Foreign Views Prove Less Neat Than 'Hawk' and 'Dove'

Tougher measures were included under NDAA

(NEWSER) - President Obama issued an executive order today imposing tough new sanctions on Iran's Central Bank. The order freezes "all property and interests in property of the Government of Iran," and of "any Iranian financial institution." The sanctions were included in the controversial defense bill Obama signed a little over a month ago, but Obama is instituting them well ahead of the six-month deadline the bill imposed, the AP reports. More»

And Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin is still pretty scary: reactions

(NEWSER) - If you thought Julianne Moore's Sarah Palin was terrifying in the first Game Change teaser , wait until you see her in the full trailer, where she utters lines such as, "We have to win this thing. I so don’t want to go back to Alaska." Watch below, then read on for some reactions:

• This will clearly be "a Frankenstein-esque story about McCain’s staffers coming to regret the choice they made in bringing a little-known governor into the limelight," writes Jon Bershad at Mediaite . "The full trailer ... gives us even more famous actors getting their turn to stare in horror at the 'monster' they’ve created."

HBO debuts first teaser

(NEWSER) - For all of you who have spent the past nine months wondering how Julianne Moore’s Sarah Palin impersonation will stack up against Tina Fey’s , you finally have your answer. HBO debuted its first teaser trailer for Game Change, the film due in March that's based on the Mark Halperin-John Heilemann book about the 2008 presidential election. Neither Ed Harris as John McCain nor Woody Harrelson as top adviser Steve Schmidt sound much like their real-life counterparts, notes David Jackson in USA Today , but Moore’s Palin is spot-on: Numerous publications including People , New York , the Huffington Post , and Jezebel are fairly impressed. More»

Stops short of issuing formal apology

(NEWSER) - In a phone conversation eight days after NATO airstrikes killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers, President Obama today offered "condolences" for the deaths to Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari, the White House says. Diplomats had encouraged the president to apologize in an effort to soothe strained US-Pakistan relations, but Obama stopped short of offering a formal apology, the New York Times reports. More»

Balks against State Dept., says US has apologized enough

(NEWSER) - President Obama has decided against issuing a formal apology to Pakistan over a NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, even as the State Department insists he must do so to salvage relations with Pakistan, officials tell the New York Times . The administration is instead backing the Defense Department, which thinks the US has apologized enough, and wants Obama to wait at least until its internal investigation of the incident is complete. More»