Every Friday, starting today: a look back at the week’s headlines, centered on a theme we’ve singled out as particularly important. Sure, another dictator passed, but this week we found ourselves considering income inequality, the poor, and the wealthy. U.S. rated the world’s most charitable country
* The GI Rights Hotline provides free information services to military members confronting confusing policy matters. * Season of Sharing provides one-time grants to Bay Area residents in critical need. * Doctors Without Borders—apolitical, international health organization for a world that still has cholera outbreaks. * The Innocence Project—dedicated to exonerating
* Scientists develop new approach to achieving coldest temperature ever recorded: removing hottest atoms from "optical lattices." * Mexico City to close one of the world's biggest dumps; city has halved its garbage through recycling and composting. * Behind-the-scenes photos of police patrolling New York in the
Don’t worry this Christmas if your grandfather shoots up the neighborhood—it’s all in keeping with 200 years of tradition that have been whitewashed by consumerism. How wild Christmas—night of carousing, gambling, and booze—became family-friendly.
* Fourteen coordinated blasts kill at least 63 during Baghdad rush hour, injure around 185. * Death toll from last week's massive flash flooding in two southern Philippine cities tops 1,000. * Tropical Storm Washi in pictures. * China says Christian Bale should be embarrassed; critics say director Zhang continues to
* Mexican cartels and Colombian cocaine suppliers drawn to Costa Rica's openness to outsiders. * Chart finds poverty continuing to fall in Latin America. * Wendy’s to overtake Burger King as America's second-largest fast-food chain in sales—first shuffle in the top trio since 1969. * A
* Mass mourning in North Korea closely mirrors scenes that came out in 1994, when Kim il-Sung died. * North Koreans' hysteria over Kim Jong-il's death recall ancient Greeks' violent grief. * Kim Jong-il dropping the bass with Daft Punk, Huoratron, Skrillex, etc. * Related: Shufflin'
Life in Newfoundland is changing. Nostalgia abounds for simpler, harder times, and outsiders are required to kiss cod on the mouth. But not everyone’s drinking the rum.
* U.S. rated the world's most charitable country in 2011. * Mark Thoma demonstrates with a simple game why the great economic divide makes everyone poorer. * Lehrer: Our theories about cause and effect are inherently perceptual, infected by all the sensory cheats of vision. * "A slice of soapsuds
Our Man in Boston sits down for this third conversation with author, critic, and book-world majordomo Sven Birkerts to talk about the current reviewing situation, the best books of 2000, and Amy Winehouse.
