Running low on hope and almost out of time, the Americans were surely beat, about to make their earliest exit from the Women’s World Cup.And then, with one of the most thrilling goals in U.S. history, they weren’t.Showing a dramatic burst sure to captivate the folks back home, the Americans packed an entire World Cup’s worth of theatrics into a 15-minute span by beating Brazil 5-3 on penalty kicks after a 2-2 tie Sunday night.Abby Wambach tied it with a magnificent, leaping header in the 122nd minute, and Hope Solo denied the Brazilians — again — in one of the most riveting games in the history of the World Cup, men’s or women’s.

Read More…

Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.

The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.

Read More…

In a blunt challenge to his nation’s critics, President Barack Obama on Wednesday exhorted world leaders who once accused the United States of acting alone to now join with him in solving global crises rather than wait for America to do it on its own.

In his first address to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama sought to set a new tone in U.S. relations, moving away from the unilateralism of his predecessor, George W. Bush. He coupled conciliatory words about a “new era of engagement” with a summons for other nations to shoulder more of the burden.

“Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone,” Obama said.

“Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”

Obama said past policies and a perception of unilateralism by the United States had fed “an almost reflexive anti-Americanism” that too often was used as an excuse for inaction.

“The time has come for the world to move in a new direction,” Obama said before a U.N. chamber packed with more than 100 of his global counterparts.

The president offered a litany of policy changes and actions his administration had undertaken during his first nine months in office, with the overarching message that the United States has no interest in a go-it-alone stance and instead wants to act as an equal partner with others on the world stage.

Read More…

A 51-year-old mother with undiagnosed heart disease; a 26-year-old with unusual fatigue. Neither had health insurance; both died. Newly published research in the American Journal of Public Health estimates that 45,000 deaths per year in the United States are associated with the lack of health insurance. “It means you’re at mortal risk,” said Dr. David Himmelstein, one of the study’s authors.

Read More…

The H1N1 flu virus could cause up to 90,000 U.S. deaths, mainly among children and young adults, if it resurges this fall as expected, according to a report released Monday by a presidential advisory panel.

Read More…

The guitarist stands in front of a mirror messing with his mohawk. The drummer strikes a wild tempo. The singer rips off his T-shirt and begins to scream the lyrics.

They’re young. They’re punk. And they’re rocking both their Muslim and American worlds with their music, lyrics and style.

“A lot of times people say, ‘Oh wow, look, brown people playing music’ [but] it’s more than that,” said 25-year-old Pakistani-American Shahjehan Khan, the lead singer for a Muslim punk band, The Kominas.

The Boston-based band is one of a handful of Muslim punk bands that emerged in the United States in the past few years.

The members of this four-person rock group with South Asian roots hold varying views on religion. One says he’s an atheist; three others identify as Muslims — both practicing and non-practicing. For them, punk music is a way to rebel against their conservative cultural upbringing and the frustrations of growing up a young Muslim in America.

Read More…

Emily Weinstein graduated from college into an economic meltdown, and as a self-employed jewelry maker she’ll be lucky to bring in $16,000 this year.

Heath insurance is out of reach, so she avoids thinking about what would happen if she got sick, was hurt in a traffic accident or was severely burned while making a silver necklace in her home studio.

“Would I have to declare bankruptcy at age 23 or would my parents have to bail me out?” asked Weinstein, of Portland, Ore. “What would I do?”

Read More….

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden purportedly issued another statement Wednesday, saying U.S. policy in Pakistan has generated “new seeds of hatred and revenge against America.”
Zeroing in on the conflict in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, where Pakistan’s troops are taking on Taliban militants, the message asserts that President Obama is proving that he is “walking the same road of his predecessors to build enmity against Muslims and increasing the number of fighters, and establishing more lasting wars.”

Al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language TV network that aired the message, said the statement was “a voice recording by bin Laden,” and a CNN analysis said the voice does indeed sound like the leader of the terrorist network that attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.

The remarks — which would be bin Laden’s first assessment of Obama’s policy — were believed to have been recorded several weeks ago at the start of a mass civilian exodus because of fighting in northwestern Pakistan.

The speaker cites strikes, destruction and Obama’s “order” to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari “to prevent the people of Swat from implementing sharia law.”

“All this led to the displacement of about a million Muslim elders, women and children from their villages and homes. They became refugees in tents after they were honored in their own homes,” the message says.
Read More…

U.S. communities are changing complexion as ethnic diversity grows in the American heartland.

Though not new in California, Arizona, Texas or Florida, the change of demographics is a bit more surprising in southwest Kansas.

Finney County, Kansas, is one of six counties across the nation that became majority-minority between 2007 and 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau recently announced. The agency defines majority-minority as a county where more than half the population is made up of a group that is not single-race, non-Hispanic white.

Nearly 10 percent (309) of the nation’s 3,142 counties were majority-minority as of July 1, 2008.

“Why there?” people ask Tim Cruz, former mayor of Garden City, Kansas, the largest town in Finney County. And then, “How do you all get along?”

“It’s just another melting pot you know,” Cruz says. “It makes it nice to have those different cultures. And sure they’re different — we have to understand what they celebrate and why they do it.”

In the last couple of decades, massive meatpacking plants in Garden City have drawn workers from Southeast Asia and Somalia.

You can smell the major industry of Garden City before you actually reach it and the stockyards that feed the meatpacking plants have their own unmistakable odor.

After high school, Cruz worked one year in the meatpacking plant and that one year was enough for him. But he says Somalis, and many southeast Asians come to the area for the steady work, and a steady paycheck — even if the work is tough.

“Very dangerous, long hours,” he says. “I am grateful that they do that work. Now, I know why my dad said stay in school, you know.”

At the Alta Brown Elementary School, the native language of about half of the 409 students is something other than English.

Read More…