From the BBC:

US economic, military and political dominance is likely to decline over the next two decades, according to American intelligence agencies.

US clout will weaken as China and India grow more powerful, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) predicts in its latest report on global trends.

When Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were looking to sell the rights to their newborn twins' photos, they wanted more than just cash from the lucky bidder. They wanted to keep control of their image. They supposedly got what they wanted.

From Canoe.ca:

The Associated Press will trim 10 per cent of its work force over the next year as a reduction in fees paid by member newspapers and a declining economy take their toll, chief executive Tom Curley said Thursday.

The staff reduction will amount to a loss of more than 400 positions from a global staff of 4,100, and Curley said the cuts will include some of the news co-operative's 3,000 journalists.

Curley told the staff in a meeting webcast to AP offices globally that he hopes most of the cuts will be achieved through attrition, but he did not rule out layoffs.

Asked if the cuts would include newsroom jobs, Curley noted that 75 per cent of the staff are journalists. "Everybody's going to participate," he said.

The AP faces problems on several fronts. CNN wants to set up a competing wire service, and more than 100 U.S. newspapers have threatened to quit the newsgathering co-operative.

Patricia Best had this in her globeandmail.com blog:

The set-up is that CanWest Global patriarch Izzy Asper, in his heart of hearts, really didn't believe in journalistic independence. If you worked for him, you were his puppet (the Shawinigate stories in the National Post were a particular bug up his ass). The Aspers took control of Southam from Conrad Black in 2000, paving the way to riches beyond their wildest dreams:

Eldest son David Asper was equally adamant that the family had the right to push their opinions down their journalists' throats. “We own the paper,” Mr. Newman recounts David as saying. “We have the right to have the papers print whatever the hell we want them to say. And if people don't like it, they can go to hell. They can leave, get another job. People knew that Conrad had a much more hands-off policy. On the other hand, in the papers he cared about, he hired people who didn't breathe without talking to him first. We inherited some of those people – for better or for worse.”