IT'S glee TIME!!!!

WATCH THE TV SERIES - 1ST SEASON : http://terratv.terra.com.br/videos/4864/Glee-1-Temp.htm

Glee is a musical comedy-drama television series that airs on Fox in the United States. It focuses on the high school glee club New Directions competing on the show choir competition circuit, while its members deal with relationships, sexuality and social issues.
The series was created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, who first conceived Glee as a film. The three write all of the show's episodes and Murphy and Falchuk serve as the show's main directors. The pilot episode was broadcast on May 19, 2009, and the first season aired from September 9, 2009 to June 8, 2010.

watch the video: "Forget You" Full Performance feat. Gwyneth Paltrow!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1_B9FCZJMA
I see you drive around town with the guy I love
And I'm like forget you(uh uh uh)
I guess the change in my pocket wasn't enough
I'm like forget you

Yeah I'm sorry, I can't afford a Ferrari
But that don't mean I can't get you there
I guess she's an Xbox and I'm more an Atari
(hmmm)But the way you play your game ain't fair

I pity the fool that falls in love with you
(Oh shit she's golddiggin' , just thought you should know it)
(uhhuuu)I've got some news for you
Yeah, go run and tell your little girlfriend

I see you drive around town with the guy I love
And I'm like forget you(uh uh uh)
I guess the change in my pocket wasn't enough
I'm like forget you and forget him too

Said,
if i was richer, I'd still be with you
Now ain't that some sh...(ain't that some sh...)
And although there's pain in my chest
I still wish you the best with a forget you(uh uh uhhh hu)

Now baby, baby, baby
Why'd you wanna, wanna hurt me so bad?(so bad?)
I tried to tell my mamma but she told me:
"This is one for your dad"

Yeah, she did
Uh, why? Ugh, why?
Ugh, why baby? Oh, I love you!
I still love you, ooh...

I see you drive around town with the guy I love
And I'm like forget you (forget you huhh yeahh)
I guess the change in my pocket wasn't enough
I'm like forget you and forget him too

Said,
if i was richer, I'd still be with you
Ha, now ain't that some sh...(ain't that some sh...)
And although there's pain in my chest
I still wish you the best with a forget you(uh uh uhhh)

GIRLS, CONGRATULATIONS! IT'S MARCH 8, INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

Each year around the world, International Women's Day (IWD) is celebrated on March 8. Hundreds of events occur not just on this day but throughout March to mark the economic, political and social achievements of women.

International Women's Day 2011 Theme

Organisations, governments and women's groups around the world choose different themes each year that reflect global and local gender issues.

In 1975, during International Women's Year, the United Nations began celebrating 8 March as International Women's Day. Two years later, in December 1977, the General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming a United Nations Day for Women's Rights and International Peace to be observed on any day of the year by Member States, in accordance with their historical and national traditions. For the United Nations, International Women's Day has been observed on 8 March since 1975. The Day is traditionally marked with a message from the Secretary-General.

THIS YEAR, 2011: Equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women

happy women's day!

 

Prince William, Kate Middleton Launch Royal Wedding Website!

The wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton

2nd March 2011

The wedding will take place on 29th April 2011 at Westminster Abbey.

WATCH VIDEOS: http://www.officialroyalwedding2011.org/

Thoroughly modern royals!
On Tuesday, St. James Palace launched the official Royal Wedding website -- http://www.officialroyalwedding2011.org/ -- to lead up to the April 29 nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
Compiling social media regarding the big day (Flickr, Facebook and YouTube accounts), the site "will be regularly updated with exclusive content, including photo galleries, features, videos and links to important information for visitors on the day," according to a new note posted Tuesday.
PHOTOS: How William and Kate fell in love
Browsers can currently get info on the service, the procession, the reception and more.

US Magazine

She wasn't herself that night.

See Christina Aguilera's Mugshot

Christina Aguilera's bleary-eyed mugshot for her public drunkenness bust hit the web via E! News late Tuesday.
PHOTO: Scary star meltdowns
The "Not Myself Tonight" singer, 30, was taken into custody "for her own protection," L.A. County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Steve Whitmore told UsMagazine.com. Aguilera was a passenger in a car driven by beau Matthew Rutler, who was pulled over by cops in West Hollywood and arrested for driving under the influence.
PHOTOS: Did Christina's divorce lead to her unraveling?
The couple were "cooperative" during their arrest, Sgt. Michael Thomas of West Hollywood Sheriff's Department told Us. Aguilera, who was released around 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, will not be prosecuted.
"It is a public welfare issue. She was incapacitated and not able to take care of herself," spokesperson Whitmore explained.
PHOTOS: Child stars gone bad
"She's really spiraling," an Aguilera pal told Us of the star's hard-partying ways. "I would be shocked if she's not in rehab in the next month or two."

