Journalists Face Hellish Sentence in Korean Gulag

And Clinton freed them with pure charm

(NEWSER) - Laura Ling and Euna Lee didn't go quietly when the North Koreans arrested them. In an interview with Larry King on CNN , Ling reveals that the men who arrested them beat them into submission. Though she admits they had crossed, briefly, into North Korean territory, she says they were actually arrested on the Chinese side of the border. “They wanted to get us back to North Korea and do whatever they could to get us back. So they hit me.” More»

Capt. Sully, Elizabeth Smart, even the Red Sox make the cut

(NEWSER) - This decade has had its fair share of tragedy, but Newsweek collects some of its best happy endings:

1. The Red Sox in 2004. Many New Englanders lived their entire lives without seeing a Sox championship, making it that much sweeter in '04.
2. Sully and the Hudson: The calm-under-fire performance of Capt. Chesley Sullenberger and his US Airways crew averted a tragedy on the Hudson River when the plane landed safely on the water.

Bernie shoves another senior citizen in stock market argument

(NEWSER) - Scam king Bernie Madoff got into a shove match with another con during an argument about the stock market, according to jailbird witnesses. Another oldster con at the North Carolina fed pen where Bernie's serving 150 years shoved Madoff as the argument escalated. Madoff pushed back, causing the other inmate to stumble. "I didn't think Bernie had it in him. The other guy was in shock that he fought back," an inmate told the New York Post. The two ducked punishment because the confrontation wasn't spotted by guards. More»

Laura Ling and Euna Lee describe their capture ordeal

(NEWSER) - The two American journalists detained for months in North Korea were on Chinese soil when they were seized by border guards, they write in Current.com. Laura Ling and Euna Lee say they were reporting on the human trafficking of North Korean refugees in China when their guide briefly brought them across a frozen river onto North Korean soil. They turned back across the ice and returned to the Chinese side, but were pursued by armed guards who hauled them back over the river. More»

(NEWSER) - Longtime Bill Clinton aide John Podesta, who accompanied the former president on his recent rescue mission to North Korea, says leader Kim Jong-Il was "fully engaged" during the visit, Reuters reports. “I would basically say that the discussions were pretty straightforward and he was fully engaged,” Podesta told reporters, though he declined to elaborate on Kim, who is thought to have suffered a stroke and may have pancreatic cancer. More»