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The insider's guides: Editor's choice

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(CNN) -- The Briefing Room's insider guides have shed light on culture, politics, heavyweight issues and penguins. Here's an end-of-year selection of our favorites.

'The Queen'

Monarch of the silver screen: Everything you wanted to know about the critically acclaimed movie "The Queen." (More)

The Scream

Everything you need to know about "The Scream," Edvard Munch's agonized portrait of existential anxiety which is back on show in Oslo -- for now. (More)

Talking to aliens

A laser time capsule is to be beamed into space from the the top of a pyramid in Mexico in a bid to make contact with extra-terrestrial life. Here's all you need to know about our ongoing efforts to prove we are not alone. (More)

'Dirty Dancing'

A stage version of "Dirty Dancing" -- the biggest pre-premiere sell-out show in the history of London theatre -- opens. Here's all you need to know about the latest blockbuster screen-stage crossover. (More)

Kazakhstan

With Borat fever sweeping cinemas everywhere, here's all you need to know about Kazakhstan, homeland of the world's most inept and offensive journalist. (More)

The world's worst poet

He is already acknowledged as the world's worst poet, Scotland's other national bard (Robert Burns being the pretender) is now set to claim a new title, the world's worst playwright. Literary aficionados will be horrified to learn that a long forgotten play by William McGonagall will be published next month. (More)

Donald Rumsfeld

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is forced out of the Pentagon after almost six years in charge. Here's all you need to know about his departure. (More)

Beth Ditto

Beth Ditto, a rock singer who fronts the band Gossip, has topped the annual cool list released by NME, allegedly the coolest rock and roll magazine in Britain.(More)

Colonizing another planet

Colonize another planet? I'm perfectly happy here, thank you very much. Yes, but for how long? Sooner or later, according to experts, the Earth is going to succumb to a nuclear conflagration or a massive asteroid impact such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, and then where will you be? Extinct, that's where. (More)

Penguins

They're cute, furry and flightless, but they've been accused of being behind "far left propaganda," and knocking the world's deadliest spy his box office perch. Here we explain the penguin phenomenon taking the world by storm. (More)

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• Opinion: Hollywood security trumps Pentagon
• Asian tsunami survivor still rebuilding life
• Lehman pays out big London bonuses
• Pregnant soldiers could face courts-martial

• Irish PM to quit over payments scandal
• NATO chief: Afghan troop increase likely
• Militants hunted as calm retuns to Basra
• Pressure on Bush to skip Olympics
• BA sending misplaced T5 baggage to Milan

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• London was lucky (2:36)
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• Second explosives-packed car foun (2:32)
• Soviet culture returns (3:47)