Balanced News Blog

With a special election just a week away, the Minnesota Supreme Court pondered today whether to disqualify a state House candidate from running in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

Nineteen people, including three young children, were killed last night when a seaplane ferrying them to the Bahamas crashed into the Atlantic off South Beach in Miami.

King Kong was expected to rake in about $75 million in theaters over the weekend, so box office monitors were surprised and Universal Pictures executives were disappointed to see that it only brought in about $50 million, with Friday being especially slow.

There will be no romantic reunion — Jessica Simpson filed for divorce Friday from former boy band star Nick Lachey.

Now, “spying” on one’s own citizens is nothing new. Nearly everyone does it. Oh please, don’t snort, you know it’s true. The Brits have been doing it for years via MI5 (no, not James Bond, that’s MI6); the French have the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST), since 1944; the Germans have Verfassungsschutz; the Chinese have the Ministry of Public Security. The list is endless, nearly every country in the world has some sort of internal mechanism for monitoring organizations and individuals within the state.

Private Kyle Lawson, a 19-year-old Tucson resident, was physically assaulted and threatened at Fort Huachuca Army Base after fellow soldiers learned he is gay, according to a report in Sunday’s Arizona Daily Star. Fearful for his safety, Private Lawson is leaving the Army, while the soldier accused of his assault appears to remain unpunished. Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) today called on Army officials to hold the responsible party accountable for the assault and called on the Pentagon to implement an Anti-Harassment Action Plan originally adopted in 2000. The plan, SLDN has reported each year since, has never been implemented.

Two women today became the first same-sex couple to use the UK’s new civil partnership laws to publicly register their commitment at a ceremony.

Monday is off to a deadly start in Baghdad. Police say a suicide car bomber detonated his explosives outside a children’s hospital in the western part of the city.

Cigarette smoking is at its lowest level in a survey of teenagers and use of illicit drugs has been declining, but continuing high rates of abuse for prescription painkillers remain a worry, the government reported Monday.

U.S. lawmakers on Sunday tentatively agreed to earmark $3.78 billion to prepare for a possible avian flu epidemic, about half what the Senate and White House had wanted for stockpiling anti-viral drugs and vaccines and helping communities plan for a health crisis.