All Global News on One Page

Used to be when you got together with friends and family, you talked about everyday things, the way things used to be and the way you think things will turn out in the future. Now that the economy tanked, I hear a different kind of conversation and usually it’s about families in distress because they are one paycheck away from homelessness or have already had bouts of homelessness. Thanks to the actions of a few, we now live in the age of widespread homelessness and poverty.
I could write you a dissertation full of facts and figures on homelessness that others have already written about based off inaccurate statistics and counts that don’t show you the true picture of the homeless epidemic that isn’t really slowing

Some marriages are more like collaborations than others. Take Sheldon Harnick and Margery Gray Harnick. He’s the renowned show-business figure who wrote the lyrics for, among other musical comedies, Fiorello! and Tenderloin. When she was still a performer, she sang and danced in

Given that I write about divorce for a living, I shouldn’t be surprised when yet another celebrity couple calls it quits.
And I’m not usually. Before Thursday, only two couples’ splits have fazed me — Tipper and Al, and Heidi and Seal. But after hearing that “Bachelor” host Chris Harrison is splitting from his wife of 18 years, my duo of disappointing divorces has become a trio.
Let me start by saying that, against all reason, I love watching “The Bachelor” and its counterpart, “The Bachelorette.” Not only do the shows give me great exotic vacation ideas (my boyfriend and I plan to travel to Belize in November after watching Ben’s season), they also make me feel better about

It was one of those conferences where it’s hard to leave the lobby. The NewSchools Summit (#NSVFsummit), co-hosted with the Aspen Institute, was held in an SFO airport hotel this week.
Ten years ago, the summit was an annual gathering of charter management organizations (CMOs), human capital builders, and the foundations that supported them. These days the blend is on — strategies for using technology to leverage teacher talent and boost student engagement and achievement where front and center.
There were ten lobby conversations that stood

Almost exactly one year after enacting the United States’ first universal health care law, the state of Vermont is once again showing the country that another world really is possible. In the wake of an impressively large and diverse May Day rally for human rights, the state legislature passed an unprecedented amendment to the budget bill that takes steps toward grounding Vermont’s budget and revenue policy in human rights. Adopting a key demand of the People’s Budget Campaign, run by the Vermont Workers’ Center, Vermont’s budget is now mandated “to address the needs of the people of Vermont in a way that advances human dignity and equity.”
This is the first time that the purpose of a state budget has been defined in terms of human rights principles. The new provision specifies that public money must be raised and distributed with an explicit focus on people’s fundamental needs, requiring that “[s]pending and revenue policies

My husband, Jeffrey Lurie, and I have been helping fund documentaries that address global issues, such as Sergio, based on Samantha Powers’ book Chasing the Flame, and Inside Job, which won the Oscar for best documentary last year. It’s clear that these kinds of films advocating for social change or illuminating a particular subject can make a difference and help educate a growing population eager to learn and take a stand.
Approximately two years ago, I first heard about a documentary called Hungry in America. One of the film’s producers, Julie Goldman, with whom I’d worked in the past, had mentioned in passing that she was involved with a project that was looking at the issue of hunger in this country. Inside Job, which was about to premiere at Cannes Film Festival, and told the story of the global financial crisis, should have prepared me for the notion that hunger was prevalent here in the United

E.L. James’ bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey speaks about women’s secret longing to be sexually dominated by a powerful and controlling man. While I appreciate its message and worldwide appeal to women of all ages, I have some deep concerns. Many commentators appear to be assuming that this longing is in conflict with the political, legal and social gender equality that women have courageously achieved.
As a trained sex therapist, clinical psychologist and marriage counselor, I have dealt with intimate sexual connections for over four

By Linda Descano, CFA, President and CEO, Women & Co. and Managing Director and Head of Digital Partnerships, North America Marketing, Citi
Linda Kempkin had a vision to help women entrepreneurs quickly secure a strong Internet presence for their new businesses. She achieved her goal with the successful launch of BoostMyWebTraffic. We thought it would be helpful to know what lessons she would share with readers who may be thinking about making the leap to entrepreneurship.
Linda had 5 recommendations:
Your “teams” may be primarily external now rather than internal, but that doesn’t mean you’re all

