Thursday, March 18, 2010
"The Virgin Suicides', Sweet 16," by Nadine Rubin
"Size Doesn't Matter," by Nadin Rubin
"Alleged 'American Jihadist' Made Way to Yemen," by Haley Sweetland Edwards
"It was like the movies," said Zaid al-Olfah, who was visiting a family member at the aging, Soviet-style building in the Yemeni capital on Sunday. "There was shooting and smoke coming out the windows and down the hallway." The window of Mobley's former hospital room is still blackened.
Mobley is the latest in a line of suspected "American jihadists" -- disgruntled American citizens, including Colleen LaRose aka Jihad Jane, who have allegedly been radicalized and recruited as foot soldiers by Islamic extremists. Their American citizenship, which allows them to both travel freely and hold sensitive positions of employment without raising suspicion, makes them potentially invaluable contributors to al-Qaida plots on American soil, U.S. intelligence reports have said.
"Adding Zest to Recipes on Labels," by Miriam Gottfried
Article and Photo courtesy: The Wall Street Journal)
America's increasingly sophisticated palate, influenced by TV cooking shows, celebrity chefs and gourmet ingredients, presents a problem. Food companies need to figure out how to update their recipes to entice today's more ambitious cooks to use products that might otherwise sit on the shelf for months. The recipes must make cooks feel like they're doing more than just adding eggs to a mix, but not use so many ingredients to require a special trip to the store. If they get too trendy, they risk alienating their core consumers.
Read remainder of the article HERE.
"Destination: Haiti," by Emily Schmall
It was sweltering when the Blackhawk landed on the narrow airstrip of the USS Carl Vinson, a United States air carrier floating thirty miles from the shores of Port-au-Prince. It was Friday, January 15, three days after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake had rocked the Haitian capital, and I was among a small coterie of foreign journalists who secured a spot on a Navy helicopter. Three days earlier, I had been eating sushi in Mexico City, where I live and work as a freelance journalist, when I first read about the quake. Though I had never reported from Haiti, my first job out of college at The Miami Herald had piqued my interest in the country, and my instinct told me I should go.
In the naïve early hours after the disaster, I had booked a direct flight on Air France from Miami into Port-au-Prince. But by the next day, all commercial flights into Haiti were canceled. It was my first introduction into the logistical challenges of reporting from the site of a disaster—challenges that take on a particular pitch when you’re going in without a satellite phone or a big wad of cash.
Remainder of article can be found HERE.
"Poverty Predicts Quake Damage Better Than Richter Scale," by Emily Schmall
To project the scope of destruction and loss of human life, the quality of buildings and the poverty level are far more telling than the magnitude on the Richter scale, scientists and aid workers say.
"It's not as much the earthquake that kills, it's the poverty that kills," said Colin Stark, a geomorphologist and researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who is studying the aftermath of a 1999 earthquake in Taiwan to predict the probability of landslides in Haiti.
"Billionaire Among Us: How Mexicans See Carlos Slim," by Emily Schmall
"Going Green," by Laura Colarusso
But now a second structure punctuates the skyline. A town-owned wind turbine, it eclipses the water tower by seven feet and looms large over the one-story bungalows that line Ocean Gate’s streets.
The turbine has become a point of pride for residents of this sleepy Barnegat Bay community. It’s the first in New Jersey created and owned by a municipality. With its construction, the people of Ocean Gate see themselves as having taken a considerable step toward not just reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, but also saving some serious cash and helping the country work toward energy independence from foreign sources.
Monday, March 15, 2010
"A Wedding in the Town of Al-Qaeda," by Abigail Hauslohner
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1955577,00.html#ixzz0iDuVN3DM
"Road Tripping in Yemen," by Abigail Hauslohner
"Mexico's Pink Taxis Cater to Fed-up Females," by Catherine Shoichet
Creepy Cabbie Taxing Your Patience? Mexico's Women-Only Taxis Offer Safe, Pink Environment
Each pink taxi comes with a beauty kit, a GPS system and an alarm button.
The new fleet of 35 cabs in Mexico's colonial city of Puebla are driven exclusively by women and don't stop for men. The cabs cater especially to those tired of leering male drivers.
"Some of the woman who have been on board tell us how male taxi drivers cross the line and try to flirt with them and make inappropriate propositions," said taxi driver Aida Santos, who drives one of the compact, four-door taxis with a tracking device and an alarm button that notifies emergency services. "In the Pink Taxi they won't have that feeling of insecurity, and they feel more relaxed."
Women's rights activists are aghast at the cars' sugary presentation and said the service does not address the root of the harassment problem.
