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.
Upon first glance, the FBI’s news that hate crimes based on sexual orientation were up 11 percent in 2008 from the previous year suggests a giant uptick in violence against America’s LGBTQ population. However, as Andrew Sullivan and Mark Thompson remind us ... (continued)
Nests across America are getting less and less empty as adult children take shelter from a lousy economy. According to Pew, 11 percent of adults now live with their parents and 10 percent of adults between 18 and 34 say the recession ... (continued)
Whoops! The bad news in this bulletin is that the U.S. economy didn’t grow at quite the rate—3.5 percent—from July through September that the Department of Commerce previously said it had. The good news: It still grew, albeit at the whittled-down pace of 2.8 percent during that time.
The Fed has been lending money at record-low rates, but instead of passing on the cash to businesses and consumers, big banks are rolling the dice in the financial markets. China and Japan have warned that these American high jinks could once again upend ... (continued)
President Barack Obama just got a report card from Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and it’s not good. According to Abbas, Obama “is doing nothing for the peace process” between Israelis and Palestinians ... (continued)
Those who hoped that President Barack Obama would consider withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan anytime soon are likely to be disappointed, judging by the hints Obama dropped about his plans for America’s military involvement in the volatile South Asian nation.
Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider buried deep beneath the Swiss-French border made history Monday, smashing two proton beams traveling at near light speed into each other. The LHC, also known as the big bang machine, is the largest machine on Earth and ... (continued)
After surviving a car wreck in 1983 at the age of 20, Rom Houben was written off as a vegetable. He was actually perfectly alert. The Belgian would spend the next 23 years in a private hell until doctors finally discovered ... (continued)
Sen. Joseph Lieberman says he will never let any form of public option—opt-out, trigger or otherwise—through the Senate, citing budget concerns. This—despite CBO estimates showing the health reform bill reducing the deficit over 10 years—from a senator who has thrown billions at boondoggles ... (continued)
More than 40 people were kidnapped and at least 30 killed Monday in the Philippines in what authorities consider to be a politically motivated massacre, according to the Los Angeles Times. The group of civilians, which included several journalists, was overcome ... (continued)
Over the last decade, Google has ballooned into the many-headed online hydra we know it to be today, and despite grumblings about monopolies and a couple of legal tussles, the company’s viselike grip has seemed assured for years to come. However, News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch might be gearing up ... (continued)
Looks like South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s extramarital activities, which were brought to light last summer after a faux Appalachian Trail excursion (by way of Argentina), aren’t going to be wiped from the record anytime soon. Sanford is now looking at 37 ethics charges, at least a few of which appear related to his affair.
The name Kennedy is just about synonymous with American Catholicism, but (at least) one of the brood is publicly feuding with the church. Patrick Kennedy, son of Ted and U.S. representative of Rhode Island, has been forbidden by his bishop to take communion since 2007.
After a tumultuous lead-up, the U.S. Senate has voted to hold full debate on a health care reform bill. The vote was 60-39, with all Republicans, except one who was absent, hitting the “no” button.
With Copenhagen just three weeks off, President Obama is said to be weighing a provisional target for cutting American greenhouse gas emissions, potentially removing a major barrier to a worldwide agreement to combat global warming.
Hamas has ordered militant groups in Gaza to stop firing rockets into Israel, which could not only avoid another bloody invasion but signal progress toward a deal to release a captured Israeli soldier.
Iran has announced it will conduct a weeklong round of air defense war games centered on the country’s nuclear sites as Western powers, especially the U.S., turn up the heat over Tehran’s nuclear program.
President Barack Obama’s on-the-job approval rating is slipping, with two polls in the past week showing that fewer than half of those surveyed are happy with the way he is conducting the business of the presidency.
Britain’s foreign secretary visited Kabul this week and had a stark warning for opponents of the NATO effort in Afghanistan: The Afghan government could fall apart within weeks of a coalition pullout, David Miliband said.
Now that he’s been cut loose from his contract at CNN, former anchor Lou Dobbs is free to do his thing unencumbered by any constraints imposed by media bosses or by archaic notions of journalistic objectivity. What, you might wonder, would “his thing” be? Well, it seems as if this self-declared champion of the middle class isn’t ruling out a run for office ... yes, even that office.
Obama’s Thankless Thanksgiving
