The New York Times has released an eBook covering the WikiLeaks scandal entitled Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy. The newspaper cut an exclusive deal with Barnes & Noble, and the title will only be available on the Nook.

eBookNewser reports: “The book chronicles important documents from WikiLeaks story and the controversy that came about as the stories were leaked to the press. The eBook comes out later this week for $5.99.”

Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich will both have opinion pieces included in the book. Senior editor Alexander Star edited the book.

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New York Times journalist Maureen Dowd stars in the new comic, The Incredibly Fantastic Adventures of Maureen Dowd (A Work of Satire & Fiction). In the book, Dowd sports lingerie and wears a gun in her stocking.

Gawker has more about the comic: “Marra’s comic book dramatizes our flame-haired heroine’s role in the 2003 Valerie Plame affair. MoDo discusses journalist ethics, gets in Blackberry screaming matches, defies gun-wielding intruders who want to steal her laptop and hush up her columns and flirts with Tom Friedman en route to a date with George Clooney.”

Comic creator Benjamin Marra wrote and illustrated the comic. It features 24 black and white interior pages and sells for $3.

The brief controversy over NY Times columnist and author Maureen Dowd‘s copying of a paragraph written by Josh Marshall seems to have concluded.

Dowd’s next column arrived today without mention of the incident, and Marshall released a brief statement saying he was happy with how the matter was handled. Earlier this week, a Times spokesperson said the paper would not take any action beyond the correction.

Here’s Josh Marshall‘s statement on Talking Points Memo: “I generally think we’re too quick to pull the trigger with charges of plagiarism. I haven’t said anything about this because I really didn’t think I had anything to add. Whatever the mechanics of how it happened, I never thought it was intentional. Dowd and the Times quickly corrected it, which I appreciated.”

Ever since a blogger discovered an unattributed paragraph in Maureen Dowd‘s NY Times column yesterday, readers around the country wondered if the paper would take action over the mistake. Earlier this afternoon, the Times ruled “there is no need to do anything further.”

Over at Politico, Michael Calderone reports that Times spokesperson Diane McNulty told him the paper corrected the error and would not take any other action.

Here’s the email message from McNulty: “There is no need to do anything further since there is no allegation, hint or anything else from Marshall that this was anything but an error. It was corrected. Journalists often use feeds from other staff journalists, free-lancers, stringers, a whole range of people. And from friends. Anyone with even the most passing acquaintance with Maureen’s work knows that she is happy and eager to give people credit.”

Over the weekend an eagle-eyed blogger spotted similarities between one paragraph of NY Times columnist and author Maureen Dowd‘s weekend column and a recent post by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo.

According to a TPM blogger, the two paragraphs seemed practically identical. Dowd–most recently the author of “Are Men Necessary?: When Sexes Collide” and “Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk”–published her column over the weekend. Here’s Dowd’s paragraph (published May 16): “More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.”

And here’s what Marshall wrote last week at his TPM blog (published May 14): “More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.” UPDATE: NYTPicker and HuffPo both have email statements from Dowd. Simon Owens has comments from the TPM bloggers. (Via Jay Rosen)

> UPDATE: The NY Times has modified the story and added this note: “An earlier version of this column failed to attribute a paragraph about the timeline for prisoner abuse to Josh Marshall’s blog at Talking Points Memo.”