Can The iPhone Match The Hype?

The Skinny is Joel Roberts' take on the top news of the day and the best of the Internet.

So can this combination cell phone/iPod/Internet device possibly live up to the buildup that's got people already camping out on the streets at Apple stores around the country?

Well, the early reviews are in and the answer is, mostly, yes!

USA Today says that "with a few exceptions, this expensive, glitzy wunderkind is indeed worth lusting after."

The WSJ agrees, saying that "despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer."

And The New York Times says the iPhone "does so many things so well, and so pleasurably, that you tend to forgive its foibles."

The biggest complaint – besides the $500 starting price – isn't with the iPhone itself, but with Apple's decision to make it available only via AT&T's cell phone network.

A Glimpse At The CIA's "Family Jewels"

Assassination plots against foreign leaders, including Fidel Castro. Spying on reporters. Collecting information on thousands of Americans in the anti-Vietnam War movement. Conducting "behavior modification" experiments with LSD on unwitting U.S. citizens.

Those are just some of the CIA abuses confirmed by the agency's declassification Tuesday of hundreds of pages of long-secret documents – the so-called "family jewels."

All the major morning papers give front-page coverage to the release of the documents, which USA Today says shows the CIA "acknowledging its past illegal activities and revealing in startling detail how it crossed the line."

The L.A. Times says many of the episodes detailed in the documents "read like relics from another time," like the attempts to seek the Mafia's help to kill Castro. But other documents "seem remarkably relevant today, as the nation grapples anew with questions of how much latitude U.S. intelligence agencies should be given, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks."

And while this look at the CIA's past misdeeds is unprecedented, The New York Times says the documents "leave out a great deal. Large sections are censored, showing that the C.I.A. still cannot bring itself to expose all the skeletons in its closet."

A Haven In Iraq

While the rest of Iraq "has plunged into a downward spiral," The New York Times reports there's one area that has suffered limited violence and enjoyed relative political calm.

In fact, things are so peaceful in Kurdistan, the semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq, that a building boom is under way involving billions of dollars in Iraqi and foreign-funded projects.

"Where explosions and bomb-scarred buildings have been a defining symbol elsewhere in Iraq, construction cranes are now a common feature on the Kurdish landscape," says The Times.

So optimistic are officials about the region's future that there's serious talk "about one day challenging Dubai as the Middle East's main transportation and business hub."

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