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Chinese security forces continue to surround the Kirti Tibetan monastery in Sichuan after local residents tried to stop them from arresting the 2,500 monks holed up inside. The standoff began earlier this week, when hundreds of people living in Sichuan's Aba region converged on the monastery determined to stop police from removing the monks for reeducation. The monks could soon face food shortages because they depend on offerings from locals, the Voice of America reports. A U.S. State Department spokesman said the U.S. is concerned about China's actions in Aba, which it called it inconsistent with the internationally recognized principles...

The gut-wrenching slide of the 2008 stock market crash is unforgettable for those caught in it. In the six weeks from the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy on Sep. 17, the stock market lost over 40 percent of its value. A quarter of trading days had plunges of 4 percent or more. Investors saw life’s savings dissipate. Traders saw a year’s work and bonus compensation vaporize. The Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury, which had been scrambling to cope with the developing financial crisis, accelerated their efforts to a frenetic pace, developing program after program to stem the panic. A chart of the...

Ten years ago this week, I was in Madrid on a Monday afternoon, watching as some of the 26,000 employees of Lehman Brothers spilled onto a Manhattan sidewalk, their mighty investment bank suddenly non-existent. As I could plainly see, this was no mere American crisis: the streets around me were already filling with Spanish and Central American workers forced to walk away from construction projects where work had halted, permanently, their U.S. and European bank financing having suddenly vanished. Over the next couple of days, the world economy ground to a halt, some of the mightiest financial institutions of the...

This is a phony funeral, with phony honors, filled with phony swamp creatures, paying phony respect, for a phony hero. Covered non-stop by phony news organizations.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who was Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election, has been excluded from his funeral. Breitbart News has independently confirmed an earlier report in People magazine, which reported that Palin was not sent an invitation, and was told through intermediaries to stay away from the ceremony. McCain fundraiser Carla Eudy confirmed to People that Palin had not been invited — possibly, People speculated, at the behest of the McCain family. The news comes on the tenth anniversary of the date in 2008 when Palin was announced as McCain’s pick for Vice...

I was going to send flowers but have decided instead to send a contribution to Trump 2020. Even in your final days on this good earth you spewed anger and hate. Now I hear that Sarah Palin, a loyal VP running mate, is not invited to your funeral. Have a nice day.- Sincerely, just one of the millions who had no choice but to cast their vote for you in 08.

Amid glowing tributes to the life and career of Arizona Senator John McCain on Monday, MSNBC took time to use the Republican lawmaker’s passing to trash his 2008 vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin, labeling McCain’s selection of the then-Alaska governor as his “biggest political mistake.” “McCain made some controversial decisions, some much-criticized decisions. One of those decisions was who he chose to run with in 2008, Sarah Palin,” proclaimed anchor Katy Tur early in the 2:00 p.m. ET hour. She then recited a column from Washington Post Associate Editor David Ignatius making that case: The anti-Washington rage embodied by...

Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the balance. The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters, searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that was foretold and preventable. As tough as the...

Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate, called her former running mate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) a “maverick and a fighter” in a statement after his death Saturday afternoon. “Today we lost an American original. Sen. John McCain was a maverick and a fighter, never afraid to stand for his beliefs. John never took the easy path in life — and through sacrifice and suffering he inspired others to serve something greater than self,” she said. “John McCain was my friend. I will remember the good times. My family and I send prayers for Cindy and the...

SEOUL, South Korea — He was one of North Korea’s deadliest secret agents. On Oct. 9, 1983, Kang Min-chul and two other North Korean agents bombed the Martyrs’ Museum in Rangoon, Burma, in a plot to kill the South Korean president, who was to have laid a wreath there. The bomb missed its mark — the president’s car had been delayed — but 17 South Koreans, including four cabinet ministers, were killed. For his deed, Mr. Kang was consigned to oblivion. North Korea denied any connection with the attack. In South Korea, where the bombing was declared a North Korean...

It was a typical December night in Moscow. The cold was biting, the snow thick and dry. In the Federal Security Service's headquarters on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad, hundreds of intelligence officers met as they did every year to celebrate the founding of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police. Champagne glasses tinkled as the officers spoke in jubilant tones. Classical music played softly in the background. The hall grew quiet as Vladimir Putin -- the former FSB director who had been appointed prime minister a few months earlier -- stood to speak. "Dear comrades," Putin said. "I would like to announce to...

