Obama creates 3 new national monuments to protect 1.8 million acres of California desert President Obama designated three new national monuments in the California desert Thursday, expanding federal protection to 1.8 million acres of landscapes that have retained their natural beauty despite decades of heavy mining, cattle ranching and off-roading. The designation was requested by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who for a decade has sought to protect land that wasn't included in the 1994 California Desert Protection Act. Unable to gain momentum on her California Desert Conservation and Recreation Act last year, Feinstein and conservation groups asked Obama to act unilaterally to create the three monuments overlapping biological zones between roughly Palm Springs and the Nevada border. NEWSLETTER: Get essential California headlines delivered daily >> The areas embrace volcanic spires, dunes, ribbons of wetlands wedged between steep canyon walls, grasslands, Joshua tree forests, historic roadways and petroglyphs. See the most-read stories this hour >> louis.sahagun@latimes.com
Myanmar’s Peace Prize Winner and Crimes Against Humanity SITTWE, Myanmar — SOON the world will witness a remarkable sight: a beloved Nobel Peace Prize winner presiding over 21st-century concentration camps. , one of the world’s genuine heroes, won democracy for her country, culminating in historic elections in November that her party won in a landslide. As winner, Aung San Suu Kyi is also inheriting the worst ethnic cleansing you’ve never heard of, ’s destruction of a Muslim minority called the Rohingya. A recent Yale study suggested that the abuse of the more than one million Rohingya may amount to genocide; at the least, a confidential report to the Security Council says it may constitute “crimes against humanity under international criminal law.” Yet Aung San Suu Kyi seems to plan to continue this Myanmar version of apartheid. Another Nobel Peace Prize winner, President Obama, who has tremendous influence on Myanmar (and who has visited twice since his re-election in 2012), isn’t showing much interest, either. Photo
First Love Is Always Unrequited Transcript Question: Who was your first love? Stephen Fry: Who was my first love? Well I shan’t give you his name because that’s unkind, and he is married and has children and I wouldn’t want to embarrass his children, but I’ve given him various names in novels and in books. Like a lot of first loves, certainly first loves for sensitive people such as I was then, I guess I have what I have is called the primary writer’s arrogance of assuming that my experiences are common to everyone else’s experiences, sometimes it is true, mostly one hopes it’s true and therefore that’s what one likes in a writer. Question: What is your advice for someone looking for real love? Stephen Fry: I suppose ask whether you’re looking to be loved or to love or whether you really do, because I think, you know, the risk of using the parallel of the slightly vulgar or carnal parallel of the gay community, as it is amusingly called. Question: What makes love last? Stephen Fry: What makes love last?
The 'Kabuliwala' Afghans of Kolkata Thousands of Afghans have lived for decades in the Indian city of Kolkata (Calcutta). Moska Najib and Nazes Afroz captured the stories of this little-known community. In 1892, India's first Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, wrote the iconic short story, Kabuliwala. It was the tale of a man from a distant land - Afghanistan - living in Kolkata, now the capital of West Bengal state. Over the past century, this interpretation has helped shape a romantic image of Afghans in Bengal and beyond. The men are typically thought to have distinctive features - piercing eyes and rugged faces. The name from Tagore's story is still in use and the Afghans of Kolkata are called Kabuliwalas, which means "people of Kabul". Dadgul Khan has been living in central Kolkata for more than five decades with his Indian wife and family. Mr Khan was born in Afghanistan and moved to India with his father as a young man. The Kabuliwalas can often be found enjoying the local food in the city's restaurants.
Swearing: it’s fucking awesome Back in September 2007, I created a new kind of doctor practice. The iPhone had come out three months prior, and Google had enabled you to embed your Google Calendar in a website just the month before. I saw a perfect storm of technology leading to an opportunity to do something unprecedented and become my own boss. As an amateur photographer plugged into the creative community of NYC, I had many friends who were uninsured artists and freelancers who occasionally needed health care. What I learned makes think that the new wave of startups vying to become “Uber for house calls” are in for a rough ride. It was classic disruption: a new idea, a lower cost. On September 27th, after investing $1,500 of my own money into this new venture, I launched my practice. Due to the press, my practice was almost immediately full. Here’s how I spent the day. It was classic disruption: a new idea, a lower cost. The practice wore me down both physically and financially, and therefore psychologically.
