What is news?

What's more important news to you? A teen from Florida went to Iraq for his term paper or a family of 14 were killed by US air raid?

Your answer may be "it depends", but Google News listed 1251 hits from news agencies for the former, most of which are from US sources; while a mere 13 "related stories" for the latter with only ABC news and Reuters as the representatives of all US news agencies. On the other side, Yahoo News did pick it up as one of today's top stories.

On the side bar, according to Reuters' interview with US military officials, the strike that killed several members of the family, including at least two children, was prompted by a sighting of three man digging a hole at 9pm(suspected may be setting up a roadside bomb, or some other unknown reasons) and went back to the house. I call that pretty efficient decision making comparing with the average 20 years death row.