|  |  |  | | | | | Huffington Post | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  It's that time of year again - skies are blue, birds are singing in the trees and soon politicians will be flaunting their intelligence with their summer reading lists. Back in the sunny days of opposition, David Cameron handed his MPs a hefty 12-page list for their holidays - no Jilly Cooper or Stieg Larsson for the wicked. Obama also went public with the worthy works he carted off with him to Martha's Vineyard last year, among them Hot, Flat And Crowded - Why We Need A Green Revolution And How It Can Renew America by Thomas Friedman. While Gordon Brown, in keeping with his dour demeanour, sentenced himself to doom-mongering The Assault on Reason by Al Gore, while he shivered on a windy beach in Suffolk.
So what self-improving tomes should be required reading for politicians this summer?
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  The Splendid Table's® How to Eat Supper, By Lynne Rossetto Kasper
Dear Lynne,
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  (PETER SVENSSON, AP?THE HUFFINGTON POST) NEW YORK -- Are you a wireless data glutton or a nibbler?
Many Verizon Wireless customers will have to figure that out – perhaps as soon as this week – as the country's largest wireless carrier is set to introduce data plans with monthly usage caps.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Just over a week ago, in the same four-day period:
(1) Government figures confirmed that income inequality in the country remains at its most extreme since 1928, when we first began to track this statistic.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Congress has passed a bill that would cut all funding from the Microbiological Data Program, which food safety experts call the United States' most important defense against produce-borne E. coli infection, the Chicago Tribune reports. The Microbiological Data Program was tasked with screening a broad swath of fruits and vegetables for pathogens, including salmonella, which sickened 20 Americans last week, and E. coli, which has killed dozens and infected thousands in Europe over the past month.
Representatives from the agricultural industry had been lobbying for the program to be cut for years, arguing that it led to unnecessary recalls. They also allege that the screening carried out by the Microbiological Data Program overlaps with work done by other agencies, making it a redundant expenditure. Meanwhile, food safety and consumer advocates told the Tribune that cutting the program would seriously increase the risk of future food-borne-illness outbreaks. They noted that other programs do not test as broad a sample of produce or require the MDP's level of experimental rigor.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Union leaders have upped the stakes ahead of today's crunch talks with the Government over public sector pensions by warning of the worst strikes since the Second World War without concessions.
[Cabinet office getting back to me with date and time of talks.]
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Bloomberg has always yearned to be remembered as one of the great New York mayors - maybe the greatest. Now, thanks to a monster City Hall scandal, the central bragging right of his administration - Bloomberg's savvy businessman-approach to governing -- is teetering.
The scandal is known as CityTime, and it involves hundreds of millions of dollars stolen or wasted from beneath the mayor's slumbering nose. (If you think New York is the city that never sleeps, think again.)
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said that the U.S. economy has deteriorated under the Obama administration at a fourth of July parade in New Hampshire on Monday, according to multiple reports.
The suggestion from Romney comes on the heels of the former Massachusetts governor walking back the very same suggestion last week.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 
This recipe is not particularly beautiful, or especially complicated. But that doesn't mean it's not one of the best. It completely debunks the myth that effort and deliciousness are proportionally related.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | With the 2012 presidential election still 16 months away, it is still far too early to know who will win, or even who the Republican candidate will be. Nonetheless, while the road to reelection will not be easy for President Obama, it is certainly possible that he will get reelected. If that happens, analysts will undoubtedly point to the recovering economy, relatively solid, if cautious, foreign policy pursued by Obama, and to the flawed candidacy of Obama's yet unknown Republican opponent. There will be some truth to all these explanations, but this should not obscure the extent to which this election, in a normal political context would be the Republicans to lose.
Accordingly, if Obama gets reelected, it will raise serious questions about where the Republican Party is heading and how they managed to miss this opportunity to win the election. Although the election is still a long way off, exploring some of these questions now, before they get overwhelmed by the specifics of the upcoming campaign, can be fruitful.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  The Ministry of Defence has been urged by MPs to get a grip of stock control problems which have left it unable to account for billions of pounds worth of military equipment.
The Commons Defence Committee said it was "dismayed" that the National Audit Office had qualified the MoD's accounts for the fourth year in succession after it lost track of assets worth £6.3 billion - including radios worth £184 million.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | As a feature-film director, John Carpenter is about a .333 hitter - which is fine in major-league baseball but no great shakes in Hollywood.