US Magazine

Credit: Antonio de Moraes Barros Filho/WireImage.com

John Galliano Speaks Out on Anti-Semitic Rant

Wednesday – March 02, 2011 – 1:19pm

For the first time since Christian Dior began proceedings to fire him over alleged anti-Semitic comments he made in a French bar last week, John Galliano is speaking out.
"I completely deny the claims made against me and have fully cooperated with the police investigation," Galliano, 50, said in a statement.
PHOTOS: See stars biggest meltdowns
The disgraced Dior designer went on to explain his remarks were made following an "unprovoked assault," by a patron in the restaurant. In France, it is a crime to make anti-Semitic comments, and Galliano could face up to six months in jail if convicted.
Despite maintaining his innocence, the designer, who's dressed stars like Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, and Cate Blanchett, didn't pass the buck entirely.
PHOTOS: Celebrity mugshots
"I must take responsibility for the circumstances in which I found myself," he said. "I must face up to my own failures and work hard to gain people's understanding and compassion. To start this process I am seeking help and all I can hope for in time is to address the personal failure which led to these circumstances and try and earn people's forgiveness."
He added, "Anti-Semitism and racism have no part in our society."
VIDEO: Red carpet recap from the 2011 Academy Awards
After the February 25 incident, a British tabloid ran a video of Galliano yelling at two women, saying, "I love Hitler... People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers would all be f...ing gassed."
Dior spokesperson Natalie Portman, who is Jewish, said she would have nothing to do with Galliano.
PHOTOS: See Natalie Portman and other pregnant celebrities Oscar style
"I am deeply shocked and disgusted by the video of John Galliano's comments that surfaced," she said. "I hope at the very least, these terrible comments remind us to reflect and act upon combating these still-existing prejudices that are the opposite of all that is beautiful."

US Magazine: http://www.usmagazine.com/stylebeauty/news/john-galliano-speaks-out-on-anti-semitic-rant-201123

Bolivia pledges aid to thousands left homeless by 'mega-mudslide'

By the CNN Wire Staff

March 1, 2011 -- Updated 1226 GMT (2026 HKT)

SEE THE PICTURES: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/03/01/bolivia.landslide/index.html

(CNN) -- Bolivia's president pledged that his government will build new houses for thousands of people who are homeless after a "mega-mudslide" triggered by heavy rainfall in the nation's capital, state media reported.
Nearly a day of uninterrupted downpours caused the Sunday mudslide, the state-run ABI news agency reported.
Ar"Natural phenomena unfortunately are causing a lot of damage. Something is changing on the planet," Bolivian President Evo Morales said, according to a statement posted on the La Paz government website Monday.
The homes of at least 4,000 people were destroyed, ABI said.
Victims left homeless by the disaster struggled to salvage their belongings Monday, ABI said. A massive crack in the ground split a cemetery in two, leaving bones exposed beside crucifixes and cracked headstones.

The news agency said construction along steep hillsides has become common as La Paz expands beyond the valley where it was founded in 1548.

ART: Ancient Afghan artifacts salvaged from black market

Ancient Afghan artifacts salvaged from black market

By Susannah Palk for CNN

March 2, 2011 -- Updated 1451 GMT (2251 HKT)

 

See the pictures: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/03/02/black.market.afghan.artefacts/index.html?hpt=C2

 

London, England (CNN) -- Feared lost forever, 20 ancient ivory artifacts looted from Afghanistan's national museum were presented to the country's president, Hamid Karzai, in London Tuesday.
The 2,000-year-old artifacts are the latest additions to the internationally acclaimed exhibition "Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World," which starts its UK run at the British Museum this week.
Stolen during Afghanistan's civil war between 1992 and 1994, the ivory inlays were once part of a hoard of treasures found at the ancient city of Begram, north of modern-day Kabul.
"These are an extraordinary set of ivories," said Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum. "Stolen from the National Museum in Kabul, bought by a London dealer specifically to return them, restored by conservators at the British Museum ... and after the exhibition they will go back."

It shows what an important role the international community can play in recovering material that has been stolen and has been sold and can then be returned.
--Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum.

