It’s Academy Awards weekend, so in anticipation of Sunday’s ceremony, Claudia Puig offers up her choices for who should win—and who actually will win—in USA Today : Best Picture : “Despite its superb performances, brilliant direction, sharp writing, and exquisitely complex, if not always likable, lead character,” The Social Network…
Continue reading …Change is sweeping across the Middle East, and you can bet al-Qaeda is grinding its teeth over it. Why? “Because Jihadists have played no role whatsoever in the great revolution,” writes Yassin Musharbash for Der Spiegel . The uprisings have exposed the fact that, “contrary to the propaganda they have been…
Continue reading …Canada used Agent Orange, the Vietnam War-era chemical linked to genetic defects, as a means of clearing roadside brush until about 1980. A Toronto Star investigation found that Canada’s forestry workers faced exposure to the chemical, poured from planes, starting in the 1950s; the government promises an inquiry, amid allegations…
Continue reading …The Farrelly brothers’ new film, Hall Pass , tells the story of two men given a week off from marriage. Don’t expect any surprises: “The Farrellys are exploring nominally adult realms, like marital fatigue and cheating, but too often these apparent good intentions get the best of them and their timing,…
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Demonstrators gather outside Bahrain embassy to show unity with those in the Middle East campaigning for greater freedoms Richard Sprenger
Continue reading …The rebels are closing in and other nations are seeking sanctions against Libya, but Moammar Gadhafi has no plans to step down. The Libyan leader addressed supporters in Tripoli’s Green Square today, urging them to put the rebels “to shame” and insisting, “We can triumph over the enemies,” Reuters reports….
Continue reading …One crucial voice has yet to be heard from amid this Arab revolution, observes Jackson Diehl in Washington Post —Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah’s regime is clearly nervous about the unrest, especially in next-door Bahrain, which also has a majority Shiite population that lives under Sunni rule. Abdullah will soon have…
Continue reading …Here’s a name that should be among the GOP frontrunners for 2012: Mitch Daniels. The Indiana governor says there’s an “excellent chance” he won’t run—but he “would be the party’s strongest candidate,” writes David Brooks in the New York Times . He “can restrain debt while still helping government efficiently…
Continue reading …A 21-year-old man just wanted some fried chicken, but when he left the drive-through of a KFC in Kansas and looked in his bag, it was instead full of money. Seems an employee had put the bank deposit into a bag, which another employee accidentally gave to the man in…
Continue reading …Air pollution causes more heart attacks than cocaine, and is as threatening a trigger as coffee, alcohol, and physical exertion, researchers find. They combined data from 36 individual studies in order to calculate each cause’s population-attributable fraction, or PAF—basically, the proportion of all heart attacks attributed to each trigger….
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