Yet his reputation - based on the good films - is much stouter than it deserves to be. His best films are 20-plus years in the past but he continues to ride a wave of critical affection based on fond memories of movies seen long ago.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Apple's strict approval process for apps can be a tough hurdle to clear for some developers. But with over 425,000 iPhone applications available in the App Store, a few are bound to offend some customers.
Apple specifies in its Software Development Kit (SDK) that "Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple's reasonable judgment may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users." (PDF)
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  It's hard to top the cuteness of five snuggly bear cubs, but the keepers at a zoo in Hokkaido, Japan have managed to crack the formula: Add water.
And sure, some may say that this is just two minutes of bear cubs chasing the stream of water coming out of a hose, but as far as we're concerned there are not enough minutes in the world for this stuff. If you opened our hearts, you'd see these bears playing on an infinite loop.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  This could be the best souvenir a soccer fan could ask for.
After Sweden beat North Korea 1-0 on Saturday, Swedish soccer star Josefine Oqvist started chatting with a supporter in the front row. The fan took off his jersey in what appeared to be an attempt to get Oqvist to switch shirts with him.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  When you're playing a supporting character in a film with three of the day's funniest actors, two Oscar-winning stars and another one of Hollywood's go-to leading men, and a scene of yours that may or may not even exist is drawing the most anticipation and driving the marketing campaign, well, that's superstardom.
And that's Jennifer Aniston.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | I sometimes feel like I am living in several different time zones simultaneously, all in the same country, often at the same desk.
There is the here and now, always the most pressing, often the most challenging, especially if you have something of an up and down mental state (certificates to prove), and a book out dredging up the past again. There is the place where the present meets the future, and as a diarist, and one now committed to what one reviewer called a 'publishing juggernaut', that is a place I have grown to know well. What I write in my diary at night gets published some years down the track, in a different context for different times. The raw and immediate can sometimes look a bit odd when even the author has forgotten all about it.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Labour is, depending on who you ask, old, new, purple, blue, divided, united and refounded.
Seventy-five days after becoming Labour leader Tony Blair abolished Clause IV. Seventy-five days into Ed Miliband's leadership he still hadn't finalised his communications team.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  A friendly soccer match between Lebanon and Kuwait over the weekend didn't turn out to be so friendly when a huge brawl broke out after the final whistle. Lebanon lost the match 6-0 and apparently started the fight. Both teams were separated about one minute into the video, but the battle started up again at the 1:40 mark. The brawl even the military to fire some warning shots into the air and at least one of the lebanese players appeared to be bleeding from the head at the end of the clip. Scroll down to watch the video.
WATCH:
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Ed Miliband made a big mistake last week when he condemned the teachers going on strike. I know he thought he was being very clever. The Tories and right wing media would be demanding: do you support these strikes or are you willing to distance yourself and the Labour party from them? Will you condemn them as all right thinking people will? So Ed caught them out by attacking the strikes before anyone had asked him to.
Cunning. Or perhaps not. Miliband thinks he's protecting Labour from attacks in the press. But he has become the prisoner of the media. Not that they captured him: he walked into the police station with his lawyer and said he was willing to answer a few questions. Now he can't leave.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge continued their tour of Canada in Prince Edward Island on Monday, which meant a series of new ensembles for the former-Kate Middleton. She started off the morning in an Alexander McQueen, cable-knit dress in cream -- apparently first worn by Sarah Jessica Parker in navy five years ago.
The couple then headed out to at Dalvay by the Sea and Catherine layered up in a trenchcoat, skinny jeans, red scarf and the Sebago Ladies Taupe Bala Deck Shoe. And for their much-talked-about Dragon Boat race, the Duchess picked a Nike windbreaker.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  What is there to say about true-crime books? They're fun. They can be intellectually compelling, and, like the fictional variety from Hammett, Cain and that crowd, they're more often than not rooted in the far side of respectability or polite society. Most every writer wants to write one. The trick is to come up with the right crime, the right crook or issue. Here are ten of my favorites that helped get me through "Reasonable Doubt: The Fashion Writer, Cape Cod, and the Trial of Chris McCowen":
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Before I became a member of parliament in May last year, my limited experience told me that British democracy was flawed. After just over a year as an MP, I now know that it is utterly dysfunctional. Politicians are already deeply disliked, and the expenses scandal didn't help. But, despite the horror stories, the real scandal has absolutely nothing to do with expenses. It is that parliament routinely fails in its most basic duties.
