All Global News on One Page

Chances are, no one ever sat you down as a child and gave you a Powerpoint presentation on how to put on a sock. Most likely, you simply grabbed a sock intuitively at some point during your late toddler years, first mouthing it to savor its pithy taste, then managing after a few failed attempts to maneuver the slip of cotton haphazardly onto your waiting foot. Voila, mission accomplished! The same with learning to open a door — no one ever deconstructed the steps; most people are able through indirect learning — that is, through observation and subsequent trial and error — to learn relatively simple tasks that involve a series of smaller movements.
My son who has Asperger’s and I have spent countless hours over the past fifteen years both deconstructing actions and decoding emotions, as he very often struggles to learn things indirectly. His challenges result both from his dyspraxia, which makes planning and sequencing challenging, and from his difficulties reading social

I’ve always had an irrational and bitter resentment toward good sleepers. You know who you are. You probably don’t mean to brag, but you guys always do. You always do.
“I could sleep ANYWHERE,” you say,

I hope this is never you. I never thought it would be me. Not in five million years. But here I am, with cancer playing the center stage in my life right

Ever since the early 1980s Israeli leaders have been warning the world, and the United States in particular, about the dangers of a nuclear Iran. Time and again successive Israeli leaders have traveled to Washington to raise the issue of the rising danger of Iran and the need for a regime change in Tehran with the incumbent U.S. president. However, none have been as adamant as Prime Minister Netanyahu in his insistence and perseverance about the need for a military solution to the Iran

My friend Jeff Sherman is a Los Angeles writer and producer. He’s also a fine documentarian, putting together with his cousin Greg a film about his father, Robert Sherman, and uncle, Richard Sherman. If their names aren’t familiar, their music is. They wrote the music for Mary Poppins and many of the greatest Disney movies, among other things.
Jeff also has a fabulous story to tell about the late Davy Jones, and how an unlikely Monkees reunion came to

Yesterday, as I was reading comments on a recent blog post I wrote, I felt an overwhelming feeling.
I really couldn’t put a finger on it, but the thought that came to me was “what in the world was I thinking?”
In the midst of being obedient to God, we may ask ourselves that very same question. As we trudge through the thing He’s told us to do, we may become weary, fearful, embarrassed, or even regretful that we stepped out on faith only to face ridicule, questioning of motives, and a major side eye from friends, family, and even strangers.
It is in this place that we have to have the Noah Syndrome.
God began to speak to me about Noah regarding his patience and obedience while building the ark. I want to share these things with you in a hope that you will continue on your path of obedience, even if that means you’re considered crazy and foolish.
Ready? [This is exactly as God said it to me. Take it all in by the spirit.]
God told Noah to build an ark in Genesis 6 because every person on the earth turned their heart away from

Its name was Marty. It, the thing I had no respect for and despised the most above all. It had neither family nor friends. Marty sprung out of

This week, Mitt Romney avoided the embarrassment of losing his home state’s primary, but not by much. The presumptive GOP nominee’s campaign continues to sputter along, unable to win over the party’s base. He blamed the lack of excitement on his unwillingness to “light my hair on fire” (who would want to inflame such a perfect coif?), but it likely has more to do with his inability to stop firing off tone-deaf comments like the latest ones about his multiple cars and his NASCAR team-owner pals.
read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON — The immediate reaction to Mitt Romney’s 2009 USA Today op-ed on health care reform has zeroed in on his suggestion that President Barack Obama pursue an individual mandate. But that focus misses a broader problem the op-ed creates for the former Massachusetts governor.
Romney has consistently defended his health care reform effort in Massachusetts on 10th Amendment grounds, insisting that it was merely “a state solution to a state problem.” The trouble with the president’s plan, Romney has argued, is not that its policy particulars — the individual mandate to buy health insurance, the coverage subsidies, the Medicaid expansion — were based on the Massachusetts plan, but rather that it “was a power grab by the federal government to put in place a one-size-fits-all plan across the nation.”
But Romney’s op-ed, published during the heat of the health care debate and recently unearthed by BuzzFeed, is squarely on the side of health care reform being driven by the federal government. In fact, the national plan that Romney sketched out as acceptable to conservatives closely resembles the one that Obama ultimately signed into law.
Romney, after touting the success of the Massachusetts plan in the op-ed, noted that the main problem facing health care generally is soaring inflation and that only the federal government can rein it

