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Merriam-Webster Inc. editor Peter Sokolowski holds up cards showing the word “pragmatic," in Springfield, Mass. Merriam-Webster has chosen “austerity” as its 2010 Word of the Year. (Photo by Charles Krupa / AP)

Merriam-Webster’s words of the year

Merriam-Webster’s annual Word of the Year for 2010 is “austerity,” meaning “enforced or extreme economy.”

San Jose Mercury News

How English evolved into a global language

BBC

Pentagon health plan won’t cover brain-damage therapy for troops

The Pentagon’s health plan for troops and many veterans refuses to cover cognitive rehabilitation treatment for brain-damage victims — a decision that could affect the tens of thousands of service members.

ProPublica

Monitoring America

Nine years after 9/11, the U.S. is building a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security, and military investigators.

Washington Post

Former ’70s activist recalls Memphis police surveillance was all over the place

Commercial Appeal

The Charleston, SC, police are watching you

Post and Courier

Special section:

America on guard

CBS News

President Obama 2.0

President Barack Obama scored more legislative victories than at first looked likely following the midterm elections. But the lame-duck session also highlighted the narrow lanes in which he is operating.

Politico

Some now see Obama as the ‘comeback kid’

Christian Science Monitor

Chavez ‘would expel US ambassador’

Tension flared between the U.S. and Venezuela over Washington’s nominee for ambassador. President Hugo Chavez warned the diplomat would be detained and sent home if he sets foot in the country.

The Independent

NATION

Contractors behaving badly mean headaches for US

Documents obtained by The Associated Press describe previously undisclosed offenses by more than 200 contract employees in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries between 2004 and 2008.

MSNBC

Internet road rules near FCC vote

A controversial proposal for Internet traffic rules that would allow providers to ration access to their networks is scheduled to come before communications regulators for a vote.

Reuters

It’s public vs. private in Net neutrality vote

NPR

Ready for a lunar eclipse?

Stay up late tonight, or get up really early Tuesday and you may be able to see the one and only full lunar eclipse of 2010.

Detroit Free Press

Dark side of moon no longer mysterious

iTWire

10 amazing facts about the moon

LiveScience

POLITICS

Republicans dig in heels on START treaty

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin predicted victory for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, but his Republican counterpart said that unless there are changes he is “absolutely” voting no.

The Hill

Congress recognizes a cultural shift

Politico

Blog:

McConnell announces opposition to START

(ABC News)

The Note

Dems: Congress will approve aid for Sept. 11 responders

New York’s two senators said that the votes are there for Congress to approve a scaled-back bill providing extra benefits to emergency workers who responded to the attacks on the World Trade Center.

San Francisco Chronicle

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Microchips now used in everything from toilets to tombstones

Besides being installed in everything from automatic teller machines to ocean-monitoring sensors, microchips also are going into a staggering array of once decidedly low-tech items.

San Jose Mercury News

Gawker hacking attack underscores flaws with passwords

A hacking attack on Gawker Media Inc. underscores a basic security risk of living our lives online: Using the same username and password for multiple sites is convenient, but costly.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

HEALTH

Plenty of kids’ doctors, but in the wrong places, study shows

There are enough children’s doctors in the U.S., they just work in the wrong places, a study has found.

MSNBC

Insight offers new angle of attack on variety of brain tumors

A newly published insight into the biology of many kinds of less-aggressive but still lethal brain tumors, or gliomas, opens up a wide array of possibilities for new therapies.

ScienceDaily

ENVIRONMENT

Cryosat ice mission returns first science

The Cryosat-2 spacecraft has produced its first major science result. Radar data from the European satellite has been used to make a map of ocean circulation across the Arctic basin.

BBC

Which heating methods are most efficient?

Carsten Beier, of Germany, doesn’t believe that “anyone would burn a 50-dollar bill to keep warm. It’s simply too valuable."

ScienceDaily

SPORTS

Eagles’ rally causes more Giant heartache, more lessons learned

Many of the memorable moments in Eagles history have come at the expense of the Giants — the miracle at the Meadowlands, Randall Cunningham’s acrobatic touchdowns and Chuck Bednarik’s hit on Frank Gifford.

Sports Illustrated

Olympians flock to Breckenridge for 1st stop of Winter Dew tour

More than 380 freestyle skiers and snowboarders are set to compete in halfpipe and slopestyle at the first stop of the Winter Dew Tour in Breckenridge, Colo.

