Contents 1 January 2 February 3 March 4 April 5 May 6 June 7 July 8 August 9 September 10 October 11 November 12 December [edit]

Thursday, October 18, 2007 It can be difficult to be John Reed. Christopher Hitchens called him a “Bin Ladenist” and Cathy Young editorialized in The Boston Globe that he “blames the victims of terrorism” when he puts out a novel like Snowball’s Chance, a biting send-up of George Orwell‘s Animal Farm which he was inspired…

Wednesday, February 27, 2008 The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a vault containing millions of seeds from all over the world, saw its first deposits on Tuesday. Located 800 kilometers from the North Pole on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, the vault has been referred to by European Commission president José Manuel Barroso as a “frozen…

Monday, June 1, 2009 United States automobile manufacturing firm General Motors filed for bankruptcy and Chapter 11 protection from its creditors at 12:00 UTC Monday, in a Manhattan, New York federal bankruptcy court. This was the largest bankruptcy filing for a U.S. manufacturing company, and with declared assets of $82.29 billion and a debt of…

Monday, May 9, 2005 Workers at Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana have completed a successful test-run of a chemical reactor designed to dispose of Cold War stockpiles of VX nerve agent. After encountering initial difficulties when the temperature in the reactor grew too high, workers were able to adjust the speed of the device. 180…

Wednesday, December 31, 2008 Also try the 2008 World News Quiz of the year. What would you tell your grandchildren about 2008 if they asked you about it in, let’s say, 20 years’ time? If the answer to a quiz question was 2008, what would the question be? The year that markets collapsed, or perhaps…

Sunday, September 2, 2007 Nineteen South Korean Christians are released from insurgents after being held captive for six weeks. The 19 South Koreans return to a nation that is glad the hostage situation has been resolved and is over. However, they also face a country that is angry with their decision to travel to Afghanistan…

Thursday, November 19, 2009 In a third case of staggering sums billed for “unlimited” Internet access reported this week, a French emergency-room doctor from Fontainebleau beats all records with a €159,212 (US$237,417) bill. The telephone-number-sized bill covers one month’s use of an unlimited 3G dongle on Orange‘s network; the beleaguered Dr Jean Spadaro has been…

Friday, August 11, 2006 The New Zealand Government has asked the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to start refining its taxpayer funded ‘Buy Kiwi Made‘ scheme to also include products designed in New Zealand but manufactured elsewhere. The Buy Kiwi Made scheme was a NZ$11 million post-election deal between the Labour Party and the…