1. Tsai to challenge Ma in 2012 presidential election
The China Post April 28, 2011
The KMT Central Standing Committee approved Ma's nomination yesterday at the party's weekly meeting, while Tsai will be formally nominated as the DPP's presidential candidate at the party's Central Executive Committee meeting on May 4.
While Ma was largely viewed as a shoo-in for the 2012 elections, Tsai's nomination was determined by DPP polls conducted by five separate polling agencies from April 25-26, each with at least 3,000 valid samples.
The DPP primary poll showed Tsai gaining an advantage over Ma, with 42.50 percent points to Ma's 35.04.
Upon her official nomination, Tsai will become Taiwan's first female presidential candidate in history when she represents the DPP in the country's presidential election to be held in January 2012.
2. Osama bin Laden, the face of terror, killed in Pakistan
CNN May 2, 2011
Osama bin Laden's legacy
(CNN) -- Osama bin Laden used the fruits of his family's success -- a personal fortune estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars -- to help finance al Qaeda in its quest for a new pan-Islamic religious state.
The Saudi-born zealot commanded al Qaeda, a terrorist organization run like a rogue multinational firm, experts said, with subsidiaries operating secretly in dozens of countries, plotting terror, raising money and recruiting young Muslim men -- even boys -- from many nations to its training camps in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden and his terrorist network were behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and are linked to others around the world.
The enormity of the destruction in the 9/11 attacks -- the World Trade Center's towers devastated by two hijacked airplanes, the Pentagon heavily damaged by a third hijacked jetliner, a fourth flight crashed in rural Pennsylvania, and more than 3,000 people killed -- gave bin Laden a global presence.
His death early Monday in Pakistan ended a nearly 10-year long manhunt for one of the world's most-wanted men.
Even before September 11, 2001, bin Laden was already on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
He had been implicated in a series of deadly, high-profile attacks that had grown in their intensity and success during the 1990s.
They included a deadly firefight with U.S. soldiers in Somalia in October 1993, the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed 224 in August 1998, and an attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors in October 2000.
Bin Laden eluded capture for years, once reportedly slipping out of a training camp in Afghanistan just hours before a barrage of U.S. cruise missiles destroyed it.
On September 11, sources said, the evidence immediately pointed to bin Laden. Within days, those close to the investigation said they had their proof.
Six days after the attack, President George W. Bush made it clear Osama bin Laden was the No. 1 suspect.
"I want justice," Bush said. "There's an old poster out West that said, 'Wanted, dead or alive.'"
Bin Laden was born in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1957, the 17th of 52 children in a family that had struck it rich in the construction business.
His father, Mohamed bin Laden, was a native of Yemen, who immigrated to Saudi Arabia as a child. He became a billionaire by building his company into the largest construction firm in the Saudi kingdom.
As Saudi Arabia became flush with oil money, so, too, did the bin Laden family business, as Osama's father cultivated and exploited connections within the royal family.
The young bin Laden inherited a share of the family fortune at an early age after his father died in an aircraft accident.
The bin Ladens were noted for their religious commitment. In his youth, Osama studied with Muslim scholars. Two of the family businesses' most prestigious projects also left a lasting impression: the renovations of mosques at Mecca and Medina, Islam's two holiest sites.
As a young man attending college in Jeddah, bin Laden's interest in religion started to take a political turn. One of his professors was Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian scholar who was a key figure in the rise of a new pan-Islamic religious movement.
Azzam founded an organization to help the mujahedeen fighting to repel the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
Bin Laden soon became the organization's top financier, using his family connections to raise money. He left as a volunteer for Afghanistan at 22, joining the U.S.-backed call to arms against the Soviets.
He remained there for a decade, using construction equipment from his family's business to help the Muslim guerrilla forces build shelters, tunnels and roads through the rugged Afghan mountains, and at times taking part in battle.
In the late 1980s, bin Laden founded al Qaeda, Arabic for "the base," an organization that CNN terrorism analyst and author Peter Bergen says had fairly prosaic beginnings. One of its purposes was to provide documentation for Arab fighters who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, including death certificates.
Al Qaeda, under bin Laden's leadership, ran a number of guesthouses for these Arab fighters and their families. It also operated training camps to help them prepare for the fight against the Soviets.
In the early 1990s, with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, bin Laden turned his sights on the world's remaining superpower -- the United States. War-hardened and victorious, he returned to Saudi Arabia following the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan.
In a 1997 CNN interview, bin Laden declared a "jihad," or "holy war," against the United States.
3. A Traditional Royal Wedding, but for the 3 Billion Witnesses
The New York Times April 29, 2011
LONDON — In the end, Friday’s wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton may not have ushered in a new dawn for the frayed royal family or brought a renewed era of optimism to a country beset by financial woes, as some predicted in the overheated countdown to the big day. But it proved that the British still know how to combine pageantry, solemnity and romance (and wild hats) better than anyone else in the world.
It was an impeccably choreographed occasion of high pomp and heartfelt emotion, of ancient customs tweaked by modern developments (Elton John brought his husband).
Viewing estimates for the ceremony, at 11 a.m. British time on the dot, hovered in the three billion range, give or take 500 million. Australians held bouquet-throwing competitions; people in Hong Kong wore Kate and William masks; New Yorkers rose by dawn to watch the entrance of guests like Victoria Beckham, teetering pregnantly in sky-high Christian Louboutin heels, Guy Ritchie, the former Mr. Madonna, and assorted monarchs from European countries that are no longer monarchies, like Bulgaria.
In London, the Metropolitan Police said, a million people lined the route of the royal procession, and half a million gathered in front of Buckingham Palace to watch the bride and groom, now known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, kiss (twice) on the palace balcony.
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