All Global News on One Page

For those who have been to San Diego Comic Con, you know it’s a grueling five day marathon of attending panels, waiting in line and splurging your cash on that latest convention collectable PVC figurine. But, 88-year-old Marvel mastermind Stan Lee wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Although he believes that the event has evolved from kids and comic books to include DVDs, TV shows, movies and every bit of fanboy material out there, the creator of X-Men, Spiderman, Iron Man, and the Avengers knows it’s the must-attend event of the year for geeks. “Everything that has to do with entertainment is at Comic Con, and I have to be where there’s entertainment,” he told What’s Trending enthusiastically.
“That’s the whole point of everything: to be in the middle of what’s happening,” he added.
You can count on Lee to be in the center of the news in this year’s

This blog article is a distant cousin to my recent “Unelectable Past Presidents” blog articles (part 1, part 2, and part 3).
Eight out of forty-seven vice presidents (or 17%) reached immortality as “accidental presidents” either through death or through resignation of the sitting president. Many of them took an independent course from the running mate they replaced leading to nation-strengthening or nation-weakening decisions.
Out of the vice presidents that have ascended to the highest office, two became great presidents (Teddy Roosevelt and Truman), two were about average (Arthur and Ford), one was a wild card (Lyndon Johnson), and four have been among the worst presidents (Tyler, Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, and

Entering the Metro convention center in Toronto Canada for the World Conference on Disaster Management last month I was struck by two incongruous sights. First of all the entrance was all but blocked with a crowd of smokers. As I made my way through the gauntlet of second hand smoke I could not help but think how counter intuitive it was that a global gathering of scientists and government agencies concerned about mitigating oncoming natural disasters would themselves be risking their personal health in such a banal and unnecessary way.
Secondly, the keynote speaker was Lester Brown, a highly respected expert on the global environment and climate

Forgive me for a moment while I make a gross generalization: Actors should stick to acting and singers should stick to singing.
I mean, come on people, remember when Michael Jordan played baseball? Just say no.
I’ve felt this way for a long time, but the excessive promotion of Justin Timberlake’s new movie Friends With Benefits has driven me to the edge. I love you Justin, I do, but watching you in The Social Network was about all I can take. So maybe you’re not the best actor, but you’re a damn good

I was pretty shocked to learn, back in March, that hundreds of city schools use dirty, dangerous oil. Well before I was exiled to the trailers behind our building, I’d often notice a strong oil smell outside our school. I’d call the office and ask if I could move my class elsewhere, and someone would tell me that it was just an oil delivery, nothing to worry about. I’d sit there with my 34 kids and hope for the

The extreme hard-line attitude of many Republicans has significantly raised the prospects for a national default and rating agency downgrades that would sweep across the nation and many states, causing an economic cataclysm and public outrage unlike anything ever seen in the history of the republic.
If the deficit talks collapse and the house of cards falls, the biggest losers will be Republicans, who almost certainly will lose control of the House.
I have always expected a deal to raise the debt ceiling, but also warned of the danger that World War I-style miscalculations could result in a default that leaders do not want. Now comes a last-minute proposal dumped by another gang, without major details, in an inflamed and dangerous situation, to radically change America by Aug. 2. This “plan” will not pass in

International street artist Lush opened his show in downtown Los Angeles with as much fanfare and contempt imaginable. Making bold, often savage commentaries on the commodity of street art culture, Lush uses text and stark images on barren canvas for maximum disaffected impact. The exhibit Lush Sells Out in LA was an assault on the mythology surrounding Banksy, as well as those who would feign his work. Through painted pieces and installation sets, Lush set the stage for his world of ‘real street’ as opposed to ‘celebrated street-ified art.’ On the real street, as we know, people get harmed, anger can be in your

Elephantine Apparition. 2010-11, Oil on canvas. 32 3/8 x 36 1/4″, Photo by Tracey Harnish, courtesy Rosamund Felsen Gallery
It’s a curious mix that Lavi Daniel conjures in painting and sculpture. Both are about density but in very different

What we think about all day really matters to our health and outlook. Positive thoughts may do more for us than we may realize. Consider this: Harvard studies prove that negative thoughts actually cause us to maintain elevated levels of stress hormones, while positive thoughts fill our bodies with the types of chemicals that smooth and regulate our moods. Antidepressants help us maintain elevated levels of serotonin in our blood

