Whiner. Before this year's NBA playoffs, that would have been one of the first words that came to mind, for many people, if someone mentioned Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. After all, this is the guy who has racked up around $1.7 million in fines over the last decade for criticizing the league and its referees. Go ahead and Google it. "Mark Cuban and Whiner." You'll only see 533,000 results. Another insult frequently directed at Cuban was baby. ...

The perennial debate about nature and nurture--which is the more potent shaper of the human essence?--is perennially rekindled. It flared up again in the London Observer of Feb. 11, 2001. REVEALED: THE SECRET OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR, read the banner headline. ENVIRONMENT, NOT GENES, KEY TO OUR ACTS. The source of the story was Craig Venter, the self-made man of genes who had built a private company to read the full sequence of the human genome in competition with an international ...

If there were any climate-change doubters in the wine industry, it seems they are now as rare as a 1921 Chteau d'Yquem. As the third annual World Conference on Climate Change and Wine gets underway April 13-14 in Marbella, Spain, the debate seems to be settled, and a new evolution in mentalities is taking place. "I think the majority of the wine industry has acknowledged that there is a problem called climate change — the impacts are ...

I hope your boy gets raped in jail and killed." The words, angry and exasperated, from an anonymous caller, burn into the ears of Jackie Golden, grandmother of Andrew Golden. For a moment she is too shaken to speak. "I know people have been killed," she says, trembling from the venom. She knows it is widespread. But, she says, Andrew is still my grandson. The tough talk that Jackie Golden fears travels fast in an area like Jonesboro, Ark. The ...

At the first Quebec Conference , rugged Canadian Sergeant Major Emile Couture's job was to keep conferees supplied with stationery. It was also his job to pick up the unused paper when the Conference was over. One morning in the Chateau Frontenac he found a piece of paper on which were boldly written the alternative dates for Dday, the number of troops and ships to be used, data on air cover. Sergeant Major Couture rushed to his commanding officer. Major ...

At the crossroads between east and west in the desert nation of Turkmenistan, a quiet battle is under way for natural gas, oil and influence, and the U.S. and Europe are losing out to China and the Muslim world. There's a lot at stake: the Central Asian country has the world's fourth-largest reserves of natural gas and substantial oil reserves, putting it in the same energy league as Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iraq. Plus, its position just north of Afghanistan could be hugely beneficial to ...

On Oct. 20, China announced, almost casually, that it was canceling 150 items of maturing government debt owed to it by 32 African countries. The announcement came a few days before a meeting between China's top legislator Wu Bangguo and Kenneth Marende, the Speaker of Kenya's National Assembly, to discuss cooperation between the two countries. Further, on Nov. 8, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was to attend the opening ceremony of the 4th Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa ...

A celebrity gossip Web site has caught Maria Shriver a third time apparently violating California's law against using a cell phone while driving. Web site TMZ posted a 17-second video Tuesday showing the California first lady apparently speaking into a cell phone while turning a corner in Brentwood in a black SUV. She puts the phone down part way through the video, but it's not clear whether she did so because she had finished her conversation or because she noticed ...

A negotiator for de facto Honduran President Roberto Micheletti said that no deal was reached between the two opposed sides Wednesday, as other government officials had reported. Ninety percent of an agreement to end the country's ongoing political crisis has been reached, Micheletti negotiator Vilma Morales said at a news conference Wednesday, but some key points remained to be worked out. Earlier Wednesday, a government official told CNN en Espaol that negotiators for both sides had reached a consensus that ...

A suspect has been arrested in the 1990 abduction and attempted murder of an 8-year-old Texas girl, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Houston, Texas, office said. The victim, Jennifer Schuett, is now 27. She recently shared her story with CNN in hopes of someday bringing her attacker to justice. Schuett fought tears as she spoke at a news conference in Dickinson, Texas. "This event in my life was a tragic one," she said. "But today, 19 years ...