1. A commercial Syrian jetliner was forced to land in Ankara on Thursday. Turkish intelligence predicted the plane was carrying Russian weapons from Moscow to Damascus to be used by Syrian government forces. They were right.

2. Chinese novelist Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for Literature this week. The committee described him as a writer whose “hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history, and the contemporary.”

3. A commemorative piece on Eugene Genovese and Eric Hobsbawm, two historians who died within days of each other this month, were two incredible scholars looking at history from within the Marxist tradition.

4. Jezebel published a response to a Michigan Daily editorial that received a lot of flack for talking down to women.

5. The Supreme Court is taking up affirmative action again, and it looks like the decision may rest on defining what constitutes a “critical mass” of diversity.

6. A shocking Human Rights Watch Report details the disturbing situation in many of Ghana’s mental health treatment facilities.

7. A damning report on cyclist Lance Armstrong confirmed almost inconclusively the doping allegations against him. He didn’t seem to care.

By:  Mike Guisinger

(Photo courtesy of sxc.hu)