Originally part of a set of Indian furniture owned by the Kushan rulers from the 1st century A.D., the ivories were first discovered by a French archaeologist in 1937.
Found in a concealed room in the ruins of Begram's ancient palace, it's believed the treasures were hidden in a moment of crisis. They then lay forgotten for almost 2,000 years.
The artifacts have now been given back to the National Museum of Afghanistan thanks to a philanthropic donor who bought the ivories from various black market dealers.
"(He's) retrieved what is probably the largest single group of antiquities that were known to be looted from the national museum during the civil war," said exhibition curator, St John Simpson.
"It shows what an important role the international community can play in recovering material that has been stolen and has been sold and can then be returned," added MacGregor.
According to the British Museum, it's estimated around 70% of the artifacts once found in Afghanistan's national museum have been looted or destroyed over the past 30 years.
Often the only way these precious relics are recovered is through international border agencies working in collaboration with museums and archaeological experts.
So far, the UK has sent back one crate of seized artifacts to Afghanistan, with another shipment due to go back in the near future.
The rest of the exhibition's 200 relics, spanning 4,000 years of the country's ancient history, are only with us today thanks to the actions of a few dedicated individuals.
They were hidden on the eve of the Soviet invasion in 1979 by a handful of Afghans and lay undiscovered in vaults underneath Afghanistan's presidential palace for over thirty years. Now they are part of this traveling exhibition, which raises awareness and much-needed funds for the national museum in Kabul.
"Although we use these cliche terms for marketing purposes, these objects really do sing," said Simpson.

"They show the fragility of cultural heritage and how the Afghans who saved them for the world have done such a fantastic job raising cultural awareness and showing there is much more to Afghanistan then the cliched news clips that you normally hear or see."

Gorbachev still speaking out at 80

WATCH THE VIDEO: http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2011/03/01/newton.russia.gorbachev.80.mov.cnn?hpt=C2

On Oscar Night, The King's Speech Reigns Supreme

By Richard Corliss Monday, Feb. 28, 2011

Best Actor winner Colin Firth poses backstage at the 83rd Academy Awards in Hollywood on Feb. 27, 2011

Mike Blake / Reuters

Success has many cousins. Just a few minutes after the end of the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony — with The King's Speech picking up four out of a possible 12 Oscars, for Best Picture, Actor, Director and Original Screenplay — the Stuttering Foundation of America e-mailed a press release: "Stuttering Reigns King at Oscars." "It is an eloquently golden night for people who stutter," proclaimed the foundation's president, Jane Fraser. "The King's Speech has been a godsend for the entire stuttering community."

Sunday night's ceremony tried to be a godsend for the entire film community by playing to two different demographics: the young, whose attendance keeps Hollywood in business; and the much older crowd of film professionals sitting in the Kodak Theatre. In an attempt to make the show less antediluvian and more, well, diluvian, the producers offered the two youngest co-hosts and cutest couple in Oscar history: James Franco, 32, and Anne Hathaway, 28, whose combined ages are less than that of last year's co-host Steve Martin, 65. A fraternity of young presenters made jokes about Banksy, Charlie Sheen and iPhone apps, and one of the snazzier set pieces was a medley of fake songs from "unintentional musicals" (Twilight, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, The Social Network) by the Gregory Brothers of Auto-Tune the News. (See the best moments from the 2011 Oscars.)

But the Academy's mission is to tie the industry's so-so present with its more glamorous past. It's really designed for the geriatric set, the elderati, if you will. So this year's show opened with an evocation of one 1939 classic, Gone with the Wind, and ended with another, as the fifth-graders from P.S. 22 in Staten Island, N.Y., sang "Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz. The first star presenter was stroke-hobbled, 94-year-old Kirk Douglas, who flirted with Best Supporting Actress winner Melissa Leo, saying, "You're much more beautiful than you were in The Fighter," to which she replied, "Hey, you're pretty good-looking yourself. What're you doin' later on?" (For the kids, Leo detonated an F bomb, which Franco and Hathaway quickly picked up on.) There were clips from the luncheons held for the winners of the technical awards and for special honorees Francis Ford Coppola, Kevin Brownlow, Jean-Luc Godard and Eli Wallach (the lifetime achievement tributes were scrapped from the main proceedings). The in memoriam segment, with its glimpses of last year's deceased artistes while Celine Dion sang live, reminded viewers that they're all gonna die.

