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"The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. It is better fed then it’s ever been. It is more educated than it’s ever been"

WASHINGTON — The burst of job growth in January gives President Obama a fresh — but tricky — opportunity to revise the grim economic narrative of his presidency while offering Mitt Romney a choice: embrace a new optimism or campaign against a sinking economy even as it shows signs of turning around. The Labor Department reported on Friday that the unemployment rate had fallen all the way back to the level of President Obama’s first full month in office, to 8.3 percent, from a high of 10 percent in late 2009. Yet unemployment also remains higher than it has been...

ATLANTA (AP) — Newt Gingrich says his passion for his country contributed to his marital infidelity. In an interview posted Wednesday by The Christian Broadcasting Network, Gingrich — who recently converted to Catholicism — said he had sought God’s forgiveness for mistakes in his past. “There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate,” Gingrich said. “What I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn’t trapped in situation...

The state Treasurer's Office came down hard this afternoon on a prediction from California Lutheran University economists that the state could default on some of its debt, calling the warning "balderdash" that is "nothing more than irresponsible fear-mongering with no basis in reality, only roots in ignorance."

It dawned with the warmest winter on record in the United States. And when the sun sets this New Year's Eve, the decade of the 2000s will end as the warmest ever on global temperature charts. Warmer still, scientists say, lies ahead. Through 10 years of global boom and bust, of breakneck change around the planet, of terrorism, war and division, all people everywhere under that warming sun faced one threat together: the buildup of greenhouse gases, the rise in temperatures, the danger of a shifting climate, of drought, weather extremes and encroaching seas, of untold damage to the world...

The devil, so the saying goes, is the ape of God. And so one of his standard methods for deceiving is to create parodies of good things and send them into the world in pairs.Why parodies? Because he cannot make, he can only mock. So instead of love, he offers lust. Instead of justice he offers merciless vengeance. Instead of dignity, he offers pride. Instead of contentment with the world’s goods he offers greed.Why does he send errors into the world in pairs? So that, in fleeing one lie, you will embrace the opposite lie. And so, for instance, he...

The chicken egg has been prepped for surgery – a pea-size hole cut in the shell and covered with sticky tape. And now Hans Larsson, a McGill University researcher, removes it from the incubator, places it under a microscope and prepares to operate. He gently peels off the tape and teases back the membranes that line the shell with tweezers. Through the eyepiece, he can see the tiny dot of a heart, steadily beating. He can also see the bud where he implants a milky bead doused in a protein. He hopes it will coax the embryo to grow a...

Heidelberg, 15 October 2007 Feminism and romance go hand in hand Study reveals that feminism is healthy for intimate relationships Contrary to popular opinion, feminism and romance are not incompatible and feminism may actually improve the quality of heterosexual relationships, according to Laurie Rudman and Julie Phelan, from Rutgers University in the US. Their study (1) also shows that unflattering feminist stereotypes, that tend to stigmatize feminists as unattractive and sexually unappealing, are unsupported. Rudman and Phelan’s work is published this week in Springer’s journal Sex Roles. It is generally perceived that feminism and romance are in direct conflict. Rudman...

Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists described by one expert as "one of the most important developments in the history of science". The parallel universe theory, first proposed in 1950 by the US physicist Hugh Everett, helps explain mysteries of quantum mechanics that have baffled scientists for decades, it is claimed. In Everett's "many worlds" universe, every time a new physical possibility is explored, the universe splits. Given a number of possible alternative outcomes, each one is played out - in its own universe. A motorist who has a near miss, for instance,...

According to statistics released last year by Rep. Steve King of Iowa, 12 Americans are murdered every day by illegal immigrants, and 13 more are killed by drunk illegal immigrant drivers. That's a whole lot more than we lose in Iraq every week. A report released in 2005 by the Government Accountability Office [GAO] looked at 55,322 illegals locked up in federal, state, and local facilities during 2003. The study found that the 55,322 represented a total of 459,614 arrests -- around eight arrests per illegal alien. Those arrests represented a total of about 700,000 criminal offenses -- averaging 13...

What a mess: A Feb. 9 front-page article about the Pentagon inspector general's report regarding the office of former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith incorrectly attributed quotations to that report. References to Feith's office producing "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" and that the office "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda" were from a report issued by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) in Oct. 2004. Similarly, the quotes stating that Feith's office drew on "both reliable and unreliable reporting" to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq "that was much stronger than that assessed...

Finches on the Galapagos Islands that inspired Charles Darwin to develop the concept of evolution are now helping confirm it — by evolving. A medium sized species of Darwin's finch has evolved a smaller beak to take advantage of different seeds just two decades after the arrival of a larger rival for its original food source. The altered beak size shows that species competing for food can undergo evolutionary change, said Peter Grant of Princeton University, lead author of the report appearing in Friday's issue of the journal Science. Grant has been studying Darwin's finches for decades and previously recorded...

You may not understand now what I am going to say, which has to do with separation from, and separation of, family. But you very well will understand in your own time. The illegal aliens who are now so demanding, and who are now being given their demands. and for that reason will now demand much, much more - indeed everything, from you - they talk about how those who want to have the most basic laws, perhaps people like you who want the most basic laws because you want to protect your family, well, people like you are told...

HOW long ago was it that you last heard some pundit blather on about the US being "the greatest empire since Rome"? Quite a while, I imagine. For if the Iraqi insurgency has done nothing else, it has induced a sense of humility and of the limits of American power. Surely all Americans hope the Iraqi elections will usher in a coalition that will let us depart. But it is time we stood back and took a hard look at what this war tells us, not only about the US's ability but also about the wisdom of trying to remake...

I am the odd loner in my community who enjoys hearing tales of our American founding fathers, our heroes and was always completely fascinated by the letter of Sullivan Ballou by the civil war, the human struggle for an ideal they, themselves perhaps know little of... I would not go into detail what promted me to write this, perhaps I needed a channel to spout out my intense discomfort after having to constantly listen to and deal with professors in my college and their utter hypocrisy. I Love this country, I love it personally. I love the people; I love...

Baghdad. In a one of a kind military operation the US army occupied 7 mosques yesterday in the Western Iraqi town of Ramadi and turned the mosques into barracks, the Iraqi News Agency INA reported. According to information, the American soldiers have taken the praying out of the mosques, closed them and banned access to the mosques within a range of 1 kilometer.

Every year, more than a million people report seeing UFOs. Are these people crackpots and attention-seekers? Or is there something real behind their claims? Hugh Ross, a Christian physicist and astronomer, has studied UFO phenomena for years. His conclusion: The overwhelming majority are explainable, but some are not, and they could be dangerous. In his book, LIGHTS IN THE SKY AND LITTLE GREEN MEN, Ross writes that, after all the frauds and natural causes have been exposed, researchers "agree that there must be something real at the bottom of some UFO reports." For one thing, there's physical evidence. In the...

  United States Department of DefenseSpeechOn the web: http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2002/s20020717-secdef.html Media contact: media@defenselink.mil or +1 (703) 697-5131 Public contact: public@defenselink.mil or +1 (703) 428-0711 Prepared Testimony for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding the Moscow Treaty Prepared Testimony of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C, July 17, 2002. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee. When President Bush took office last year, he made clear his determination to transform the Russian-American relationship—to put the hostility and distrust built up over so many decades behind us, and set our two nations on a course toward greater...