In February, leaked internal budget (PDF) and fundraising (PDF) documents from the Chicago-based propaganda contractor The Heartland Institute exposed the group’s plans to spend $100,000 to create a 20-unit national school science curriculum falsely teaching that there is a scientific controversy over climate change. At the time Heartland described the person doing this, David Wojick, as a climate science expert who works for the U.S. Department of Energy. I contacted DOE spokesperson Jen Stuntsman, who told me Wojick was actually a part-time computer database contractor who “has never advised or conducted research for the Department on climate change or any other scientific topic.”
This week, Heartland went live with billboards in the Chicago area further promoting their view, but the billboards are not what a typical soccer mom would normally expect of an organization preparing a curriculum having to do with schoolchildren and

With a movie as big and anticipated as The Avengers, it’s hard to imagine it being anything other than a disappointment. After all, the hype has been building since the Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk movies in 2008 and has grown even louder and more frenzied with Iron Man 2 and the success of the Thor and Captain America movies in 2011. With so much at stake — including maintaining current franchises, setting up new ones, and recouping a budget and marketing campaign costing hundreds of millions — the studio instinct would be to make The Avengers as big, stupid, and loud as possible. This is called “broadening the appeal,” which is a polite term for dumbing a movie down so it won’t confuse or offend small children, stupid people, and foreign audiences who will be following the dialogue in

It’s no secret that southeastern Michigan for many decades stood as one of the most segregated and racially polarized communities in America. There is much baggage to show how we got here but most of the blame seems to always be directed at Detroit leaders and Detroit residence. Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts said the city must get over race issues to move forward. Roy Roberts said “Detroit is a city that’s so proud of being a black city that it hurts us,” Roberts makes black pride sound like it’s a

I read the original article on The Huffington Post on special needs parents and was moved to tell my family’s story. My child was born with the Amyoplasia form of Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congenita. She has extremely low muscle tone on all four of her limbs, no bicep movement in her arms, her elbows don’t bend and her knees don’t straighten. She has many weekly therapy appointments and must be stretched throughout the day by us in the hopes that she will one day move enough to become

By Abby Gilman
When is the last time you consumed a Big Mac or McChicken meal? Did you consider the effects your 99-cent meal had on the environment, your health and animals?
Buda-ba-ba-ba, I’m hatin’ it.
Or, at least animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is. Animal rights is the No. 1 reason PETA promotes vegetarian diets. The McCruelty campaign aims to impose less cruel forms of slaughtering upon McDonald’s meat suppliers.
“That’s a step in the right direction, although we of course wish they weren’t being slaughtered at all,” said Ryan Huling, manager of college campaigns and outreach at PETA.
Although PETA focuses on animal rights, this isn’t the only motive with a wide-felt

Want to know if you’ve drifted into the divisive political extreme? If you celebrated the resignation of Richard Grenell from the Romney campaign this week, you fit the bill. You’re part of the problem of division in this country. It’s people like you who have driven people like me from both the Democratic and Republican parties. And it’s episodes like this that continue to fracture our society.
When Grenell, Mitt Romney’s openly gay advisor on foreign policy, announced his resignation this week, partisans on both the left and the right

This very weekend in the Springsteen-lauded town of Asbury Park, New Jersey, a convergence of freaks, geeks, and celebrities will occur to celebrate all things cinema.
The unifying event is known as Tromadance, and even amongst the film making community, it is relatively unique. Unlike large institutions such as Sundance or Cannes, Tromadance requires no submission fees from artists looking to have their work screened. Furthermore, there’s no admission cost for attendees, and no velvet

As I sat down to dinner the other night, the phone rang, and I knew without answering what it was: an election robocall. Still, I decided to pick up, as I hope to ingratiate myself with the robots before the Internet becomes self-aware, so that I can get myself a T-1000 Terminator bodyguard. (The T-800s had bugs and often wound up showing the Blue Screen Of Death — literally, of death.) So, as I picked up, I heard, “Hello! This is Barack Obama, President Of the United States, with an important message for… Floyd Elliot!”
“Uh, hi, robot President