It's really a miracle that hundreds of millions of people still watch this stately parade. You'd have thought by now that the Academy would take a cue from shows like American Idol and, instead of simply announcing the winners, have a public countdown. Especially in the Best Picture category, now stuffed with 10 nominees, it would add welcome suspense to slice off the bottom five by midshow and then eliminate other nominees one by one until just two were left standing. But no, that would be too ... entertaining. To make the evening even more obscure, at least half of the awards categories cover either crafts that the mass of film fans don't care about or films they haven't heard of and will likely never see. (See the top 10 movies of 2010.)

By coincidence or design, the ceremony played to the moviegoing majority. Every feature film given an Oscar, except for the foreign-language and documentary winners, earned more than $100 million at the worldwide box office. The two top-grossing pictures of 2010 snagged two prizes each: Toy Story 3, for Best Animated Feature and Song ("We Belong Together" by Randy Newman, which was his second win and 20th nomination), and Alice in Wonderland, for Best Art Direction and Costume Design. Inception, another international smash, took four Oscars in the craft categories. The King's Speech is closing in on $250 million worldwide, and The Social Network (Best Adapted Screenplay, Editing and Score) is not far behind. The Fighter (Best Supporting Actor and Actress for Christian Bale and Leo) and The Wolfman (Best Makeup) are each $100 million–plus grossers. So there was no need, when a winning film's name was announced, for an instant search on IMDb. (See "Oscar Fashion: The 9 Best Women over 40.")

That also meant precious few upsets. All the odds-on-favorite actors, including Black Swan's Natalie Portman and Colin Firth of The King's Speech, won as expected. But for those predicting a King's Speech sweep of six or seven Oscars, the show generated some nail biting. With just four awards to go, the front runner had won only for Best Screenplay. When it lost to The Social Network in a couple of categories, like Best Editing, which often mirrors the eventual winner of Best Picture, fans of the Facebook film dared to hope for an upset — a dream dashed when Tom Hooper won for Best Director. That yanked the proceedings out of its Inception-like state and into reality, as the Stuttering Foundation's poster film roared back to take Best Actor and Picture.(Comment on this story.)

With few surprises in the main categories, viewers looked for enlivening moments of wit or stumbling. The host tandem didn't provide much of either. While Hathaway poured frantic charm into the gig, providing cheerleader whoops after nearly every introduction, Franco seemed to be there under protest. The famous multitasker was more attentive to his tweets and vlogs than to his gig and, as if one-half of some secretly feuding duo, barely glanced in Hathaway's direction the entire evening.

As if sensing that their hosts would need help, producers Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer called on earlier emcees, one from the grave. Alec Baldwin, who shared duties with Martin last year, played a character in the clever opening sequence, directed by Troy Miller, that planted Hathaway and Franco in an Inception scenario. Hugh Jackman, the 2009 host, served as the brow-furrowing subject of a Hathaway song. (The lady's got Broadway chops, as she proved in an Encores! revival of Carnival nine years ago, but the bit was too insidery and totally pointless.) Billy Crystal, host of eight Oscar shows, dating back to 1989, was given an entire segment to pay tribute to 18-time host Bob Hope, who died at the age of 100 in 2003. On tape, Hope got off one of the evening's best-targeted jokes: "The suspense is fabulous. And all the praying: thousands of voices saying, 'Let it be me. And if not me — not him.' " (See Tuned In's review of the 2011 Oscars.)

We were left with these random epiphanies and moments: onetime Nine Inch Nails bad boys Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, while accepting the Oscar for Best Score for The Social Network, earned another prize for Best Behaved Winners by thanking the Academy, their director and their wives and kids ... the remark by Dave Elsey, a co-winner with Hollywood makeup legend Rick Baker, "It was always my ambition to lose an Oscar one day to Rick Baker. This is better" ... the strange outbreak of prop comedy, with Douglas doing his shtick with a cane and an Alice in Wonderland winner placing a tiny Mad Hatter chapeau on his statuette's head ... the tornado entrance of Harpo-haired Like Matheny, winner in the live-action short category, who thanked his mother for doing craft services on the film (Best Director winner Hooper also thanked his mom) ... and 20-time nominee Newman's typically dyspeptic thank you, in which he noted that "at the lunch for the nominees, they have a Randy Newman chicken by this time," and then chastised the Academy for nominating only four songs. "You could find a fifth song from someone," he groused. "But hell with it — it might have beat me."
Really, the show had something for everyone, except the stutterers, to complain about. But hell with it — we'll be back next year.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2055794,00.html#ixzz1FT6eCWz7

Sex Addiction: Real Disease or Convenient Excuse?