USA TODAY

Columns And Op-Ed

The opinions in the items below are not necessarily those of DailySource or our editors. Read more.

Blog (Matt Taibbi):

Crisis dominoes start falling with Lehman auditor

(Rolling Stone)

Taibblog

Blog (Glenn Greenwald):

The government’s 1-way mirror revealed

(Salon)

Unclaimed Territory

Editorial (Warren Bolton):

Celebrating South Carolina’s secession is just wrong

Lexington Herald-Leader

Editorial:

The politics of fear invades the science of cancer care

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Blog (Joe Klien):

2 dreams, 1 dead

TIME

Column (Robert Reich):

Big government isn’t to blame for bad economy

San Francisco Chronicle

Column (Yasmin Alibhai-Brown):

The ghost of Tiny Tim haunts coalition’s children in need

The Independent

XXXX wrong item type XXXX:

Not all Christmas presents are equal

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Site edited by: Jameson O'Neal, Yagmur Guller, Rachel Barrus, Ashley Nawn, Samantha Floyd and Catherine Lux.

GOOD NEWS

Facebook for farmers: Technology empowers China’s rural workers

China Mobile‘s Nongxington — or farming information service — launched four years ago. The company is currently focusing on expanding its delivery in China’s western and southwestern regions.

BBC

Inside Juarez: hope amid the despair

We tell the stories of three individuals who are struggling to bring some sense of order to the chaos that reigns over the troubled border city of Juarez, Mexico.

Houston Chronicle

Getting a 2nd chance

Jeremy Williams, 16, walked into school in August, wondering what it would take to survive after running the streets for years. Now he has a home again, thanks to a man who’d lost a son and found Jeremy.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

WORLD

North Korea won’t retaliate over drills

North Korea called South Korean artillery drills on a front-line island a “reckless military provocation” but said it would not retaliate, backing away from earlier threats to strike back.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

South Koreans seek shelter in bunkers

YouTube

Czech doctors to abandon the Republic

Fed up with shockingly low pay and long hours, doctors in the Czech Republic are threatening to leave the country en masse.

NPR

1,000s flee fresh Darfur clashes

As many as 12,000 people have fled following fresh fighting between army and Darfur rebels in Sudan, according to the United Nations.

Al Jazeera

BUSINESS

Banks prepare to charge new fees for their services

Banks, which have absorbed blame for everything from setting off the Great Recession to being tight-fisted lenders hampering the nation’s economic recovery, are hearing it on a new front.

Lexington Herald-Leader

Volt: head-turner, job saver

On its first road trip from a Detroit factory to consumers’ garages near NYC, the Chevrolet Volt made a lot of people happy.

Detroit Free Press

GM launches new electric hybrid car in US

Guardian

RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY

Pope: Church must reflect on what allowed abuse

Pope Benedict XVI said the Catholic Church must reflect on what is wrong with its message and Christian life in general that allowed for the widespread sexual abuse of children by priests.

USA TODAY

Survey: For many, Jesus isn’t the reason for the season

Come-all-ye-partiers trumps “O Come, All Ye Faithful” for more than one in three people asked about their Christmas activities in a survey by LifeWay Research, a Christian research organization.

USA TODAY

EDUCATION

Small schools flirt with forced closings

Leaders of 10 Iowa districts spent more money than was authorized in the 2009-10 school year, state records show. Seven districts are in their second or third year of unauthorized spending.

Des Moines Register

Students eye measures to keep ‘movement’ alive after DREAM Act fails

Emboldened by months of phone calls to lawmakers, hunger strikes and sit-ins, a group of students and graduates say they plan to take their fight for immigrant rights to the states and 2012 election.

Star Tribune

In NC, a racial uproar over schools stirs old echoes

When Charlotte’s majority-white board voted to close several predominantly black and Latino schools, the ensuing tumult raised the specter of the civil rights era.

Los Angeles Times

LIVING AND ENTERTAINMENT

Judging a book by its cover

Sometimes the cover of a book like “The Godfather,” “Catch-22” or “Jaws” can be as memorable as the book itself.

CBS News

Blog:

Sony says that E-readers are ‘selling out around the world’

(CNET News)

Crave

Andy Warhol: motion pictures at MoMA

A modern art exhibit now on view focuses on Andy Warhol’s cinematic portraits and non-narrative, silent, and black-and-white films from the mid-1960s.

Monsters and Critics

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