Will Oprah And Howard Stern Team Up?
The Skinny is Hillary Profita's take on the top news of the day and the best of the Internet.
The proposed merger of XM and Sirius satellite radio – the only two companies with FCC licenses to provide satellite radio in the U.S. – makes the front page of three papers this morning.
Because they are the only such providers, "the deal is likely to face significant regulatory obstacles," writes the Wall Street Journal.
Neither company "has yet turned an annual profit and both have had billions in losses," writes the New York Times, and the companies said yesterday that their $13 billion merger "would give consumers a broader range of programming, while eliminating overlapping stations that focus on genres of music. At the same time, they said, they could cut duplicated costs in sales and marketing."
But before Howard Stern (of Sirius) and Oprah Winfrey (of XM) can join forces, writes the Washington Post, the companies "must persuade the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission that they are complying with antitrust laws, a claim that land-based broadcasters and consumer groups are likely to dispute."
A Follow Up On The "Other" Walter Reed
Following a is being investigated by the hospital for "seeking funders and soliciting donations for his own new charity," writes the Post.
Wagner's department "was supposed to match big-hearted donors with thousands of wounded soldiers who could not afford to feed their children, pay mortgages, buy plane tickets or put up visiting families in nearby hotels." Soliciting donations for his own organization would be against federal law as well as Army and Defense Department policy.
There is, however, some good news out of the hospital following the Post's weekend series, which Walter Reed and Army officials have been meeting about "'continuously for three days,'" to determine how to fix the the problems that the articles addressed. They began yesterday by making repairs to a building where recuperating patients live and "that has been plagued with mold, leaky plumbing and a broken elevator."
"A Renewed Drive By Insurgents"?
Yesterday's suicide bomb attacks on an American combat outpost outside of Baghdad gets front page attention in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal's newsbox. The attacks killed two American soldiers and wounded at least 17.
The LAT called the attacks "a possible foreshadowing of attacks to come as a neighborhood-based Baghdad security plan takes shape," while the NYT described the incident as "part of a renewed drive by insurgents in recent weeks" as more American troops are dispatched to the area.
Training Ground For Terrorists
Two papers take note of the potential that Northern Africa is a "staging ground for terror," as the New York Times headline puts it. According to "counterterrorism officials on three continents," an Algerian terrorists group -- the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, known by its French initials G.S.P.C – "is acting on its promise: to organize extremists across North Africa and join the remnants of Al Qaeda into a new international force for jihad."
And North Africa "could become an Afghanistan-like terrorist hinterland within easy striking distance of Europe." The group is already "funneling" fighters to Iraq.
In Morocco, men are also being recruited by international terrorist networks to travel to Iraq as fighters or suicide bombers. Moroccan authorities have so far identified more tnan 50 such volunteers who have gone to Iraq since 2003.
And The Post writes that "as the war drags on, it continues to serve as a powerful rallying tool for radical Islamic networks around the world that have developed recruiting pipelines as far afield as Europe and Southeast Asia."
A NOTE TO READERS: The Skinny is now available via e-mail for those of you umbilically attached to your blackberries and whatnot. Click here and follow the directions to register to receive it in your inbox each weekday morning.