Rush Limbaugh issued an apology today for calling Sandra Fluke a prostitute and a slut after she testified before Congress on women’s health care. This “apology” occurs after three days of Limbaugh slut shaming Ms. Fluke, insulting her parents and saying that Fluke should make a pornographic movie for his titillation.
On the fourth day, after a public outcry and the loss of at least six national sponsorships due to BoycottRush.org and similar efforts, Mr. Limbaugh now regrets his choice of

You’ve heard of it. You’ve wondered about it. You’ve seen films of the classic ones on laserdiscs, VHS tapes and new-fangled DVDs. If you’re really lucky (or live in the U.K.) there’s a reasonable chance you’ve even attended one of

The firestorm of rebuke that met Rush Limbaugh’s crude characterization of a Georgetown law student who dared to speak in favor of free contraception flashed across the headlines, the blogosphere and Facebook Friday.Such contempt — he called her a “slut” and a “prostitute” — appears to have crossed the threshold of what most Americans will tolerate.
But I can’t say Limbaugh’s words shocked me. This kind of remark is all too familiar in this political season — or perhaps century — of dissing and disregard for fact.
It is, after all, less than two weeks since an ESPN producer posted the headline “Chink in the Armor”on the sports network’s mobile user platform after Chinese-American basketball phenomenon Jeremy Lin played his first bad game for the New York Knicks. It’s only a month since CNN political commentator Roland Martin tweetedanti-gay “jokes” during the Super Bowl.
And the Limbaugh brouhaha broke on the same day my morning Boston Globetold of a new round of fraternity hazing at Dartmouth University so crude and degradingthat it led Theatre Professor Peter Hackett to ask the paper, “Why do we have a social system that is from the 19th century?”
Yes, why? The answer, perhaps, is thatthe hazing and Limbaugh incidents are just the latest sign that if we don’t live in the 19th century, plenty of people still appear to long for a time when white males from the right families ruled supreme and everyone else could just damn well get used to it.
One doesn’t have to look much past the abuse heaped on our first African-American president to realize that. Barack Obama has been called a socialist (repeatedly), a closet Kenyan Muslim (where’s the birth certificate, huh?), a liar (before the joint houses of Congress) and lots more.
Wrote Andrew Rosenthal in a New York Times commentary, “There has been a racist undertone to many of the Republican attacks leveled against President Obama for the last three years, and in this dawning presidential campaign.”
Still, the issue posed here is larger than the president and more wide-ranging than the issue of race

In the summer of 1996, I was excited to hear the good news. The Palestinian Ministry of Information had agreed to a request to grant us a license for an educational television station to broadcast in Ramallah. With little funding and tremendous passion we began building up the station with trained staff, equipment and production capacity.
Having grown up in the U.S., I tried to run the new Palestinian station as a hybrid between PBS and

Last month, I wrote about how we are stuck in a bad relationship with planet Earth.
A good relationship is built on respect.
A good relationship demands that you listen to your partner.
But we, as a society, have not been listening to planet Earth and the signals she is sending. Our relationship with our home is in desperate need of therapy.
One of the ways we can rebuild our relationship with the Earth is to reclaim our role as citizens.
We must not allow ourselves to simply consume.
We need to call for a nation of citizen entrepreneurs: people who love their home, who love the earth, and who can connect the dots regarding the global challenges we face.
On my journey in life, I have been fortunate enough to meet and work with people who connect those dots and take action. One person, Pam Dashiell, was an amazing activist from the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.
I met Pam after Hurricane Katrina, when I led Global Green on a journey, armed with a vision to help rebuild New Orleans green. We responded to the crisis immediately after the storm, and we were determined to help pave the way for a brighter, greener future.
We set a goal of greening homes, schools, and adopting a neighborhood, while creating sustainable models for climate-friendly communities and

“I will never get married again…”
“I can’t even imagine going on a date…”
“I feel so old and unattractive…”
“How do you even meet people…”
“I don’t have time in my life for dating”
“I’m so ready for my next relationship…”
“There are no good men out there…”
I hear these statements over and over again from women who are going through and moving forward after divorce. Any of these sound familiar to you?
So today we are going to have a lesson in “SEXpectations” — or the expectations we all have about love after divorce or the ending of any relationship.
Whether you believe it or not, the following words will all have a significant role in your new life: dating, romance, sex, intimacy, sensuality, passion and love. I am going to give you my thoughts about what each word means in your journey towards designing your amazing new life:
Dating: Dating is fun! Yes, you heard me, dating should be and can be a blast when you have set expectations around it that allow you to enjoy the process. You will not fall in love on a first date, nor will you know if he is the “right” fit for you

