All Global News on One Page

Source:
__________________________________________________________________________

Links:Full news story
Source:espn.go.com

Getting agriculture policy right was viewed as a key to pulling America out of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Agriculture Secretary Henry A. Wallace’s visionary ideas on food security, soil conservation and a social safety net for farmers were at the heart of the New Deal, and U.S.D.A., of all places, attracted some of the best minds in government.
This summer, agriculture is again center stage in the policy debate — as an inviting target for deep budget cuts. That’s unfortunate. There’s plenty of fat and waste in the farm programs, but there’s also an urgent need for a new vision of American farming in the 21st century.
Agriculture doesn’t have the same needs it had in the

If you’ve never had your man indicted for a major crime, you may not understand what Anne Sinclair is doing by accompanying her husband to a summer symphony as he awaits trial.
But I do. If it’s anything like what the photo of them at Tanglewood made me remember, she his filling his picnic basket for a long winter ahead.
I don’t know how Anne found out that Dominique Strauss-Kahn had been taken into custody. I was asleep alone in my own house when the phone rang early one morning.
After my sleepy hello, and validating my name and that I indeed knew my boyfriend of four years, I heard a Virginia police sergeant say, “Ma’am, have you seen today’s Washington Post?”
“No sir, not

As I do with any new product in the social space — I have been using, analyzing, and testing Google+ since it came out (on top of that I’m pretty sure I invited at least half of their initial user base… give or take). After using it for a couple of weeks, here are three product suggestions I have that would help with the Google+signal to noise ratio. Hit me up on Twitter @MattPRD if you want to discuss any of the ideas in this article or the social web in

I’ve got a habit that is shared by a great many Jews both in Israel and abroad: when a fellow tribesman invents something of great value, creates a groundbreaking work of art, or, far more infrequently, triumphs improbably in some international sporting event, we are inordinately proud. Conversely, when a Jew does something particularly infamous and vile, we are incredulous and disheartened. I still remember the dismay that gripped my parents and their friends in that long, hot New York summer when we learned that the madman responsible for the city’s shocking rash of serial murders was named David Berkowitz — and then what a lifting of spirits there was upon learning that he had been adopted!
“Of course!” I heard repeated countless times in countless Upper West Side apartments — “He couldn’t have been born Jewish.”
So how to explain the behavior of the forty-seven members of the Israeli parliament who just voted to pass the “Boycott Law”– a virulently anti-democratic, intellectually and spiritually corrupt legislation directed against its own citizens’ freedom? I’d like to believe they were all adopted — but somehow, alas, I suspect it not to be the case. Jews, of course, are capable of being as myopic and self-destructive as any of the multitude of enemies past and present we conjure up in every prayer session, on every holiday, at every heated political discussion.
In passing this law, with its intentional vagueness, the government has declared war not only on its own citizens’ freedom of speech and expression, but on language itself, in a manner that matches the satirical imaginations of Franz Kafka, Joseph Heller and George

I recently have been reading the plethora of snazzy articles being written by tech journalists about the impending doom of HTC/Google due to the judge’s ruling on the two patents. The lack of substance in the articles and in-depth review of what is really going on here has spurred me to write this blog.
First, I will predict that HTC and Google will emerge from this as the victors against Apple. How can I be so confident? The patents granted to Apple, 5,946,647 and 6,343,263, would basically give Apple claim to how every browser/computer works today on the Internet.
In particular, everyone is talking about the alleged infringement on patent 5,946,647 and, even more specifically, claims 1, 8, 15 and 19. These claims are basically about how a computer can recognize “important” data in any data

As Florida’s Space Coast ends a celebrated American era with the close of NASA’s manned shuttle program with launch of Atlantis, there is a palpable sadness in the air. Residents resignedly prepare for what is sure to bring continued economic disaster with the demise of the storied program. Losing the link that has sustained generations, the collective fears they harbor are a tangible reality — no longer simply an abject concept. With the industry that for more than 50 years has supported roughly 100% of residents in Brevard County — Cape Canaveral, Merritt Island, Titusville, Coco Beach, and Port