It is common for an art student to show up for the first day of painting class and discover that other students in the room will be brushing with various solvents such as turpentine, mineral spirits, and odorless mineral spirits (OMS). In the last painting class I attended, two students left on the first night because of the fumes. These solvents are assumed to be part of the artistic process, with painters working in rooms without ventilation, using materials that can cause serious reactions — materials that are illegal in schools and restricted in the general workplace. Further, the art stores are largely unaware of these problems, not selling protective masks, gloves and coats that would normally be required in the workplace.
Just this past week, I was attending an art fair, and had the opportunity to converse with the featured

Billy Graham — I can’t bring myself to call him “Reverend” — issued a statement Wednesday through the Charlotte-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) in support of Amendment 1, the constitutional marriage discrimination amendment being put before North Carolina voters next Tuesday. According to Martha Waggoner of the Associated Press, Graham’s statement will appear in its entirety in a full-page pro-marriage-discrimination ad running in 14 North Carolina newspapers this weekend. The statement reads, in part:
The fact that the 93-year-old Graham, who was born during the final days of World War I, supports marriage discrimination is not, in and of itself, surprising, when one considers both his age and his evangelicalism. What israther surprising, however, is the fact that he’s made such a public anti-gay pronouncement at

Pardon this indulgence but last weekend I said goodbye to my best friend, a stellar journalist who passed on last November after a two-year battle with brain cancer. My blog pals (we call ourselves Trailmixers) gathered last Sunday at Gloucester Harbor, Massachusetts, to remember and celebrate a true gem, Sean Holton.
By Sean Holton
The Last Mile
Cranes for the Brain
One Avenue, Two Faces
A White House Mystery
Dick Cheney vs.
read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com

An article in this week’s Miami Herald brought me back to November 2008, when I was an immigrant rights organizer in South Florida. It turns out that two men from Guatemala, Adolfo Garca and Julio Daz, are set to be deported by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) on May 18. How they got picked up and why they shouldn’t be deported is the subject of my flashback.
It all started with a November 21, 2008 press release authored by the former

On Thursday, May 3, the Guardian held a media and technology summit in New York, bringing together thought leaders with the theme: “through the use of technology and the Internet, we can make the world a better place.”
Speakers included LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Google’s Alfred Spector, Twitter’s Adam Sharp, Facebook’s Andy Mitchell, Om Malik of GigaOm, Guardian Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger, media thinker Clay Shirky and HuffPost’s own Arianna Huffington.
There were a number of interesting insights shared at the event, held at The Paley Center for Media, but for those who missed it and are crunched for time, here are 10 key takeaways for the news business.
(Scroll down for a more comprehensive overview on the day’s events through Storify and click here for analysis from the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt.)
(1) It’s time to engage more with our readers/viewers. Rusbridger said that the Guardian wants to “reevaluate the relationship between professional journalists and our readers.” He said media companies would benefit from readers feeling they’re jointly creating the news. BuzzFeed’s Jonah Peretti added readers don’t just want to consume news, they want to be part of it, comment and share.
(2) There’s a big opportunity for a journalism platform. Hoffman said that news organizations should think about creating open platforms, where its users can both create and discover

Recently, I had the great pleasure of meeting Jeff Unger, founder of the innovative legal services firm eMinutes, through a mutual friend, Romy Taormina, a Count Me In Awardee and the co-founder and “Nausea Relief Chief” of Psi Health Solutions. Jeff and I got to talking and he told me a little bit about his work. In a word: Wow.
Jeff, who’s 43, finished Babson College in three years, and law school in two. But instead of going into the family business — his grandmother founded Martin Wheel, one of the largest manufacturers of wheels in the world — he moved to Los Angeles and started

I try to avoid Fox News, and I’m not a fan of Bill O’Reilly. Anyone who has read anything I’ve written on The Huffington Post is probably not surprised by either of those facts. But as the mother of a self-identified gay 7-year-old son who has a crush on Glee’s Blaine, the most recent media controversy involving Mr. O’Reilly caught my attention.
In his show on Thursday, April 19,

I’ve always had a really bad memory. So when my mother got Alzheimer’s disease, I knew that I had to record what was happening to her and to our family. I wanted to be able to look back over my notes and remember all the moments of craziness, beauty, and tragedy- and not lose any of them.
Mom started showing symptoms of Alzheimer’s in 1996, when she was only