All Global News on One Page

“Isn’t India in North America?” a classmate asked in the seventh grade. I, along with the students around her, was completely dumbfounded. This is typical of the results you’ll see in an education system with no global focus. Yes, this may be an extreme example, but nonetheless it is a true

On Tuesday, Texas financier Robert Allen Stanford was convicted in a Houston federal court on 13 out of 14 criminal counts of fraud.
As The New York Times reported, “The jury decision followed a six-week trial and came three years after Mr. Stanford was accused of defrauding nearly 30,000 investors in 113 countries in a Ponzi scheme involving $7 billion in fraudulent high-interest certificates of deposit at the Stanford International Bank, which was based on the Caribbean island of Antigua.”
Media accounts of Stanford’s conviction were filled with stories of his excesses: mansions, private yachts and jets, and so much money invested in Antigua — including bribes — the small island awarded him a knighthood. Among his other indulgences, noted the Reuters news service: “He bought a castle in Florida for one of his girlfriends and his oldest daughter lived in a million-dollar condominium in

People talk about the “freshman fifteen” for a reason. Although most freshmen don’t gain fifteen pounds, most gain at least five. This is because college students are drawn to snacks that are easy to make and often do not pay attention to the lack to nutrition. Things like pizza and soda are high in sodium and sugar and don’t contribute to a healthy

In our book, Children’s Picture Books [Laurence King, $35.00] we explore not only the history and evolution of the picture book, but all aspects of the “art” of picture book-making–from education and training to the interplay of words and images on a page, from the use of old and new printing methods to the editorial process and the demands of the publishing industry in the twenty-first century. As part of this exploration, we also examine the role of the picture book in introducing children to the visual arts as well as language, and consider important issues such as the appropriateness of certain subjects and styles of illustration for children. We look, too, at the picture book in the classroom. Here, we draw on the critical theory of scholars, such as Barbara Bader, and in particular on the research of Evelyn Arizpe and co-author Morag

Oil prices are escalating and Americans soon may pay $5 for a gallon of gasoline. This grim fact has not escaped the notice of politicians. America’s latest energy crisis has prompted heated rhetoric from Republicans and Democrats. Here are four lies that have been bandied about.

Silent House is one of those gimmick-movies that you can easily imagine beginning with a conversation along the lines of, “Hey, you know what would be cool?”
In this case, the answer to that question is, “It would be cool to make a horror movie in one continuous unedited shot that lasts the length of the whole movie so the whole thing unfolds in real time.”
That was the approach with the Uruguayan original of this film by Gustavo Hernandez – and filmmakers Laura Lau and Chris Kentis, the filmmakers behind Open Water, follow the same template in their new American remake. (In fact, you can see the seams where they did, in fact, cut, putting together long, long takes but not one unbroken one.)
Like the original, the Lau-Kentis film focuses on a trio of people who converge on a remote lake house: a man, John (Adam Trese); his daughter, Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen); and the man’s brother, Peter (Eric Sheffer Stevens). The man and his brother have been working on remodeling the house in preparation for moving out; the daughter has joined them for the final night before they take off in the morning.
Peter and John fight about John’s expectations of the work Peter should have finished, so Peter leaves. John heads off to work elsewhere in the house – leaving Sarah to wander around

There’s more to St. Patty’s Day than shamrocks and pots of gold. We’re bringing you recipes featuring a famous Irish stout that has become beloved by the masses. Cheers to celebrating this decidedly jolly holiday to the

Thousands of victims of sexual abuse will never receive a personal apology from their church leaders.
Many continue suffering into adulthood from the crimes of wayward clergy and the conspiracy of silence by religious hierarchs. Now, some will be offended even more by statements made by Cardinal Edward Egan.
The archbishop emeritus of New York recently expressed regret for issuing an apology at the height of the U.S. scandal, saying, “I don’t think we did anything wrong.”
Yet no matter how much individuals such as the cardinal would like to put the sexual abuse scandal behind them, they can no longer appeal to an obedient laity to ignore or downplay the crimes, according to new research.
Many Catholics are still mad as heck, and they are not going to take it anymore. It is not just the firestorm of disapproval that greeted Egan’s remarks published earlier this month.
Consider some of these recent findings related to the enduring consequences of the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church:
In a 2011 survey of American Catholics, more than three-quarters of respondents said the sexual abuse issue has hurt priests’ ability to meet the spiritual-pastoral needs of parishioners.
In an online survey, anger at church leadership for the sexual abuse scandal was the