Read the remainder of the article HERE.
"Mexican prosecutors probe possible Frida fakes," by CATHERINE E. SHOICHET
(Article courtesy: Huffington Post)
MEXICO CITY — Mexican federal prosecutors said Tuesday they are investigating a claim that more than 1,000 items attributed to artist Frida Kahlo were forged.
The Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Trust filed a complaint saying signed paintings, notes and drawings featured in two recent art history books are fake, the Attorney General's Office said.
"We must stop the commercialization of false works," said Hilda Trujillo, director of the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Museums.
Read remainder of article HERE.
"As Nuclear Reactor Fleet Ages, Engineers Ask,' Is 80 the New 40?'" by Paul Voosen
"Wind Power's Dirty Secret: Hidden Carbon Footprint?" by Anita Kissee
"Carbon Markets Struggling to Emerge From Communism's Rubble," by Paul Voosen
A surplus of U.N. carbon emission credits piling up across Central and Eastern Europe is threatening to destabilize nascent carbon markets across the world and dampen efforts to curb global warming, market experts and politicians say.
"Poetry so bad it's Good," by Abigail Deutsch
What are we to do with lines like these?
We have seen thee, queen of cheese,
Lying quietly at your ease,
Gently fanned by evening breeze,
Thy fair form no flies dare seize.All gaily dressed soon you'll go
To the great Provincial show,
To be admired by many a beau
In the city of Toronto.
We might grow slightly nauseated. We might (who knows?) get hungry. We might gleefully illuminate the poetic palsies that weaken the frame of this work, James McIntyre's "Ode on the Mammoth Cheese": the clanging rhymes, the collapsing meter, the misguided coronation of a Canadian dairy queen.
Alternatively--as we reread in delight, as we probably just did--we might note the workings of a mysterious alchemy. Just as milk ferments into cheese, so can bad poetry, in this and other cases, transform into something rather enjoyable. Like a pungent Roquefort, bad poetry can stink in marvelously complex ways.
Read remainder of the article HERE on the Huffington Post.
"Seven Cancer Topics to Watch," by Elaine Schattner
"Quiet Biotech Revolution Transforming Crops," by Paul Voosen
Fourth in a five-part series about genetically modified crops.
"Escaping to England," by Erica Rex
(Article and photo courtesy: Kaiser Health News)
This is the first in a new KHN series, First Person.
I moved to England in September at the age of 53, three days after my student health coverage at Columbia University ran out. Diagnosed with breast cancer last April, I knew I would not be able to buy a plan on the open market, even if I could have afforded it.
I had been struggling to find a full-time job in New York since 2003, following the breakup of my first marriage. It had been grim. Between the economy and the state of my profession – I’d been working as a journalist for many years – I hadn’t been able to land full-time work. After yet another promising job melted into “we’ve had our requisition pulled so now we can’t hire you,” it occurred to me that a journalism degree might help. So in the fall of 2008, I returned to school for a mid-career masters degree at Columbia Journalism School.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
"#1 Party School," by Aaron Scott
(Photo and article: This American Life)
"Where wedding shots once meant something else entirely," Haley Sweetland Edwards
(Article and Photo: GlobalPost)
"SANAA, Yemen — It's wedding season in Yemen and traditionally, that's meant three things: music, dancing and joyously firing an array of pistols, assault rifles, rocket-launchers, anti-aircraft mortars and grenade launchers into the air to celebrate the occasion.
But in the past few years, that last part has been nixed from the program.
In 2007, the Yemeni government began implementing an ambitious disarmament and weapons-registration campaign in Sanaa, the nation's capital, and in many other cities around the country. The upshot is that Yemenis can no longer carry, brandish or fire weapons of any sort in urban and semi-urban districts — even on their sons' wedding nights."
Read remainder of article HERE.
"The golden mean in Pakistan," by Maha Atal
"Yemen's Hidden War: Is Iran Causing Trouble?," by
Thursday, December 24, 2009
"Somalis in Yemen: Dangerously intertwined Basket Cases," by ABIGAIL HAUSLOHNER
"Despite Aid, Yemen Faces Growing Al-Qaeda Threat," by ABIGAIL HAUSLOHNER
Sunday, November 15, 2009
"Skamania Co. auditor under investigation for misusing funds," by Anita Kissee
Article and Video: Courtesy KATU
Records show Garvison billed taxpayers for $51,000 in travel expenses last year. This year he’s already racked up a reported $32,000.
Our investigation led to his early resignation and continues.
"Single in Portland: Building the skills and confidence to succeed," by Anita Kissee
PORTLAND, Ore. – Dating in Portland can be hard but many are finding they just need to develop the confidence and the skills that will help them meet that special someone.
