* After al Qaeda threat leads to dozens of U.S. embassies being closed, officials explain fears of liquid bombs and "Frankenbombers." * New research finds deep cooperation between Hollywood studio bosses and Nazi officials. * I feel alienated by [Don Lemon's] comments because they translate into a form
* Sharia committee bans croissants for their shape, which has been said to celebrate European victory over Muslims. * Successful scientific PR is not necessarily antithetical to valid science, but there's good evidence of a negative correlation. * Why serial tardiness is ruining your life—and how to turn yourself around.
* Wendy Davis succeeded against endemic misogyny to make her voice heard in the male-dominated Texas Capitol. * Though women are represented at the state level, just one woman, sworn in on Friday, holds office in the entire LA government. * If we cannot face the root issue—that we let people
* Beijing scalpers dominate Apple Genius Bar appointments, then sell appointments online. * Austerity be damned, most Europeans refuse to work through their plentiful, sacred holidays. * MetaFilter collects Queen Elizabeth's nuclear war speech and other undelivered speeches. * Because Breaking Bad is so probing about morality, the finale also raises the
* Putin has used Snowden's plight...to pose as a human rights defender and to cast the Obama administration as disingenuous. * A Soviet-era re-enactment bunker, the former home of Pablo Escobar, and other bizarre amusement parks. * Assad's Instagram provides a whitewashed, propagandized look inside Syria&
* Commerce Department’s gross domestic product revisions say the Great Recession wasn't so bad. * Assessment of the state of the male contraceptive pill: for both scientific and social reasons, there's no bright future ahead. * Winners from climate change include brain-eating parasites that flourish in America&
* Zimbabwe's prime minister Tsvangirai calls election a "huge farce," with elaborate vote-rigging by Mugabe. * Reporters struggle to describe bustling neighborhood completely destroyed by Assad in Syria's third-largest city, Homs. * Portraits of possessionless, religious nomads in India and Nepal. * Occupy-style protests, underwritten
* New Snowden documents show NSA program "XKeyscore" collects nearly everything people do on the internet, with "real-time" interception. * Round-up of journalists' and politicians' reactions to the Manning verdict. * Dos and don'ts of escalator etiquette, where "leisure"-oriented commuters
* A fair election will find Mugabe pushed out of power; only Africa's other leaders can make that happen. * Assessment of what America would look like, based on internal documents and interviews with former aides, 200 days into Mitt Romney's first term. * Toyota donates efficiency in lieu
* There have been few openly gay ambassadors—and that's absolutely about to change. * For the past 10 weeks, oil has been leaking into Alberta—no one's saying how much and no one knows how to stop it. * "Medical marijuana advocates become unlikely opponents to pot