At first glance it might not seem that President Obama and kid-rocker Justin Bieber have much in common. But both men had just a tad too much altitude going through the doorway of aircraft and — boom! — the celebrity noggins got a good crack while the paparazzi snapped photos.
Yep, it is fun to put America’s president and Canada’s most adorable heart-throb together in the same sentence and call them klutzes, but there’s more to the story.
Ask the flight attendants who work on the smaller regional airplanes how often their passengers get an owie for failing to mind their noodles on entering the airplane and you’ll hear an astonishing number. Ninety seven percent said they’ve seen passengers crack their heads, three-quarters of them said the injury involved bleeding, bruising or a bump and more than half of the flight attendants surveyed said they’ve seen it happen dozens of times.
In the comments section of the survey, conducted by JDA Aviation Technology Solutions, one flight attendant wrote, “Passengers hitting their heads has been discussed with our Director of Safety and the flight attendant management before, but it is another ‘Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be).’”
Ron Whipple, an air transport specialist, who has 9,000 hours flying the Saab 340 told me he lost count of how many times he banged his head on the door frame during his 18 years of flying for American Eagle.
“Luckily, I had my hat on most of the time,” he said with a laugh, “so I didn’t get really hurt.”
So there is a problem knocking around out there, but getting any attention paid to it is undermined by the fact that no one takes this kind of injury seriously — up to and including sometimes, the person injured.
Asking the Regional Airline Association for the number of skulls cracked while boarding got me nowhere. Kelly Murphy, the industry’s media representative said it “does not keep reports of this nature.”
So to quantify the problem, JDA had to ask the folks most likely to know, pilots and flight attendants who work for the regional carriers that are moving 430,000 passengers around America each and every

I recently returned from Las Vegas, Nevada, where I had been invited to speak on a panel, “Is Reorganization of the State the Answer to the Greek Crisis?” at an international conference for public administrators. Because of my longstanding work in both the fields of innovation and meaning I decided to focus my remarks on what I consider to be primarily humanistic concerns — not that structure and function do not matter — under the banner of “The Deeper Meaning of the Greek Transformation.”
Frankly, I don’t believe that simply “reorganizing” the state is the answer to the Greek crisis, although it certainly is a part of it. More fundamentally, I wanted in my presentation to identify some issues that relate directly not only to the feasibility of reorganizing the state but also to dealing with Greece’s “existential” or identity crisis in its larger context. After all, the word “crisis,” which has its roots in the Greek language, represents an important decision point and therefore is also an opportunity.
Speaking metaphorically, it is also important to underscore that I didn’t want simply to move chairs around the deck of the sinking Titantic! In order to take full advantage of the opportunity side of the crisis and move towards a positive future for Greece and Greeks, a process that I call “existential digging” (explained in my book, Prisoners of Our Thoughts) is required as a prerequisite for facilitating substantive change — that is, change grounded in the Core of

At times with good intentions — other times with not so good — someone tries to silence my complaints about the machismo in my country, telling me, “Cuban women don’t have it so badly… those in some African nations, where they are subjected to ablation, are worse off.”
As an argument it’s a low blow, it hurts me in the groin, connects me to the cry of a defenseless teenager, mutilated, subjected to that ordeal by her own family. But the rights of women should not be reduced only to the power to maintain their physical integrity and to defend their biological capacity to experience pleasure. The clitoris is not the only thing we can lose, there is a long list of social, economic and political possibilities, which are also snatched from us.
As I live in a country where the paths of civic protest have been severed and demonized, I dare to offer in this blog a list of the violations that still persist against women.
They do not allow us to establish our own women’s organizations, where we can unite and represent

by guest blogger Maya Rodale,writer of historicaltales of true love and adventure
Being a Rodale, I am often asked if I garden. For most of my life, I sheepishly said no. While I helped out in the backyard, or at the Rodale Institute, being a city dweller in cheap, dark apartments meant that I did not have a garden of my own. I’m happy to report that has changed since I moved to an apartment with actual sunlight and acquired my “plant babies.”
I started with an assortment of herbs and promptly killed all of them except for Rosemary and Sage (I think I overcrowded

by guest blogger Maya Rodale,writer of historicaltales of true love and adventure
Being a Rodale, I am often asked if I garden. For most of my life, I sheepishly said no. While I helped out in the backyard, or at the Rodale Institute, being a city dweller in cheap, dark apartments meant that I did not have a garden of my own. I’m happy to report that has changed since I moved to an apartment with actual sunlight and acquired my “plant babies.”
I started with an assortment of herbs and promptly killed all of them except for Rosemary and Sage (I think I overcrowded

How does one walk the path of love, tolerance, compassion, forgiveness, etc. without becoming a doormat? This is a fundamental question, and one that’s rarely addressed, if ever. When sweeping generalizations are made about love and compassion without sufficient directives they leave many vulnerable and at the mercy of others who take liberties without reciprocating. Sometimes others might mistake kindness for willingness — even an acceptance — to mistreat and disrespect or lie, cheat and swindle.
It is a very New Age tendency to forfeit common sense in favor of

Over the course of thousands and thousands of years our brains have become wired toward creating, fixing, solving, and basically just doing. It’s been a great benefit; we have roofs over our heads, cars to drive, chairs to sit on and even this technology to connect around. But when it comes to our stress or uncomfortable emotions, the brain mistakenly uses the same approach and unknowingly make our stress and pain worse.
We can begin right now to train our brain with a more effective approach.
This is what I call the “BE” practice, and it can be experienced in one minute.
Note: First, see if you can set any judgments aside of whether this practice will or will not “work” for you. Engage this just with the goal of being aware of your experience.
Breathe — Take a few deep breaths and as you breathe in, know that you’re breathing in, and as you breathe out know that you breathing

