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Tracking the D'bury Universe
We won't post new stories on this page every day, but whenever we do put something up you have our word: It will be about the strip. Guaranteed.
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Joseph Kony Hunt Is Proving Difficult For U.S. Troops
ix months after President Obama ordered 100 elite troops to help capture the messianic warlord Joseph Kony, U.S. military commanders said Sunday that they have been unable to pick up his trail but believe he is hiding in this country’s dense jungle, relying on Stone Age tactics to dodge his pursuers’ high-tech surveillance tools.
Kony and his brutal militia, the Lord’s Resistance Army, have slowed their pace of rapes, abductions and killings in recent months. Under renewed international pressure, LRA fighters have slipped deeper into the bush, splintering into smaller bands to avoid detection and literally covering their tracks, according to U.S., African and United Nations officials who are collaborating on the hunt...
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Sudan Declares State of Emergency as Clashes Continue
Sudan declared a state of emergency on Sunday along much of its border with South Sudan as the momentum toward all-out war continues to build after weeks of clashes over disputed areas and oil.
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s decree gives authorities in the border areas wide powers to make arrests and set up special courts. It was issued a day after Sudan detained three foreigners and a South Sudanese near the border and accused them of spying for South Sudan, a charge the South denies...
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Machine Politics: The Man Who Started the Hacker Wars
In the summer of 2007, Apple released the iPhone, in an exclusive partnership with A.T. & T. George Hotz, a seventeen-year-old from Glen Rock, New Jersey, was a T-Mobile subscriber. He wanted an iPhone, but he also wanted to make calls using his existing network, so he decided to hack the phone...
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Wendell Berry, American Hero
The sensibility of Wendell Berry, who is sometimes described as a modern day Thoreau but who I’d call the soul of the real food movement, leads people like me on a path to the door of the hillside house he shares with his wife, Tanya, outside of Port Royal, Ky. Everything is as the pilgrim would have it: Wendell (he’s a one-name icon, like Madonna, but probably in that respect only) is kind and welcoming, all smiles...
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Doonesbury Takes a Whack at Huffington Post. No Hard Feelings, Says HuffPo Bureau Chief
Dissed again.
This time, it’s cartoonist Garry Trudeau knocking the Huffington Post for paying writers in “exposure.”
Trudeau is in good company: The Huffington Post has been dissed by the best, from Chris Hedges to Stephen Colbert. The first editorial cartoonist to win a Pulitzer Prize, the Doonesbury creator was just named one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” by Time magazine...
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The 100 Most Influential People in the World: Stephen Colbert
Before every show, Stephen visits the green room and tells that evening's guest the same thing: "My character's an idiot. Your job is to set him straight."
Easier said than done, especially since the first part's a lie. Stephen's character may ask idiotic questions, but they're so unexpected and diabolically entangling that watching his guests fight their way toward daylight is unalloyed pleasure...
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Bo Xilai Officials 'Wiretapped call to President Hu Jintao'
The spotlight on the Bo Xilai affair has turned back on to political tensions in China following reports that officials in Chongqing wiretapped a call to the country's president, Hu Jintao – helping to trigger the scandal that unseated Bo.
Official accounts of the case have portrayed it as being unrelated to the political struggle for power in the country. Bo is instead accused of unspecified disciplinary violations while his wife, Gu Kailai, is accused of murdering the British businessman Neil Heywood...
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The Koch Brothers -- Exposed!
If the Koch brothers didn't exist, the left would have to invent them. They're the plutocrats from central casting – oil-and-gas billionaires ready to buy any congressman, fund any lie, fight any law, bust any union, despoil any landscape, or shirk any (tax) burden to push their free-market religion and pump up their profits.
But no need to invent – Charles and David Koch are the real deal. Over the past 30-some years, they've poured more than 100 million dollars into a sprawling network of foundations, think tanks, front groups, advocacy organizations, lobbyists and GOP lawmakers, all to the glory of their hard-core libertarian agenda. They don't oppose big government so much as government – taxes, environmental protections, safety-net programs, public education: the whole bit...
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Do the Eyes Have It?
We all know the adage that dogs are man’s best friend. And we’ve all heard heartwarming stories about dogs who save their owners—waking them during a fire or summoning help after an accident. Anyone who has ever loved a dog knows the amazing, almost inexpressible warmth of a dog’s companionship and devotion. But it just might be that dogs have done much, much more than that for humankind. They may have saved not only individuals but also our whole species, by “domesticating” us while we domesticated them.
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At 64, Israel Celebrates, But Not Without Wariness
The paradox that is Israel — wealthy, dynamic and safe, yet mistrusted, condemned and nervous — was on full display on Wednesday as the country mourned its fallen soldiers and began celebrating its 64th independence day. Commentators on the left and the right stuck to their scripts, with the left asserting that the country’s treatment of the Palestinians and its regional saber rattling have made it isolated and stagnant, and the right glorifying Israel’s accomplishments: high-tech innovations, long life expectancies and democracy...