I recently read an incredible true story called An Invisible Thread. It’s by first-time author Laura Schroff and was on the New York Times bestseller list for 12 weeks. The book cover states, “An Inspiring True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny.”
Yes, that’s what the story is, but its meaning delves much deeper.
Laura’s story reminds us how much we need one another and ultimately how much love we have in our hearts. You may never know what a single gesture means to another person, but it may have the power to change lives, yours

As you read this, a small, thin 23 year-old Saudi with a Bambi-like physicality, awaits trial in a Riyadh prison. His crime was to write a poem. Barely hours after posting three tweets, a supernova of anger exploded on Twitter and Facebook against him. Thousands of Saudis, mainly in the Arabic language, were outraged at the young writer’s tweets; which were parts of a poem describing an imagined conversation with the Prophet

The atmosphere inside U.S. soccer stadiums is unique for American sports. Supporters groups, some styled on soccer’s Ultras movement, are a big chunk of the core energy driving atmosphere at MLS games. Every year, their numbers grow, there is an evangelical quality to the

Dear President Obama,
Greetings to you, our First Lady Michelle and ofcourse your two beautiful daughters. Thank you for daring to take on the position of the presidency during such a tumultuous time in our country’s history. I believe in you and so many others do too, thank you.
If I can have your attention for just 3 minutes, I do hope to return the gift of inspiration that you gave to me and this country back in 2007.
In April of 2011 I began an amazing empowerment outreach to teach women to overcome their biggest fear- failure. This fear holds women back from going after their dreams and leaving abusive situations because they are scared that if they lose everything, they wont be able to

The attack came at night. Fifty young Kurds returning from Iraq were within sight of the Turkish border when rockets began to explode around them. It was late December and freezing cold. “Five or six took refuge behind the

Jesus is often quoted for his saying to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” The rest of the quote could be a message to the Obama Administration: “Render unto God the things that are God’s.”
The current tensions over religious freedom come down to a simple fact: the First Amendment guarantees free exercise of religion. That includes the right of Catholic and other religious institutions to define and carry out their ministry.
An Obama regulation that compels virtually all employers to provide sterilization and contraceptives, including abortion-causing drugs, to employees without co-pay, has a religious exemption. But the exemption is so narrow that Jesus himself wouldn’t qualify. Religious ministries qualify for the exemption only if the people providing the service are Catholic, the ones being served are Catholic, and the service itself comes packaged with religious instruction.
So much for hospital

This past week more than any other in memory has reinforced for me how hard it is to sustain social progress, even around matters that by any measure seemed to have been settled. Can it be that all of the Republicans in the United States Senate save one voted for an amendment to a highway bill that would give employers and insurers the right to deny women insurance coverage for contraceptives, an amendment that by the way would also potentially deprive women of additional benefits like prenatal care and childhood vaccinations and cancer screenings, including mammograms — merely on the grounds of the claim of a conscientious objection?
It is consoling perhaps to read that even two-thirds to three-quarters of America’s Catholics oppose such fanaticism. Yet the alarm bells are ringing, and in a year when a disproportionate number of Democrats are up for re-election the Senate is only a few seats away from being controlled by people whose political base listens to Rush Limbaugh, watches Fox News, seriously considers Rick Santorum’s candidacy for president, and would blithely legislate that women must endure the forcible entry of a state-authorized probe before terminating an unwanted pregnancy.
Political campaigns at their best are a kind of morality play, in which the sentiments that linger beneath the surface are flushed out into the open despite the best efforts of the handlers and the spin-doctors to keep a lid on things, and now a primary season that was supposed to be about the economy has suddenly erupted into a fury of bigotry and religious

Source:
__________________________________________________________________________

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

Trust
On Feb. 18, in over 30 countries, from Paris to New York to Dublin, people gathered to announce: “We are all Greeks Now,” in protest against the continuing austerity packages that are daily hacking away at the livelihood of Greeks. The growing global movement is just one example of the solidarity that is being displayed to Greece, a country that many see as a scapegoat, or even as the first nation to crash down in a likely financial domino-effect across the world. At a time when masks are flying off the faces of formerly respectable and powerful institutions, individuals and systems (see Egypt, Syria, the UK media scandal, Lybia, Occupy Wall St), people are demonstrating support to each other as citizens of the same world, and remembering that beyond language and culture, most societies are built on the same basic foundations, many of which are today proving to have been cemented by lies and reckless economic