This is the time of year — second only to December, maybe — when we're reminded how much kids cost. It's nice when states suspend their sales tax for a week of back-to-school shopping, but it doesn't change the fact that somehow we have to start over in September: new sneakers, new notebooks, maybe a new lunch box, because SpongeBob is so last season. Even in hard times, economists have found, children are "recession resistant." As investments, they are ...

For nearly a week now, Spaniard Oscar Pérez has been alone on the wall of ice and rock that is Latok II. The 33-year-old mountaineer fell while attempting to summit the notoriously difficult peak in northeast Pakistan's Karakorum range, breaking his leg and possibly his wrist. Unable to get him down unassisted, his climbing partner, Alvaro Novellón, left Pérez with supplies and went for help. But a combination of bureaucracy, complicated logistics and poor weather impeded search efforts, and ...

Karen Sypher PICS [caption id="attachment_17283" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Karen Sypher Photo"][/caption] Here you can find the pics of Karen Syhper, the woman involved in the Rick Pitino extortion case. She has become quite popular in the last few days, and many people are wondering what she looks like.   Well, judge for yourself with these Karen Sypher pictures: karen sypher, karen sypher photo, pitino scandal, Here you can find pictures of Karen Sypher, the woman who is accused Rick Pitino of assault, rape and forcing an ...

Over the last year, Mexico has suffered from a seemingly never-ending list of escapes, riots and murders in its prisons. In October 2008, prison inmates hurled grenades and sprayed Kalashnikov rounds at each other in a penitentiary in the Pacific state of Sinaloa. A month earlier, federal police stormed a rioting jail in the border city of Tijuana, resulting in the death of 23 prisoners. Just this past May, in the mining town of Zacatecas, 53 inmates simply walked ...

For the small number of vulture lovers the world over, good news comes this summer from Sindh, Pakistan. In June, a new "vulture restaurant" opened to provide safe food for the endangered birds — no reservations needed, but it's always a fierce fight for the flesh. Similar vulture ventures have already been successful in South Africa, India and Nepal, where one region in which a restaurant started to provide vultures with clean carcasses saw a doubling of nesting pairs ...

Women diagnosed with early stage breast cancer are faced with a tough choice — either to have parts of the affected breast removed, followed by several weeks of potentially toxic radiation therapy; or opt for mastectomy, removing the entire breast and contending with the disfigurement that entails. The decision typically rests on where and how widespread the tumors are. It's no wonder, then, that more and more women are relying on high-tech MRI scans to help them examine their ...

The Colbert Report has an occasional segment called "Cheating Death," which is introduced by the image of Stephen facing the hooded figure of Death over a chessboard. That's a reference to the 1957 film The Seventh Seal, a medieval morality play written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Colbert, who switches chess pieces while Death is distracted, parodies the role of a knight who puts his soul on the line to save a few lives during a season ...

The usual way to test the economic pulse in a downturn is to go for a stroll down Main Street. Perhaps we should take to the high seas instead. There may be no better measure of the reach, depth and potential duration of the global economic slowdown than the fast-sinking fortunes of the shipping industry. From the historic docks of Rotterdam to China's booming trading hub of Ningbo, troubling symptoms abound. The Baltic Dry Index, which tracks the cost ...

As one of the few surviving pro-U.S. conservative heads of state in a continent that has swung left, Colombia's President, Alvaro Uribe, is used to being at odds with his neighbors. But accustomed though he may be to swimming against Latin America's political tide, Uribe is scrambling to explain his less-than-transparent decision to allow the U.S. military to use air bases on Colombian soil to track drug traffickers and even rebels. Although the pact has yet to be ...

Rob Thomas is a busy guy -- so busy, he apparently hasn't had much time to check in with his Matchbox Twenty bandmates. We only know this because we ran into guitarist Paul Doucette at the BMI Pop Awards in Beverly Hills several weeks ago, where he was picking up a plaque for songwriter of the year. "We're interviewing Rob about his solo album," I told him. "Hey," Doucette exclaimed. "Tell that guy to call me, would ...