By Bill McKibben, Published: May 23

Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing.

Israel admits it covertly canceled residency status of 140,000 Palestinians

Israel has used a covert procedure to cancel the residency status of 140,000 West Bank Palestinians between 1967 and 1994, the legal advisor for the Judea and Samaria Justice Ministry’s office admits, in a new document obtained by Haaretz. The document was written after the Center for the Defense of the Individual filed a request under the Freedom of Information Law.

The document states that the procedure was used on Palestinian residents of the West Bank who traveled abroad between 1967 and 1994. From the occupation of the West Bank until the signing of the Oslo Accords, Palestinians who wished to travel abroad via Jordan were ordered to leave their ID cards at the Allenby Bridge border crossing.

As Inspector Clouseau once said, “There is a time to laugh, and a time to cry. And this is not one of them.”

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - National Geographic Channel is replacing its primetime programing with a week’s worth of programing related to Osama bin Laden’s death, starting Monday night.

“Because we really don’t want to be next.”

Saudi Arabia, like most Middle East countries, faces the problem of finding good-quality employment for its burgeoning population of young people. Its 24m inhabitants have a median age of 24, and the government is implementing a strategy of diversifying the economy to improve job prospects.

Indeed, in several of the projections his team relies on, global warming supplies more economic benefits than costs for decades to come. Richard Tol, one of his economic gurus, points out that most of the planet’s economy is in temperate zones “where warming reduces heating costs and cold-related health problems,” and hence is a net benefit for now. “Gains for the high-income areas of the world exceed losses in the low-income areas.” There is a Marie Antoinette tone to this argument.

National secular defense forum refutes comparisons to the Safed rabbis’ letter: ‘It’s a fight against those who would impose their way of life on others.’

As the GOP majority on the House Energy and Commerce committee prepared to pass a bill prohibiting the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon pollution, Markey said that although he opposed the bill, “I won’t rise physically, because I’m worried that Republicans will overturn the law of gravity, sending us floating around the room.”