A backbench MP is paid to do two things - hold the government to account and vote in a way that is good for the people they represent. The present structures ensure they do neither, and the effect is that decisions taken by a very small number of politicians are subjected to virtually no scrutiny at all.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  THE CANADIAN PRESS -- LONDON - Bombardier Transportation (TSX:BBD.B) says it will cut more than 1,400 jobs in Britain after it failed to win a contract for building rail carriages.
The company says it will lay off about 446 permanent staff and 983 temporary hires at its plant in Derby in central England.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The First Couple feted the Fourth of July at the White House on Monday, inviting staff members and armed servicemen and women to an Independence Day barbecue on the South Lawn. Read about the festivities here.
For the occasion, Michelle Obama picked a red-and-blue printed Sophie Theallet frock (from Spring 2011, for those of you wondering) paired with Lanvin sandals and an armful of bangles. Barack stuck with a short-sleeved, navy button-down and khakis.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  THE CANADIAN PRESS — VICTORIA - A man is in hospital in serious condition following a grizzly attack in northern B.C.
A spokeswoman for the Vancouver Island Health Authority says the attack happened in Oweekeno, about 480 kilometres northwest of Vancouver along the province's rugged Central Coast.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  A council is spending £100,000 on a footpath to ensure children can reach the nearest McDonald's safely from the school gates.
Every lunch time 200 pupils turn their noses up at school meals and instead walk along a busy bypass to eat at the fast food chain.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  THE CANADIAN PRESS — MA'SUM GHAR, Afghanistan - Canada's desert war came to an end Tuesday when soldiers of the Royal 22e Regiment stood down and formally handed over their battlefield to American units.
The country's legal command responsibility for the western Kandahar district of Panjwaii will continue for several days, but Brig.-Gen. Dean Milner's headquarters will be directing U.S. combat units.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Every day I look out from my office window across Grosvenor Square - on a corner of London that is forever America.
The view - of Presidential statues, buildings with American connections, and memorials to World War II and 9/11 - is a powerful reminder of the special relationship and our shared commitment to liberty and democracy.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  After a fun-filled day in Prince Edward Island, William and Kate flew north to the land of the midnight sun.
A crowd of a couple hundred turned out Monday night for the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to Yellowknife under grey skies and a light drizzle. They were greeted by Northwest Territories Premier Floyd Roland and federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq and presented flowers by two local children before retiring for the evening.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Two Cornell students died In unrelated incidents in gorges near the university's campus this weekend. One student, Nathaniel Rand, was a rising senior at the college. The other student was a visiting from abroad.
The Cornell Daily Sun has more:
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Two months in and Canadians have no regrets about how they voted in the last federal election.
According to the latest polling results from Abacus Data, the voting intentions of Canadians have changed very little since the vote was last held on May 2nd.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The issue of good maternal health has risen so high on the international development agenda that the maternal mortality campaign even has the dubious honour of hearing occasional grumbles that other 'health priorities' are not getting enough of a look in whether in terms of global political attention or media coverage. While strangely flattering for the NGO or civil society activist, this is not the whole story.
Maternal Mortality was just a very few years ago the 'Forgotten MDG', and the health and survival of mothers in pregnancy and childbirth not recognised at the international government summits until 2008. But the rise in global profile and much welcomed political attention has already made a difference in that short time.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Though it may not come as much of a relief, subway commuters and downtown residents should know that Americans aren't the only ones being subjected to bland public art. Legislators in South Korea recently addressed the blight of bad art in its cities--including the capital, Seoul--by changing a law that had forced industrial developers to spend 1% of each large building's budget on public artwork.
Insofar as it populated urban areas with artwork, the initiative was successful. The Los Angeles Times reports that "the public art promotion act produced 10,684 public art works between 1995 and 2008,— at a cost of more than $546 million." Many of the works, however, have drawn complaints, including a large, steel Frank Stella sculpture called "Amabel," which rusted quickly after its completion.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  More than 2 million couples will get married in the United States this year alone. Several hundred thousand of these couples should reconsider, postpone their weddings or not get married.