By Kerri-Ann Jennings, M.S., R.D., Associate Editor, Nutrition for EatingWell Magazine
If you’ve ever found yourself arguing about whether eating meat is healthy for you and the planet and, if so, which meat to eat, you now have some answers. The Environmental Working Group (EWG), which brought us the “Dirty Dozen,” a list of the 12 most pesticide-ridden fruits and vegetables, released a report yesterday showcasing the carbon footprint of 20 conventionally grown popular protein sources, from lentils to lamb.
To come up with the carbon impact, the EWG looked at the food’s full “lifecycle”—including the water and fertilizer to grow feed crops, transportation of the food and even the amount of food that’s wasted.
The biggest take-away: eat less meat and avoid wasting it (20% of edible meat ends up being tossed). Why should you care? The implications of this report are twofold—environmental and personal health. On the environmental side, the United Nations recently determined that livestock is one of the top contributors to the world’s most serious environmental

It begins and ends with gratitude. For me, gratitude arrived when I had been sober for less than two years. It was Thanksgiving Day. The weekend before, I spent a long afternoon with my sponsor, the late Bob Roche, doing my Fifth

The celebrated Scopes “monkey trial” was an intriguing, convoluted affair, only generally reminiscent of Lawrence and Lee’s famous stage play “Inherit the Wind.” As popular mythology, it rightly highlights the folly of outlawing the teaching of legitimate scientific theories because they are perceived as threatening to religion (or any other influential social institution, for that matter). However, in his book “Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution” (2008, HarperCollins, pp. 73-74), physicist Karl Giberson points out a small, often overlooked fact about that case with troubling implications.
The science textbook from which John Scopes was accused of teaching evolution discusses eugenics in terms likely to offend most of today’s liberal

This year, we have seen historic progress for LGBT rights, in particular on marriage equality, at both the state and federal levels.
Most recently, of course, I was thrilled when my home state of New York passed marriage equality. The law goes into effect on Sunday and I can’t wait to see the images of so many loving couples lining up for marriage licenses. I also look forward to attending some of my good friends’ weddings this year!
In addition to New York’s historic victory, we’re making significant progress at the federal level as well. Back in March, you’ll recall the Obama Administration took the unprecedented step of announcing it would cease to defend the constitutionality of The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA.) This discriminatory law prohibits the federal recognition of legal same-sex marriages all over the country and prevents loving same-sex couples from enjoying over 1,100 rights and privileges afforded to married straight couples by the federal government.
Then, this past April, I was proud to join Senator Feinstein, Senator Leahy and several other of my colleagues in introducing the Respect For Marriage

The US government has tried trillions of dollars of fiscal and monetary stimulus, and yet our economy remains stuck in low gear. The officially measured unemployment rate hovers around or above 9 percent, but millions more are so discouraged by the poor job market that they have stopped looking for work, while many others want to work longer hours but can’t.
Much more conventional stimulus doesn’t appear to be in the cards. The Fed has essentially said it has done all it can do, especially given the recent uptick in the inflation numbers. The Obama Administration has floated the idea of extending or even expanding the social security tax cut of 2010 for another year, but in light of the huge federal deficit there doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm for the idea on Capitol

It used to be that Americans wondered if a woman could be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. They also questioned if modern society would ever elect someone who’s been divorced. Hey, just last week, Larry David asked why we haven’t had any bald presidents.
So what’s the new roadblock du jour? Migraines.
Roughly 36 million Americans suffer from this neurological condition – including about 18 percent of women. And candidate Michele Bachmann is one of

Trying to get excited about preventing Alzheimer’s from striking you may be a bit like getting enthused over socking money away for retirement. I understand that the notion may lead thoughts like these to pop into your head:
“I’m only (insert your age here). They’ll have a cure for Alzheimer’s long before I catch it.”
“If I get Alzheimer’s, I’m not even going to be aware that I have it. I’d rather focus on today, when I can appreciate my life.”
“I’ll die of something else long before I get Alzheimer’s.”
The truth is, people do stick back for retirement, and odds are good that most of us will live long enough to reap the rewards of our

