Saturday, April 25, 2009

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FDA So Understaffed It Inspects Less Than One Percent Of Imported Food Top
The Food and Drug Administration may be the only federal agency that both political parties agree is in desperate need of an overhaul. More on Barack Obama
 
Salma Hayek Gets Married At Star-Studded Venice Party (PHOTOS) Top
Guests motored to the restored La Fenice theater in Venice Saturday as Salma Hayek and Francois-Henri Pinault tied the knot - for the second time. After a masquerade ball rehearsal dinner on Friday ( photos here ), guests including Bono, Penelope Cruz, Charlize Theron and Jacques Chirac attending Saturday's celebration. According to People Hayek "wore a Balenciaga wedding gown by Nicholas Ghesquiere": The bride, who wore her hair in a bun with a long veil, held a bouquet of orchids and stephanotis with crystals. The couple's daughter, Valentina Paloma, 19 months, was a flower girl, along with Francois-Henri's son and daughter from his first marriage, Francois, 10 and Mathilde, 8. Valentina wore a dress by Bonpoint for the ceremony, which started around 7 p.m. At one point in the ceremony, the guests sang "Over the Rainbow." PHOTOS OF GUESTS : More on Photo Galleries
 
Stress Tests Show At Least One Bank Would Need More Capital Top
One of the 19 financial institutions that received a government stress test would require additional capital, based on the initial findings, according to an industry source. "At least one firm, under the stress test assumptions, will require more capital," said the source. More on Economy
 
Heidi And Spencer Wed: MTV Couple Says 'I Do,' AGAIN Top
Five months after eloping in Mexico, Hills stars Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt have said "I do" again. Montag, 22, and Pratt, 25, wed in front of more than 200 guests Saturday at 4 p.m. at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Pasadena, Calif., Usmagazine.com has confirmed. (A skywriter above the church wrote "Spencer Loves Heidi" numerous times in the clouds before the ceremony.)
 
GM Employee Stock Fund Dumps All Company Shares As Bankruptcy Threatens Top
WASHINGTON - The manager of General Motors' employee stock fund has sold off all remaining shares of the troubled auto maker, which is closing plants and slashing costs in a bid to avoid bankruptcy. General Motors revealed in a regulatory filing late Friday that its employee stock-purchase plan has unloaded all shares of the company in favor of short-term and money market investments. The plan's financial manager, State Street Bank and Trust Co., said it began selling off shares of the Detroit automaker in late March "due to the economic climate and the circumstances surrounding GM's business." GM disclosed the development in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. State Street said the General Motors Savings Plan now consists entirely of short-term, cash-based investments. By the end of May, the GM Common Stock Fund will be eliminated as an option for company employees, the investment manager said. The selloff underscores the grim outlook for GM, which plans to shut down more than a dozen plants over the summer to conserve cash, slash costs and align production levels with demand. The company is racing against the federal government's June 1 deadline to squeeze larger concessions from bondholders and the United Auto Workers union. The cost-cutting efforts are expected to lead to thousands more layoffs and temporary factory closures. More on Auto Bailout
 
Bull In Irish Store Causes Chaos (VIDEO) Top
In what is sure to be an experience these supermarket employees in a small Irish town will never forget, a bull escaped from the cattle ring on market day and ran into the store, chasing people around and just generally wreaking havoc. Needless to say, to the employees couldn't quite believe their eyes until the bull headed right towards them. The Guardian has the details. Watch a video report on it from Ireland, including CCTV footage of the bull running around the shop. Filed by Nicholas Graham More on Video
 
Iraq Resisting US Pleas To Reconcile With Saddam Hussein's Political Party Top
On April 18, American and British officials from a secretive unit called the Force Strategic Engagement Cell flew to Jordan to try to persuade one of Saddam Hussein's top generals -- the commander of the final defense of Baghdad in 2003 -- to return home to resume efforts to make peace with the new Iraq. More on War Wire
 
Greenwood, South Carolina, Big Obama County, Hit By Economic Calamity Top
But now, as Obama nears the 100-day milestone of his presidency, Childs suffers from constant exhaustion. In a conservative Southern state that bolstered Obama's candidacy by supporting him early in the Democratic primaries, she awakens at 2:30 a.m. with stress headaches and remains awake mulling all that's befallen Greenwood since Obama's swearing-in. More on Barack Obama
 
Tony Cole, Convicted Felon In Stroger Hiring Scandal, Lived Rent Free: CBS Top
Tony Cole, the convicted felon at the center of Cook County Board President Todd Stroger's patronage hiring scandal, has called the McGill Terrace Apartments on the South Side home since February of last year. The apartments are provided either free, or at reduced monthly rent, for those with a low income.
 
