The Bulgers: A Tale Of Two Brothers

Alleged mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger is on his way back to Boston to face charges. Arrested after 16 years on the lam, Bulger is implicated in 19 murders linked to a brutal crime ring. What many people outside Massachusetts don’t know is that Bulger’s brother may have been just as powerful in his own [...]

Spanish-Language Network Makes Daytime Emmy Bid

Nominations for this year’s Primetime Emmys close Friday, and for weeks TV networks have been waging slick ad campaigns on behalf of their shows, actors and actresses. This year there’s a newcomer to the Emmy campaign: Spanish-language network Telemundo, which is promoting its hit La Reina del Sur (The Queen of the South). La Reina [...]

Obama: We Need More Manufacturing Jobs

President Obama is in Pittsburgh Friday to highlight American manufacturing, which he hopes to boost with a series of appearances and a program called the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership. Coming from the industrial Midwest, Obama knows the value of factory jobs. From his first days in office, he’s been talking about lighting a fire under the [...]

Foreclosed Homes Wait In ‘Shadows’ To Go On Sale

The housing market is still languishing this summer, leading some economists to believe prices won’t begin to recover until 2014. Even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake says the market may be worse than most people thought. This is due in large part to something economists call the shadow inventory — or the number of houses [...]

The Teacher Learns A Lesson: Coming Out In Class

As a high school teacher at Friends Seminary in New York, John Byrne has taught hundreds of students. Recently, he spoke with a former student, Samantha Liebman, about the years before he became the teacher he is today. For one thing, his classrooms were very regimented. “I would make the kids line up before they [...]

Supreme Court Hands Drug Companies Twin Wins

The U.S. Supreme Court handed the pharmaceutical industry two major victories on Thursday. In one case, a First Amendment decision, the court, by a 6-to-3 vote, struck down a Vermont law that barred the buying, selling and profiling of doctors’ prescription records — records that pharmaceutical companies use to target doctors for particular pitches. And [...]

To Curb Childhood Obesity, Experts Say Keep Baby Fat In Check

The number of overweight kids and adolescents in the U.S. has almost tripled since the 1980s. That’s pretty troubling, but the Institute of Medicine says we need to be paying more attention to the littlest kids: those under five. Almost 10 percent of babies and toddlers carry too much weight for their size. And more [...]

Human Trafficking And The Terrible ‘Price Of Sex’

Before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Eastern Europeans were locked inside an open-air prison. So when it finally came down, many countries were unprepared for what passed through the newly opened gates. In many countries, liberation left a vacuum that filled with lawlessness and deep poverty. In the worst cases, an epidemic of human [...]

Amusing ‘Bad Teacher’ Needs Lesson In Likability

Wielding its title like a blunt instrument, Bad Teacher plainly evokes The Bad News Bears and Bad Santa, two other black comedies about profane, selfish, ill-mannered cranks who work with children, but lack the ability (or the interest) to censor themselves in their presence. But here’s the secret to the earlier films: We like Walter [...]

‘Can’t Stop’: Backstage With A Comic In Transition

“If you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.” It was with those words that Conan O’Brien bid farewell to his audience last year after his brief stint as host of The Tonight Show, just seven months after taking over for Jay Leno. His sudden departure arose from NBC’s decision to push [...]