Not quite as much fun as Thor, not nearly as bad as Green Lantern, Captain America: The First Avenger feels less like an exciting comic-book-hero movie than required reading for a course called The Avengers, arriving in theaters next summer.
Directed by Joe Johnston, this movie harkens back to the origin story of the original World War II-era Captain America — as opposed to the one who arrived with the birth of Marvel Comics in the early 1960s. But its bookend segments, which open and close the film, have the built-in answer as to how to move Cap into the 21st century for that Avengers movie, without concocting some extravagant time-travel tale.
As origin stories go, this one manages to get all the set-up out of the way in the first 40 minutes or so, in order to let this actually be a Captain America adventure, instead of yet another growing-into-his-powers story of a super-hero finally claiming his place in the universe and foiling the villain in the final reel.
The hero’s name is Steve Rogers and he’s played by Chris Evans who (through the miracle of computer wizardry) has his head grafted onto the body of a 98-pound weakling at the beginning of the film. It’s 1942 and scrawny Steve is dying to join the Army and go overseas to fight Hitler, like his pal Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). But the Army keeps turning him down – until an insightful scientist, a German migr named Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci), spots him for the potential hero he is.
Erskine picks Steve to be his first subject in a top-secret experiment to transform ordinary men into

By Shirley Gao, iWatch News 6:00 am, July 20, 2011Retired schoolteacher Mary Linville looked around the dinner table and smiled. It was an evening late in November 2008, and she was surrounded by friends who had come to unwind after the hectic Thanksgiving holiday. To her left sat her husband, and to her right were friends from church with whom she often went horseback riding. Her son Jamie, a county sheriff’s deputy, sat across from her.The dinner at Linville’s middle-class home in the rural West Virginia town of Alkol was interrupted by a knock on the

According to an accidentally leaked email, and reported by the Wall Street Journal (“Chevron’s Email ‘Oops’ Reveals Energy Giants Sway Over Markets” 07.17.11) less than a week ago Chevron traders held oil and product contracts of 27 million barrels of oil in the physical and derivatives markets – an amount exceeding the total daily consumption of oil in the United States by some 8 million barrels.
Yes, there is some rationale, being an oil producer and refiner to maximize or protect the price of their production. But Chevron’s oil/oil product trading activities goes far beyond hedging. They, as producers are in the catbirds seat to know what is happening in the market, and as the Wall Street Journal points out that “companies’ traders take advantage of their inside view of the oil market to place speculative bets…” Speculative bets that have been enormously profitable for Chevron and likely for every other oil

When a manipulative, destructive marriage ends in divorce, oftentimes the manipulating person (your ex or soon-to-be ex) will place the guilt and blame on you, adding insult to injury and exponentially magnifying the heartbreak and stress that divorce can cause. It’s almost impossible to recover from the sadness and despair, simply because you feel like the divorce was your fault. It’s time to realize that it’s not your fault, as hard as that may be to accept.
This feeling of blame is simply a case of the manipulative person projecting his/her behavior on to

I finished my book tour for my most recent book, “Love Shrinks: a Memoir of a Marriage Counselor’s Divorce”, and I was on around fifty radio stations talking about my divorce and divorce in general. My own divorce seemed so idiosyncratic to me that I didn’t imagine so many people relating to it, but I found out I was wrong. Many of the listeners said they had divorces that were a lot like mine. They also had no sex for years and a deep attachment despite

So much for the meritocracy. Despite an elite education, effusive charm and brilliant wit, Barack Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, has ended up betraying his humble origins by abjectly serving the most rapacious variant of Wall Street greed. They both talk a good progressive game, but when push comes to shove–meaning when the banking lobby weighs in–big money talks and the best and the brightest fold.
The defining moment of Clinton’s capitulation was his destruction of Brooksley Born, the one member of his administration with the courage and prescience to warn him about the unregulated derivatives trading that ultimately led to the housing collapse. For Obama, it is his decision not to nominate Elizabeth Warren to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which she fought so hard to create.
Obama’s refusal to take the fight to Senate Republicans by nominating Warren should be taken as the vital measure of the

A Conversation with Rickie Lee Jones
Mike Ragogna: Rickie Lee, how are you?
Rickie Lee Jones: I’m great. How are you?
MR: Terrific. So there is a certain new Rickie Lee Jones DVD out called, Live In Stockholm. Let’s just start from the beginning on this, like with that story about how your neighbor became the director.
RLJ:

Today was about public relations — but not about the public.
What was exposed in Parliament during the Murdochs’ testimony wasn’t necessarily News Corp. — we shall see what happens to it — but instead the cozy, closed ties between institutional journalism and institutional government. The corruption of their close links was what was most shocking about today: news executives and politicians at lunch and spas and sporting events; news executives hired by politicians and police to give advice and spin their ex-colleagues; news reporters paying police; news executives sneaking through the back door to the seat of power; government officials being protected from hearing too much about the dirty work of news…
Can this institutional incest survive the Murdoch affair? We’d better not allow it — we, the

