By Simon Romero, New York Times, March 31/April 1, 2012
RIO DE JANEIRO — [....] Thor Batista, the 20-year-old son of Brazil’s richest man, was driving back one night in March from a meal at a steakhouse in the mountains above Rio. He was on a highway at the steering wheel of his father’s $1.3 million sports car, a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren.
OTTAWA — Canadians under the age of 54 will be forced to wait longer to qualify for their Old Age Security pensions, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced Thursday.
The controversial shift means that starting in 2023, the age of eligibility for OAS benefits will gradually increase to 67 from 65 [....]
PARIS — [....] the economic distress it has left in its wake is pushing a rising tide of workers into precarious straits in France and across the European Union. Today, hundreds of thousands of people are living in campgrounds, vehicles and cheap hotel rooms. Millions more are sharing space with relatives, unable to afford the basic costs of living.
By Jeff Krulwich @ his science blog @ NPR.org, March 30, 2012
When researchers showed subjects pictures of Jennifer Aniston, very specific neurons lit up. And these neurons weren't triggered by pictures of other people. This curious finding is one that brain scientists hope to solve by tracing the pathways in the human brain and creating a map called a connectome.
BEIJING — China is closing a dozen websites, penalizing two popular social media sites and detaining six people for circulating rumors of a coup that rattled Beijing in the midst of its worst high-level political crisis in years.
The extensive crackdown, announced late Friday by state media, underscores the authoritarian government’s anxieties over a public that is wired to the Internet and eager to discuss political events despite censorship and threats of punishment [....]
By Steve Coll, Daily Comment @ newyorker.com, March 29, 2012
Lede: A secret memo based on a briefing by General Ashfaq Kayani may help us understand.
[....] In late February, I travelled to Pakistan and met with a number of military officers there, including several senior ones. They explained how they saw, from their side, the rise and collapse of the strategic dialogue with Washington. [....]
By Jonathan Mirsky, New York Review of Books Blog, March 27, 2012
Until it was taken off the air last December, one of the most popular television programs in China’s Henan province, which has a population of 100 million, was “Interviews Before Execution.” The presenter was Ding Yu, a pretty young woman, always carefully dressed with colorful scarves and blouses; in each episode, she would interview on camera a condemned murderer who was about to face a firing squad or a lethal injection.
Police and medics removed the captain from a JetBlue plane after he exhibited erratic behavior, forcing passengers to detain him. NBC’s Tom Costello reports.
(My comment: when are we going to just give up on the farce of airline security and give all frequent fliers the air marshal training they need? )
By Annie Lowrey, New York Times, March 23/24, 2012
WASHINGTON — The White House on Friday named Jim Yong Kim, the president of Dartmouth College and a global health expert, as its nominee to lead the World Bank [....]
By Susan J. Matt, guest op-ed, New York Times, March 21/22, 2012
ACCORDING to a recent Gallup World Poll, 1.1 billion people, or one-quarter of the earth’s adults, want to move temporarily to another country in the hope of finding more profitable work. An additional 630 million people would like to move abroad permanently.
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