Berthold Steinhilber / Laif-ReduxHistory in the Remaking

A temple complex in Turkey that predates even the pyramids is rewriting the story of human evolution.

They call it potbelly hill, after the soft, round contour of this final lookout in southeastern Turkey. To the north are forested mountains. East of the hill lies the biblical plain of Harran, and to the south is the Syrian border, visible 20 miles away, pointing toward the ancient lands of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, the region that gave rise to human civilization. And under our feet, according to archeologist Klaus Schmidt, are the stones that mark the spot—the exact spot—where humans began that ascent.  read more »

(P. Santilli - AP) MEXICO CITY -- Decapitated bodies dumped on the streets, drug-war shootings and regular attacks on police have obscured a significant fact: A falling homicide rate means people in Mexico are less likely to die violently now than they were more than a decade ago.

It also means tourists as well as locals may be safer than many believe.

Mexico City's homicide rate today is about on par with Los Angeles and is less than a third of that for Washington, D.C.

Yet many Americans are leery of visiting Mexico at all. Drug violence and the swine flu outbreak contributed to a 12.5 percent decline in air travel to Mexico by U.S. citizens in 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, a blow to Mexico's third-largest source of foreign income.

Mexico, Colombia and Haiti are the only countries in the hemisphere subject to a U.S. government advisory warning travelers about violence, even though homicide rates in many Latin American countries are far higher.  read more »

Prime minister predicts financial deal by G20 in June

A global bank tax could soon be agreed by the world's leading economies as a response to last year's financial crisis, Gordon Brown said today.  read more »

the State of the Union Address. (Photo: Chuck Kennedy / White House)Mr. President, there has never been any doubt you are a brilliant orator. And it is also clear that nothing you have said will cause the Republicans in the Senate to break their stranglehold on progress, using threats of filibusters to destroy the majority rule that is the hallmark of every other democracy in the world. People are asking for results they can understand.

Your First Year

You accurately articulated your accomplishments in your State of the Union address, but what's striking is that in light of them, the American public has lost faith. If you had achieved only the economic turnaround that prevented the recession from turning into a calamity greater than the Great Depression, that alone would have put you in the history books and should have been enough for people to understand what an extraordinary job you have been doing.  read more »

The PGA Tour season's not even a month old, and we've already got our first major controversy. Phil Mickelson has played exactly 18 holes, and he's smack-dab in the middle of it.

At issue are new club groove rules that went into effect on Jan. 1. Long story short: golfers were using specially-cut grooves on their clubs to spin the ball more sharply and play more effectively out of the rough; the penalty for putting a shot into the rough was thus minimized. So the USGA and the Royal & Ancient, two of golf's major governing bodies, decreed that such grooves were illegal and could not be used on Tour starting this year. (For more detail, check our handy guide to the new rules right here.)

However, golfers are expert at wiggling their way out of tough situations, and they discovered that a lawsuit Ping filed against the PGA Tour and the USGA way back in 1993 exempted wedges made before 1990 from the new rules. (Don't try to figure it out, just accept it.) Lo and behold, what should turn up in the bags of golfers like John Daly and Phil Mickelson but some vintage Ping Eye 2 wedges, clubs that are old enough to legally drink.  read more »

By Keith Fitz-Gerald, Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning
Editor's Note:Money Morning Chief Investment Strategist Keith Fitz-Gerald's new book is - "Fiscal Hangover"

When it comes to global manufacturing, Mexico is quickly emerging as the “new” China.

According to corporate consultant Alix Partners, Mexico has leapfrogged China to be ranked as the cheapest country in the world for companies looking to manufacture products for the U.S. market. India is now No. 2, followed by China and then Brazil. In fact, Mexico’s cost advantages and has become so cheap that even Chinese companies are moving there to capitalize on the trade advantages that come from geographic proximity.  read more »

LOS ANGELES – Once in a blue moon there is one on New Year's Eve. Revelers ringing in 2010 will be treated to a so-called blue moon. According to popular definition, a blue moon is the second full moon in a month. But don't expect it to be blue — the name has nothing to do with the color of our closest celestial neighbor.

A full moon occurred on Dec. 2. It will appear again on Thursday in time for the New Year's countdown.

"If you're in Times Square, you'll see the full moon right above you. It's going to be that brilliant," said Jack Horkheimer, director emeritus of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium and host of a weekly astronomy TV show.  read more »

A couple months ago, Jacqueline Stevens, a reporter for the Nation, went on a road trip with Mark Lyttle, a U.S. citizen, born in North Carolina, who had been kidnapped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), stripped of his rightful identity documents, rendered stateless, and deported to Mexico, to re-locate the government offices that had temporarily held him.

Using google maps, they punched in 140 Centrewest Court, an address that appeared on a number of the documents issued to Lyttle by ICE in Cary, North Carolina. But when they arrived, Stevens was surprised that the government site was an unmarked building, no sign, no flag, with 15 equally unmarked vans next to an Oxford University Press production plant and a few gated communities.  read more »

Eric Cantor:(Brendan Smialoski)Do Republicans read?

I ask that seriously. The past few days, with the president focused on his White House jobs summit, GOPers have targeted their anti-Obama crusade on the president's economic record. And their number-one talking point has been this: Obama's stimulus stinks. Some examples:

-- In a speech at the Heritage Foundation, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor decried the "failure" of Obama's $787 billion stimulus package.

-- Talk show agitator Glenn Beck huffed that "jobs are not being saved or created."