Hey…did you hear that? It sounded like something just snapped.
It’s the sound of America finally getting fed up with the high-stakes craziness going on here in the nation’s capital. I could be wrong, but my read of the national mood is that it’s changing and that enough people are both paying attention to the debt ceiling debate and are “taking names” such that we might see Congress shamed into some action.
I’ll continue to track this of course, and I’ll weigh in on parts that I believe are of interest, but frankly, it’s not worth it to follow every wiggle. So let’s put aside “the-gang-of-six-and-their-bag-of-tricks” for a moment and assess where we are and where we might be headed, political-economy wise.
[Note: Read in the New York Times this AM regarding the gang’s plan: “…Representative Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican, and others like Representative Paul

The Christians United for Israel dinner in Washington, DC was an experience I won’t quickly forget. Until you sit in a room with five thousand Christian lovers of Israel and absorb their enthusiasm for the Jewish state and the Jewish people you would be hard pressed to think it possible. But there I was, surrounded by Christians from all over the nation waving Israeli and American flags, pledging eternal love and support to the most vilified country on earth. The speeches came fast and

To say that the year-old Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is under attack in Washington is like describing Little Big Horn as an engagement between the cavalry and the Indians. What we are watching looks more and more like a one-sided massacre, and the hordes of financial industry lobbyists and their Republican enablers are taking all the scalps.
I take no pleasure in saying I told you so. But what many of us saw as the fatal flaws in Dodd-Frank are now fully exposed. I repeatedly said in the Senate debates last year that the bill did not include the kind of tough laws that were passed in the1930s by the last Congress that had to deal with a catastrophic financial

Yes, American Graffiti was an influence on his movie, The Myth of the American Sleepover, David Robert Mitchell says, sitting in a dorm-room-sized hotel room in the Ace Hotel near New York’s Garment District.
But that wasn’t the movie he wanted to make.
And he hasn’t. Mitchell’s film, shot in 2008 and shown at the 2010 South By Southwest festival in Austin, TX, is a quietly amusing, charming and involving night-in-the-life tale of a group of Michigan teens, mixing and matching themselves in terms of friendship and potential romance on the last weekend of the summer. The film opens in limited release on Friday (7/22/11).
In the course of that night, there aren’t the kind of momentously wild or raucously life-changing moments that are inherent in (and occasionally anathema to) the

The shaving cream hurled at Rupert Murdoch on Tuesday as he sat before a British parliamentary committee may be the only punishment he’ll get. True, the tycoon — whose News Corp holdings encompass Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post, as well as giant swathes of the world’s English-language media — pronounced himself humbled before millions of viewers and listeners. But whether or not Murdoch and his coterie of close collaborators will ever get their comeuppance, Murdochgate is exposing how power and influence, infused with insidious new forms of corruption, operate today. And we’d better pay attention if we want to understand — let alone have a say in — the policies that affect everything from our pocketbooks to our health care and habitats to “our”

With stronger writing, A Little Help could have been one of those minor black-comedy indy gems, along the line of The Joneses and The TV Set, the kind that develops a strong after-life even though it’s overlooked when it’s in theaters.
Instead, it’s just OK, a set of interesting ideas wrapped in a less-interesting package, tied together by the evocative central performance of Jenna Fischer, finally stepping out of the Pam range she shows on The Office.
In this film written and directed by Michael Weithorn (whose prime credit is as a writer/producer on King of Queens), Fischer plays Laura, who is in a stalled and unhappy marriage with Bob (Chris O’Donnell), who seems to always be working. It’s the summer of 2002 and her fractious family is gathering at the home of her bossy, obnoxious sister Kathy (Brooke Smith) for a barbecue. Her parents are judgmental, her son is a pain, her husband is late and terse – only her brother-in-law, Paul (Rob Benedict), seems to notice her distress.
After a fight with Bob, Laura runs out of her sister’s house – and when Bob chases her, he suddenly collapses. A trip to the emergency room leads to a diagnosis of a panic

