All Global News on One Page

Ron Artest, a 6-foot 7-inch 260-lb. basketball player on the Los Angeles Lakers, was given a flagrant foul when he walloped relatively diminutive 6-foot 175-lb. Dallas Maverick guard J.J. Barea with only 24.4 seconds remaining in the Lakers dismal second straight playoff

I haven’t posted on the commentary portion of my website since late March. Not because there was nothing to write about – more just for lack of time.
So I didn’t write about how completely addictive HBO’s Game of Thrones is. Or why Justified’s season finale was terrific – not a disappointment, as some have opined. Or why I got choked up at Steve Carell’s departure from The Office – and why, as much as I enjoyed the weirdness of Will Ferrell’s character, I’m glad he’s not a permanent addition to the

Ah yes, the Manhattan Cocktail Classic Gala. An annual blow-out of extremes, excesses, and lots and lots of cocktails. 40,000 cocktails to be exact. With 3,000 guests celebrating and drinking – thats 13.3 cocktails per guest!
We, unfortunately did not have 13.3 cocktails – but we can tell you (from today’s headache and the junk-food cravings) that we had our fair

Happy Monday everyone, here’s my Top 5 for May 16, 2011 from Len Berman at www.ThatsSports.com.
1. Quick Hits
* Chicago easily handled Miami 103-82 in game one of the NBA Eastern Conference finals.
* Oklahoma City beat Memphis in game seven, 105-90. The Thunder will now play Dallas in the Western Conference finals starting tomorrow night in Dallas.
* In the NHL Playoffs, Vancouver beat San Jose 3-2 in game one of their series.
* South Korea’s K.J. Choi wins the Players Championship on the first sudden death hole against David Toms.
* #2 in the world Novak Djokovic beat #1 Rafael Nadal to win the Italian

As technology advances every year, electronics have taken over today’s generation. Some call our generation “The Technology Generation.” Everyone has an iPhone or a blackberry or an Android, a laptop, an iPod — an iPad! What’s really the use of an iPad?! Electronics have become accessories instead of necessities. And now you can get hundreds of accessories for your electronic accessories! Six-year-old kids are getting cell phones for their birthday and starting early on the “texting craze,” downloading games and spending time indoors on their phones instead of outside playing. Human interaction has drastically

The US has reached its debt limit of $14.3 trillion (£8.6tn) and is taking measures to cut spending to avoid breaching it.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said that he will suspend investing into two large government pension funds.

This delays any breaching of the limit to 2 August.

Congress is currently negotiating an increase to the limit, without which the US risks defaulting on its debt.

"I have written to Congress on previous occasions regarding the importance of timely action to increase the debt limit in order to protect the full faith and credit of the United States and avoid catastrophic economic consequences for citizens," Mr Geithner said in a letter to

IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn's troubles are mounting, 24 hours after he was charged with attacking and attempting to rape a hotel maid.

Mr Strauss-Kahn, who had been seen as a contender in France's 2012 presidential election, is appearing at a New York court. He denies the charges.

His court hearing was delayed to allow forensic tests to be carried out.

Now French writer Tristane Banon says she is considering filing a complaint of sexual assault over a 2002 incident.

The European Union says the scandal surrounding Mr Strauss-Kahn should not affect bail-outs for eurozone countries.

The IMF (International Monetary Fund) has played a central role in organising rescue packages for the troubled economies of Portugal and Greece.
Allegation resurfacesAnalysisHugh SchofieldBBC News, Paris
The first reaction of many ordinary French people is that this has got to be a put-up job. That says more about French political culture, that there have been so many operations mounted against politicians. It has been full of dirty tricks in the past.

But this changes everything. There's a lingering hope among some of Mr Strauss-Kahn's supporters that somehow this will be explained away.

The conspiracy theories are beginning to circulate on the internet but realistically there is no evidence for that. I think in the next day or so, the realisation will really take hold that his candidacy is over.

For the left, it is a bitter blow because he was very much the man they thought could carry their banner through to next year's elections and beat Nicolas

If you work with the poor in the United States it’s very easy to believe that this country doesn’t like “those people.” According to the National Poverty Center nearly fifteen percent of the U.S. lived in poverty in 2009. It’s counterproductive to detest 1/6 of the population especially when that translates into loathing fifteen and a half million children.
I work in a homeless shelter and daily learn stories that prove few folks in power think about the poor when they are making the rules which effect