Pavel Somov, Ph.D.: Mindful Emotional Eating Top
You have two options in regard to emotional eating: you can try to eliminate it altogether or you can try to make better use of it by making emotional eating more conscious. The latter would be consistent with the goals of harm reduction, a humanistic form of psychotherapy that offers a pragmatic risk-reduction approach to managing problematic behaviors. Three Principles of Mindful Emotional Eating If becoming a mindful emotional eater is the goal you'd like to pursue, the following three principles will help you transition from mindlessly-reactive emotional eating to mindfully-conscious emotional eating in moderation: 1) when eating to cope with emotions, accept emotional eating as a legitimate coping choice, not a coping failure; 2) when eating to cope with emotions, follow a predictable eating ritual, with clear start and end points; 3) when eating to cope with emotions, remember that emotional eating does not have to mean emotional overeating. Following these guidelines will help you approach emotional eating with a sense of control. Ritualize Emotional Eating Habits, routines and rituals offer a soothing, stabilizing sense of predictability and help us feel in control of the moment. Emotional eating episodes are often haphazard and unstructured. To help you rely less on food and more on the activity of eating during your emotional eating episode, I encourage you to ritualize and structure your emotional eating "protocol." I encourage to always begin by stating to yourself (out loud or internally) that you are making a conscious choice to cope by eating and that in doing so, you are giving yourself a permission to not feel guilty or disgusted with yourself afterwards since emotional eating is, however imperfect, a viable form of self-care. Decide in advance not to judge yourself. Following this statement of intent and the permission to cope by eating, identify how you feel and what you are trying to cope with. You might follow this by stating your expectations of how you wish to feel after you eat. Then, consciously consider what you will eat and decide on a "dose." Then, with mindfulness of the process , eat. Take your time to savor and appreciate the flavor of the food as well as the subtle changes in your state of mind and body. Pause to check to if you have attained a desired emotional state; if not, proceed with another serving and check again. When you feel you have attained a desired state (whether you use psychological or somatic/physiological markers for that), allow yourself a realization that you have once again been able to successfully self-soothe with food. Congratulate yourself on another coping success. Pavel Somov, Ph.D, author of Eating the Moment: 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time (New Harbinger, 2008) www.eatingthemoment.com
 
Blagojevich Gave State Job To His Luxury Suit Maker Top
When he was governor, Rod Blagojevich loved his suits. He spent a lot of time shopping for them at the very upscale Oxxford Clothes suit store, striking up such a rapport with a man who handled his account that he offered him a state job. More on Rod Blagojevich
 
Tom Gregory: Aaron Tveit: A Next to Normal Star Explodes on Broadway (Video) Top
Next to Normal is a ground-pounding Broadway musical that demands you sit up straight and listen. It's a nonstop look into the stop/start life of a bipolar mother and the hell her unreality wreaks on her husband, daughter and son as she rides the sharp edge between coping and insanity. The show is nearly completely sung. The cathartic emotion explodes through rock music tempered with swelling and floating ballads. N2N moves like a roller coaster as it twists us into the manic-depressive world of the show's central character, Diana (Alice Ripley). She rarely sees her world accurately, but Diana pulls us into her happy place that has driven her family over the RPM red line. In N2N the future of the American family stays rooted but could well be doomed. N2N is drawing in younger audiences just like Director Michael Greif's RENT . Few of us have ever dealt with a mother like Diana, but it's through Greif's direction, Brian Yorkey's turbulent book and lyrics, and Tom Kitt's music that we connect with our own repressed angst. From the emotional reaction this show is drawing, it's clear that fans think the ticket price is worth twice the cost of psychotherapy. Before a recent performance I spoke with Aaron Tveit who plays the seventeen-year-old soon Gabe. Like the rest of the cast, Tveit bites deep into his role and never lets go. Tveit's talent is nimble, full of life, and direct. Singing the show's stand out power-romp duet, Superboy, and the Invisble Girl with Jennifer Damiano, it's clear 'Tveit' will be a name everyone will soon know how to pronounce. I'm delighted that in my happy imagined place, Ethel Merman is watching Tveit and smiling for the future of Broadway. Rounding out the cast are J. Robert Spencer, Adam Chanler-Berat, and Louis Hobson. Next to Normal is playing at the Booth Theatre. Click here for tickets.
 
Crestwood Residents Lash Out At Mayor Over Tainted Drinking Water Top
CRESTWOOD, Ill. (AP) -- U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush has met with south suburban Chicago residents concerned about possible contamination of their drinking water in his attempt to assess how federal authorities should intervene. It was Saturday's second meeting called to discuss the findings of a Chicago Tribune investigation published earlier this month. The newspaper found that, over two decades, Crestwood officials drew drinking water from a well that federal authorities had deemed contaminated with chemicals linked to cancer. Earlier in the day, Crestwood residents shouted angry questions at Mayor Robert Stranczek ('STRAN-zehk) during a meeting where village officials declared that the water was safe. Gov. Pat Quinn's administration on Friday said it would push for more testing of drinking water. -ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
Alleged Craigslist Killer Philip Markoff Told Family To Brace For More Bad News Top
lleged Craigslist killer Philip Markoff reportedly collapsed into a blubbering, self-loathing mess during a jailhouse visit from relatives, telling them to "forget about me" and to brace for more bad news, it was revealed today.
 
