Disgust is the Cinderella of emotions. While fear, sadness and anger, its nasty, flashy sisters, have drawn the rapt attention of psychologists poor disgust has been hidden away in a corner, left to muck around in the ashes.

No longer. Disgust is having its moment in the light as researchers find that it does more than cause that sick feeling in the stomach. It protects human beings from disease and parasites, and affects almost every aspect of human relations, from romance to politics.

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By James C. McKinley Jr.

R.E.M., the underground band from Athens, Ga., that helped invent the alternative-rock sound of the 1980s, said on Wednesday that its members were splitting up after 31 years of making music together.

“A wise man once said, ‘The skill in attending a party is knowing when it’s time to leave, Michael Stipe, the group’s lead singer and lyricist, said in a statement posted on the band’s Web site. “We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we’re going to walk away from it. I hope our fans realize it wasn’t an easy decision, but all things must end”

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By Damien Cave

The hair and accents were wrong, but the audience cared about just one thing: the house band was singing the Beatles, here, in a new bar called the Yellow Submarine, in Cuba, where such an act might have led to arrests in the mid-1960s.

I read an article from The New York Times yesterday that was about a hate crime around Sep 11, and a victim amazing level of forgiveness.

I don’t know how many of us would be able to speak as this man has after such a event, and it’s amazing to hear.

It gives me deeper belief in us and maybe it has given a new understanding to all of what forgiveness truly means

Article by Timothy Williams

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

Interviews with those affected by the spill. Alton Verdin — with his granddaughters Emily Verdin, 3, left, and Johenna Duplantis, 2 — is eager for shrimp season.

A single social program is transforming how countries all over the world help their poor.

The city of Rio de Janeiro is infamous for the fact that one can look out from a precarious shack on a hill in a miserable favela and see practically into the window of a luxury high-rise condominium.  Parts of Brazil look like southern California.  Parts of it look like Haiti.  Many countries display great wealth side by side with great poverty.  But until recently, Brazil was the most unequal country in the world.