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April 27, 2010 Ukraine Passes Deal Under Hail of Eggs By  CLIFFORD J. LEVY MOSCOW — Lawmakers  pelted the podium with eggs  and catcalls before stalking across the aisle, putting their colleagues in headlocks and engaging in other tactics not exactly covered by Robert’s Rules of Order.  Smoke bombs were set off  in the chamber. Glue was poured into voting machines. The legislative leader  directed the session behind umbrellas  held by his aides, to protect him from projectiles. Ukraine ’s Parliament was supposed to conduct a weighty debate on Tuesday revolving around the country’s sovereignty and relationship with neighboring  Russia , but the proceedings often seemed more like a food fight in a high school cafeteria. At issue was whether to ratify an  agreement to extend the lease  on a Russian naval base on the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine by 25 years. In the end, it was narrowly approved, with 236 votes out of a possible 450, but not ...

Chocolate love 'depression link' People who regularly eat chocolate are more depressive, experts have found. Research in Archives of Internal Medicine shows those who eat at least a bar every week are more glum than those who only eat chocolate now and again. Many believe chocolate has the power to lift mood, and the US team say this may be true, although scientific proof for this is lacking. But they say they cannot rule out that chocolate may be a cause rather than the cure for being depressed. In the study which included nearly 1,000 adults, the more chocolate the men and women consumed the lower their mood. Those who ate the most - more than six regular 28g size bars a month - scored the highest on depression, using a recognised scale. None of the men and women were on antidepressants or had been diagnosed as clinically depressed by a doctor. 'Mood food' Dr Natalie Rose and her colleagues from the University of California, San Diego, say there are many possi...

Wheels for real Participants of the Critical Mass bicycle ride lift their bicycles above their heads after their demonstration pedaling across Budapest, Hungary on Saturday. Tens of thousands Hungarian cyclists participated in the event, a worldwide urban movement devoted to riding bicycles.

Seeing Double The top 40 nature photos of all time? In honor of the 40th annual Earth Day on April 22, members of the International League of Conservation Photographers chose their top 40, including this one here. Many of the honored photographers or their trusts went on to donate their work for an Earth Day auction benefiting environmental groups.  Ten of those 40 are shown here, including this one by Paul Nicklen of a polar bear and his reflection. Polar bears often travel submerged -- a tactic used to surprise prey -- and this one was spotted at the northern tip of Canada's Baffin Island. Scientists fear melting sea ice habitat due to global warming could drive polar bears to extinction sometime this century. Fished for Fin Underwater documentarian Brian Skerry photographed this thresher shark, doomed by a gill net, in Mexico's Gulf of California. It had been killed for its fin in order to satisify Asian demand for shark fin soup. Conservation groups estimate 100 million sh...

An employee, right, of Mumbai's Oberoi Hotel, which was one of the targets of Nov. 26, 2008, terror attacks that left 166 people dead, walks after a news conference held at the hotel on April 21. The five-star complex is reopening to guests after a $45 million reconstruction.  from msnbc.com

A member of the German Air Traffic Control center crisis management group points at a map showing the current air traffic in the sky over Germany near Frankfurt on Tuesday, April 20. The Eurocontrol air traffic agency in Brussels said it expects 55 to 60 percent of flights over Europe to go ahead Tuesday, a marked improvement over the last few days. By midmorning, 10,000 of Europe's 27,500 daily flights were scheduled to go. A passenger waits at Bilbao airport in northern Spain on April 18, after all flights were canceled due to the ash.

Crocodile tears on Wall Street In the spirit of the original tea party, activists should be demanding accountability from Wall Street BY  BILL MOYERS ,  MICHAEL WINSHIP With all due respect, we can only wish those Tea Party activists who gathered in Washington and other cities this week weren’t so single-minded about just who’s responsible for all their troubles, real and imagined. They’re up in arms, so to speak, against Big Government, especially the Obama administration. If they thought this through, they’d be joining forces with other grassroots Americans who in the coming weeks will be demonstrating in Washington and other cities against High Finance, taking on Wall Street and the country’s biggest banks. The original Tea Party, remember, wasn’t directed just against the British redcoats. Colonial patriots also took aim at the East India Company. That was the joint-stock enterprise originally chartered by the first Queen Elizabeth. Over the years, the government granted...