Thousands of pages of e-mail from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's administration range from the mundane details of governing to efforts to crack down on state news leaks and push back against critics.
Scattered among the 24,000 pages, released by state officials in Juneau on Friday, are glimpses of Palin periodically butting heads with top Alaskan political figures as she pushed to get landmark oil and gas legislation through the statehouse; demanding that Exxon finish paying damages for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill; even dealing with complaints about high school football rivalries by offering to bake brownies.
By June 2008, she was being sought out by national news outlets and being talked up as potential running mate for Republican presidential nominee John McCain. But the documents show her battling Alaska reporters even as McCain was preparing to put her on the national stage.
FULL STORYIn a brazen daylight attack Saturday in the Indian city of Mumbai, gunmen shot and killed a veteran journalist who reported on the city's underworld.
Jyotirmoy Dey, was rushed to a hospital where he died of five gunshot wounds, reported CNN's sister network, CNN-IBN.It quoted police as saying that four men on two motorbikes pulled up to Dey, who was also riding a bike, and shot him from behind at close range.
Police are searching for the gunmen, who were able to escape the scene.
Dey had covered crime for two decades and was most recently writing for an English language tabloid called Mid Day.
The newspaper posted a statement on its website that called Dey "one of the pillars" of its newsroom.
It would not comment on the circumstances of Dey's killing but speculation surfaced that it was act committed by someone who intended to silence him.
"We will not stop doing investigating stories, and we will not bow to criminals," the newspaper said.
FULL STORYRep. Anthony Weiner is under pressure in Washington to resign over his sexting-and-lying scandal, but he still enjoys support among some of his constituents in the New York City borough of Queens.
CNN's Jason Carroll is speaking with New Yorkers on the street Saturday to get their opinions.
"I have a very hard time with the resigning thing," Dale Kaplan told Carroll. "But personally, in a very selfish way, I was crying when I heard about it because he was a voice for things that I strongly believe in, and that voice has now been taken away. Who's going to take his place? Nobody. And I'm so, so incredibly upset about that.
"Should he resign? Yeah, I guess he should; everybody else is resigning," she continued. "I mean, I don't think he did anything so awful, but he's taking away from the party. ... It's just causing so much furor that we shouldn't be talking about. That's the only reason.
"I feel sorry for him as a person," Kaplan added, "because, to see a man's life fall apart right in front of your eyes, it's very, very depressing."
Others in Weiner's 9th Congressional District may be similarly conflicted. A Marist College poll released Thursday showed 56% of registered voters there don't believe he should step down; 33% believe he should. The district covers portions of Queens and Brooklyn.
A top al Qaeda operative in East Africa, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, was killed at a Somali checkpoint, a senior Kenyan official said Saturday. Mohammed was long sought in Somalia for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
"There's reason to believe this senior terrorist is dead," a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak on the record said Saturday. "He was killed, it appears, at a Somali police checkpoint in or around Mogadishu."
The commander of Somalia's government forces confirmed that two men driving through a checkpoint southwest of Mogadishu late Wednesday were killed when both opened fire on soldiers there.
One of the men was a foreigner and his identity is under investigation, Gen. Abdikarin Dhega Badans said.
Tiny flies found in the trunk of Casey Anthony's car fit the theory that the body of her 2-year-old daughter was stored there, maybe for three to five days, an insect expert testified Saturday in the Orlando woman's capital murder trial.
The flies found in the car suggest something began to decompose inside the trunk, but do not prove that the material was a human body, said Neal Haskell, a forensic entomologist from Saint Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Indiana. Such flies will feed on many things, he said.
Based on his analysis of temperatures and the reproductive habits of the small flies found on paper towels that another scientist found were soaked in fluid from decomposition, Haskell said it appeared that whatever attracted the flies had been in the car for three to five days.
Defense attorney Jose Baez, in his cross-examination of Haskell, tried to show that that flies could have been attracted by common garbage or leftover food.
FULL STORYGuests at restaurants in Argentina's Buenos Aires province must say good-bye to the salt shaker.
In an effort to combat hypertension, which affects some 3.7 million residents in the province - nearly a quarter of the population, the health department reached an agreement with the hotel and restaurant federation to remove salt shakers from the tables at their eateries.
"On average, each Argentinian consumes 13 grams of salt daily, while according to the World Health Organization, you should consume less than five," Health Minister Alejandro Collia said when he announced the change last month.
The measure is not as extreme as it sounds. Salt will be available by request, but only after the patrons have tasted their food.
FULL STORYSyrian soldiers working to retake a rebellious northern town killed, wounded and arrested members of "armed terrorist groups" operating in the region, state media reported Saturday.
This development unfolded as Syrian troops on Friday afternoon came to the entrances of the city, Jisr Al-Shugur, in an operation "to restore security and tranquility to the area which was being terrorized by armed terrorist groups," the Syrian Arab News Agency reported.
This military offensive took place amid anti-government protests raging across Syria for nearly three months, outpourings that have led to violent security crackdowns on demonstrators.
Syria's Bashar al-Assad regime has consistently blamed what it calls armed gangs for the bloodshed over the last three months. But activists and protesters say security forces have caused the violence.
FULL STORYVenezuelan President Hugo Chavez underwent surgery Friday in Cuba, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said.
Chavez suffered from a pelvic abscess and results from the surgery were "satisfactory," Maduro said.
Authorities in New Castle County, Delaware, are investigating contact between an area teen and Rep. Anthony Weiner.
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