In Japan: Officials retracted yesterday’s announcement that radiation at the Fukushima Daiichi Plant was 10 million times higher than normal, which they now say was inaccurate.

In Libya: Rebels advance on a major oil refinery, and a woman who attempted to report being raped by Gaddafi’s forces to journalists was silenced and taken into custody by government officials.

In Syria: Twelve people were killed in anti-government protests yesterday.

Confederacy of Dunces for America: Mississippi governor Haley Barbour and Newt Gingrich kicked off their presidency bids—in front of 500 conservatives in Iowa—by calling Obama’s policies stupid, and getting all flustered about energy policy.

To be fair, Topshop is really overpriced: During a march of over 250,000 in London protesting the British government’s public spending cuts, 211 people were arrested, some for attacking symbols of wealth, including HSBC and Topshop.

Cool, you go first: Mike Huckabee says that battling gay marriage is so important it’s worth losing your job over.

The disorganized skies: A crashed computer system forced Alaska Airlines to cancel 140 flights yesterday, stranding 11,700 travelers and grounding 50 planes at SeaTac.

Finally, in very sad (and yesterday’s) news, Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro has died at the age of 75. Here she is, accepting the vice presidential nomination in 1984.

13 replies on “Morning News”

  1. I got a Mitt Romney/Haley Barbour poll call yesterday. It was quite humorous, though I think the caller was not so fond of my responses..

  2. Ms. Burbank, although I have nothing but the utmost respect for your news-gathering skills, I feel I must direct you to this crucial bit of information:
    http://www.dlisted.com/node/41351

    Re: Japanese officials retracting their “10 million x normal” announcement….sorry, seandr, I guess you’ll need to make alternate plans…and here I was hoping to see the video… 🙂

  5. Oh, Canuck – well done! (And I think Goldy is resolutely sticking to his End Times plan – he’s stripped off, took an acid tab he’d kept in his junk drawer since 1981, and is currently propositioning a comely sapling down at the Arboretum.)

    My favorite stories I’ve read this morning are:

    1. The New York Times’ Jan Hoffman outdoing every local reporter by digging into the groundbreaking Olympia sexting-teen prosecution case – terrific wrapup:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/us/27s…

    2. The story of California’s budget bloodbath brings this look at its youngest-ever, first Latina, and first openly gay budget director, Ana Matosantos.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/us/27d…

    3. And the student riots in England called to mind Krugman’s latest excoriation of the national policy insanity roiling that country, Ireland, Portugal…and which, if we’re stupid enough to do it in the U.S. we’ll have fucked over the entire next generation…
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/opinio…

  6. God, gus, you are good for a belly laugh first thing (well, maybe second thing) in the morning! Oh Goldy, I can just see it, he’s thinking his partners were so much softer in his uni days…

    And multiple thank yous for giving me some reading material on what promises to be a very quiet day putting in a few hours at work…

  7. Ferrarro completely destroyed her legacy with her gender-baiting bullshit. She sounded damn near separatist in her whines about Hillary not getting the nomination.

  8. @7: I don’t think she did. I was nine when she got nominated for the vice presidency, and it made me feel like I could grow up to be anything. A lot of old-school feminists rallied around Hillary in 2008, and while I supported Obama, I also understood that it’s because of that powerful solidarity in the previous generation that I enjoy so many rights now.

    Thanks for fighting the good fight, Geraldine.

  10. Canuck, if you’re still whiling away some hours, I found this fantastic example of a classic NYT theater-critic rave last week – Ben Brantley on the new Broadway musical from the creators of South Park and Avenue Q. One of those things that makes me want to open up my creaky wallet and hie to Manhattan for at least a long weekend…

    This is to all the doubters and deniers out there, the ones who say that heaven on Broadway does not exist, that it’s only some myth our ancestors dreamed up.

    http://theater.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/th…

  11. Oh gus, in an alternate universe, I too would whip out my over-extended Visa card and join you there. That looks wonderful.

    (my dad lives in nearby Princeton, NJ…does it make me a terrible person that every time I read about something like this, I think, “I really should go visit dear pa”…?)

  13. Oh gus, that was lovely! Isn’t it funny how, not having listened to that music for years and years, and now playing it all the time on my ipod, that I remember every word, every pause, as I’m sure you do, too. And yes, I’d think the crocuses (crocae?) must be in bloom there by now, sigh.
    Oh how I would love to see that original show…

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