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Two days after Plotnikov's death, Tsarnaev flew to Moscow on July 16 last year, and the next day to the US. "It seems that Tamerlan Tsarnaev came to Dagestan with the aim of joining the insurgents," said the source. "It didn't work out. First you need to contact an intermediary, then there is a period of 'quarantine' – before they take someone, the insurgents check him out over several months. "After Nidal and Plotnikov were destroyed and he lost his contacts, Tsarnaev got frightened and fled."

This is just breaking on CNN so no article yet -- CNN reporting sources say legal talks are underway for the Boston Bomber to avoid death penalty in exchange for information!!

Investigators spoke with the man in Rhode Island, the source said, after reports surfaced suggesting members of the suspected bombers' family blame a "Misha" for radicalizing alleged bombing mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The man, whose real name is Mikhail Allakhverdov, denies ever encouraging a violent take on Islam, and says he was not Tamerlan's teacher, according to a New York Review of Books writer who says he interviewed "Misha."

The CIA asked the main U.S. counterterrorism agency to add the name of one of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers to a watch list more than a year before the attack, according to U.S. officials.

Waltham police have stepped up their investigation of a 2011 triple homicide where a friend of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was brutally murdered, according to a relative of one of the victims who was interviewed by the Globe. The relative said Sunday that police have renewed the investigation at the request of victims’ relatives who believe Tamerlan, and perhaps his younger brother, Dzhokhar, played a role in the homicides. Authorities have said the victims all had their throats slit.

7:02 p.m. | Updated The New York Times mistakenly sent an e-mail on Wednesday to more than eight million people who had shared their information with the company, erroneously informing them that they had canceled home delivery of the newspaper. The Times Company, which initially mischaracterized the mishap as spam, apologized for sending the e-mail.

Travelers seemed to get a chuckle out of the holiday levity. But Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officials weren't amused and initially said the dispatcher could be strongly disciplined.

Obama’s two major foreign-policy initiatives have utterly failed. .... For his exertions, Obama earned (a) continued lethal Iranian assistance to guerrillas killing Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, (b) a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador by blowing up a Washington restaurant, (c) the announcement just this week by a member of parliament of Iranian naval exercises to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, (d) undoubted Chinese and Russian access to a captured U.S. drone for the copying and countering of its high-tech secrets.

...The Times Co gave no explanation for Robinson's sudden departure, which caught analysts as well as company insiders by surprise. Speculation among industry observers and the analyst community centered on the company's faltering stock price, which has declined more than 80 percent since Robinson was appointed CEO in December 2004....

HOPATCONG, N.J. (AP) — A cable TV repairman got quite a surprise when he walked into the basement of a New Jersey home. There was a 500-pound bear sound asleep on the floor.

A new International Climate Court will have the power to compel Western nations to pay ever-larger sums to third-world countries in the name of making reparation for supposed “climate debt”. The Court will have no power over third-world countries. Here and throughout the draft, the West is the sole target. “The process” is now irredeemably anti-Western. Ø “Rights of Mother Earth”: The draft, which seems to have been written by feeble-minded green activists and environmental extremists, talks of “The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony between humanity and nature”

This must be a difficult time for New Jersey. You see, in addition to finding out that they’re harboring the second most dangerous city in America (for the second year in a row), they’ve now got a traitor in their midst. His name is Joe Steinfield, and he is hilarious. Well, I guess that depends on whether or not you live in one of his satirical regions of New Jersey and/or take offense to being lumped in with “Canadians and Philly Trash” (aka Wildwood according to Steinfield’s map).

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — A snafu marred the critical moment of silence Wednesday at the Pearl Harbor ceremony observing the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack.... ...But on Wednesday, emcee Leslie Wilcox was still speaking at 7:55 a.m., even as the Hawaii Air National Guard's F-22's roared overhead on schedule 42 seconds later.

Actor Alec Baldwin was removed from an American Airlines flight leaving Los Angeles for New York on Tuesday when he was apparently too engrossed in a game of Zynga's "Words With Friends" to power down his iPad.... The incident caused a one-hour delay in the flight and kicked off a flurry of Internet chatter.

So if the Republican party has shifted so far to the right, and the Democrats have shifted to adjust, doesn’t that mean the populace has as well? Those changes are not at all reflective of what the population believes

The National Climate Ethics Campaign is pleased to announce that the "Statement of Our Nation’s Moral Obligation to Address Climate Change" will be released Wednesday, November 30 from 1:00-2:30 p.m. in Room 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building (The Environment and Public Works Hearing Room). There are now over 1200 signers on the climate ethics statement. Please send the message pasted below to organizations, listservs, and people that might endorse it.

A Massachusetts law professor has created a campus firestorm with an email to colleagues that declares it would be “shameful” to send care packages to U.S. troops “who have gone overseas to kill other human beings.”