"In Egypt, Debate Grows over a Successor to Mubarak," by Abigail Hauslohner
"Courts Force U.S. Reckoning With Dominance of GM Crops," by Paul Voose
Take Oregon's Willamette Valley, which for generations has been the germ of the U.S. sugar beet industry, producing nearly all the country's seeds. Such breeding is complicated when neighbors grow genetically similar crops and stiff Pacific winds, baffled by the Coast Range mountains, shove pollen every which way.
But Willamette's growers have cooperated, establishing a system in which seed producers flag their plots on a collective map, giving fair warning of what is grown where. Voluntary distances between crops were established and, if abutting farms had a conflict in what they grew, well, they could usually figure it out."
"For Tasmanian Devils, Hope Against a Wily Cancer," by Erica Rex
“Parents used to tell their kids: ‘Don’t go out into the bush because the devil will get you,’ ” recalled Dr. Greg Woods, an associate professor of immunology at Menzies Research Institute in Hobart, Tasmania’s capital."
"Biodiversity a Bitter Pill in 'Tropical' Mediterranean Sea," by Paul Voosen
They had a rich catch that night on the research vessel Shikmona, according to Bella Galil, a senior scientist at the institute. Spilling from the nets were pucker-faced dragonet fish, sprawling octopuses and brown crabs, snapping their claws. On the examination table, it seemed a display of the sea's bounty.
Unfortunately, it was another sea's bounty."
"Cancer I Can't Afford," by Erica Rex
Article: Courtesy New York Times
"Finding out I had breast cancer came as a shock. But the really rude awakening was learning I’m not middle class anymore.
I found a lump in my breast last March. This wasn’t like the lumps of my youth. Those earlier iterations had been hard as pebbles, painful, nested between my sternum and the base of my breast. They had come and gone with my monthly cycle.
This new lump, a lima bean in size and shape, lay recumbent, a half-inch south of my right nipple, just under the skin. And it didn’t hurt. At all. When I pressed on it, it seemed to dip, as though
bobbing on water."
Sunday, November 8, 2009
"Death-Penalty Holdouts," by Daarel Burnette II
The three -- jurors in the mass murderers' criminal trials -- intrigue legal experts for their rare ability to withstand intense pressure during deliberations and their refusal to support the death penalty.
Though a staple of courtroom movies and television dramas, the lone holdout or two is an anomaly inside jury rooms, experts say. That's even truer in capital cases where the law bars people who morally oppose the death penalty from serving, making it more difficult for those who favor a life sentence for a particular defendant to find allies."
"Safe Harbor," by Laura Colarusso
Photo and article courtesy: The Boston Globe
"Combat psychologist Leslie Lightfoot will soon open the Northeast Veteran Training and Rehabilitation Center in Gardner to help vets wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
"Abbas' Move on War-Crimes Report: A Boost for Hamas" by Abigail Hauslohner
"Mahmoud Abbas is not in the business of doing favors for his bitter rivals in Hamas, which is why the Islamists may have been more taken aback than anyone else at the massive political gift presented to them on Oct. 2 by the Palestinian Authority President. At the instruction of Abbas, the Palestinian delegation to the U.N. Human Rights Council withdrew support for moves to pursue war-crimes charges over Israel's January offensive in Gaza, effectively shelving U.N. action on an inquiry led by former international war-crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone that accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes. So furious has been the reaction of Palestinians across the political spectrum that the move is being widely seen as the final nail in the President's political coffin — with the Palestinians due to hold parliamentary and presidential elections next year, Abbas may no longer be a viable candidate for his Fatah movement."
Read remainder of article HERE.
"In Yemen conflict, number of displaced grows" by Haley Sweetland Edwards
Photo and article courtesy: Los Angeles Times
"It was sometime after 2 a.m. when gunfire and mortars startled Oqaba Mohammed out of sleep. She thanked God she was alive and quickly gathered her four children, walking into the night and away from the only home she had ever known."
We had nothing but the clothes on our bodies, but I didn't look back," said Mohammed, who had carried her physically disabled daughter in one arm and her 15-month-old son in the other. "We walked for three days, from village to village, asking for food from ordinary people. And then we arrived here."
Mohammed and her family were among the first wave of displaced Yemenis to make it to Mazraq, a United Nations camp in the northwestern province of Hajjah, where 7,000 people now live. They have fled the war in nearby Saada province, where the nation's army, after five years of sporadic warfare in the region, has launched what it calls a final offensive against a Shiite Muslim rebel group called Houthis."
Read remainder of the article HERE.