Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/16/2011

Christopher Hitchens, the prolific opinion writer and polemicist, is dead at the age of 62. During the course of his career Mr. Hitchens managed to annoy just about everybody, most recently his erstwhile friends on the Left via his support of the war against Iraq. He will be sorely missed.

In other news, investors in European sovereign debt currently prefer Spanish government bonds over their Italian counterparts, finding the former to be less risky. Meanwhile, Sweden says it is willing to lend up to 100 billion kronor to the IMF to help solve the euro crisis.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, TV, Van Grungy, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.