Tony Blair: Iraq Regrets, but Not Many

Mimi Alford's 'Once Upon a Secret' recalls Kennedy fling

(NEWSER) - A former White House intern's shocking tell-all about her affair with President Kennedy has arrived in bookstores. Mimi Alford's Once Upon a Secret recounts her first sexual encounter with JFK at a White House after-party in 1962: The president guided her into Jackie O's bedroom, "unbuttoned the top of my shirtdress and touched my breasts," she writes. After they had sex, he matter-of-factly pointed her to the bathroom. The 19-year-old kept thinking that night: "I’m not a virgin anymore.” More»

Castro, the former Cuban leader, talks up 1,000-page tome

(AP) - Fidel Castro spent six hours presenting a two-volume memoir to an audience at a Havana convention center, state media said today. It was a rare appearance for the retired and increasingly reclusive former Cuban leader. Images on state television showed a smiling, animated Castro wearing a dark track suit over a blue plaid button-up shirt. Audio of him was not broadcast, but Communist Party newspaper Granma said he told attendees yesterday that they would hear about "two books that you haven't had any news of." More»

Bloated state banks feed corrupt economic system: critics

(NEWSER) - Eight years after the US invasion, Iraq still lacks reliable electricity, postal service, public transport, you name it. But many of these problems are fueled by a corrupt banking system that rejects market economics and funnels money to scams and greedy government officials, McClatchy reports. The worst offenders, critics say, are two bloated state banks with fraudulent balance sheets. "We have deficient people here, sitting in certain high posts, who cannot create any economic vision," says one official. More»

She recalls clashes with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush

(NEWSER) - It's time for Dick Cheney to take a little return fire from Condi Rice. Less than 2 months after his memoir described her as turning tearful during a political discussion , Condoleezza Rice has written her own book, No Higher Honor, which comes out next month, the New York Times reports. Rice recalls White House clashes and encounters with creepy foreign leaders:

• Rice argued with "ultra-hawkish" Cheney that terrorism suspects can't just be "disappeared"; President Bush agreed, and moved several from secret prisons to Guantanamo Bay.
• Rice opposed increasing troop levels in Iraq, telling Bush, "If they want to have a civil war we're going to have to let them." The president appeared pained over a war going badly, she writes.

Actress recalls romance in upcoming memoir

(NEWSER) - Diane Keaton fondly recalls her romance with Woody Allen in upcoming memoir Then Again, out next month, writing that she “was in love with him before I knew him.” Her family often watched him on TV before she first worked with him in 1968, and she loved “his manner, his way of gesturing, his hands, his coughing and looking down in a self-deprecating way while he told jokes.” More»