-- Sarah Palin tweeted, "Baffling/nonsensical:Obama's talk of yet another debt-ridden 'stimulus' pkg.Fight this 1, America, bc after last 1 unemployment rose,debt grew." (Palin apparently doesn't put spaces between sentences to fit in more characters.)  read more »

It may seem blindingly obvious, but I'm going to say it anyway as we often seem to forget, that clear communication is essential to mutual understanding. Without a common understanding of what we say to each other we find ourselves adrift in Babel-land. The risks to us all from a lack of common understanding cannot be overstated.

In the midst of the deluge of bailouts, rescues and stimulus packages there is no clear communication as to just why these measures are being taken and how they are meant to improve the lives of ordinary people. It is abundantly clear that this is deliberate. If we, the normal people of the planet, were to gain a common understanding of what is really happening, we would decide that we don't approve, we would agree on exactly why we don't approve and we would likely agree on what we wish to see happen instead. Those that control our world know this so they ensure that no common understanding is reached; they need the confusion. In fact, they create the confusion.  read more »

Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage.comWhen I was on a double family RV trip to Big Sur this last Spring Break, when we arrived at our campground, a young man who was helping us set up the two large rigs dropped his campground manifesto on me, "There are two kinds of people. One who wakes up and says 'Good Morning, God' and the other who says 'Good God, Morning?'"

I wake up every day with the belief in the power of a new day and beginning, the belief that good can come from the efforts I put into the day.  read more »

Ionia KershawDisputes are raging within the Obama administration over how to continue the US war effort in Afghanistan. A new leak tells us that Washington's ambassador in Kabul, former four-star Gen. Karl Eikenberry, has cautioned against adding more troops while President Hamid Karzai keeps disappointing American policymakers. This is the extent of the current debate within the warfare state.

During a top-level meeting Wednesday afternoon in the White House, The Washington Post reports, President Obama "was given a series of options laid out by military planners with differing numbers of new US deployments, ranging from 10,000 to 40,000 troops. None of the scenarios calls for scaling back the US presence in Afghanistan or delaying the dispatch of additional troops."  read more »

Project Coronado results in 1,186 arrests and huge drug and money seizures against one of the world's most violent drug cartels  read more »

What is a miracle? It is not the intercession of a supernatural being into material affairs, not an event that violates the laws of the universe. A miracle is something that is impossible from one's current understanding of reality and truth, but that becomes possible from a new understanding.

A miracle is more than an event: it is an invitation. It says, "The universe is bigger than you thought it was." It invites us to step into a larger world, in which new things are possible. A miracle can blow apart our world if we accept it. Indeed, sometimes we do not accept it; sometimes we relegate it to the category of "that was weird," an exception to life, and we preserve normalcy and think and live as we always have, as if nothing had happened. When faced with an event that defies our usual explanations, we discard the event to preserve the explanation.  read more »

Announcing My First Pick for the HuffPost Book Club: In Praise of Slowness

Before I announce my first pick for "Arianna's Reading" (aka the HuffPost Book Club), I want to talk a little bit about how I will -- and will not -- be making my choices. I'm not going to pick a book simply because it's the It Book of the moment that everyone is talking about or because some juicy or controversial excerpt is making news or because it's just been published. Instead, I'm going to pick the books that captivate and excite me, that make me want to run out and buy multiple copies to give to my friends. The books that make me pull out my pen and start underlining and writing in the margins (yes, I'm one of those readers!).  read more »

AP Photo/Charles DharapakObama-led UN council backs broad nuclear agenda

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- With President Barack Obama presiding, the U.N. Security Council on Thursday unanimously endorsed a sweeping strategy aimed at halting the spread of nuclear weapons and ultimately eliminating them, to usher in a world with "undiminished security for all."

"That can be our destiny," Obama declared after the 15-nation body adopted the historic, U.S.-initiated resolution at an unprecedented summit session. "We will leave this meeting with a renewed determination to achieve this shared goal."  read more »

There is nothing more powerful than hearing someone speak from their heart.

That is why I was so moved by Barbara Lee's passionate speech on the floor of Congress September 14, 2001, eight years ago this week. She was the only member of Congress, in both the House and Senate, to have the courage to vote no against authorizing war in Afghanistan. Her voice shakes with emotion, but she stands her ground with strength and grace and the knowledge that she is speaking the truth that desperately needed to be heard. Hers was the only voice of compassion, of reason, during such a charged and painful time. When she said "Let us not become the evil that we deplore," she knew the quagmire that would result from such military engagement.  read more »

Illustration: Jared Rodriguez)C. Wright Mills argued 50 years ago that one important measure of the demise of vibrant democracy and the corresponding impoverishment of political life can be found in the increasing inability of a society to translate private troubles to broader public issues. This is an issue that both characterizes and threatens any viable notion of democracy in the United States in the current historical moment. In an alleged democracy, the image of the public sphere with its appeal to dialogue and shared responsibility has given way to the spectacle of unbridled intolerance, ignorance, seething private fears, unchecked anger, along with the decoupling of reason from freedom. Increasingly, as witnessed in the utter disrespect and not so latent racism expressed by Joe Wilson, the Republican Congressman from South Carolina, who shouted, "You Lie!" during President Obama's recent address on health care,  read more »

Although at times the pragmatist signaling a willingness to compromise came up for air, for most of the president's 45-minute call to action on health care, the "Community Activist" took center stage. President Obama left little doubt last night that health care reform to him is a moral issue that needs to rise above the partisan bickering that plagues Washington. The address before Congress would have been perfect if the pragmatist side of Obama did not signal that the public option was not a necessary part of his plan.

The president did, however, make a strong case for its inclusion in the final package:  read more »

The American government - which we once called our government - has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "economic royalists," who choose our elected officials - indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.  read more »