Shocking new statistics released recently by the U.S. Census Bureau suggest that Americans may no longer need marriage. For the first time ever, fewer than half of the households in the United States are married couples. In the past decade, the number of unmarried couples increased 25 percent as more people chose to cohabitate. A Pew Research Center study last year put it more succinctly, finding an increasing number of Americans now believes marriage is "becoming obsolete."
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  "He is such a pleasure to be around since starting his meds."
-Mother, 16 year old son
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  THE CANADIAN PRESS -- TORONTO - A Gordon Ramsay protege known for crafting refined, high-end cuisine is the inaugural winner of TV's "Top Chef Canada."
Vancouver's Dale MacKay claimed a $100,000 prize in a wine-inspired challenge that pit him against Toronto's Rob Rossi and Calgary's Connie DeSousa.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Secret Service said Monday it will investigate the hacking of Fox's political Twitter account over updates claiming that President Barack Obama had been assassinated.
Secret Service spokesman George Ogilvie says the law enforcement agency whose job it is to protect the president will conduct a probe of the false postings and that "we will conduct the appropriate follow up."
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Popular film and television has relied on stereotypical portrayals of Muslims and Arabs since its existence. There is, however, a quiet revolution afoot inside television and film, and the predictable box of the Muslim-as-terrorist is slowly fading. But will this shift make a difference in ending America's growing prejudice toward Muslims?
Neuroscience, a field that has itself been undergoing a quiet revolution, may provide some of the answers. Over the last two years I have been presenting at the Muslim Mental Health Conference on how recent advances in neuroscience and social psychology might help us to understand how anti-Muslim prejudice can be reduced in the media. The project has now morphed into a policy brief as part of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding's "Navigating a Post 9/11 World: A Decade of Lessons Learned," a series of research papers that seek to set a new direction for America and Muslims globally.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  I love having a good conversation with someone who disagrees with me. Over the years, I've had hundreds of these types of conversations -- mostly with colleagues in the church who disagree with me about the place of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender faithful.
Though I don't know many people who share my joy in opening up a dialogue with those who they might call their "adversaries," I believe those conversations are critically important for us to have. This is especially true if we are to better understand and eventually open our neighbors' minds to the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in our churches.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  THE CANADIAN PRESS -- VANCOUVER - Four black bears shot by conservation officers over suspicions they fed on the remains of a B.C. woman were healthy and showed no signs of being sick or malnourished, says a conservation officer.
Rod Olsen, of the B.C. Conservation Officer Service, said Monday the bears were between 45 and 63 kilograms and were well fed, eating natural foods like Saskatoon berries.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  CBC -- The Alberta government has asked four construction companies to submit proposals to design and build the new $340 million Royal Alberta Museum in downtown Edmonton.
Premier Ed Stelmach announced in April that the museum will move from its current location near Government House in Glenora to a site at 103A Avenue and 99th Street.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  ORLANDO, Fla. -- Onlookers began arriving in droves Monday afternoon shortly after the jury began deliberations in the Casey Anthony murder trial. Small groups slowly gathered at the intersection of Hope Spring and Suburban Drives. Within hours, the dozens ballooned into hundreds, possibly thousands.
(SCROLL DOWN TO SEE EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS FROM THE SCENE)
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  CBC -- If you're tired of scratching your ankles after a night on the deck, too bad. Edmonton's mosquitoes are here to stay.
After a decade of drought, the pests are back in force.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  CBC -- For more than 30 years, the Labrador West Visual Arts Association has been adding a bit of colour to the mining towns of Labrador City and Wabush.
But now the group might have to clean off its paintbrushes for good.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  CBC -- The federal government announced the winning bids on Monday for oil and gas exploration in Canada's north.
The Northern Oil and Gas Directorate of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development granted five companies rights on the promise they will spend more than half a billion dollars on exploration over the next four years.
More... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 
SAN FELIPE, Mexico (Reuters/Lizbeth Diaz) - Eight American vacationers are presumed to have drowned after a sports fishing charter capsized in a storm and sank off Mexico's Baja California peninsula, authorities said on Monday.
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THE CANADIAN PRESS — OTTAWA - A new study suggests more than 
After a winter of lows, Demi Lovato is looking to reach new heights with "Skyscraper."
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