Over the many years of treating couples in my private practice, I have used six behavioral directives that help committed relationships last. These directives are of course only effective when both partners are honestly dedicated to the relationship and are willing to change and grow together.
Remember, all couples come to therapy with good intentions. They all desperately want to improve their relationships and make them

Have a job interview coming up? How would you like to make a great first impression, connect with the interviewer and convey your points with confidence and clarity? If so, it’s time to borrow a page from the self-help gurus and act “as if.”
Oprah Winfrey is the undisputed master of interviewing and no one could argue that this great communicator was born into circumstances that would guarantee her success. Rather, her phenomenal rise to stardom came about as a result of a number of personal factors that would bode well for anyone seeking employment to adopt. So, as you prepare for your next interview, remember the gurus’ advice and act “as if… Oprah.”
The following are three characteristics that set this media queen

For those men who take for granted the concept of oral contraception, let’s pretend that it’s 1958 and there’s no pill. What were your contraceptive options back then?
First, there was the prophylactic. A disease preventative, yes, but also an exasperating hassle.
Back in 1958, just buying a package of condoms was unpleasant because you first had to endure the disapproving scowls of practically everybody standing behind you in line, not to mention the lewd chuckles from the pharmacy

This Sunday in Austin, Texas, “$ellebrity” — the first feature documentary directed by respected celebrity photographer Kevin Mazur — will premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival. I know this because I’m an Executive Producer of the film – which in this case means that I had the considerable pleasure of filming remarkably candid interviews with assorted famous folks like Jennifer Aniston, Elton John, Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow, among many other interesting people, about the state of fame today. “$ellebrity” — which Huff Po recently spotlighted as one of the most anticipated films of the SXSW Film Festival — explores the good, the bad and the ugly about our cultural obsession with fame — and the way that technology has changed the tone and texture of celebrity. All of us who worked on the film can’t wait for audiences to see Kevin’s movie, and if we all just so happen to get more famous because of “$ellebrity,” well, then we’ll just have to live with that

My father is running for president. He announced this decision as I arrived for my regular visit. He was sitting in front of the television, watching the twenty-four hour news programs. “Not one candidate has any idea of how to solve problems,” he

300 years ago, a watchmaker in Geneva, Switzerland, fathered a son who became the first powerful voice against inequality in an urbanizing Europe in which the costs of capitalism and private property were already clear. Jean-Jacques Rousseau proclaimed in his Social Contract that men, though born free, were everywhere in chains. In time, he became an inspiration to the French revolutionaries.
Astonishingly, three centuries later, inequality continues to dog capitalism and taint democracy’s legitimacy — worse now even than back then. Equality and equality’s advocates continue to take a beating in an America whose democracy counts dollars rather than votes, and in which the disparities between rich and middle and middle and poor deepen day by

Last week MSNBC took a big step into 21st-century reality when, for the first time in the network’s history, it demonstrated that it understands that the modern civil rights movement isn’t entirely wrapped up in whether gays and lesbians can serve in the military or marry each other, that just like every other segment of American society, one of our community’s key concerns is jobs and employment.
There’s no question that the intention of host Thomas Roberts, an openly gay man, in bringing this issue to MSNBC’s air is a good one, and we should be thankful and appreciative that out of all of his on-air colleagues, up to and including even the also-openly-gay Rachel Maddow and major civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton, Mr. Roberts is leading the way at the network in covering this critical issue. Yet as is so often the case when mainstream media cover an important and well-established issue for the first time, mistakes were made, mistakes that could have been easily avoided had there been more prep work and research done on the issue before it was presented on-air for public consumption.
The segment was titled “LGBT: Next Steps” and featured a trans woman, People.com Associate Editor and Huffington Post contributor Janet Mock, and gay conservative Robert Traynham, a former staffer for virulently anti-LGBT Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum.
Thomas Roberts’ first question was also the most

If the Republican Party doesn’t wrap up its nomination very soon and rally around a consensus candidate, we are heading to a Tampa National Convention of epic battles, divisive delegate challenges and a deadlock that could rupture the party or cause it to reach outside of the remaining candidates for someone to bring method to its madness. And if the Republican Convention determines not to enforce its party’s rules on its constituent state parties, the Party will find itself (and possibly the Democrats as well) with no rules left to enforce in the future. Last night’s muddled split decisions all over the country, with non-proportional awarding of delegates in violation of RNC rules, makes floor fights and credentials challenges far more likely. The Republican Super Tuesday all but invites the Tampa Convention to adjudicate and enforce its own rules
In 1972, the regular wing of the Democratic Party, organized labor and five presidential campaigns coalesced in a last ditch effort to block what they thought would be the disastrous nomination of George

Much has been written about Greece’s financial doom and the domino effect it will have on Europe’s and possibly America’s economy. I’ve never liked playing dominos. I prefer to find solutions to problems before there are consequences.
Having traded and borrowed off their historical culture for years, Greece over spent and their Doric columns couldn’t sustain them. So on their application to join the European Union, they underplayed their level of debt to meet Euro