“So I asked them to smile” is the name of the multicultural project by Jay Weinstein that shows how much a stranger’s face can change by the simplest and the warmest gesture of them all – smiling.

“So there are no names. No occupations. No confirmed religions or ethnicity. No intriguing life lessons or heart strumming anecdotes. Just one human face. Without, and with a smile.”- Jay Weinstein says. He also adds that he is overwhelmed by the response of the project. Most of his photos are taken in India. If you visit his FB page you will see lot more of these amazing portraits exuding the transformational power of smiles.













More: http://www.wherecoolthingshappen.com/20-powerful-photos-show-smile-can-change-humans-face/

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Like, for example, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president, who according to a pair of US lawmakers is looking forward to Trump taking the White House.



Sen. Chris Coons and Rep. Adam Schiff were in Zimbabwe to discuss wildlife trafficking when they got a surprise meeting with the nonagenarian president. They told Politico that when a discussion about US sanctions on the country went sour, Mugabe apparently told them: “Once Trump is your president, you’ll wish you’d been friendlier to me.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un apparently penned a column — which ran on a state-run propaganda website — praising Trump.



“It turns out that Trump is not the rough-talking, screwy, ignorant candidate they say he is but is actually a wise politician and a prescient presidential candidate,” the column in the May 31 edition of DPRK Today reads.

The author also praised Trump’s suggestion that he’d pull out US troops who have been stationed in South Korea since the 1950s if Seoul doesn’t chip in more cash. “Yes do it, now,” it reads. “Who knew that the slogan ‘Yankee Go Home’ would come true like this? The day when the ‘Yankee Go Home’ slogan becomes real would be the day of Korean Unification.”

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Colbert (the real one) brought back Colbert (the character) to The Late Show on CBS earlier this month for a special appearance at the Republican National Convention. Comedy Central, which technically owns the character as intellectual property, took immediate umbrage of the legal kind.

Instead of digging in for battle, Colbert took the tongue-in-cheek approach, ostensibly putting the character to rest on Wednesday night: "It is with a heavy heart that I announce that thanks to corporate lawyers, the character of Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report, will never be seen again."

Introducing his identical twin cousin, Stephen Colbert:



Will Comedy Central buy this razzle-dazzle?

Can Stephen Colbert rightfully claim that Stephen Colbert is not Stephen Colbert but, instead, Stephen Colbert?

As the country gets to know Tim Kaine, we reflect on a compassionate and unpretentious friend to animals

The morning after Election Day in 2005, I got a call in my office from a staff member in our adoption center. She told me that Tim Kaine, Anne Holton and their kids were in an adoption center living room meeting dogs. I was incredulous since he had just been elected Governor of Virginia the night before. But, sure enough, I went downstairs and there they were. Tim had done many great things for our organization over many years and we knew both Tim and Anne well. They told me that they were fulfilling a promise to their kids that, regardless of outcome of the campaign, their family would adopt a dog as soon as the campaign was over. That morning, they adopted a precious little terrier mix who we had named “Baby Girl” but the Kaines renamed her “Gina” in honor of Anne’s childhood dog, Gina Lollabrigida.

Tim Kaine has recently been chosen as the running mate of Hillary Clinton and may become our next Vice President. While the rest of the country will be getting to know him in coming weeks, many of us in Richmond have known him well for many years. Tim and Anne have been active participants in our community and deeply dedicated public servants. What others may be less familiar with is that Tim has been a great friend to the Richmond SPCA over many years and has helped us to make our community one of the most progressive and life saving ones in the country for homeless animals.

Our early relationship with Tim included his helping us to make a TV commercial promoting pet adoption that featured his pant legs and shoes walking along next to the adorable John Henry through our adoption center. He led the support when he was on City Council for us to create a working partnership between our private Richmond SPCA and the City of Richmond Animal Control agency. It was a fairly contentious issue at the time but Tim was such a dedicated consensus builder that he got Council to approve it. That partnership survived for years and achieved great success in life saving until its continuation was rejected in recent years by the current Mayor’s administration.

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Former New York City Mayor and current Donald Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani said on Wednesday that he thinks it’s an “excellent idea” to monitor Muslims on the federal watch list through electronic monitoring tags.

“I would think that’s an excellent idea,” Giuliani told reporters at a press conference, according to NJ Advance Media. “If you’re on the terror watch list, I should you know you’re on the terror watch list. You’re on there for a reason.”

Giuliani said he would suggest that Trump use the same measure of electronically monitoring people as in France. Both the attackers involved in the killing of a priest in Normandy on Tuesday were already known to French security services and on watch lists, and one was being monitored through an electronic tag.

The terrorism watch list and no-fly list are notorious for ethnic and religious profiling, and many innocent people end up on the list — but Giuliani’s comments come as no surprise given his own penchant for surveillance of the Muslim community, another ineffective practice, during his time as New York’s mayor.

Playlists are finally coming to Netflix: The video service rolled out a new feature dubbed Flixtape Friday that makes it possible for viewers to compile and share their own playlists of shows and movies. Netflix’s Flixtape micro-site also comes with a few pre-compiled playlists, including “The Summertimes Flixtape,” “The Kiss and Tell Flixtape” and “The Family Reunion Flixtape.”

Misty Copeland is joining Disney’s live-action “Nutcracker” film. Ms. Copeland, a principal dancer at American Ballet Theater, announced her involvement with the project on Instagram.



Ms. Copeland will play what a Disney spokeswoman called the lead ballerina role in the film, “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.” Lasse Hallstrom will direct; Ashleigh Powell wrote the script, adapted from the 1816 E. T. A. Hoffmann short story “Nussknacker und Mausekönig” (“Nutcracker and Mouse King”).

1. “Officer-involved shooting”



Probably the most popular and most frequently criticized example of copspeak, “officer-involved shooting” is a textbook example of what Robert Jay Lifton called a “thought-terminating cliche.” It describes an act of violence without assigning blame and is almost never used for when a police officer is the victim, only when the police have shot someone — justified or not.

By describing an event alongside the person who did it without connecting the two, “officer-involved shooting” vaguely alludes to what happened without the emotional response this would normally evoke. “Such phraseology,” Orwell wrote in “Politics and the English Language,” “is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.”

On Sunday, Houston CBS affiliate KHOU (7/10/16) framed a police shooting:

Man Killed After Officer-Involved Shooting in SE Houston

Beyond the term “officer-involved shooting,” this headline is still opaque to the point of inaccuracy. The man in question wasn’t killed after an “officer-involved shooting” he was killed in an officer-involved shooting. The causal relationship between the two isn’t made clear at all, nor is the responsibility for the death clearly ascribed to the officer. We routinely see this rhetorical pretzel employed to obscure killings by police.

A black cat interrupted a rugby game between between Australian rugby league teams the Penrith Panthers and the Cronulla Sharks during last Sunday afternoon’s match, and the sight was no less than majestic.

The speedy feline rushed through the Pepper Stadium back and forth as fans cheered it. It must have been a nice distraction from the fact that the home team Panthers lost 26-10 to the Sharks. The unusual intrusion also echoed throughout the internet, giving a solid reason for a photoshop battle. Take part in this challenge and submit your own photos, or vote on your favorites!