By Brad Knickerbocker in Tampa, Christian Science Monitor, August 27, 2012
They're a minority at the Republican Convention – particularly on issues like same-sex marriage. But gay delegates and activists support the Romney-Ryan ticket on other issues, and they see signs that they're changing their party from within.
Venezuela has one of the highest murder rates in the world, and illegal firearms are prevalent. More than 130,000 illegal arms were turned into the state last year as part of a pilot disarmament program.
By Gimena Sánchez, WOLA, reposted @ Latin American Monitor, August 27, 2012
By Mirwais Khan, Associated Press, August 27, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan – Insurgents attacked a large party in a Taliban-controlled area of southern Afghanistan and beheaded 17 people, officials said on Monday.
Op-ed by Carol Giacomo, New York Times, August 25/26, 2012
[....] The centerpiece of Mr. Romney’s proposal is a promise to spend at least 4 percent of gross domestic product on military personnel, procurement, operations and maintenance, and research and development. That would add as much as $2.3 trillion to the defense budget over 10 years from projected 2013 spending levels, according to Mr. Sharp’s analysis.
By Scott Clement, Washington Post, August 23, 2012
[....] A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll finds independents are among the most likely to say they are still trying to pick a candidate — no surprise here — but so are cross-pressured partisans who are out of step with their own party on key issues.
Israel believes the report backs up claims that Tehran has sped up its nuclear project, while the White House insists that findings don’t change the working assumption that there is still time to resolve the crisis diplomatically.
Israel and the United States are split over the significance of a new International Atomic Energy Agency report expected to accuse Iran of installing hundreds of new centrifuges at its underground enrichment facility near Qom [.....]
The French president, François Hollande, has put more pressure on Greece to push ahead with painful reforms after a meeting with the Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras.
By Alissa J. Rubin and Matthew Rosenberg, New York Times, August 25/26, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — In small mountain villages on Taliban turf in eastern Afghanistan, Pashtun tribesmen took up arms to fight the insurgents this summer, fed up with their heavy-handed tactics of closing schools and threatening families whose sons had joined the Afghan Army.
By Robert F. Worth, New York Times, August 22/23, 2012
[....]He could no longer hide his disbelief. He walked into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. “I remember thinking, Who on this planet has any idea what I’m going through?”[Jerry] DeWitt told me.
[....] American linguistic diversity as a whole isn’t dying—it’s thriving. Despite our gut-level hunch about the direction of the language; despite the fact that 70-cent, three-minute, off-peak, coast-to-coast long-distance calls that cost four inflation-adjusted dollars in 1970 are now free; despite cheap travel, YouTube, and the globalization of film and television, American dialects are actually diverging.
Antibiotics will be made available Wednesday for more than 1,000 porn performers after an outbreak of syphilis prompted a nationwide moratorium on adult film production and calls for more regulation within the industry.
By Rosie Mestel, Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2012
Men who become fathers later in life pass on more brand-new genetic mutations to their offspring, a study has found — probably contributing to disorders such as autism and schizophrenia in the next generation.
[....] Yesterday, I happened to watch a discussion on Al Jazeera about the flight of North Eastern Indians from various cities after the link helpfully came along on my Twitter feed. It was a mouth-wide-open experience –- not because of new insights but because of the easy ignorance of a certain “expert commentator” and his brazen misuse of television time.
Guest op-ed by Robin Wright, New York Times, August 19/20, 2012
[.....] For years, many Salafis — “salaf” means predecessors — had avoided politics and embraced autocrats as long as they were Muslims. But over the past eight months, clusters of worshipers across the Middle East have morphed into powerful Salafi movements that are tapping into the disillusionment and disorder of transitions.
By Jeremy W. Peters, New York Times, August 20, 2012
TAMPA, Fla. — They hail from the Broadway stage, the control rooms of NBC and the design studios that created sleek sets for Oprah Winfrey and Jon Stewart.
Their craft is slick packaging and eye candy that audiences consume by the millions.
Their latest project? Selling the Mitt Romney story in prime time.
By Peter Keepnews, New York Times, August 20/21, 2012
Phyllis Diller, whose sassy, screeching, rapid-fire stand-up comedy helped open the door for two generations of funny women, died on Monday at her home in Brentwood, Calif. She was 95 [....]
By Judith Thurman, The New Yorker, August 17, 2012
[....] [Laura Ingalls] Wilder’s books were written in collaboration with her only child, Rose Wilder Lane, a best-selling author in her own right. The extent of that collaboration is disputed—some critics have called Rose Laura’s “ghostwriter.” The evidence suggests that, at the least, Lane edited and shaped the manuscripts considerably, and thought of her mother as an amateur [....]
The News International (Pakistan,) August 20, 2012
TEHRAN: The “cancerous tumour” of Israel is the biggest problem confronting Muslim countries today, Iran’s supreme leader said on Sunday, repeating an epithet slammed just days earlier by UN chief Ban Ki-moon and US and EU officials.