In his new book, The Restless Wave, and in an upcoming HBO documentary, U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) expresses regret about choosing former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate in the 2008 election. According to TheNew York Times, in the documentary, McCain refers to the Palin selection as “another mistake” he made in a long political career. In his new book, McCain reportedly claims that former Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, would have been a better choice for the ticket. McCain noted that his advisers convinced him not to choose the Democrat, so he picked...

John McCain may have admitted that he regrets picking Sarah Palin as his running mate in the 2008 presidential election, but according to the former Alaska governor, “that’s not what Sen. McCain has told me all these years.” The one-time Republican vice-presidential candidate told The Daily Mail on Thursday that she feels a “perpetual gut punch” every time she hears reports about McCain’s regrets and that having to read the news every day is “not a real fun thing.” “I attribute a lot of what we’re hearing and reading regarding McCain’s statements to his ghostwriter or ghostwriters,” Palin said. “I...

United States presidential candidate John McCain now retains a lead over Barack Obama in several polls conducted in the past few days. Both Zogby International and Rasmussen Reports have McCain with a slight, but not statistically significant lead. The most recent Gallup tracking poll has McCain with a statistical lead of 5.0 percent. The Day to Day Politics Poll Average also has a slight, but not statistically significantly lead of 0.4% for McCain. Obama had a 6.0 percent lead in the Day to Day Politics Poll Average after the Democratic National Convention, but now is trailing after the Republican National...

The forthcoming final memoir from Senator John McCain, titled The Restless Wave, and a nearly two-hour-long HBO documentary on its way seem to be being used as an opportunity to settle some scores. Jonathan Martin of the New York Times has obtained copies of both books, and has spoken with the ailing senator at his ranch, where he seems to be spending his final days. This leaped out at me: While he continues to defend Ms. Palin’s performance, Mr. McCain uses the documentary and the book to unburden himself about not selecting Mr. Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent, as his running...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he regrets choosing former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) to be his running mate during the 2008 presidential campaign. The New York Times reported on Saturday that McCain, while still defending Palin’s performance, said in his upcoming book “The Restless Wave” that he wishes he had instead selected former Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) His advisers reportedly had warned against choosing Lieberman, who was once a Democrat, stating that Lieberman’s support of abortion rights could divide Republicans. “It was sound advice that I could reason for myself,” he writes. “But my gut told me to ignore...

Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2004 1:09 p.m. EDT Billionaires Secretly Met in Aspen to Defeat Bush In the days following the Democratic National Convention in Boston this past August, several billionaire Democratic activists secretly met at the famed Aspen Institute in Colorado. The purpose of their clandestine meeting was "to use their fortunes to engineer the defeat of President George W. Bush," The New Yorker magazine reports in its most recent edition. Details of the meeting remain sketchy, but the magazine described the Aspen conference this way: "Five billionaires joined half a dozen liberal leaders in a lengthy conversation about the...

FAISALABAD, Pakistan — The father of Imran Awan — an IT aide to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz who investigators concluded made “unauthorized access” to House servers — transferred a USB drive to a Pakistani senator and former head of a Pakistani intelligence agency, the father’s ex-business partner, Rashid Minhas, alleged. Minhas told The Daily Caller News Foundation that Imran Awan’s father, Haji Ashraf Awan, was giving data to Pakistani official Rehman Malik, and that Imran bragged he had the power to “change the U.S. president.” Asked for how he knew this, he said that on one occasion in 2008 when...

WASHINGTON -- The Securities and Exchange Commission tapped Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive Adam Storch on Friday to serve as the agency's first-ever chief operating officer of the enforcement division. The new hire represents the latest personnel change at the SEC in its effort to improve its operations following its failure to detect Bernard Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme. Enforcement Division Director Robert Khuzami created Mr. Storch's position of managing executive as part of the major re-structuring effort he announced earlier this year. Mr. Storch will oversee division operations that include budget, information technology and administrative services. He will also supervise...

SNIPPET: “..."For the Love of Islam: A Second American Woman Is Arrested in Cartoonist Case,” by Vanessa O’Connell, Stephanie Simon and Evan Perez in the Wall Street Journal, March 13..." Last Easter, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, a 31-year-old mom with a $30,000-a-year job as a medical assistant, announced to her family that she had converted to Islam. A few months later, she began posting to Facebook forums whose headings included “STOP caLLing MUSLIMS TERRORISTS!”” SNIPPET: “On Sept. 11, she suddenly left Leadville, Colo., a small town in the Rocky Mountains, for Denver, then for New York, to meet and marry a Muslim...