Gorki Aguila and Porno para Ricardo in the US
You thought Rage Against the Machine fought the political fight? You ain't seen nothing.
3/8: Stem Cells, Cuba, and the Taliban
The Bush Era stem cell funding ban will be lifted on Monday.
March 7 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama’s expected reversal of an 8-year-old restriction on U.S. funding for embryonic stem cell research has excited scientists and health advocates who say the action will accelerate the search for cures to major illness. Obama plans to lift the funding ban, imposed by former President George W. Bush, in a March 9 signing ceremony, said two government officials, who spoke yesterday on condition of anonymity. Bush objected to the use of the tissue because the process caused the destruction of human embryos.In a wide ranging NYT interview, Obama mulls reaching out to elements of the Taliban.
WASHINGTON  President Obama declared in an interview that the United States was not winning the war in Afghanistan and opened the door to a reconciliation process in which the American military would reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, much as it did with Sunni militias in Iraq. Mr. Obama pointed to the success in peeling Iraqi insurgents away from more hard-core elements of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a strategy that many credit as much as the increase of American forces with turning the war around in the last two years. “There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region,†he said, while cautioning that solutions in Afghanistan will be complicated.He will also start easing restrictions on trade and travel to Cuba.
President Barack Obama is poised to offer an olive branch to Cuba in an effort to repair the US's tattered reputation in Latin America. The White House has moved to ease some travel and trade restrictions as a cautious first step towards better ties with Havana, raising hopes of an eventual lifting of the four-decade-old economic embargo. Several Bush-era controls are expected to be relaxed in the run-up to next month's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago to gild the president's regional debut and signal a new era of "Yankee" cooperation. The administration has moved to ease draconian travel controls and lift limits on cash remittances that Cuban-Americans can send to the island, a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of families.
Che: A chronicle of the man
"Che", the new biopic directed by Steven Soderbergh is a tight, mostly well-executed history of Guevara (played by Benicio Del Toro), his role in overthrowing the Batista regime in Cuba, and work in Bolivia. But it's also a riveting look at the work and business of being a revolutionary.
