Larry King and wife were swingers, claims his ex-wife

April 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

New York, Apr 28 (ANI): Larry King and his wife, Shawn Southwick, were swingers, that’s the claim of the talk show host’s former wife Julia Alexander King.

“Larry told me they both knew that each of them had others in their lives,” Julia, his Spouse No. 6 from 1989 to ”92, told Radar Online.

“I never asked him and he never told me who his ”other” was, but he knew Shawn was having an affair with the baseball coach. She practically flaunted it,” she added.

According to her, Larry was allegedly cheating with Shawn”s younger sister, Shannon Engemann, and Shawn was trysting with their sons” baseball coach, Hector Penate, reports The New York Post.

“Larry doesn”t have a mean bone in his body,” said Julia, who keeps in touch with her ex. “He is a wonderful man in every area of his life except marriage. He just doesn”t have a moral compass when it comes to women.” (ANI)

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HRW’s Saudi Arabia fundraising mission is like asking Taliban for donation: Israel

July 15, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Jerusalem, July 15 (ANI): Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office has criticized the Human Rights Watch (HRW) for sending a fundraising delegation to Saudi Arabia, and likened the situation to a women’s rights group asking the Taliban for donations.

“A human rights organization raising money in Saudi Arabia is like a women’s rights group asking the Taliban for a donation. For an organization that claims to offer moral direction, it appears that Human Rights Watch has seriously lost its moral compass,” The Jerusalem Post quoted Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev, as saying.

Sarah Leah Whitson, director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa Division, responded by saying that there was a need to distinguish between a government and its people, and to conflate the two was “misguided at best.”

“Certainly not everyone is tainted by the misconduct of their government. There are private individuals in Saudi Arabia who are not part of the ruling government,” she said.
Comments from Netanyahu’s office on HRW come in the wake of reports that a delegation from HRW recently visited Saudi Arabia to raise money from wealthy Saudis by highlighting the group’s activities against Israel.

Two weeks ago, Israel was ripped for alleged misconduct during Operation Cast Lead in reports issued by HRW and Amnesty International.

Israel has decided to take a much more aggressive stance toward future reports issued by these organizations, according to sources.

“We will make a greater effort in the future to go through their reports with a fine-tooth comb, expose the inconsistencies and their problematic use of questionable data,” one senior official said.

“We discovered during the Gaza operation and the Second Lebanon War that these organizations come in with a very strong agenda, and because they claim to have some kind of halo around them, they receive a status that they don’t deserve,” he said.

Recently, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman had said that his ministry was currently involved in a reform that would place a much greater emphasis on dealing with NGOs. (ANI)

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Like humans, animals too can tell right from wrong

May 24, 2009 By Leave a Comment

London, May 24 (ANI): It’s not just humans who have a moral compass, animals too possess a sense of morality which allows them to tell the difference between right and wrong.

That’s the conclusion of a new book.

Boffins who study animal behaviour reckon they have evidence to prove that species ranging from mice to primates are governed by moral codes of conduct in the same way as humans, The Telegraph reported.

However, Prof Marc Bekoff, an ecologist at University of Colorado, Boulder, believes that morals are “hard-wired” into the brains of all mammals and provide the “social glue” that allow often aggressive and competitive animals to live together in groups.

Bekoff reached the conclusion after compiling evidence from around the world that shows how different species of animals appear to have an innate sense of fairness, display empathy and help other animals that are in distress.

Prof Bekoff, who presents his case in a new book Wild Justice, said: “The belief that humans have morality and animals don’t is a long-standing assumption, but there is a growing amount of evidence that is showing us that this simply cannot be the case.

“Just as in humans, the moral nuances of a particular culture or group will be different from another, but they are certainly there. Moral codes are species specific, so they can be difficult to compare with each other or with humans.”

Prof Bekoff believes morals developed in animals to help regulate behaviour in social groups of animals such as wolves and primates.

He claims that these rules help to control fighting within the group and encourage co-operative behaviour.

Prof Bekoff, who co-wrote the book with moral philosopher Jessica Pierce, also from the University of Colorado, added: “There are cases of dolphins helping humans to escape from sharks and elephants that have helped antelope escape from enclosures. While it is difficult to know for certain that there is cross species empathy, it is hard to argue against it.” (ANI)

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Twitter, Facebook could confuse your moral compass

April 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 14 (ANI): They might keep you socially happy in the cyberspace, but in real life, social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook harm people’s moral values, as they don’t allow time for compassion or admiration, warn scientists.

According to a study from a neuroscience group led by corresponding author Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, emotions linked to our moral sense awaken slowly in the mind.

The finding suggests that digital media culture may be better suited to some mental processes than others.

“For some kinds of thought, especially moral decision-making about other people’s social and psychological situations, we need to allow for adequate time and reflection,” said first author Mary Helen Immordino-Yang.

Humans can sort information very quickly and can respond in fractions of seconds to signs of physical pain in others.

Admiration and compassion-two of the social emotions that define humanity-take much longer, Damasio’s group found.

The study will appear next week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition.

“Damasio’s study has extraordinary implications for the human perception of events in a digital communication environment,” said media scholar Manuel Castells, holder of the Wallis Annenberg Chair of Communication Technology and Society at USC.

“Lasting compassion in relationship to psychological suffering requires a level of persistent, emotional attention,” the expert added.

To reach the conclusion, study’s authors used compelling, real-life stories to induce admiration for virtue or skill, or compassion for physical or social pain, in 13 volunteers (the emotion felt was verified through a careful protocol of pre- and post-imaging interviews).

Brain imaging showed that the volunteers needed six to eight seconds to fully respond to stories of virtue or social pain. However, once awakened, the responses lasted far longer than the volunteers’ reactions to stories focused on physical pain.

The study raises questions about the emotional cost-particularly for the developing brain-of heavy reliance on a rapid stream of news snippets obtained through television, online feeds or social networks such as Twitter.

“If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people’s psychological states and that would have implications for your morality,” Immordino- Yang said. (ANI)

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