Monday, Feb. 28, 2011

Melinkovich last year in West Hollywood, Calif. He has fought powerful urges for years

Photograph by Gregg Segal for TIME

A difference between an addict and a recovering addict is that one hides his behavior, while the other can't stop talking about it. Self-revelation is an important part of recovery, but it can lead to awkward moments when you meet a person who identifies as a sex addict.

For instance, within a half-hour of my first meeting Neil Melinkovich, a 59-year-old life coach, sometime writer and former model who has been in Sex Addicts Anonymous for more than 20 years, he told me about the time in 1987 that he made a quick detour from picking up his girlfriend at the Los Angeles airport so he could purchase a service from a prostitute. Afterward, he noticed what he thought was red lipstick on himself. It turned out to be blood from the woman's mouth. He washed in a gas-station bathroom, met his girlfriend at the airport and then, in the grip of his insatiability, had unprotected sex with her as soon as they got home — in the same bed he said he had used to entertain three other women in the days before.(See how addiction affects the brain.)

Is this a man with colossally bad judgment or one with a blameless addictive disorder? In the past year, this question has presented itself with dependable regularity. Most famously, Tiger Woods received sex-addiction treatment last winter after he admitted to infidelities; at least a dozen women came forward to claim they'd had sex with him. The chronically undisciplined Charlie Sheen recently sought help in controlling a variety of runaway appetites, including a fondness for the company of porn actresses. Earlier this month, Republican Congressmen Christopher Lee resigned after he was caught e-mailing a shirtless photo of himself to entice a woman he met on Craigslist. And then there is Silvio Berlusconi, the uninhibited Prime Minister of Italy, where prosecutors want him to face trial for accusations that he paid an underage girl to have sex with him. Berlusconi has never hidden his partiality to beautiful women, but he has called the allegations — and reports of louche parties at his villa — politically motivated. All these cases differ in scope, but a central question remains: Why would these men risk everything to satisfy their urges?

When it comes to addiction, the line between morality and disease has always been blurry. But only in the past 25 years have we come to regard excesses in necessary cravings — hunger for food, lust for sex — as possible disease states. In 1983, when Melinkovich was continuously cheating on his then wife (an actress from Planet of the Apes), a Minnesota-based addiction-treatment organization called the Hazelden Foundation published a foundational book called Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction. The book, which is still in publication, helped create the field of sex-addiction treatment. Its author, Patrick Carnes, is now executive director of Gentle Path, the sex-addict program Woods is said to have entered last year in Hattiesburg, Miss. (See a brief history of the Tiger Woods scandal.)

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is debating whether sex addiction should be added to its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The addition of what the APA is calling "hypersexual disorder" would legitimize sex addiction in a way that was unthinkable just a few years ago, when Bill Clinton's philandering was regarded as a moral failing or a joke — but not, in the main, as an illness.
APA recognition of sex addiction would create huge revenue streams in the mental-health business. Some wives who know their husbands are porn enthusiasts would force them into treatment. Some husbands who have serial affairs would start to think of themselves not as rakes but as patients.
This is already happening. In the year since Woods made sex addiction famous, rehab facilities accustomed to dealing with alcoholics and drug addicts have found themselves swamped with requests for sex-addiction treatment. The privately held company Elements Behavioral Health, which operates high-priced rehab centers around the U.S. — including a celebrity-friendly one on a breathtaking mountainside in Malibu, Calif. — recently acquired the Sexual Recovery Institute, a Los Angeles center for sex addicts. The institute's revenues grew 50% in 2010.
But the legitimacy now being granted to sex addiction requires a closer look. In the 20th century, we changed our thinking about alcoholism: what was once a moral weakness came to be understood as an illness resulting in large part from genetics. Sexual acting out seems different, though. Is excessive lust really just another biochemical accident?

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2050027,00.html#ixzz1FT61ECwG

Global Spin

Why Western Intervention in Libya Is Tricky

By Tony Karon

Colonel Gaddafi is not going quietly, and the power struggle that may have already claimed many hundreds of lives threatens to claim many thousands more, and potentially spark a humanitarian catastrophe.

