I think of the self-actualizing man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away. The average man is a full human being with dampened and inhibited powers and capacities.
~Abraham Maslow

NY Times reporter: Bush White House didn't listen to 9/11 warnings

Eleven years after the 9/11 attacks, there is new information on what the George W. Bush administration knew about al-Qaeda's plans.

We learned after 9/11 that a presidential briefing paper in August 2001 was headlined "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."

But Tuesday in the New York Times, investigative reporter Kurt Eichenwald says the White House received ominous warnings as early as May 2001.

Xi Jinping mystery deepens amid speculation over health of China's next president

Tuesday marked the tenth day since Mr Xi, who is widely expected to be unveiled as China's next president during this autumn's leadership transition, was last seen in public.

But with Beijing yet to offer an official explanation for Mr Xi's disappearance from the public eye, online rumours are circulating with growing frequency.

Initial rumours last week suggested Mr Xi may have hurt his back swimming or playing football. But on Tuesday the New York Times cited a "well-connected political analyst" who claimed Mr Xi might have suffered a "mild heart attack".

US 'hushed up' Soviet guilt over Katyn

New evidence appears to back the idea that the Roosevelt administration helped cover up Soviet guilt for the 1940 Katyn massacre of Polish soldiers.

Historians said documents, released by the US National Archives, supported the suspicion that the US did not want to anger its wartime ally, Joseph Stalin.

They showed the US was sent coded messages suggesting the Soviets, not the Nazis, carried out the massacre.

Analysis: $575 million spent on presidential ads

An eye-popping $575 million has been spent so far on presidential campaign ads in battleground states, according to an analysis by NBC News.

The states getting the most money for TV and radio ads should be no surprise to political observers. Florida ($117.4 million), Ohio ($112.1 million) and Virginia ($85.7 million) are tops on the network's list, which uses data from SMG Delta, an ad-tracking firm.

The NBC analysis includes spending by the Obama and Romney campaigns, the super PACs that are helping their causes, and various outside groups such as the deep-pocketed Americans for Prosperity, Planned Parenthood and labor unions that are key players in the election.

The politicians-are-failing theory of unemployment

Watching the Republican and Democratic conventions, you might have thought there was nothing the two parties could agree on. But you’d be wrong. They have adopted the same theory — at least in public — as to why unemployment remains so high. The only problem? That theory is wrong.

You heard it in former President Bill Clinton’s comments. “Of course, we need a lot more new jobs, but there are already more than 3 million jobs open and unfilled in America, mostly because the people who apply for them don’t yet have the required skills to do them.” In other words, the hold-up isn’t that employers don’t want to hire, but that they can’t find the workers they need.

Among economists, this is known as the “structural” theory of unemployment. A better name might be the “math-and-ATMs” theory. The idea is that unemployment is high because workers don’t have the right skills for today’s industries. Either they didn’t learn them in school — the “math” side — or they learned good skills but new technologies made them irrelevant — “the ATMs” side. The way to fix it is to give workers the skills they need to compete in the modern economy.

Catholic college course scrutinized for calling homosexuality deviant

Three weeks ago, an alumnus of Franciscan University of Steubenville was researching online a rape that had occurred years ago near the campus.

One of the search results upset the alum: A social work course on deviant behavior offered by the Catholic university that lumped together “murder, rape, robbery, prostitution, homosexuality, mental illness and drug use.”

The alum, a member of a Facebook group for gay graduates of Franciscan University, posted the course description, and members of the group contacted the sole accrediting agency for social work education to examine the university’s program.

Travelers arrested after hiding small primates in underwear at Delhi airport

Three United Arab Emirates nationals have been arrested after security guards at India's capital airport found two of the men hiding slender lorises in pouches in their briefs, the BBC reported.

Security guards at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport noticed a bulge in their underwear during a frisk and uncovered the nocturnal, carnivorous primates, according to the BBC report.

The men were traveling from Bangkok to Dubai when they passed through the airport, the BBC reported.

Sea Otters Help Reduce CO2 in Atmosphere and Ward Off Global Warming, UC Santa Cruz Study Shows

A new study by researchers at the University of California- Santa Cruz reveals that sea otters may make a big contribution in fighting global warming than previously thought.

The study, which was released on Friday Sept. 7, analyzed the effect the animals had on sea urchin populations and kelp forests.

According to the study, researchers gathered 40 years worth of data on otters and kelp blooms from Vancouver Island to the western edge of Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Within the data, researchers discovered that the animals have a "positive indirect effect on kelp biomass by preying on sea urchins, a kelp grazer."

Testicular cancer linked to pot

Recreational marijuana use was linked to an increased risk of subtypes of testicular cancer that tend to carry a worse prognosis, U.S. researchers say.

Victoria Cortessis, assistant professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and colleagues looked at the self-reported history of recreational drug use in 163 young men diagnosed with testicular cancer and compared it with that of 292 healthy men of the same age and race/ethnicity.

Researchers suspect the increase in this type of cancer -- most often diagnosed in men ages 15-45 is due to increasing exposure to unrecognized environmental causes, Cortessis said.