Is there a more beloved book than Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird?
Mockingbird turned out to be Lee’s only book. She published it, saw the classic movie made with Gregory Peck, gave a few interviews – and then disappeared from sight, never to speak publicly again.
Instead, her book did the talking for her. It is a modern classic, a novel that is at once a page-turning courtroom thriller; a touching father-daughter tale; and a profound look at the state of race in the American South.
As Mary Murphy’s compelling new documentary, Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, shows, the book was prescient in addressing issues of race at a moment when it was on the front burner of the American agenda. Even as the civil-rights movement was bursting into flames in the South, Americans were reconsidering the racial question from a new angle, thanks to Lee’s book and the movie that was made from it.
Murphy’s film is, in essence, a biography of the book, as well as of Lee

I recently gave a public talk on Living Green, Eating Green, which I fashioned to be a sort of meatlessness’ greatest hits — how being meatless is cool — Bill Clinton and Oprah are doing it, and it’s cool in terms of carbon output. It’s good for our health — even the USDA’s new dietary guidelines say so. It might even dig us out of the deficit, as Mark Bittman argues. I even threw in a stanza from

With gasoline prices now north of $4 a gallon, and the summer driving season upon us, politicians have predictably resumed pandering to the oil industry and those who think we can drill our way back to cheaper energy. Efforts to repeal multi-billion dollar tax breaks for the oil industry ran into the usual festival of K Street lobbyists and Oil Company CEOs pleading for benefits they neither need nor deserve. In the New York Times, John Broder recently reported that President Obama was moving to speed up drilling for oil and gas in a:
The willingness of the industry and their political pals to mislead the public is truly breathtaking. As economists like to say, “all things held equal,” increased production of oil could lower the price of gasoline by increasing

It is such a sad story. Once again, a major political figure,Dominique Strauss-Kahn, is taken away in hand cuffs for alleged sexual crimes. And then the usual comments follow. From

Of all the things the Obama presidency has achieved, isolating the madness at the heart of America’s psyche — a madness knowingly cultivated and allowed to fester — has been about the best.
Driving the right wing absolutely bat-shit nuts to the extent it has is one unforeseen benefit of having an intelligent, articulate person at the country’s tiller, especially after the 8+ years of fumbling swagger and rampant booberie epitomized by the W presidency. The resultant fatigue and deeply lodged anxiety having exhausted all one’s powers and skills justifying the onslaught of bad policies and inane utterances from that particular leader should have qualified all of us for much deserved sick leave.
But even more than just sounding good (and trying like hell to implement generally sound policy while having to compromise in order to do the business of government, and all while being assaulted night and day by his feral opposition) the presence of a black man in The White House has shaken opponents to their very cores and stripped any artifice that the right wing so feverishly depends upon to get their otherwise unpalatable message across. Now denuded, they cannot help but blurt out and embody their bitter racism, xenophobia and utterly profit-driven motivations for power, cannot help revealing the pathetic truth beneath their cloak of respectability and patriotism.
A traipse across the AM dial is a like a day-trip to an asylum, roars of paranoid outrage echoing through the corridors from behind padded doors; a look through the scuffed and smeared portholes reveal the screamers themselves, raving against the brown-skinned boogie

THE TREE OF LIFE **** out of ****
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth….
“When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”
–The Book Of Job 38: 4-7
It’s brilliant. Let’s get that out of the way. If you like director Terrence Malick, rest assured his new film fits in snugly alongside Badlands, Days Of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and The New World. It features extensive voice-overs musing on the nature of life, stunning images that convey a wealth of emotion and a surprisingly detailed storyline conveyed almost entirely without conventional

The proudest boast amongst Members of the Tea Party Caucus in Congress has been scrupulous adherence to the Constitution. They ridiculed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s asperity to inquiries about constitutional authority to enact Obamacare: “Are you kidding?” They insisted on reading the Constitution’s text on the House floor to remind Members that their sole oath of office is to uphold and defend the sacred parchment. They invite celebrated figures like United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to deliver tutorials on constitutional intent and principles.
But as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the proof of Tea Party Caucus Members is in action, not

You might not realize it, but this is National Small Business Week. I’m betting many small business owners aren’t aware of it, either. Perhaps that’s because most small business owners are far more likely to be worrying about whether they’ll be able to offer health insurance to their employees for another year.
Or is this the year they join the ever-growing list of small businesses that have been “purged” by their insurance carrier?
For several years now, insurance companies have been “purging” small business accounts they no longer consider profitable enough or that their underwriters believe pose too much risk. I became familiar with “purging” (yes, that’s the actual word insurance executives use internally) toward the end of my career as an industry PR man.
Virtually unknown outside of a few executive suites until I disclosed it in testimony before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in June 2009, the practice is most prevalent at the big for-profit insurance companies — the ones that are under the gun to meet investors’ profit expectations every three

A couple of days ago, the Lone Wolf and I were taking one of our strolls through the Cimetire du Pre-Lachaise, which is an endlessly fascinating park to us. For those who don’t know: Pre-Lachaise is the largest cemetery in Paris at 118.6 acres and is said to be the world’s most visited home to the dead. I can see why. It is beautiful and grand, full of mysterious, elegant monuments and stories of lost souls who have been laid to

Thousands have evacuated the US state of Louisiana after floodgates were opened on Saturday to relieve pressure from the swollen Mississippi River.