To Intervene, Or Not To Intervene

Posted by Bruce Crumley Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 12:22 pm

 

To further Tony's excellent post yesterday on obstacles that any eventual Western military action in or around Libya will face, it will be interesting to watch in the coming hours and days whether a more consistent view on outside intervention forms on the Libyan street. For the moment (as the NY Times piece Tony refers to notes) there seems to be a clear discrepancy between rebel leaders and rank and file opponents to the Gaddafi regime not just about whether foreign help is desirable—but what form it might take. Meanwhile, differences of opinion among Western nations also seems to be surfacing about the wisdom of getting directly involved in what has blossomed into a civil war. Though majority views both in Libya and in the West clearly want to see any outside intervention avoided, those attitudes could change if Gaddafi's backers successfully manage to push back.
Reports Wednesday from the eastern port city Brega say fighting has broken out between rebels and pro-Gaddafi forces mounting a drive to recapture control of the town. Early in the day, those loyalists took control of a major refinery installation in the area, as well as an adjacent airstrip. According to television footage and comments by reporters on the scene, those same troops were being backed up by military aircraft bombing a large ammunition depot near Brega. At nearly the same time, Gaddafi forces also launched an assault on the of the nearby town Ajdabiya in an effort to wrest it from rebel control. Though those offensives could scarcely be described as a turning of the tide that allowed opponents to take control of most of Libya's major cities last week, there is concern that the new loyalist push—combined with Gaddafi's success in retaining his hold on Tripoli and surrounding areas—may the armed campaign to depose the dictator may take much longer than hoped. If so, may influence attitudes on how the international community might help to end the conflict.
For now, anecdotal evidence from media reports suggests the most ordinary Libyans are strongly against any foreign intervention in their struggle. Most coverage quoting Libyans arguing for outside support tend to come from officials organizing rebel strongholds, and whose pragmatism may arise from greater military experience than most idealistic Libyans who oppose intervention. Though the selection of people questioned and tone of their answers may well differ between national media, French reports cite an overwhelming number of Libyans expressing hostility to the participation of foreign, and indicate that is by far the majority view. Le Monde and le Parisien, for example, carry interviews with citizen rebels and military officials who have joined the popular uprising passionately warning against outside intervention, and insisting the fight is one freedom-craving Libyans must win on their own. “No foreign soldiers, the Libyan people will win by itself,” le Monde quotes from banners hung in Benghazi. “(Intervention) would be a catastrophe, a nightmare scenario.”
The New York Times story quotes members of rebel organizing committee saying they plan to request some sort of international help, Le Monde cites a similar official using even more pointed language against Western involvement. “No one has forgotten the American bombing of 1986 that didn't spare Benghazi,” said the official, calling himself Commander Idriss. “Libyans have been treated like dogs by Gaddafi. Our revolution must restore the dignity of the people, who will never accept the arrival of foreign soldiers. That would be worse than Iraq—an endless war.”
Rahma, a 21 year-old resident of Tripoli TIME spoke with by phone on Feb. 25 echoed similar sentiments. “This is something Libyans must do without outside help—(intervention) that could lead some people to say Libya is becoming the next Iraq or Afghanistan, or turning Libya into just that,” Rahma said. “We ask and will gratefully accept economic and development aid, and help to reconstruct the country. But we need to do this on our own, without foreign intervention.”
She and others who share that position may well get their wish—thanks in part to contrasting enthusiasm within the West over wading in. British Prime Minister David Cameron found himself walking back his  March 1 call for NATO to establish a no-fly zone over Libya after Western allies—including American officials—distanced themselves from it, terming any plans about foreign involvement in the Libyan conflict were “premature”.
Those comments were echoed later in the day by the new French Foreign Affairs Minister, Alain Juppé, who said that while nothing was off the table for consideration, Western boots on Libyan soil was something he thought would have “extremely counter-productive” consequences—and will therefore almost certainly never materialize.
"Different options are being studied -- notably that of an air exclusion zone…but at this time, military intervention isn't being anticipated," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé told parliament Tuesday after noting that any measure would require a “clear mandate” from the United Nations. With fall out of Western invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan clearly in mind, Juppé then explained why Paris seems to be ruling out direct troop involvement—clear mandate or not.  "I don't know what would be the reaction on the Arab street, if Arabs around the Mediterranean saw NATO forces landing on southern Mediterranean territory,” Juppé said.
That's a wariness that appears to be shared in war-fatigued planning offices in governments across the West, as well as in the minds and hearts of Libyan rebels who seem to view outside help as both humiliating, destined to create new problems, and quote possibly the only recipe for rallying popular support back to Gaddafi's side.

Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/03/02/to-intervene-or-not-to-intervene/#ixzz1FT5O8IJM

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world#ixzz1FT4SdX8g

Health Special: Chronic Pain

Some hurts are forever. But now science is pushing back

Healing the Hurt

By Alice Park Thursday, Feb. 24, 2011

Pain is the human bodyguard, the cop on the beat racing to the scene, sirens wailing, shutting down traffic. You've been cut, burned, broken: pay attention, stop the bleeding, apply heat, apply cold, do something. It's one of life's most primitive mechanisms, by which even the simplest creature, if it has anything like a central nervous system, learns to avoid danger, stay out of bad neighborhoods, hunker down to give itself time to heal. Pain is protective. Don't do that, it commands — and the command is usually a wise one. So this sensation we seek most to avoid is in fact one of the most essential ones for our survival.

But what happens when pain goes rogue, when it sends off false alarms so that all the sirens keep sounding, all the cops keep coming, all the hurts keep hurting? If even benign stimuli get distilled down to a single, primal Ouch!, then pain ceases to be adaptive. Rather than saving lives, it wrecks them. Rather than helping you get well or stay safe, it becomes an illness in itself. The result: persistent, unceasing torment. (Read about kids and concussions.)

That's the situation that more than 76 million Americans face. Their pain can last for days or even weeks at a time, then dissipate, only to return. The problem may be caused by something as common as arthritis, an inflammation of the joints that makes them throb with discomfort. The issue could be fibromyalgia, in which a breakdown of pain signals leaves joints, muscles and tissues hypersensitive. It may be a nerve disorder known as neuropathy, triggered by diseases as diverse as cancer and diabetes. It may be that the cause is unidentifiable. Many cases of chronic pain remain unexplained, but they hurt all the same.

There's no telling who the victims of chronic pain will be, but there are ways of determining who is at highest risk. About 10% of people who have surgery, even relatively routine procedures such as knee or back operations, for example, will never be the same again, suffering a lifetime of generalized pain that may start from the incision site but is eventually diffused to other parts of the body. Around 20% of cancer patients will continue to feel pain two years after the surgery or chemotherapy that may have saved their lives. For all of them, pain is not merely a symptom but a disease in itself, one that doctors have only recently come to recognize. But recognizing a disease is only a prelude to treating it, and doctors admit that while they're pretty good at relieving the acute pain that occurs immediately after surgery or an injury, they are usually stymied by the chronic kind. The most common complaint doctors hear from their patients is about pain that will not quit, and more than 80% of those people never receive treatment — or at least not an effective one. About a decade ago, physicians took the first step toward acknowledging the prevalence of pain and their inadequate ability to address it by including pain assessment as a vital sign along with blood pressure, respiratory rate, heart rate and temperature. "As a clinician, I'm frustrated, and I'm sure many patients are, because we do a very poor job in terms of providing relief for chronic pain," says David Borsook of the McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

To address that frustration, this summer, an expert panel convened by the Institute of Medicine — the independent scientific advisory arm of the National Academies — will release a report on the latest advances in understanding chronic pain and highlight the need for an all-encompassing approach that treats it as a disease of both brain and body. A strategy that lays bare the multitude of body systems involved in maintaining a world of chronic hurt also presents a multitude of treatment opportunities for science to exploit.
Brain-imaging studies and research in genetic and molecular biology, for example, suggest that a brain in chronic pain looks and acts differently from a normal brain and that the phenomenon can even run both ways: haywire circuits cause the brain to register persistent pain, which in turn leads to changes — perhaps permanent — in the way the brain and body work. All this suggests entirely new routes toward eliminating pain or at least managing it better.
"There has been a shift in thinking away from pain as only a sensory experience," says Dr. Clifford Woolf, a neurologist at Children's Hospital Boston. "Rather than targeting the suppression of pain as a symptom, the best treatment now has to be targeted at preventing pain as a disease. That insight really changes the way we understand pain."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2053382_2053379_2053375,00.html%20#ixzz1FT3lIXuS

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO INTERVIEW: Charlie Sheen Denies Death Threat Against Ex

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO INTERVIEW: Charlie Sheen Denies Death Threat Against Ex, Calls Her 'Photo Op' Mom & Labels Court Order 'Retarded'

watch the video: http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2011/03/radar-exclusive-video-charlie-sheen-denies-death-threat-against-ex-calls-her

Brooke Mueller lit the fuse -- and Charlie Sheen's exploded.