Michael B. Laskoff: Republican Choice: Reality or Tea Bags Top
President Obama was a hell of a campaigner - smart, disciplined and highly realistic. He's brought those same qualities to the presidency itself, which has already begun to help the country while creating quite a quandary for the Republican Party. Recently, I wrote about the President's reality-based foreign policy. My contention, one that I maintain, is that he's clearing the rhetorical decks so that we can focus on the real nightmare scenario, the possible fall of the Pakistani government and the issue of 100 or more nuclear weapons ending up in the hands of the Taliban. In this context, conversations with Hugo Chavez seem entirely irrelevant. Predictably, the Tea Baggers who pine for the golden era of "Mission Accomplished" were furious and flummoxed by a handshake. Of course, that was nothing compared to the ire that they feel toward the present administration for releasing documents that prove what everyone already knew: the United States did some naughty things in the past eight years, including the torture of people who were deprived of any legal rights. Mind you, the Fox News pundits don't dispute that we did something heinous: they are upset that we've admitted to it. Their patriotic, defender of liberty self-image doesn't square well with the smoking gun. But just as the Republicans were preparing to stake their political futures on the defense of waterboarding, Obama has moved ahead with a concept that frightens the right wing even more - reconciliation. This is the little parliamentary maneuver that allows the majority party in the Senate to pass legislation with a simple majority, not the normal sixty. What's worse is that the procedure makes the almighty filibuster unusable. (The Republicans used this little trick twice under the previous administration to pass the federal budget.) Reconciliation is something that the minority party should rightly detest, but what has the party of Limbaugh and Beck in full panic is that the President intends to use it to ensure health care reform. Obama has never threatened to do this on any other issue - not on education, energy or environmental reform. Health care is his priority, and while he'd prefer to have the Republicans on board, he's letting everyone know that he and 59 Senate Democrats will not hand the GOP a veto. Republicans, listen up: resist the urge just to be naysayers. In the short-term, you'll feel terribly macho accusing Obama of being a crypto-communist, but in the long-term, you'll be missing a historic opportunity to participate in the solution to a vexing problem that makes life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness less like likely. In other words, be realists, not tea baggers. More on Tax Day Tea Parties
 
Michael Franti: Time for Passion and Strategy on Climate Change Top
Ok, here's the deal. I remember reading that when President Obama was a community leader, he became somewhat disenchanted with the relatively modest gains he was able to achieve. That's when he decided to go to law school, and perhaps that's when he began seriously considering the importance of politics for enacting REAL change. I understand where he's coming from and although I love being a socially conscious musician, I see that more can be done. That's my main reason for joining forces with CARE , the international poverty-fighting organization, and why I'm REALLY looking forward to taking part in CARE's National Conference which is all about changing U.S. policy to improve marginalized communities around the world. I've seen enough during my world travels to know what works. During my travels in Iraq, Israel, Gaza, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Europe and all over the United States, I have seen and heard the voices of people who want change. They want the stabilization of the economy, education and healthcare for all, renewable energy and an environmental vision with an eye on generations to come. We've got to get this message through to the policy-makers in Washington, DC. One of the most important issues of our time surely has to be climate change. In case you haven't noticed wherever you are in the world, the weather is changing. In some places, summers are hotter and longer. In other places winters are longer and colder. The rainy season is resulting in flooding the likes of which have never before been seen in some regions of the world. And of course there are the droughts plaguing other regions. All of this has serious implications for agricultural production--literally who eats or doesn't eat. There are consequences for disease. Not only does research prove that prevention and preparedness work, but so does real action and on-the-ground experience. When you invest in community disaster risk reduction during the dry season, you can literally see the difference it makes during the rainy season when the floods come. Over the past 50 years, changes in the climate have occurred at an alarming rate, above and beyond what scientists consider natural. This is a fact, not a theory. Human activities have resulted in negative consequences. And it is also a fact that while poor people around the world are the least responsible for causing climate change, they are already bearing the brunt. The U.S. has historically been the world's largest contributor to climate change. What we do now will save money down the road, because the longer we delay, the worse it gets. If we do not change our negative habits toward climate change, we can count on worldwide disruptions in food production, resulting in mass migration, refugee crises and increased conflict over scarce natural resources like water and farm land. This is a recipe for major security problems. Now is the time to act. It's sort of like when you own a home and you discover that you have termites. You can do nothing but you know those buggers are not going away until you act. They will keep munching at the foundation of your house until it is totally destroyed or way too expensive to even think about repairing. We can all take pride in the fact that the U.S. has always been a world leader. On this issue we are not out there on a limb by ourselves. Even developing countries like China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, have demonstrated willingness to be part of the solution. The U.S. could bring all countries together around shared goals and responsibilities. When I'm on Capitol Hill next month with several hundred of my fellow advocates at the CARE National Conference and Celebration , we hope to drive home the point to the Congress that they must commit to passing legislation that positively impacts the world's poorest and most vulnerable people. Even if we stopped all emissions today, we still need to deal with consequences of past actions, which have set in motion longer-term changes. Investing now in safe-guarding people by helping them to adapt to climate change, will help save money and lives while building resilience. History shows that Americans believe in doing the right thing. Collectively, we activists are essential to advancing U.S. policy to help empower marginalized people to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty for good. The world can't have a global solution to climate change with U.S. action alone; and the world can't have a global solution without U.S. action. It's up to us to set the bar.
 
