The Good

This book is targeted at the level required to pass 2kyuu. However, all articles include the natural Japanese version and a full English translation, plus furigana for all words, so even if your Japanese isn't quite up to par it's a good resource to start.

The book is designed to get you up to speed with scanning (if not reading fluently) newspaper articles. There are 60 article extracts (1-2 paragraphs each) with all of the translations and vocab.

In addition, each article is accompanied by a few sample conversations and grammar points, so you can learn a bit about actually discussing what you're reading, and not just cramming for the 2kyuu.

The Bad

The book is pretty narrowly focused and all you're getting here is some carefully selected and partly dumbed down newspaper articles. However, I found it a great help to getting a running start on actually tackling the real newspaper.

CDs

Unfortunately, I purchased my copy used without the CDs, so I can't evaluate them in this review.