In a candid and no-holds-barred interview with RadarOnline.com’s Senior Executive Editor Dylan Howard, in the hour after authorities took his 23-month-old twin sons Max and Bob out of his care, the embattled Two and a Half Men star denied he made a death threat to Mueller, blasted her parenting skills, called her a “traitor” and declared that “she must be banished”.

PHOTOS: Charlie Sheen Through The Years

"Tiger blood will drip from my veins in my quest," Sheen told RadarOnline.com while sitting at his dining room table, adding: "Defeat is not an option."
"She is an absolute traitor and she must be banished," he said, noting that when he’s done exposing Mueller's supposed treacherous ways, "She will be living under a bridge, toothless and confused.”

PHOTOS: Charlie Sheen's Difficult Year

Sheen, 45, summarized Tuesday night's dramatic events as "just a cheap ploy by a cheap person" and called the court order "retarded, frickin' gibberish... it's Brooke up to her old predictable, transparent lunacy.”
Sheen, who’s been on police ride-alongs to prepare for past roles, said authorities followed an unusual protocol when removing the children from his care, noting they were extremely nervous, didn’t present their badges in a timely manner and didn’t even have car seats for the tots until Sheen and his entourage provided them.

PHOTOS: See All Of Charlie's Porn Stars

“It didn’t feel that official,” he said.
"If people thought I created a s--- storm by my focus and my resolves to go after CBS, Chuck Lorre, Les Moonves, all of them -- if they thought that was radical, they haven't seen anything yet.

PHOTOS: Charlie Sheen's New Friend Bree Olsen

"You come into my house and take my children away... there's a storm coming -- and its me!"
Sheen said his bad blood with Mueller, 33, stems from a series of events that unfolded the past week, in which her continual abuse of hard drugs such as crack and cocaine caused him to send her home early from a Bahamian vacation she went on along with the twins and Charlie's "Goddesses," porn star Bree Olson (Rachel Oberlin) and designer Natalie Kenly.

PHOTOS: Brooke Mueller Out on the Town

"I told her she was out, she can't be a part of the team -- can't be part of the winning team," Sheen said.
He said this incident was "a reminder of why I extracted her from my life in the first place, via divorce."
Sheen ripped Mueller's parenting skills, saying she'd leave the child-raising to the nannies, as “she'll roll [the twins] out for a photo op, but knows nothing about child care."
While Sheen was not represented in court Tuesday, Judge Hank M. Goldberg stripped him of custody and issued a restraining order, preventing the star from communicating with Mueller or getting within 100 yards of her or the kids.
"I am very concerned that [Sheen] is currently insane," Mueller stated in the filing.
"I am in great fear that he will find me and attack me and I am in great fear for the children's safety while in his care."
The TV star said he's dumbfounded Mueller -- with a severe drug addiction and neglectful parenting style, he claimed -- was able to convince authorities the kids are better off in her care.
In court documents filed Tuesday, Mueller, 33, alleged that Sheen took Bob and Max from her residence without her permission on February 26 and has withheld them from her since then. When she tried to get them back, Mueller said Sheen threatened her, "I will cut your head off, put it in a box and send it to your mom,” as well as punching her in the arm, spitting on her feet and threatening “to stab my eye with a pen knife."
Sheen denied all of the accusations, saying, "I guess she's been around me long enough to develop some acting skills."
Sheen said that Mueller's taken their battle "to a level she will regret," as he's determined to pool his considerable resources to regain custody of his young sons.
A calm Sheen, who didn't raise his voice once during the chat, said he was savoring the despair he felt in the moment, as he was ready to make his next move.

Top 10 Celebrity Meltdowns

watch the video: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1876761_1876818_2056350,00.html

Charlie Sheen's press tour is the latest in a months-long descent into erratic, volatile behavior. TIME takes a look at other angry and bizarre celebrity flip-outs

Usually when a celebrity is plagued by months of bad publicity due to alleged drug and party binges as well as accusations of spousal abuse, he stays away from the press. Not Two and a Half Men star Charlie Sheen. In what seems to mirror his high-octane, erratic and bizarre lifestyle, Sheen granted interviews to NBC, ABC, TMZ.com and CNN's Piers Morgan. During his media tour, Sheen tried to justify demanding a 50% raise from Warner Bros. for his work on the now halted CBS show. Never mind that Sheen — while he was working — was the highest-paid actor on television. Though Sheen denies being under the influence of drugs or alcohol — even going so far as to take a supervised drug test, which he passed — his family, including his father, actor Martin Sheen, says Charlie is indeed battling addiction.

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