Of the 564 members of the assembly present for the vote, only four voted to keep the monarchy.

The group met all day in a convention center to reach the agreement and even continued to work after the facility was bombed.

Two apparent bombs damaged the building about 8:20 p.m. local time, said a CNN journalist covering the meetings.

There were no reports of injuries, and the group was back working within 10 minutes of the blasts.

Even though the meeting went late into the evening, a small procession of people could be seen celebrating outside the convention center when the news of political transition was announced.

There was no immediate reaction from the palace, which has rarely commented on political developments in Nepal since King Gyanendra was forced to end his royal dictatorship and restore democracy after widespread protests two years ago.

The country's former rebels, the Maoists, then ended their 10-year communist insurgency and in April won the most seats in the assembly, setting the stage for the end of Nepal's monarchy.

Wow. Three years ago I thought of crossing over into Nepal from India, and the Maoists and the King were killing people. Now the Maoists are elected to run the government. Democracy in action.

Nepal abolishes monarchy - CNN.com

In the aftermath of the great Sichuan earthquake, we’ve seen a hopeful glimpse of China’s future: a more open and self-confident nation, and maybe — just maybe — the birth of grass-roots politics here.

Earthquake and Hope - New York Times

Ministers are to consider plans for a database of electronic information holding details of every phone call and e-mail sent in the UK, it has emerged.

I swear it's a game of who can come up with the most Orwellian proposal

maybe if we shoot everybody then there won't be any crime or any terrorists!!!

BBC NEWS | UK | Phone calls database considered

For Americans, what is happening each night in the French channel port of Calais is poignantly and shamefully familiar. As Caroline Brothers reported in The Times recently, clusters of poor people wait for darkness and a high-risk chance to crawl inside or beneath a truck to cross to a country that needs and welcomes their labor but refuses to legally recognize their presence.

Shame in Calais - New York Times

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran made another blustering claim this week: that his scientists are tripling the size of their nuclear fuel program. The fact that it made barely a diplomatic ripple is another reminder that the major powers are adrift on one of the major security challenges of the day.

As Iran works on its bomb, the world drifts - International Herald Tribune

A vast hunk of floating ice has broken away from the Antarctic peninsula, threatening the collapse of a much larger ice shelf behind it, in a development that has shocked climate scientists.
...
"I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. We predicted it would happen, but it's happened twice as fast as we predicted."

Giant Antarctic ice shelf breaks into the sea | Environment | guardian.co.uk

THE FIFTH anniversary of the invasion of Iraq prompted a flurry of speeches from President Bush and the Democratic candidates who hope to inherit the White House next year. Sadly, what they had in common was their failure to grapple with hard realities -- beginning with the elusiveness of any clear or quick path toward Mr. Bush's promise of "victory," or that of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to "end this war."
...
Barely acknowledging the reduction in violence, the Democratic candidates insist that U.S. troops are, as Ms. Clinton put it, "babysitting a civil war." In fact, the surge forestalled an incipient civil war, and U.S. commanders and diplomats in Iraq don't hesitate to say that if American forces withdrew now, sectarian conflict would probably explode in its full fury, causing bloodshed on a far greater scale than ever before and posing grave threats to U.S. security.

BOTH Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton propose withdrawing U.S. troops at the most rapid pace the Pentagon says is possible -- one brigade a month. In the 16 months or so it would take to remove those forces, they envision the near-miraculous accomplishment of every political goal the Bush administration has aimed at for five years, from the establishment of a stable government to agreement by Iraq's neighbors to support it. They suppose that the knowledge that American forces were leaving would inspire these accords. In fact, it more likely would cause all sides to discount U.S. influence and prepare to violently seize the space left by the departing Americans.

Fantasies on Iraq - washingtonpost.com

I always hoped he would be one of those folks that would make it over a hundred.

Arthur C. Clarke is dead

Friday’s employment report — which was so weak that it had many economists declaring that we’re already in a recession — was bad news. But it was actually less disturbing than what’s going on in the financial markets.
...
Some observers worry that the Fed is taking over the banks’ financial risk. But what worries me more is that the move seems trivial compared with the size of the problem: $200 billion may sound like a lot of money, but when you compare it with the size of the markets that are melting down — there are $11 trillion in U.S. mortgages outstanding — it’s a drop in the bucket.

The Face-Slap Theory - New York Times

Amid increasingly turbulent credit markets and ever-weaker reports on the U.S. economy, the Federal Reserve has been unusually swift and determined in its lowering of the overnight lending rate. The White House and Congress have moved quickly as well, approving rebates for families and tax breaks for businesses. And more monetary easing from the Fed could well be on the way.

The central question for America's economy is this: Will this medicine work? The same question was asked repeatedly in Japan during its "lost decade" of the 1990s. Unfortunately, as was the case in Japan, the answer may be no.

The unwinding of excesses - International Herald Tribune