All My Children may be on the way out , but Erica Kane will remain with us in a sense, writes Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon . Susan Lucci’s character was “one of television’s first unself-consciously feminist characters” and “an unlikely pioneer,” writes Williams. Erica, for instance, became the first big TV…
Continue reading …The DEA is moving to make “fake weed,” commonly known as K2 or spice, much harder for people to get their hands on. The agency has made it illegal to possess or sell five chemicals used to make the drug, reports Live Science . The emergency designation will remain in effect…
Continue reading …A new Harvard study debunks the idea that diet sodas and other artificially sweetened drinks carry an increased risk of diabetes. Researchers followed a big group of men for 20 years, and discovered that while those who drank regular soda and other sugary drinks were significantly more likely to develop…
Continue reading …Here’s a happy thought with summer barbecue season just around the corner: A new study suggests that about half the meat sold in the US is contaminated with potentially harmful bacteria, the Los Angeles Times reports. Researchers tested beef, chicken, turkey, and pork from supermarkets around the country and found…
Continue reading …With produce prices soaring, thieves decided the time was ripe for a major operation—and they got away with $300,000 worth of Florida produce, including six truckloads of tomatoes, the New York Times reports. “I’ve never experienced people targeting produce loads before,” said one trucking broker. “It’s a little…
Continue reading …The House today passed Paul Ryan’s budget blueprint for 2012 that proposes to fundamentally overhaul Medicare and Medicaid while combating out-of-control budget deficits. The GOP proposal passed 235-193, with every Democrat voting “no.” The nonbinding plan lays out a fiscal vision of cutting $6.2 trillion over 10 years from…
Continue reading …Thanks to a violent crackdown and an assist from Saudi troops, the government of Bahrain has just about silenced the protest movement—and that’s left the US facing some hard questions. Even as it fights to free Libya, the Obama administration has done next to nothing to help Bahrain’s protesters,…
Continue reading …Destructive storms that tore across the country’s midsection left at least nine people dead after smashing uprooted trees into homes in Arkansas and ripping apart the only school in the tiny Oklahoma town of Tushka, officials said today. The fatalities in Tushka were two sisters in their 70s, and another…
Continue reading …The last few years have seen lots of gloom-and-doom scenarios about how the world is running out of fish . Don’t believe it, writes aquatics professor Ray Hilborn in the New York Times . Flawed studies produced those results. In reality, “fish stocks worldwide appear to be stable, and in the United…
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