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'Today We Are His Family': Teen Volunteers Mourn Those Who Died Alone Brendan McInerney (front, from left), Noah Piou, Emmett Dalton and their fellow students from Roxbury Latin boys' school carry the casket of a man who was left unclaimed by family to a grave site in Fairview Cemetery on Friday. Kayana Szymczak for NPR hide caption toggle caption Kayana Szymczak for NPR Brendan McInerney (front, from left), Noah Piou, Emmett Dalton and their fellow students from Roxbury Latin boys' school carry the casket of a man who was left unclaimed by family to a grave site in Fairview Cemetery on Friday. Kayana Szymczak for NPR On the drive to Fairview Cemetery in the Boston neighborhood of Hyde Park, six seniors from Roxbury Latin boys' school sit in silent reflection. Today the teens have volunteered to be pallbearers for a man who died alone in September, and for whom no next of kin was found. The students, dressed in jackets and ties, carry the plain wooden coffin, and take part in a short memorial. After the brief ceremony the students laid flowers.
Blood Donors In Sweden Get A Text Whenever They Save A Life Donate blood in Sweden and you’ll get an automatic ‘thank you’ text for your contribution to the country’s blood supply. You’ll also receive a text when your blood is used to help someone else. In a recent initiative to combat blood stock shortages, Sweden has taken to digital media to raise public awareness and to get people talking about blood donation. “We are constantly trying to develop ways to express [donors'] importance,” Karolina Blom Wiberg, a communications manager at the Stockholm blood service, told The Independent. “We want to give them feedback on their effort, and we find this is a good way to do that.” The initiative started three years ago as a pilot scheme by Stockholm-based blood service Blodcentralen, and since then it has received such a great response that it’s being rolled out country-wide. “It's a great feeling to know you made such a big difference and maybe even saved someone else's life,” said Blom Wiberg. [H/T: Independent]
25 Substantiated Facts About Barack Obama As the final remaining year of the Obama administration is well underway, the legacy that President Barack Obama will forge in history remains hotly contested. Conservatives argue Obama is the “worst president ever” while liberals have claimed he has “done more good for this country than any president before him.” He likely will not play the role of a “lame-duck” president, as the administration has yet to slow down. Obama currently finds himself in the middle of a heated standoff with the Republican-led Senate to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. He still pursues a workable plan to close Guantanamo Bay, one of his 2008 campaign promises. When reflecting on Obama’s time in the White House, the facts beyond the opinions deserve to be examined. The team at InsideGov queried our presidential database to find key data points regarding this controversial sitting president. .05 Percent Unemployment Rate Decrease Obama inherited an economy reeling from the 2008 financial crisis. 1 Nobel Peace Prize
IKEA's Innovative Solution for Refugee Shelter Can't Keep Up with Demand by Natalie Shoemaker How are we housing millions of Syrian refugees? The question is easily answered. A quick Google image search reveals tent houses — hundreds of rows of these flimsy tents. IKEA may have a better solution. The IKEA Foundation is helping Syrian refugees in their major transition by building easy-to-assemble shelters. “I mean they’re really people running for their lives,” said British-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie. The brain behind these shelters is industrial designer Johan Karlsson. “The average stay in an UNHCR refugee camp is 17 years,” Karlsson told The Globe and Mail in an interview. The finished product stands six feet tall and comes in two sizes: 57 square feet or 188 square feet. Watch one get assembled in Greece: The good news is camps across Europe — in Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden — are demanding these shelters. “What started as a humanitarian project for people far away in distant, war-torn countries is now right on our doorstep,” he explained.
Bathroom bill costs transgender youth their dignity At 3 years-old, my son declared himself a boy. He patiently corrected me when I insisted he was wrong. In my ignorance, I didn’t understand; I thought it was “a phase.” Faced with parents who couldn’t hear him and a world that insists that one’s body defines one’s gender (never mind what one’s brain says), he internalized the message that he was “born wrong." Eventually both his certainty about his identity and the agony of suppressing it for over 20 years were so great that he mustered up the courage to do something I couldn't imagine myself doing - he came out. Coming out for a transgender person is, by its very nature, a public act. I understand parents who feel fearful around gender issues - the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is accept that the child I raised as a girl for 26 years was, and had always been, a boy. I felt like my world had come apart. I also understand the misconception that being transgender has to do with sex. Read or Share this story: