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This Memorial Day, as we pay tribute to all the brave heroes we have lost fighting for our country, we must also remember the debt we owe to those veterans who return home.
For many of the brave men and women who have fought on the frontlines, returning home means trying to navigate a complicated and bureaucratic Veterans Administration benefits system.
The VA’s passive system forces veterans to figure out on their own what benefits they are eligible for. It is outrageous that after all these brave men and women have done for our country that our government allows so many of them to fall through the cracks.
Currently, more than 720,000 of our veterans do not take advantage of the VA benefits they are eligible for. We must do a better job of making sure the brave men and women who serve our country get the benefits they have earned and deserve.
That’s why, last week, I introduced legislation in the

Along with spending billions of dollars on better healthcare for the world's poor, Microsoft founder Bill Gates is increasingly turning his attention to Africa's struggling small farmers.

In an interview for the BBC World Service, the world's most influential philanthropist explained why farming was now his foundation's second-biggest programme.

The approach, he said, combined practical aid such as improved seeds with better information for the growers.

Pressed on the controversial issue of genetic modification, he said he saw it as a solution in some cases, although to date most of the foundation's seed work was non-GM.

Soaring food prices have added a new urgency to the plight of subsistence farmers on a continent where agriculture has not seen the kind of progress achieved in recent decades elsewhere.

In a recent book, The New Harvest, Harvard University professor Calestous Juma estimated that while global food production had grown by 145% over the past 40 years, African food production had fallen by 10% since 1960.
Model farmers
Since 1994, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent about $3.3bn (£2bn; 2.3bn euros) on global development, including agricultural aid, compared to $14.5bn on global healthcare.
“Start QuoteI absolutely think that, in some of those cases, genetic modification is how we will get them the new seeds”
End QuoteBill GatesMicrosoft founderOne farmer in eastern Ghana who spoke to the BBC complained that subsistence farmers in his region continued the traditional practice of slash and burn cultivation, without regard for the soil.

Mr Gates said his programme aimed to reduce the practice through supplying new, more productive seeds, conducting soil surveys and putting up capital for easier loans to buy seeds and

Gen Martin Dempsey has been nominated as the new chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the highest US military post.

A veteran of the Iraq war, Army Chief of Staff Dempsey will succeed Navy Admiral Mike Mullen as the president's top military adviser on 30 September.

President Obama made the announcement in the White House garden but it is subject to Senate approval.

Obama has also named Adm James Winnefeld, the head of the US Northern Command, to serve as vice chairman.

Gen Ray Odierno was nominated to replace Gen Dempsey as the Army's chief of

In an out-going interview, former House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken pointed to the advent of minority government in 2004 as the key point from which civility in the House of Commons began to deteriorate.
I would go further back to 1984 and the arrival of the then Liberal ‘Rat Pack.’ Their approach to the daily question period consisted of using over the top questions, often yelled at the top of their lungs to get attention. With the Mulroney government dominating the Chamber with some 205 members, this was a very effective way for the Liberals to get media attention.
Decorum deteriorated to the point that the time allocated to ask a question eventually became much more constricted. MPs (both Liberal and NDP) were frequently sanctioned by the Speaker and several were dismissed from the House for varying lengths of time.
And while the present NDP leader is being very sanctimonious about how his party will behave today, NDP MPs back then were often leading the charge on bad

When I handed my toddler Emile my completed ballot to gleefully stuff into the box a few weeks back, I had no reason to think our NDP vote would be anything but a throwaway.
For exactly half my life I’d voted for Canada’s traditional third party, and always with the resigned belief that the best I could hope was that this principled runt of a party might act as the ruling government’s conscience.
The unintended byproduct of an NDP vote, however, was that it helped their ideological opposites to victory. That is simply what third (or fourth and fifth) parties do. They are

It occurred to me the other day that as a parent of a toddler, you have to have some pretty thick skin and the patience of a saint.
For example, my three-year-old daughter, Sadie, recently informed me that my teeth looked like corn.
“Really?” I asked. “Yes, daddy, she replied

The fear of the sellout is rampant among many ethnic and racial groups in the United States and Canada. When members of these communities enter positions of privilege, they indeed become objects of pride and admiration, but these feelings are often accompanied by a nervous uncertainty as to whether they will eventually “forget where they came from.” The sellout has been branded with several epithets in the majority-white North American context. Most of the derogatory terms have referred to being or “acting white,” which has been one of the constant characteristics of the sellout. Black sellouts have been called “Uncle Toms” or “Oreos,” while South Asians have been called “coconuts” and Asians have been labeled “twinkies” or “bananas.”
These epithets point to a deep-seated animosity towards ‘race betrayers’ who the host community regards as a traitor and an ungrateful free

Every one of us knows what it’s like to be plagued by an unpleasant or unwanted thought. It could be a nagging self-doubt, a disturbing story from the evening news or the humiliation of being recently rejected by a potential love interest. Try as you might to block it out, the image or feeling pops up over and over again. It makes you miserable and leaves you feeling very much a virtual prisoner of your own cruel mind.
Most people believe that there really isn’t much you can do about it — that on some level, these thoughts must need to happen, and that trying to block them out is

Many of us work hard in life in an effort to get ahead and do the right thing. We strive on every level to better ourselves, our situation and our planet. Yet these endeavors to get ahead and improve our lot in life are often met with many roadblocks. There are, of course, challenges and obstacles we face in our external environment; however, there are also insidious unseen obstructions of which we are not even

Though not a sports rivalry of legend, the Dallas-Miami matchup does have its championship game history.
Anyone my age or older might recall Super Bowl VI in 1973 when the Cowboys suffocated the Dolphins 24-3 and all, but the most recent of basketball fans can remember the 2006 NBA Finals when the Mavs could not deliver the knockout blow — though they were ahead 2-0 in the series and up by 13 points with 6:15 left in the fourth quarter of game three. That was the year Dirk Nowitski revealed that his free-throw line routine included humming David Hasselhoff’s “Looking for Freedom” to himself, and Miami fans waved stick posters of Hasselhoff’s head while Dirk was at the charity stripe in an unsuccessful effort to distract him.
Dirk hasn’t said whether he’s still humming “Looking for Freedom” at the line, but he is shooting 93% thus far in the playoffs while he and his teammates are looking for some rings.
And that search is certainly among the most compelling story line of this year’s finals — the unfinished business for Dirk against the team that embarrassed him and his teammates in 2006 and got them labeled soft. The following year Nowitski won a regular season MVP (2007) but suffered the indignity of receiving it after his Mavs had been defeated in the first round by the upstart Golden State Warriors. This year’s sweep of the defending champion Lakers in the conference semi-finals has already done much to repair Dirk’s reputation not only as a great talent but as a clutch player — he was unstoppable pretty much that entire series and destroyed the Lakers down the stretch in game

Everybody’s talking about it — the fastest-growing drugs of abuse are prescribed painkillers, synthetic opiates like OxyContin.
There’s nothing surprising about these drugs’ ascendance. Painkillers have always been Americans’ number-one drug attraction, in direct descent from morphine to heroin to Demerol to Percodan to… the present.
The best painkillers provide a sense of detachment from stress and emotional incontinence; that’s why soldiers in Vietnam loved the heroin there so much, although most overcame their addictions (even including those who sampled narcotics stateside) once they got home.
Now, it’s harder to escape the duress that drove soldiers bogged down in Asia to require pain relief.
Kids learn from the earliest ages to accept and welcome pain relief in a bottle. We don’t want our kids to

Once you have made the most important step in the transformation journey — choosing to change — it is time to map the course. If you have been reading my blogs,
you understand the importance of commitments in the transformation process. I am going to lay out several commitments in each successive blog and highlight tips, tricks and shortcuts along the way!
Step 1: Set Your Goal
To begin any journey, we need a clear-cut path to where we are going. This process is about creating results by design, not by

This series has looked at a variety of complementary therapies that are often used by cancer patients. They include: Acupuncture, Reiki, Therapeutic Massage, Meditation, Tai Chi and Yoga.
Although the effectiveness of these treatments on physical symptoms such as nausea and pain vary, all of them appear to have one thing in common: They have the potential to reduce chronic stress in many of the people who use them. Which raises the question: Is stress related to cancer, and if so, how?
Linking Stress, Depression and Cancer
According to a study conducted at Stanford University School of Medicine, women with breast cancer who are also clinically depressed are at higher risk for a recurrence of cancer than are women who have only the cancer but not the

One of the higher profile medical stories of the past week was the news that work is increasingly workless. In the physical sense, that is. Physics defines work as force times distance, and we do ever less of the former, and electrons traverse ever more of the latter on our behalf.
Specifically, the paper published in PLoS One, and the media coverage of the study published everywhere else, tell us that the average adult male expends roughly 142 fewer calories per day at work, and the average adult female expends 124 fewer. The findings are based on an analysis of Department of Labor statistics from the 1960s, to 2008.
The theoretical importance of this finding is that it helps to explain the obesity epidemic, and a bit of number crunching will quickly show

With everything in the world from our language to our LinkedIn networks growing bigger, more complex and moving faster, it’s easy to feel like we are no longer in control. Our career path, our relationships and our futures are all victims of circumstance. Whether we are bowing to the will of a boss, a paycheck, a parent or a profile on Match.com, it’s important to remember that when it comes to directing our lives, we are still very much at the wheel.
How we perceive ourselves and the world around us largely shapes how we are seen by the

Are you living up to your potential or down to your perceived limitations?
For 21 years, the U.S. Army used the recruiting slogan, “Be all you can be.” That slogan still resonates with many because it speaks to the truth that most of us can do or be more than what we have settled for so far in our lives. The tricky question is learning to tell the difference between what you can do or become and the kinds of limitations that are holding you back.
Seth Godin’s recent blog on excuses got me thinking about how people hold themselves back in life. In my 35 years of helping people achieve more in life, I have certainly encountered many versions of limitation, some “real,” and some more of self-imposed

When I was in second grade, the Daughters of the American Revolution, in search of potential members, paid a visit to my classroom. As the child of an Argentine mother growing up in a rural Missouri town, I knew, even at that young age, that I’d never make the cut. Even so, my mother reacted strongly when I was passed over. “They should have chosen you,” she said,

Monday is Memorial Day. My intent at this time is to sit with our honored dead. Our warriors who died with a very big mission. They died attempting to do what they thought was right and it reinforces my own pledge of doing what I can to support our people on active duty as well as our

When we reflect on our relationships, we can’t help but recognize that we’ve said and done things that we wish we hadn’t. We’ve made mistakes, mistakes that have hurt those we love — sometimes without even realizing it, sometimes accidentally, sometimes through neglect, judgment or gossip, and yes, sometimes purposely.
Writing a legacy letter to acknowledge and take responsibility for what you’ve said or done may be a welcome gift to the one you’ve wronged and a release and relief for you.
Let’s consider ourselves first. No one wants to pass on a legacy of hurt or pain, yet often this is part of what we do inadvertently when we are silent about our

A Californian team say they have managed to convert human skin cells directly into functioning brain cells.

The scientists manipulated the process by which DNA is transcribed within foetal skin cells to create cells which behaved like neurons.

The technique had previously been demonstrated in mice, says the report in Nature.

It could be used for neurological research, and might conceivably be used to create brain cells for transplant.
Reprogrammed skin
The scientists used genetically modified viruses to introduce four different "transcription factors" into foetal skin cells. These transcription factors play a role in the "reading" of DNA and the encoding of proteins within the

Aldo Lanzini uses threads, ribbons, felt and wool to make outrageous yet beautiful works – psychedelic masks, eccentric body pieces, sculptures and charming stuffed aliens.
Crane.tv meets him in Milan and gets a glimpse of the world through a distorting and colorful prism.
Lanzini has a fluid outlook to life, he avoids labels and sees no need to define things or to fit a certain category. Construction of one’s self is of crucial importance: we have no fixed identity – he argues – we have one that changes, one that

