most vocal neoconservative critic of the Bush Administration's foreign policy, only months after resigning from the Bush team when the Senate for the second time refused to confirm his nomination to the U.N. post.
Bolton accuses the Administration of laxity in dealing with a nuclear-armed North Korea and an Iran intent on obtaining the bomb, not to mention its efforts to arrange a Middle East peace conference. But implicit in Bolton's bomb-throwing is a startling admission: that his never-ending battle against "pragmatists" and those less ideologically committed inside the most conservative administration in decades has been lost. In an interview with TIME, Bolton said: "Secretary Condoleezza Rice is the dominant voice on national security and there is no one running even a close second; her ascendancy is undisputed."
So where does that leave Bolton allies like Cheney and his hard-line advisers, and the few remaining neocons scattered through the national security bureaucracy? "You will never know what the VP's exact interaction with the President is," says Bolton, "But the VP is still closer to the President's basic instincts than anyone else." Bolton's explanation for the shift in White House policy: "The President may be distracted by the Iraq war or other events... but there's no doubt that the President has moved heartbreakingly away from his own deepest impulses on the three principal issues of controversy (North Korea, Iran and Middle East peace); what is happening now is contrary to his basic instincts." |
From Yahoo News Politics
23 Bush plays down WWIII warning
AFP
1 hour, 34 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush on Tuesday played down his warning of "World War III" if Iran gets nuclear arms but refused to rule out using force to keep Tehran from getting an atomic weapons.
"I think it's very important for us to pursue our objectives diplomatically. I also know it's important for all options to remain on the table, and they are on the table," Bush told ABC television in an interview.
"No one wants to use military force to achieve any objective. But, but it's important for all parties to understand that, you know, while I'm optimistic we can solve it diplomatically, options are available to the president," he added. |
24 Fed slashes US growth forecast on housing, credit ills
by Rob Lever, AFP
2 hours, 41 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Federal Reserve slashed its outlook for 2008 US economic growth Tuesday, citing weakness in housing and tighter credit conditions, and suggested members are unsure about future interest rate cuts.
The central bank, in its first quarterly update under a new policy implemented by Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, projected growth next year in a range of 1.8 to 2.5 percent down from 2.5 to 2.75 percent.
The forecast was revised from a semiannual report in July, under a new policy ordered by Bernanke to provide more frequent updates on the economic outlook. |
25 Romney a tough sell for many U.S. Christians
By Ed Stoddard, Reuters
1 hour, 1 minute ago
DALLAS (Reuters) - When a pair of Mormon missionaries knocked at the door of Jerry Pierce's home in a north Dallas suburb last month, he marshaled his arguments and stood his ground.
"I look forward to encounters like that. I like to talk to them about the nature of Christ and who Jesus is," said Pierce, a staunch Southern Baptist, the biggest Protestant denomination in the United States.
Mitt Romney, a Mormon, is running into similar resistance as he tries to win over Southern Baptists and other evangelical Protestants in the race for the Republican Party's nomination for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. |
From Yahoo News Business
26 Ailing dollar falls to historic low against euro
AFP
1 hour, 23 minutes ago
NEW YORK (AFP) - The ailing US dollar tumbled to a historic low against the euro Tuesday as concerns mounted about US economic growth after the Federal Reserve trimmed back its growth projections, traders said.
Fears of slower economic growth, largely driven by a lingering housing slump and a related credit squeeze, have weighed heavily on the dollar in recent weeks.
Fears that overseas investors and countries, especially China which holds over a trillion dollars in foreign exchange reserves, could sell or convert their dollar holdings have also depressed the dollar. |
From Yahoo News Science
27 Scientists find fossil of enormous bug
By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer
1 minute ago
LONDON - This was a bug you couldn't swat and definitely couldn't step on. British scientists have stumbled across a fossilized claw, part of an ancient sea scorpion, that is of such large proportion it would make the entire creature the biggest bug ever. How big? Bigger than you, and at 8 feet long as big as some Smart cars.
The discovery in 390-million-year-old rocks suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were far larger in the past than previously thought, said Simon Braddy, a University of Bristol paleontologist and one of the study's three authors.
...
"We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies. But we never realized until now just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were," he said. |
28 Ancient Chinese town on front lines of desertification battle
by Dan Martin, AFP
Tue Nov 20, 1:12 PM ET
DUNHUANG, China (AFP) - Towering sand dunes loom over the ancient Chinese city of Dunhuang like giant waves about to break, and they are already lapping at Ma Wangzhen's onion farm.
She points a rough finger at a line of dead trees, half-buried in sand, planted years ago as part of her 20-year losing battle to halt the once-distant dunes which now threaten to spill into her onion crop.
"It moves very fast, much faster than anything I can do to stop it," said Ma, 60. |
29 Carbon pollution from industrialised countries rises again
by Richard Ingham, AFP
Tue Nov 20, 8:00 AM ET
PARIS (AFP) - Emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialised countries are surging anew after a long decline, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said on Tuesday ahead of a crucial forum on tackling global warming.
It blamed continued growth in Western economies and a revival of growth in former East Bloc nations, with pollution from transport the biggest culprit by sector.
"Industrialised countries' overall greenhouse-gas emissions rose to a near all-time high in 2005," UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said in a press conference telecast from Bonn. |
30 Earth's Moon is Rare Oddball
Dave Mosher, Staff Writer, SPACE.com
Tue Nov 20, 4:15 PM ET
The moon formed after a nasty planetary collision with young Earth, yet it looks odd next to its watery orbital neighbor. Turns out it really is odd: Only about one in every 10 to 20 solar systems may harbor a similar moon.
New observations made by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope of stellar dust clouds suggest that moons like Earth's are—at most—in only 5 to 10 percent of planetary systems.
"When a moon forms from a violent collision, dust should be blasted everywhere," said Nadya Gorlova, an astronomer at the University of Florida in Gainesville who analyzed the telescope data in a new study. "If there were lots of moons forming, we would have seen dust around lots of stars. But we didn't." |
Who says I don't know how to end with a bang?