On Wednesday, the 10th anniversary of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the creation of a network of men tapped to serve as male role models in the fight against gender-based violence.
Strange but true: Even after leaving office this summer well before her term as Alaska’s governor was over, Sarah Palin’s “executive experience” still strikes Mike Huckabee as valid evidence of leadership that would put her above Barack Obama in the former Arkansas governor’s estimation, were he to be faced with those two choices at the polls.
Other market sectors are another story, and this story may also change in coming months, but let’s have some good news about the residential real estate market, shall we? Right: The Associated Press is reporting that home sales rose more than 10 percent in October from their September levels, largely due to tax incentives, and November may continue along this trend.
Will Roman Polanski spend the holidays at his mountain chalet in Gstaad? That could well be the case after Polanski’s latest bail offer, this time to the tune of $4.5 million, was accepted by a Swiss court Wednesday, although the 76-year-old director ... (continued)
A French writer could do a lot worse than be buried alongside the likes of Émile Zola, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Victor Hugo, but some compatriots of philosopher Albert Camus, as well as his son, Jean, are none too pleased with President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to relocate Camus’ ashes to the celebrated Panthéon in Paris.
Over-the-top pop star Adam Lambert may once have been constrained by the unwritten rules of competition on “American Idol” when it came to his sexuality, but he made a notable departure from those days during his provocative performance at Sunday’s American Music Awards. Looks as if that act cost him ... (continued)
Getting a grip on the economic catastrophe that rocked the country during the fall of 2008 is no easy feat, what with so many players, back-room deals, bills, upswings and meltdowns to consider. Updated
The puzzling thing about politicians of either party who claim to be “centrist” or “moderate” is how much they sometimes sound like party-line right-wing Republicans.
Jail, anyone? Perhaps that’s too harsh, and at any rate premature, but is anyone ever going to be held accountable for the behind-the-scenes sweetheart deals that passed tens of billions of taxpayer dollars through the AIG shell game to the very banks that caused the financial meltdown?
The opposition’s decision to stall and oppose President Barack Obama’s judicial nominations smacks of hypocrisy, and further draws into question the majority’s ability to govern.
Student protesters may think they are simply battling a wasteful, callous government bureaucracy that is more concerned about bailing out Wall Street banks than supporting a frivolous thing like education. But really the fight is about something much more basic and widespread: It is a fight between the young and the old, between California’s baby boomer pensioners and everyone under 49.
There are some 614 coal-fired power plants in the United States, and it is up to us to shut them down. No one in the White House will do it. No one in Congress will do it. And no one at the coming U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen will do it.
Germany’s top soldier, army chief Wolfgang Schneiderhan, has resigned over accusations of a cover-up after officials withheld information about a NATO airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Afghanistan.
The former U.K. ambassador to the U.S. has publicly admitted something of a truism: The plans to invade Iraq did not give time to U.N. weapons inspectors to do their job, and coalition forces “found [themselves] scrabbling for the smoking gun.”
We’re kicking off a new feature. Get the best of the Net from Larry Gross. Tonight: Internet for Nobel Prize, secrets of the Kremlin, augmented reality art, charges against nude model dropped, and more.
President Obama won’t unveil his plans for Afghanistan until next week, but military officials tell the AP he intends to escalate the war by sending up to 35,000 additional troops. Press secretary Robert Gibbs said the plan would include an exit strategy, but that’s little consolation for the doves who got Obama elected. (continued)
A Norwegian company thinks it can squeeze enough electricity out of the natural phenomenon of osmosis to power China. Right now the company’s plant can barely heat a tea kettle, but officials hope to power a village in a few years, and a lot more after that.
The United States will take part, after all, in next month’s United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen. President Barack Obama will attend the meeting, if only for a day, to do his part for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the White House also announced ... (continued)
The Internet Juggernaut, pursuing its quest to make all the world’s information universally available, has gone to the national museum in Baghdad, which was notoriously looted following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. CEO Eric Schmidt made the trek to announce that Google has photographed thousands of the just-reopened museum’s treasures.
U.N. Combats Violence Against Women, With Help From Men