If you want to find justification in the Bible for any sort of behavior, it’s in there. It’s just a matter of interpretation, from when the earth will end to what a supreme being had in mind for us to eat.
In Genesis 1:29, the Word, as Adam and Eve got it, was, “Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree bearing seed, to you it shall be for food.” You can read that and conclude God wants us to be meatless.
Then you can read Genesis 9:3 in which God tells Noah, “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you, even as the green herb have I given you all things,” and conclude God’s given us the okay for animal.
Or you can reckon, as I do, that Noah was a whiner. That he yammered and yammered and said, But I don’t like seeds and herbs and we’re stuck here in the rain on this stupid boat and I’m

UK Street Artist HUSH deftly synthesizes his adoration for graffiti tagging, Street Art aesthetics and eastern images of feminine beauty and sensuality.
In “Twin,” his show on view now at New Image Gallery in West Hollywood, he happily employs a mash-up process that borrows heavily from graffiti’s mark-making and dog-eared textures of urban decay, easily sliding back and forth between paint, collage, and de-collage to achieve his sense of balance.
A detail from HUSH (photo copyright Todd Mazer)
With a number of shows (in New York City, Miami, London, Basel, San Francisco and Berlin) and street pieces under his belt, the British native is also quietly achieving a mastery of his technique, as urban turns urbane in the finely sprayed misty glow surrounding these peaceful idyllic visages, rising from the blue cacophony.
A detail from HUSH as he climbs to install at New Image Gallery (photo copyright Todd Mazer)
“Tagging, Graf, Street Art and art; each is always a choice, an action,” the free expressionist HUSH told us when discussing his work, and his open approach to borrowing from comic books, graffiti method spray painting, and traditional Japanese iconography.
HUSH from above on the street in Los Angeles (photo copyright Todd Mazer)
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Hush’s figures contain texture, grillwork, and graffiti mark making techniques
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BETTINA RHEIMS from Michael Kurcfeld on Vimeo.
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Photo copyright Todd Mazer
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About his latest work, Hush explains, “An outline around a tag in one of my recent paintings for example references a painting I like from Fiona Raes that I saw recently, while at the same time it references a outlining of a (graffiti) throw up.”
New Image has been mining the margins of graffiti and Street Art since the mid-nineties, producing shows for artists like Bst, Cleon Peterson, Clare Rojas, Date Farmers, Ed Templeton, Jo Jackson, Neck Face, Os Gemeos, and Retna, so owner Marsea Goldber knows what she is looking for and how to create a charged environment for artists to stretch in.
“Hush has a down-to-earth, hard-working, vibrant spirit,” Marsea explains, “I’ve liked his work for a long time – The first time I saw his work was at the “Cans Festival” which Banksy put on in London four years ago. When I saw his colorful, ornate murals in the long tunnel I was beyond impressed.”
As his work mutates and configures across mediums, one might wonder how much of the final piece has meaning to him and whether it is an involuntary stream of favorite symbols and techniques combined and recombined. “I feel like my works have matured and I’m creating my own visual language, even though it’s probably only me who understands it,” he says smiling.
“It’s funny – I’ve had this work in my head for the last few years but it’s just fitting into the story

This past week the New York Times, in its inimical fashion reported on Saudi Arabia’s efforts to contain the tide of change sweeping the Middle East (“Saudi Arabia Scrambles to Limit Region’s Upheaval” 05.27.11 ). Aside from dispatching troops to Bahrain the Times reported on efforts being made by the Saudi’s to stabilize the monarchies of Jordan and Morocco as well allowing Syrian President to remain in power, all in the thrust of “safeguarding our interests” according to Prince Waleed bin Talal al-Saud, the peripatetic Saudi businessman.
The article underlined Saudi concerns that the regional uprisings will present an opening for Shiite Iran to meddle in Arab affairs. That divergent policy with Washington have led to rumblings of Saudi Arabia viewing the United States as an “unreliable partner” and that Riyadh was “ready to go it alone.”
Really? What the New York Times did not mention, nor has written about given its fastidious reporting on Wikileaks as far as this reader can tell, is the news reported a few days before the NYTimes article. Al Jazeera reported “Leaked Cable: Gulf States ‘funded extremism” 05.22.11 and Reuters “Wikileaks: Saudi Arabia, UAE funded extremist networks in Pakistan”