Workers dig at a mine in Chudja, near Bunia, north eastern Congo. The conflict in the Congo, a nation rich in mineral resources such as gold, diamonds, tin, and cobalt, has often been linked to a struggle for control over its minerals resources.
Delly Mawazo Sesete wants American consumers to know what is in their smart phones, computers and other electronics and where U.S. companies like Apple are getting those rare metals.
Sesete says that, without knowing, consumers in the U.S. could be fueling conflicts in Eastern Congo. The human rights activist is from a remote part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where armed groups are wreaking havoc and get much of their funding from mining rare metals.
Jake Finkbonner, shown with his father, Donny, and mother, Elsa, nearly died after contracting a flesh-eating bacterium. His family and friends prayed for a miracle, and now the Vatican has declared that his recovery was considered a miracle by the church.
In February 2006, 5-year-old Jake Finkbonner fell and hit his head while playing basketball at his school in Ferndale, Wash. Soon, he developed a fever and his head swelled. His mother, Elsa, rushed him to Seattle Children's Hospital, where the doctors realized Jake was battling a flesh-eating bacterium called Strep A.
"It traveled all around his face, his scalp, his neck, his chest," she recalls, "and why it didn't travel to his brain or his eyeballs or his heart? He was protected."
Metropolitan State Hospital employees and supporters gathered outside the hospital in Norwalk, Calif., this summer to protest repeated assaults at the hands of mental patients, and what they called dangerous working conditions.
Mikael Blomkvist, the investigative journalist who teams up with the title character in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, is the second iconic character that actor Daniel Craig (right, with Christopher Plummer) has tackled in the space of a half-decade.
Credit MGM/United Artists / The Kobal Collection
The smooth, daring James Bond — Craig's other franchise-icon role — is the polar opposite of Blomkvist, the average guy. Craig says Blomkvist's appeal is his honest nature, driven by a sense of injustice.
Actor Daniel Craig is used to taking on iconic characters. In 2006, he famously shook up the 007 franchise as a new, blond James Bond. And his latest on-screen character, though he has somewhat less swagger and not nearly as much style, is almost as well-known.
In David Fincher's film of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Craig plays investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist, the leading man in a trio of thrillers by Swedish author Stieg Larsson that has sold 65 million copies worldwide.
Newt Gingrich has seen his once-sizable lead in Iowa collapse over the past couple of weeks. One of Gingrich's rivals, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, has taken to the airwaves with very tough ads targeting the former House speaker. And a pro-Mitt Romney super PAC has also run ads criticizing Gingrich. All this raises a question: Does traditional, on-the-airwaves negative advertising still work?