ZANESVILLE, Ohio (AP) — Amid expressions of horror and revulsion at the killing of dozens of wild animals in Ohio — and photographs of their bloody carcasses — animal rights advocates agreed there was little local authorities could have done to save the dangerous creatures once they began roaming the countryside after their owner released them before taking his own life. Sheriff's deputies shot 48 animals — including 18 rare Bengal tigers and 17 lions — after Terry Thompson, owner of the private Muskingum County Animal Farm near Zanesville, threw their cages open Tuesday and then committed suicide.

BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts man was arrested Wednesday and accused of plotting to destroy the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol by attacking the buildings with large, remote-controlled aircraft armed with lethal amounts of explosives.... According to a federal affidavit, Ferdaus said he wanted to deal a psychological blow to Americans, the "enemies of Allah," by hitting the Pentagon, which he called "head and heart of the snake."

Following in the footsteps of billionaire investor Warren Buffet, former Google employee Doug Edwards asked President Obama to raise his taxes at a town hall meeting in California Monday. "Would you please raise my taxes?" Edwards asked, a request that drew applause from the audience

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. (AP) — The western Pennsylvania site where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after passengers confronted hijacking terrorists during the Sept. 11 attacks almost a decade ago is being marked by a gigantic boulder.

She said she knows she's a good teacher. But she still helped her students cheat. "What I did was wrong, but I don’t feel guilty about it," said a veteran Philadelphia English teacher, who shared her story with the Notebook/NewsWorks.

"We'd prefer if you skip Fox please," a White House broadcast media staffer advised a Treasury Department public affairs secretary ahead of the interview. In other emails during the same time frame, deputy White House communications director Jennifer Psaki called Fox News anchor Bret Baier "a lunatic" and boasted that "I am putting some dead fish in the fox cubby--just cause." In yet another email, another White House press officer wrote: "We've demonstrated our willingness and ability to exclude Fox News from significant interviews …"

TOKYO (Reuters) – Vast deposits of rare earth minerals, crucial in making high-tech electronics products, have been found on the floor of the Pacific Ocean and can be readily extracted, Japanese scientists said on Monday.

Fast forward to a day in Anbar Province, Iraq. Mr. Pottinger, now an intelligence officer supporting an infantry battalion, is standing over the body of a high level al Qaeda operative that his unit has just killed. It was an intense and lengthy manhunt. Mr. Pottinger is rifling through the man’s pockets, looking for additional documentation. Nearby is the mangled body of the man’s guard, who moments before detonated a suicide vest in a last, and failed, effort to kill the attackers. “I was standing over this guy’s corpse, looking down at him and thinking of all of the resources...

"Twice this week, President Obama suggested that he might become the first sitting U.S. president to support gay marriage. He said his views on whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry are "evolving"...."

Schwarzenegger, who counts legislation combating global warming as one of his signature achievements in office, suggested he might be interested in a post dealing with energy or the environment. "I'm a big believer in environmental issues," Schwarzenegger said, who added that he wanted a post where he could use his "celebrity power … knowledge and experience" to impact public policy. "I've traveled the world. … I'm very familiar with the world."

BERLIN – Heavy overnight snowfall disrupted air travel across western Europe Friday, forcing more than 800 flight cancellations and leading to major delays in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Germany appeared the hardest hit by the snow, with more than 600 flights canceled, schools forced to close and highways clogged with traffic after scores of accidents that killed at least three people and injured dozens.

For connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information; and for changing how we all live our lives, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is TIME's 2010 Person of the Year.

Together, the three government-employee unions will have spent nearly $172 million campaigning for Democrats in the course of this election cycle. That outstrips by more than $30 million what the Chamber of Commerce and the Rove network combined are pouring into the 2010 campaign.

WASHINGTON — Republican senators blocked Democratic legislation on Thursday that sought to provide medical care to rescue workers and others who became ill as a result of breathing in toxic fumes, dust and smoke at the site of the World Trade Center attack in 2001. The 9/11 health bill, a version of which was approved by the House of Representatives in September, was among several initiatives that Senate Democrats had hoped to approve before the close of the 111th Congress.

The US embassy cables are marked "Sipdis" – secret internet protocol distribution. They were compiled as part of a programme under which selected dispatches, considered moderately secret but suitable for sharing with other agencies, would be automatically loaded on to secure embassy websites, and linked with the military's Siprnet internet system. They are classified at various levels up to "secret noforn" [no foreigners]. More than 11,000 are marked secret, while around 9,000 of the cables are marked noforn.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh admits covering up US military strikes on Al-Qaeda in Yemen by claiming they are carried out by Yemeni forces, according to US documents leaked by WikiLeaks. "We?ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," Saleh said in January talks with General David Petraeus, then commander of US forces in the Middle East, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable published by the New York Times.

Now he tells us. Al Gore says his support for corn-based ethanol subsidies while serving as vice president was a mistake that had more to do with his desire to cultivate farm votes in the 2000 presidential election than with what was good for the environment.