Another day, another press release announcing a new series heading to Sky Atlantic.
Last month the channel announced they were taking cult favourite Nurse Jackie off BBC Four’s hands.
It’s the latest in a longish list of acquisitions from other channels, Sky’s wallet proving too big for the rest of the UK terrestrial broadcasters to compete with.
Sky Atlantic popped up earlier this year promising glossy new HBO drama such as Treme, Boardwalk Empire, Game Of Thrones and most recently, Kate Winslet vehicle Mildred Pierce.
Old favourites The Sopranos, Battlestar Galactica, The Wire and Six Feet Under are also shown on the Sky-only platform.
Their buying up of existing favourites from other channels is more interesting – much of the channel’s output comprises series that either wouldn’t have been shown in the UK had it not been for Sky’s spending power, or have already been shown on terrestrial channels and gone on to become giants of the DVD boxset world.
When it finally returns for its fifth series, Mad Men will be following Nurse Jackie over to Atlantic, while E4 have also had Glee snatched from under them, although this time by Sky1.
And I say let Sky have them.
Yes, some viewers may not have the package needed to receive Sky Atlantic, and for fans of the respective programmes, that’s a shame.
Really, though, the BBC shouldn’t be spending exorbitant amounts of its precious budget on US imports, and as for Glee, it’s a show that peaked some time ago (in my view during the closing credits of the fourth ‘Kurt does the Single Ladies dance’ episode of the first series).
E4 are well shot of it.
One of the BBC’s more recent acquisitions was Heroes. Made by NBC in the States, it cost BBC Two around 400,000 an episode to show in the UK. That’s right, 400,000 an episode so we could see the development of a story arc so convoluted not even the cast and writers cared what happened when it eventually limped out after four series.
Think what that money could have been spent on? The resurrection of Play For Today? More of established winners like Doctor Who? The arrival of the next Being Human? Quality comedy like Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle?
The BBC should thank its lucky stars Sky Atlantic is

A stunningly horrendous car crash. A windshield smashed in by a wooden stump. A shard of white light cutting sharply through a smoke cloud which rises to eerily announce the arrival of UK street artists Miss Bugs in Brooklyn. In “Parlour,” their first solo show on view right now in Bed Stuy, the backyard diorama is a plastered paper perimeter of gnarled and murky indigo off-road forest, a haunting backdrop to the cut-out distorted and riveting forms who break the fourth wall toward you with intent.
The curvaceous ladies are cousins of the street pieces Miss Bugs places with great care publicly, cut outs that fade into their surrounding and pop out from it, undulating, teasing and riveting, a perfectly charged counterweight of sex to the violent metal and glass carnage before

The Kunsthaus in Bregenz, Austria explores the architectural work of Ai Weiwei with a solo show titled Art / Architecture. While not as widely presented as his artistic oeuvre, Ai Weiwei’s work in the field of architecture is extremely important for the artist because of the collaborative – that is social and political – aspect of it.
On three floors of architect Peter Zumthor’s Kunsthaus building, the exhibition focuses on Ai Weiwei’s collaborative architecture projects such as the Beijing National Stadium (colloquially as the Bird’s Nest), developed in collaboration with the Pritzker price winning architects Herzog & de Meuron, but also numerous projects with lesser known architects.
read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com

Source:
__________________________________________________________________________

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

Source:
__________________________________________________________________________

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

It is hard to imagine a new angle on the beleaguered Cape Wind project. Everything from its rich opponents, to the Kennedys, to the local Indian tribes, has been the subject of endless news stories.
But there is one item that deserves some attention — jobs and what the Massachusetts utility regulator’s decision to approve the project means for how any new energy technology can be built.
After an interminable struggle, the state’s utility commission approved part of the future power output from the project a few months ago. But in the press around the approval, the important rationale for the approval did not get nearly enough attention. It is never too late to point out an important point, so here goes.
That approval was a big deal because the cost of power (about 18 cents per kWh) is quite a bit more than the average cost of electricity in the

My 12-year-old holds a heart in his hands.
“Do you like the blue?” he asks. We’re in Venice, a place known for glass beads and tiny fragile animals. I nod. Jamie has always associated me with blue as he knows it’s my favorite

When HauteLook’s morning email popped up announcing a sale on Kate Somerville skincare, Casey felt a flutter of excitement. Never mind that she was barely half way through a tube of ExfoliKate and had another waiting under the sink that she’d purchased during a different promotion. Kate Somerville on sale! Within minutes Casey had added $125 to her credit card balance for a new jumbo tube of a product she won’t need for at least nine months. She wasn’t alone ExfoliKate sold out in 90

The final gathering of the 2011-2012 school year at Joplin East Middle School was not in the auditorium as originally scheduled.
That auditorium, the pride and joy of our new building, was in ruins, along with half of the school following the May 22 tornado that destroyed a large section of our city.
Instead of the awards assembly and talent show, traditions we brought to East from our old school, we met at the Fourth Street Bowl, 18 days after our school year ended early.
For the seventh and eighth graders, it was the first opportunity they had to see their friends since the tornado. Many of them had wondered if they would ever see those friends again. In the days immediately following the tornado, many were not sure if their friends had survived.
So the first order of business, even before they picked up their belongings, which had been removed from lockers and placed in black trash bags, were hugs and in what immediately became a Joplin tradition after May 22, the tornado story.
Some of the students told harrowing tales of survival, while others almost apologized as they revealed that they were not in the tornado’s path.
One student, seventh grader Zach Williams, did not survive the