“Money doesn’t buy happiness.” Ask anyone who had been slaving away on his desk late last night. Happiness seems to stop going up at$75,000.Make more and you are no better off.
This is only a third of the story.
Double my income today and I’ll tell you tomorrow that I am happier for it — another piece of conventional wisdom. I might get used to my increased riches eventually, but for now let me enjoy the extra cash.
There’s another, even more profound complication lurking in the background: Ask me how I evaluate my life overall, and the threshold goes away altogether. More money suddenly does buy more happiness, even for a household raking in more than $75,000 per year.
$75,000 itself, of course, is already

Most people are too busy using their technology to think about how they could use it better. Let me help you with that.
Nerd News Roundup is culled from tech and science blogs, with special attention given to items related to trends in media, politics, and journalism. It is designed for writers who do not have the time or inclination to search for this stuff on their own.
Interesting Enough to Read the Headline
(…but probably not the rest)
China Looking to Buy a Chunk of Facebook: This Week in Online Tyranny (rww)
T-Mobile Amps Their “4G” Network To 42Mbps in 56 New Regions, Still Has No 42Mbps-Compatible Phones (techcrunch)
1 in 10 Pets Have a Social Networking Profile [STUDY] (mashable)
10 Animals With More Social Media Fans Than Major Media Outlets (mashable)
Dear Netflix, Thanks For The Customers! Signed, Redbox (techcrunch)
TechCrunch.com daily uniques down ~60% since sale to AOL. (google via hacker news)
Potato genome sequenced (physorg)
Police adopting iPhone-based facial-recognition device (tuaw)
Google Maps Terrorizes Jersey Woman by Designating Her House a State Park (gizmodo)
Scientists discover first gonorrhea strain resistant to all available antibiotics (medicalxpress)
You Might Find This Useful:
(Guides, tools, and news that may or may not apply to you)
#Mac
Mac OS X Lion: This Is Not the Future We Were Hoping For (lifehacker)
TUAW’s Daily Mac App: Disk Inventory X (tuaw)
Slingshot Makes Taking Screenshots and Sharing Them One Key-Command Away (lifehacker)
Airfoil 4.5 allows streaming from your iOS device to your Mac and more (tuaw)
TUAW’s Daily Mac App: AppTrap (tuaw)
ReadNow Brings Instapaper & Read-It-Later To A Sleek Mac Interface [Mac 10.6+] (muo)
Meteorologist Puts Incredibly Detailed Weather in Your Mac’s Menu Bar (lifehacker)
#iPhone
Fight Information Overload With Trimit on iPhone
Turn Your iPhone into a Radiation Detector (gizmodo)
The Best Camera App for iPhone (lifehacker)
iPhone Bottle Opener is the Holy Grail for lovers of beer and tech (dvice)
Add an Instant-Record Button to Your Home Screen and Never Miss the Money Shot (lifehacker)
Stitch Your Own Designs Onto This iPhone Case (gizmodo)
REVIEW: iPhone App Now Works With Dragon NaturallySpeaking (mashable)
#iPad
5 Free Collaborative Whiteboard Apps For the iPad (rww)
StumbleUpon Redesigns & Launches Its iPad App (muo)
Make Your iPad A True Writing Tool With These Notebook Apps (muo)
5 Must Download New Free iPad Games (muo)
TUAW’s Daily iPad App: PDF Converter (tuaw)
#Android
Evernote for Android Adds Rich Text, New Widget, and Tablet Support (lifehacker)
#Firefox
3 Tips To Make A Firefox Active Tab Stand Out From The Others (muo)
Interesting Enough to Look at, Briefly
(Images)
Cryptex flash drive uses combination lock sleeve, brings a whole new meaning to hardware encryption (gizmodo)
Lightning over Puyehue-Cordon Caulle (boingboing)
iDJ Live gives your iPad two turntables, microphone not included (engadget)
Dock Connector-USB Hub Hybrid Mitigates the MacBook’s Biggest Shortcoming (gizmodo)
Interesting Enough to Read in Passing
(Maybe worth clicking through?)
If a Monkey Steals Your Camera, Who Owns the Photos?
(gizmodo)
Good news, college kids: video games and weed help memory
The Groningen Mental Enhancement Department in the Netherlands recently conducted a one-year study to see how gaming and cannabis can affect the brains of Alzheimer’s