
The Consumers Union wants Congress to
delay the nation's transition to digital television because it believes the program to help American's transition has been underfunded and poorly implemented. It was announced earlier this week that the
$1.3 billion dollar program to offset the cost of buying converter boxes is all tapped out.
All full-power television stations in the US are
required to stop using the old method of transmitting TV signals, known as analog, and start broadcasting exclusively in a digital format on Feb.

President-elect Barack Obama, President Bush, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton (that's all of the surviving past presidents)
met up for lunch at the White House today in a historic gathering. Collectively the bunch has more than 30 years of presidential experience.

India's government-run Air India airline has dumped 10 female fight attendants who were grounded last year for being overweight. A
report says the firings occurred after the cabin crew was warned about meeting minimum physical fitness standards (as in, not being thin enough, apparently) and given "sufficient time to lose weight." The report also says the flight attendants were offered alternative ground assignments, which they understandably refused.

Ready to say adios to 2008? You are going to have to wait one whole second longer this New Year's Eve. The world's official timekeepers (who knew we had them?!) have
added what they call a leap second to the last day of the year to help sync clocks to the earth's slowing spin on its axis.

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was
voted Russia's third most popular historical figure in a nationwide poll that ended this weekend. Stalin's notable superlative comes despite the famine and purges (which included sending people to labor camps and millions of deaths) that marked his dictatorship.
The "Name of Russia" contest was run by the Rossiya state television channel for about six months and closed Sunday night with a final vote from the Internet or cell phones.
The last time New Orleans saw snow was a white Christmas day in 2004, and the Southern city has only been painted white 17 times since 1850. But this morning residents woke up to
as much as six inches of snowflakes.
Today marks the earliest date for snowfall in the city, and the rare weather found some unprepared.

Just like all presidents before him, the President-elect plans to be sworn in using his full name: Barack Hussein Obama. Although Obama said that by using his full name, he's just doing what every other president did, he also
told the Chicago Tribune, that he has a unique opportunity to renovate relations with the Muslim world. He hopes to "create a relationship of mutual respect and partnership in countries and with peoples of goodwill who want their citizens and ours to prosper together."

A South Carolina Ford dealer wants Americans to put the brakes on buying foreign cars, and he's using the radio to accelerate the spread of this message. In a
controversial ad the local dealer chastises Toyota customers saying:
All you people that buy all your Toyotas and send that money to Japan, you know, when you don't have a job to make your Toyota car payment, don't come crying to me. All those cars are rice ready.

If you listen to Bush cabinet members or other high-ranking administration officials talking about the last eight-years, you might notice that their comments have something in common. That's because the White House sent administration staff a two-page memo outlining upbeat answers for questions about the president's reign.
Suggested talking points found in the "Speech Topper on the Bush Record," memo
maintain that Bush:
- Upheld "the honor and the dignity of his office."
- "Kept the American people safe" after the Sept.

Matthew Alexander, if that's his real name (it's not), says that the qualities that make a good terrorist interrogator are the same things that make a good American, and those qualities don't include a knack for physical torture. He should know, because he served as a US military interrogator in Iraq, and wrote
a book all about how to break a terrorist.
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Last night on the
Daily Show, Alexander explained that it's counterproductive to torture terrorists even in ticking time-bomb scenarios.