USA Today: Bill Moyers returning to weekly TV in January
Journalist Bill Moyers retired from weekly TV a year ago but now says he plans to return.
He said Monday he'll be back in January with an hourlong interview show called Moyers & Company.
He says the new weekly show will not be carried by PBS, the home for much of his past programming. It will be distributed to public TV stations by American Public Television.
Washington Post: Rick Perry distances himself from George W. Bush in GOP presidential race
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, like most of the other the GOP presidential hopefuls, says his campaign is about undoing the decisions of President Obama. But Perry is also offering himself as a stark alternative to the last Republican to occupy the White House, his fellow Texan George W. Bush.
Perry shares the view, widely held among conservatives, that Bush’s government spending habits in office were a betrayal of the GOP’s core fiscal principles. But Perry goes further, dismissing “compassionate conservatism,” the central tenet of Bush’s domestic policy, as just more overreach by the federal government.
Even more than former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the other top-tier candidate, Perry presents GOP voters sharper outlines of the choice facing the party in 2012: how much to embrace of the anti-government stridency of the tea party and how much to discard of the “compassionate conservatism” of Bush, who presided over the last successful reinvention of the party at the presidential level.
In words and deeds even before he entered the presidential race, Perry, the new front-runner, has distanced himself from Bush’s vision of the Republican Party, painting it as too moderate — particularly those positions that expanded the role of government in Washington.
USA Today: Lockerbie bomber found in Libya close to death
Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi has been tracked down in Tripoli, dashing rumors that he had been taken out of the Libyan capital, The Telegraph and other news organizations report.
Earlier, we reported in On Deadline that U.S. politicians had called on Libyan leaders to turn over al-Megrahi and that Libya's new ruling council would not. Before this most recent discovery, al-Megrahi has surfaced on occasion in Libya.
Al-Megrahi was discovered by reporters from CNN comatose and near death, surviving on oxygen and an intravenous drip. The cancer-stricken former Libyan intelligence officer is being cared for by his family at his Tripoli villa.
San Francisco Chronicle: Officials: 29 dead in suicide bomb in Iraq mosque
A suicide bomber blew himself up inside Baghdad's largest Sunni mosque Sunday night, killing 29 people during prayers, a shocking strike on a place of worship similar to the one that brought Iraq to the brink of civil war five years ago.
Iraqi security officials said parliament lawmaker Khalid al-Fahdawi, a Sunni, was among the dead in the 9:40 p.m attack.
Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, a spokesman for Baghdad's military operations command, confirmed the bombing happened inside the Um al-Qura mosque during prayers in the western Baghdad neighborhood of al-Jamiaah. The blue-domed building is the largest Sunni mosque in Baghdad.
Two security officials and medics at two Baghdad hospitals put the casualty toll at 29 dead and 38 wounded. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
St. Petersburg Times: Scott transition team knew of e-mail deletions in March, records show
Gov. Rick Scott said he learned within the past two weeks that state transition e-mail accounts could not be recovered from a private computer server, potentially erasing records that state law requires be kept.
But documents show that Rackspace, the Texas company that provided the e-mail service, notified Scott's transition team as early as March 14 that records no longer existed from 44 of 47 e-mail accounts, including Scott's.
News of the disconnect between Scott and his transition staff comes at the same time the state produced 700 pages of e-mails from Susie Wiles, Scott's campaign manager and legislative liaison during the transition.
Wiles' e-mails provide additional details about the hectic and disorganized two-month window between Scott's election and his inauguration. Among the new insights: A schedule that shows Scott had a private dinner with former President George W. Bush shortly after the November election and e-mails from former Gov. Jeb Bush questioning a decision to dismiss three African-American employees working in the Governor's Office.
Euro News: Explosion sends panic through Turkish resort
At least 10 people have been injured in a bomb attack at a beach resort in Turkey.
Local media say the small bomb exploded at Kemer in Antalya, a resort popular with German, Dutch and Russian tourists.
The blast caused panic, but the injuries were all described as light and only needing emergency out-patient treament. The bomb had been buried in sand so most damage was done by flying pebbles.