California Fuel Standard Has Oil Companies Worried Top
In car-crazy California, a new fuel standard ordered by state officials to curb greenhouse gases could dramatically change how vehicles run. It also could have a huge effect on cost.
 
Rupture: Shawn Fanning, Napster Founder, Has A New Brainchild Top
He started Rupture in 2006 to help gamers find out what their friends are playing and connect. The online service, which was sold to Electronic Arts in June, is expected to launch this summer.
 
Stephen Elliott: Matt Smith and the Anti-Porn Agenda: Fight Over Job Training for Porn Company Heats Up In San Francisco Top
In the lead column in this week's SFWeekly Matt Smith complains that Kink.com , the largest maker of fetish porn, has received close to $50,000 in state job training benefits, money Kink.com used to train editors, programmers, and video technicians. Smith is very proud that his research for the article resulted in Kink.com being kicked out of the program. His article states: Some serious and credible people say it's worth considering whether it's legal to deny training to porn workers merely because they film naked, shackled women with live electrodes clipped to their genitals. The article is heavily anti-porn, and anti-BDSM, focusing on women being dominated, avoiding mentioning Men In Pain, a kink.com site with women dominating men, or TS Seduction, where men are dominated by transexuals. Smith ends with this: Yet its (Kink.com's) business plan is more medieval than modern, consisting, as it does, of giving people money if they'll agree to being on camera while being stripped, bound, impaled, beaten, and shocked. Sex columnist Violet Blue (NSFW) responds in detail on SF Appeal , accusing Smith, among other things, of being uninterested in comments from Kink.com employees, including Lorelei Lee : We expect our local reporters to have opinions; that's what makes them flavorful. And to see Smith write another yawn-worthy anti-Kink, anti-porn, anti-BDSM article about Kink just lumps him in with the rest of the unremarkable lot of mainstream media's lie of unbiased reporting when it comes to porn, and sex for that matter. Within that, it's not a shocker that Smith couldn't be bothered to get comments* from both sides of the unchallenged "women as victims" accusations, such as the articulate Kink performers (and writers, speakers and activists) Madison Young, Lorelei Lee or Princess Donna. That would be presenting a balanced picture of Kink's product, and we know that's really too much to ask of most mainstream media, and now disappointingly, the SF Weekly. For instance, Lorelei Lee responded to Smith's accusations saying, "Mr. Smith's repeated use of the terms "torture" and "impalement" to describe BDSM and dildo play demonstrates a total lack of understanding for the respectful, consensual, pre-negotiated, intimate, and often-joyful interaction that is BDSM. Every staff member at Kink.com, from the talent department to the directors to the production assistants has been trained by the company to make the health and safety of their models a top priority. This policy of prioritizing worker health and safety is in obvious contrast to many other big employers in California. Further, I find Mr. Smith's implication that I, as a model and porn performer, have been coerced, victimized, or exploited by my job to be profoundly degrading and insulting. To imply that I have not exercised the same autonomous judgment as anyone else has in choosing a career, is to completely dismiss my will, intelligence and rational capability. " Smith responds to Violet on his blog . The Bay Guardian reached out to Matt Smith for an interview regarding his article, which Smith denied . The Sword , a gay sex lifestyle site, probably puts it best: While we're at it, we should probably also take away Kink employees' rights to unemployment benefits and healthcare protection. Because it's not like they are a legally recognized entity in California, and it's not like they pay payroll taxes or anything. Oh, wait--they are and they do. But it doesn't matter when you're a second-rate city paper trying to sell pitchforks and torches. ** Stephen Elliott is the editor of The Rumpus.net More on Sex
 

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