The Whole Delivery

The top international news today has clearly been the little old dictator getting ready to give his son that same position : North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has apparently named his third son, Kim Jong-un, believed to be 27, as a four-star general in the military ahead of the country's biggest political convention in three decades, making his hereditary succession plan official for the first time, Yonhap news reported. The announcement was made in the dispatch of Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the state news agency of North Korea, on the opening day of the biggest Workers' Party convention since 1980. The announcement is the first mention by name in the state's official media of Kim Jong-il's third son. Picture President Obama firing Mike Bloomberg in NYC, Menino in Boston, or Daley in Chicago. Well, that's what has transpired today in Moscow, as President Medvedev has fired the city's long time mayor Yury Luzhkov . And he appears to do it without P...

Spanish Journalists are freed from Al Qaeda's captivity. (Photo from AFP) His weird media tour continues : The commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan says the momentum built up by the Taliban has been reversed in the south of the country and capital Kabul. General David Petraeus said it was important to destroy the safe havens of Taliban. He also said he would offer President Obama his best professional advice on the wisdom of handing control to Afghan forces next July. $815.58 million given to Pakistan is still not enough for its epic disaster. But with NATO forces focusing on silly wars, I guess that isn't a surprise indeed. Julian Assange seems to be in the midst of fighting a smear campaign against him, especially after the charges of him raping someone was dropped in Sweden . Sudan, an ally of Iran, is looking to start its own nuclear programme : The Sudanese government is planning to build a nuclear reactor which is first of its kind purposely for peaceful e...

One of the biggest war leaks in the history of the United States military. Digest that massive statement : A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency. The disclosures come from more than 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the conflict obtained by the whistleblowers' website Wikileaks in one of the biggest leaks in US military history. The files, which were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel , give a blow-by-blow account of the fighting over the last six years, which has so far cost the lives of more than 320 British and more than 1,000 US troops. With how they hate whistleblowers revealing information on how the government makes itse...