“It exploded just as I was coming out of the sea. Everybody was shocked, no-one could move for 10 seconds,” said one tourist.
Euro News: Arab League urges Syria to end bloodshed
The Arab League has called for an end to bloodshed in Syria “before it is too late” and urged respect for its people’s right to reforms.
Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby will travel to Damascus to try to mediate a solution to the crisis, following a special meeting of the body in Cairo. It was its first official gathering on Syria since the start of five months of unrest that the UN says has left more than 2,000 people dead.
Pro-democracy protesters hostile to President Assad made sure their voices were heard outside the League’s headquarters in the Egyptian capital.
Many Arab commentators have criticised the organisation for its timid reaction to the crackdown.
Guardian:
Karachi gang war prompts intervention by Pakistan Rangers
Weeks of violent mayhem that have left more than 1,000 dead in Pakistan's biggest city culminated on Sunday in troops entering a gangster-run district in an attempt to end the violence.
The holy month of Ramadan, supposedly a time of piety, has only increased the slaughter on Karachi's streets, with beheadings and horrifically mutilated bodies dumped in sacks in gutters, the debris from a war between gangs divided on ethnic lines.
Over the weekend, the prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, described the violence in Karachi as the country's "greatest challenge".
In an extraordinary televised press conference on Sunday, a senior official of the ruling Pakistan Peoples party (PPP) accused the interior minister, Rehman Malik, also of the same party, of culpability in the killings in Karachi.
Guardian: Labour seeks law change to stop News Corp renewing BSkyB bid
Labour is trying to secure cross-party support for an emergency change in the law to prevent News Corporation from renewing its bid to take full ownership of BSkyB.
In a move designed to capitalise on the embarrassment the phone-hacking scandal has heaped on the government, Labour said there was still a possibility that Rupert Murdoch could reopen his bid and the law should be changed to allow ministers to block it. Ivan Lewis, the shadow culture secretary, will introduce a negative motion when parliament returns next week, which – if approved by all parties – could go ahead without a vote.
He has written to the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and the Lib Dem culture spokesman, Don Foster, with his proposals. The aim would be to introduce a new public interest test applicable to media barons to rule people out based on their conduct.
Under Labour's proposed amendments to Section 58 of the Enterprise Act 2002, ministers would be given the necessary powers to ask regulators to apply a wide-ranging public interest test. Ministers would be also be able to intervene at any stage in the process if new information came to light.
New York Times: No Favorite Emerges in Race for Japanese Premier
In the brief race to choose Japan’s next prime minister, five candidates vied Sunday for support within the governing Democratic Party, but none of them appeared to have a decisive lead going into Monday’s vote.
The campaign began on Friday after Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced his resignation. It has so far failed to grip the nation, which has had five prime ministers since Junichiro Koizumi stepped down in September 2006. Most of the current candidates are relative unknowns and seem to be short on concrete ideas for directing this rudderless country.
The winner of the party vote will face a host of daunting tasks. Foremost among them: rebuilding the earthquake- and tsunami-devastated northeast, mitigating the damage caused by the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and finding ways to pay for those efforts while halting the rise of the yen, reining in the ballooning national debt and ending two decades of economic malaise.
It could also be the last chance for the Democrats, who ended a half-century of virtual one-party rule by the Liberal Democrats two years ago with promises to revitalize Japan, only to flounder under the indecisive leadership of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. His successor, Mr. Kan, was forced out over his perceived failure to lead an effective response to the triple disaster in March.
CBC: Jack Layton's 'passion, civility' honoured at funeral
"I'm sad, we're sad. But let us not look behind us, let's look forward," Chow said, wiping back tears, as part of a video tribute tracing her husband's path to power.
"We are overwhelmed by the incredible support you have shown us. We are proud to have shared our father with you," Mike Layton said during his eulogy alongside his sister, Sarah Layton.
Mike Layton shared with the crowd memories of his "loving dad" who urged people to "have a dream that is longer than a lifetime."
"My dad lived life to the fullest," Layton's daughter said. While she noted her father's many accomplishments, she said he was particularly proud to become a grandfather. She also praised Chow as her father's "soul mate."