More floodgates are to be opened in the coming days, for the first time in several decades.

The man-made floods will damage thousands of homes and hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland.

Officials say this is the only way to save more populated areas along the river like Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

Most residents heeded the warnings and headed for higher ground; by Sunday, some areas were virtually empty as the water from the Mississippi River slowly rolled across the Atchafalaya River basin, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Opening the Morganza Spillway floodgates is set to inundate up to 3,000 sq miles (7,770 sq km) of land in an attempt to protect large cities along the Mississippi River, which forms a large section of the border between Louisiana and Mississippi

Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s face turned red with rage. Leaning in close to U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Khrushchev said that Cold War Berlin was “the most dangerous place on earth.” He told Kennedy he would “perform an operation on this sore spot – to eliminate this thorn, this ulcer…to the satisfaction of all peoples of the world.”
It was June of 1961, and the setting was neutral

US stock exchanges Nasdaq and ICE are dropping their $11.3bn (£6.9bn, 7.8bn euros) bid for rival NYSE Euronext.

The two exchanges concluded the proposed takeover would not be approved by US regulators.

NYSE Euronext had already rejected the unsolicited bid for the same reasons last month.

It said it would concentrate instead on plans to merge with German exchange Deutsche Boerse in a deal worth

The earthquake hit five minutes after I got off the plane. I cruised through customs and was delighted to discover my suitcase already circulating the carousel — no waiting for luggage at Narita! The airport felt remarkably uncrowded with only one person in front of me at the final checkpoint. I didn’t mind waiting. I liked watching the immigration officer greet each new visitor to Japan with his elegant efficiency; receiving their passport with both hands and bowing when he returned it.
I was gearing up my own mindfulness so I could meet him with equal grace, but when I handed him my passport he turned his head and became very

Mental illness touches the lives of more than 100 million Americans every year. More than 50 million children and adults in this country are diagnosed every year with mental illness, from common conditions like depression, anxiety disorders (like PTSD, OCD and panic disorder) and drug and alcohol problems to less prevalent but often disabling illnesses like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Every one of these people has close family members who are devastated by the diagnosis and overwhelmed by the task of helping them.
People who are physically ill with diabetes, heart disease, asthma and cancer are at far greater risk of becoming depressed. And if you are depressed with these medical conditions, you are twice as likely to develop cardiovascular disease and stroke, four times more likely to die within six months of a heart attack (myocardial infarction) and three times more likely to be non-compliant with your

This is our ode to our humanity, our wellness, our intelligence.
This is our ode to our secrets.
We all think we have secrets; actually, they have us.
The number-one reason people keep secrets or lie is to “keep the peace.” We hold onto secrets to keep other people happy, safe, set in their vision of the world, and in their vision of us. After my friend Lauren Zander’s 20 years of coaching people, she’s found “lies” to be the sturdiest walls that we humans erect within and around ourselves, thereby keeping ourselves trapped and wrapped in a wide range of limitations.
In the Handel Method, all the different types of lies are defined, from white lies, “Oh yes, I’ve read that book,” to the full-blown secrets that some of us call “those we take to the grave,” such as shameful abuse or cheating. In the gray area between those two extremes of lying is where we live most of our daily lives, with little, supposedly harmless

The Cleveland Clinic, where I work, attracts patients from just about every corner of the globe. I have the opportunity to see many of these diverse patients and, regardless of where they come from, I hear the same phrase about why they struggle to eat healthy: “I can’t afford healthy foods, especially with increasing produce prices.”
In addition to my patients here at Cleveland Clinic, I’ve seen many Huffington Post readers ask the same questions on my columns. Healthy foods look great, but who can afford them? If you’re interested in keeping your waist lean while keeping your wallet fat, then I hope you’ll find my tips helpful enough to apply to your diet! Eating healthy on a budget is possible and I have examples to prove it!
1 of 10
Buy Your Produce Already Bagged
1 of 11
First Slide
Previous Slide
@
I recently did an audit in a local grocery store comparing prices of bagged apples and oranges vs. individual