News you can use - America celebrates Thanksgiving with violent sales frenzy

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The Walkleys happened last night and Julian "Sexy Touch" Assange (remember him?) was given the Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism Award, the night's highest honour. He accepted the award via a pre-recorded six minute speech in which he went to town on Julia Gillard, the US Government and the price of a carton of milk.

New Zealand staged an election on the weekend and comfortably returned the sitting PM, John Key, to power. While technically conservative, the warm and fuzzy nature of NZ politics means that he'd probably be the target of a consistent smear campaign in The Australian if he was to run over here.

Election season continues to mature well in the US, with both Perry and Romney now being accused of running entirely false campaigns about Barack Obama. Whatever the price, 'ey guys?

As always, America has celebrated Thanksgiving with its annual Black Friday sales rush, which was marked this year by an even higher level of gun related violence than normal. And a woman who pepper sprayed her fellow shoppers in desperate pursuit of an Xbox. Must be something to do with the economy. Although perhaps not all that much because shoppers poured $11.4 billion into the economy in 24 hours.

Relations between Pakistan and the US may well be at an all-time low after a cross-border attack by the latter accidentally killed two dozen troops of the former. Oops! LOL! This of course being a fair difference from when an American cross-border attack kills two dozen civilians that may or may not be Islamic militants.

With Muammar Gaddafi out of the way, Hugo Chavez continues to mature as the world's go to leader for all round nuttiness - he is currently in the process of removing all of Venezuela's gold from banks in Europe and the US and is bringing it back to Venezuela. Which is not nearly as economically sound as I think he'd like to believe.

After a week of protests that have left 42 people dead and 3000 injured, Egypt will today stage its first "free and fair" elections in a good four decades. With many voters and parties boycotting the elections while the military retains control of the country, it's probably fair to say this is not the triumphant turn toward democracy envisaged by the world back in February. Meanwhile, the Arab League has agreed to sweeping sanctions against Syria that will freeze assets, prevent Syrian officials travelling to any Arab nation and halt all transactions with the brutally repressive state. Some 35 civilians (and a cheeky dozen of the security forces) were killed over the weekend.

Reports out of Europe suggest that the IMF is readying a 600 billion euro bailout of Italy. Which seems like a sensible amount of money to have to give to the tenth largest economy on Earth.

The Dominique Strauss-Kahn case gets more interesting by the second, with a renowned investigative journalist piecing together a suite of evidence that suggests he might have been the target of political assassins in Sarkozy's party. Of course he may also just be a rapist, but there is some bizarre stuff in there.

Features

The Fin Review on the remarkably significant ramifications of Peter Slipper's defection. Malcolm Turnbull must be oh so excited.

A brilliantly written but utterly distressing tour of famine, war, pestilence and death-ridden Mogadishu, a city that could very easily be the unhappiest place on Earth.

Oddities/Curiosities

Germany's fattest baby on record has been delivered, and the 528 pound (239 kg) mother celebrated the arrival of the 13 pound behemoth by calling him Jihad. The woman in question now has 14 children, diabetes and a healthy attitude towards life.

Good to see the Catholic Church is still keeping with the times - not only do they still have a position of Chief Exorcist, one of the guys who until recently occupied that role has now gone on record as declaring Harry Potter and yoga to be evil. Hearts and minds, people, hearts and minds.

Video

So, this is what sales time looks like in the US. Apparently this particular frenzy was caused by the appearance of a $2 waffle iron. Which is, admittedly, tremendous value. Just think of all the waffles you could... DROP THE WAFFLE IRON ASSHOLE, THAT THING IS MINE.



And here's another one in which the teeming masses buying their Blu-Ray players look nothing so much like a cluster of starving humans clustering around a grain shipment in Mogadishu. Hectic.