The Chicago Climate Exchange is shutting down at the end of the year. Nobody’s buying carbon credits. Right now, days go by when not a single trade is done. When trades are done, carbon dioxide sells for just five cents a ton. It’s over.

"It very much likely did come either with peacekeepers or other relief personnel," said John Mekalanos, Harvard University microbiology chair. "I don't see there is any way to avoid the conclusion that an unfortunate and presumably accidental introduction of the organism occurred."

bizarre photo of Hillary laughing

According to the draft report, a state-owned Chinese telecommunications firm, China Telecom, "hijacked" massive volumes of Internet traffic during the 18-minute incident. It affected traffic to and from .gov and .mil websites in the United States, as well as websites for the Senate, all four military services, the office of the Secretary of Defense, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and "many others," including websites for firms like Dell, Yahoo, IBM and Microsoft. "Although the Commission has no way to determine what, if anything, Chinese telecommunications firms did to the hijacked data, incidents of this nature could have a number...

Tina Brown is expected to address her staff at The Daily Beast this morning about its merger with Newsweek, which was confirmed late Thursday.... ...The merger follows a protracted search by Harman for a new editor-in-chief of Newsweek, which he officially purchased in early October for $1, while agreeing to take on the magazine's mountain of debt.... ...Under the terms of the deal, Newsweek and The Daily Beast will become a 50-50 joint venture called The Newsweek Daily Beast Company, owned equally by Harman and IAC. The nuances of how the editorial operation will function are still unclear, but Brown...

WASHINGTON – No charges will be filed against the CIA's former top clandestine officer or anyone else in the destruction of CIA videotapes of harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists, the Justice Department announced Tuesday. Another part of the nearly three-year-old criminal investigation is continuing into whether CIA interrogators went beyond the legal guidance given them on the rough treatment of suspects during questioning, a Justice Department official said.

Prisoners are to have the right to vote after the Coalition conceded defeat in a long-running battle with Europe. The Government has confirmed it will change the law to remove the voting ban on the 70,000 inmates of British jails. It is being forced to do so after admitting it cannot win its fight against the European Court of Human Rights, which has been urging prisoners to seek compensation for being denied a voice in elections. David Cameron is said to be exasperated and furious but accepts the government has little choice but to end the 140-year blanket ban.

Gov. Charlie Crist is employing President Barack Obama's famous "Yes, we can" campaign slogan as he heads toward the finish line in Florida's three-way U.S. Senate race... At an early morning stop Sunday at a senior citizens facility, Crist responded "Yes, we can" after former state Rep. Addie Greene said the election was not about Republicans or Democrats, but moving Obama's agenda forward.

"The Swiss couple who recently renewed their marriage vows in a Maldives beach ceremony can scarcely have expected the shaky handheld video of the ceremony to turn them into temporary celebrities, but thanks to YouTube, and the addition of subtitles, this is exactly what has happened.... Despite the grovelling apology issued by the Maldivian authorities, the victims in this story are not the Swiss couple but the "celebrants" who have now been arrested, and the thousands of other Maldivians who will doubtless be under harsher pressure to bite their tongues and keep smiling over the cocktails."

... the title is drawn from how Karl Rove told Matthews that the CIA agent Valerie Plame was fair game for critics of her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson. Wilson, you’ll recall, was dispatched by the CIA in 2002 at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney’s office to investigate whether Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. Wilson came back with the answer no, and he was outraged when President Bush nevertheless stuck with the claim in his 2003 State of the Union address, which made the case for war with Iraq. Just three...

Does anyone know the whole story with this "Commit to Vote Challenge" that's popping up all over social media sites such as Facebook? Is it a stealth operation or do they openly admit funding and support from the Obamanation?

In primaries this year, Republican voters in Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, Nevada, and Utah, have rejected—en masse—the candidates preferred by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which Rove is said to informally advise. The Conservative Party candidate Tom Tancredo—a known enemy of Rove—is trouncing the GOP-backed candidate in the race for governor of Colorado.

the enthusiasm gap has been pretty overblown

At least two other gunmen ran into the building shouting "Allahu Akbar" as they opened fire on the people inside, Bekkhoyev said. The attackers were killed in an ensuing gunfight with police, said Chechen presidential spokesman Alvi Kerimov.

On Tuesday, the Prime Minister will outline a timetable under which Britain’s one fully operational aircraft carrier, HMS Ark Royal, is immediately retired. The Navy’s other carrier, HMS Illustrious, will continue to function as a helicopter platform stripped of jets before retiring in 2014. The first of the new carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth, will enter service in 2016, configured to carry helicopters, not jets. The second new carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, will arrive in 2019. At that point, HMS Queen Elizabeth will be put into “extended readiness”, effectively mothballed indefinitely.

"The View" co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar stormed off the set Thursday during a contentious interview with Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. As the cast debated whether there should be a community center and mosque built in Lower Manhattan, O'Reilly declared that "Muslims killed us on 9/11" to back up his position that it's "inappropriate." "Oh my God!" Goldberg responded, before uttering a few words bleeped out.