SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Sarah Burke was an X Games star with a grass-roots mentality — a daredevil superpipe skier who understood the risks inherent to her sport and the debt she owed to it for her success on the slopes. (more)
After more than two years, Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds have decided to end their marriage, a source close to the couple tells UsMagazine.com. (more)
A Vancouver man who uses a wheelchair is being hailed as a hero after coming to the aid of a shopkeeper defending herself against an angry customer. (more)
The visit Sunday to the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, cruising off coast of Vietnam, by high-ranking Vietnamese military and government officials was not a big story in the United States. Teams of U.S. military personnel have been conducting MIA-remains-recovery operations in Vietnam for 20 years. U.S.-Vietnam relations have been steadily improving since 1995 when the two countries normalized diplomatic relations. A U.S. warship visited Ho Chi Minh City in 2003. It was, however, big news in China, especially in the news reports circulated among China’s ruling elite. (more)
Out at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, rancor is rising over how to handle an expanding colony of feral, and largely tame, rabbits. (more)
Every war requires a unique grand strategy, but certain strategic principles never change. They apply to all wars and are essential to victory. So why is the Obama administration deliberately avoiding the one most essential to winning the war with Islamist-Jihadism? (more)
I’ll admit, maybe the flat-screen TV’s and minifridges are a bit much, but, as far as socialist-leaning countries go, I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Scandinavia. While for many libertarians and conservatives the “taxation is theft” debate immediately comes to mind when speaking of such countries, I’d rather point to the rationale behind Norway building the world’s “most humane prison”—to attempt to give people who are imprisoned a real chance at reintegrating into society upon release. In other words, a real, tangible concern for the welfare of people other than one’s self. Time writes: (more)
Human behaviors are often explained as hard-wired evolutionary leftovers of life on the savannah or during the Stone Age. But a study of one very modern behavior, fairness toward total strangers one will never meet again, suggests it evolved recently, and is rooted in culture rather than biology. (more)
Why was I alive? (more)
After a dismal showing at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expects a different result when Russia hosts the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. On Monday, March 1, 2010, Medvedev mandated that Russian Olympic officials quit or be fired due to placing 11th in the medals table and earning only three golds. Russia’s performance paled in comparison to the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, where Russia placed fifth with 22 medals, eight of which were gold. (more)
Rowdy curling crowds; spontaneous street parties; public drunkenness. You don’t have to look far for evidence that the crowds at Winter Games in Vancouver know how to have a good time. (more)
Talking to Alan Wurtzel, President of Research, NBC Universal from his Vancouver based “The Billion Dollar Lab Initiative” is very interesting. Wurtzel and his crew of world class numbers crunchers are tracking our Olympic viewing habits the same way The Elias Sports Bureau breaks down baseball stats. (more)
Every day, someone sends me a puzzling e-mail in which he tells me what he’s had for breakfast. And it’s not within the context of a larger narrative, or because I’ve asked him what he eats for breakfast, or to agitate some kind of Hegelian dialectic—nor is it particularly friendly. It’s simply declarative: “Today I had a corn muffin.” Or, “Today I had a Spanish Omelet.” I’m not sure if this is his attempt at engaging me—does he want to know what I had for breakfast? Or if it’s just his way of documenting his eating habits. In any case, it just isn’t the kind of information with which I can do anything of real consequence. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, I keep them all. (more)
VANCOUVER, British Columbia–The good news for Microsoft is that all the PCs powering the Olympics are running Windows. The bad news: it’s the older Windows XP operating system. (more)
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — This border rivalry has raged for two decades now, since even before women’s hockey was an Olympic sport. (more)
Amidst all of the excitement about the Vancouver Olympics and consternation over the still-lingering jobless recovery, there was a flickering, glimmering light that sparked in the ashes of this nasty recession about a week ago and hardly anyone noticed.
The Fed announced a teeny-tiny rate hike on the money they loan the largest banks. (more)
ALBUQUERQUE—Having left Vancouver for a long weekend in the Bay Area, I now arrived in the frozen desert. It was 38°F when I landed, and the temperature dropped below freezing overnight. Never mind that I was now over 1,000 miles south of the Winter Games; I had returned to winter for the first time since leaving D.C. on the last flight out of Dulles before the airport shut down two weeks ago. (more)
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Question: Will American audiences tune in to a ladies figure skating competition in which an American is not in the hunt for the gold medal? Maybe not even make an appearance on the podium? It hasn’t happened since 1964, but we may find out in the next few days, for this Olympic gold will be decided between a couple of longtime Asian rivals: South Korea and Japan. (more)
VANCOUVER, British Columbia–Less than a century ago, the timing of downhill skiing required someone at the top and bottom of the run, each with a stopwatch synchronized to the time of day. (more)
