Many self-help programs are useful, but some can direct people in ways that aren't right for them, a psychologist says.

Jason Hanna
CNN

Amber Lemna says studying "The Secret" is changing her life for the better.

The 2006 book and film discusses the law of attraction, something adherents say allows people to attract what they want by envisioning it and believing it will come. Lemna says she's used it to kick-start a business idea: attaching decorated tabs to credit cards so people can easily pull the cards from wallets.

Thanks to "The Secret," she says, she's attracted people and resources to help her and already is selling the tabs in 10 local stores.

"Nothing has been the same since I've listened to the CD [of the book]," said Lemna, 29. "I can control how my day goes."

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More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years.

Charles Duhigg
The New York Times

More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.

That law requires communities to deliver safe tap water to local residents. But since 2004, the water provided to more than 49 million people has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage.

Regulators were informed of each of those violations as they occurred. But regulatory records show that fewer than 6 percent of the water systems that broke the law were ever fined or punished by state or federal officials, including those at the Environmental Protection Agency, which has ultimate responsibility for enforcing standards

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Families, friends, students and sympathizers light candles in Koronadal, Philippines, for the Maguindanao victims.

Maria A. Ressa
Head, ABS-CBN News & Current Affairs
Former CNN Jakarta Bureau Chief

57 people killed in broad daylight, 30 of them journalists. It was premeditated murder because even before they were ambushed, their graves were dug. It was the worst election-related violence we have ever seen and the deadliest single attack on journalists anywhere around the world.

This is a story about the courage of one anonymous Filipino – a citizen journalist – who risked his life three times on Monday, November 23 to tell the world about the massacre in the southern Philippines. His courage gave the world the first photograph of the carnage released to the public. It also shows how professional journalists and citizen journalists can work together to circumvent fear, prevent a whitewash and get the Truth out.

ABS-CBN’s citizen journalism program began during our 2007 elections. We called it “Boto Mo, I-Patrol Mo.” Translated it means, “Patrol Your Votes.” It was the first time globally that a broadcast media organization used the power of mass media and combined it with mobile phone technology and new media for a political purpose: to help ensure elections are free and fair.

It’s important in the Philippines because our elections have always been plagued by rampant cheating and violence. The Philippine National Police declared the 2007 elections the most peaceful in our history – with only about 130 people killed in 217 incidents of poll-related violence.

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John Lennon was killed on December 8, 1980 outside the Dakota building in New York City.

Bob Greene
CNN Contributor

Maybe if you're a New Yorker, you grow accustomed to the sight.

Maybe if you live in the city, it becomes just another part of the Manhattan landscape.

But if you're from somewhere else, visiting, and you're not expecting to encounter it. . . .

Well, you sense that you've been in front of this building before, even though you never have. You feel it before you fully see it.

So it was, early on a recent afternoon, that I was walking east on 72nd Street, approaching Central Park West.

I glanced to my left.

To say the building is spooky is perhaps too easy. Yet everything about it - the high gables, the balustrades, the gas lanterns burning even in the daytime, the black iron gates leading into the open interior courtyard - seems purposely designed to give off an aura of portent.

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CNN

Amanda Knox is in an Italian jail, sentenced to spend the next 26 years there for the 2007 slaying of her roommate, Meredith Kercher, while the two were exchange students in Italy.But despite a trial lasting nearly a year, many questions about the case remain unanswered. Knox's family will talk to Larry King tonight at 9 p.m.

Go here and scroll down to view a photo gallery of Amanda Knox's childhood.

Researchers found evidence that overweight people cluster on Facebook.

Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler
Special to CNN

The bonds we renew in person between friends and family as we visit during the holiday season get reactivated online after we all go home. This is the time when feast and Facebook go hand-in-hand.

And as it turns out, these two activities are more related than you might imagine.

Two years ago, we published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that showed weight gain could spread from one person to others in our real-life social networks. When we gain weight, so do people who are one "degree of separation" from us: our friends, siblings, spouses, and co-workers.

The effect doesn't stop there. It also spreads to people who are two degrees removed from us, like our friends' spouses, or our siblings' co-workers, or our friends' friends. In fact, it even spreads to three degrees of separation, to our friends' friends' friends.

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CNN

Amanda Knox, who is accused of murdering her roommate in Italy, was an easy child to raise in Seattle, Washington, along with her younger sisters Deanna and Ashley, her parents said. She took to soccer early on but hit the books as hard as she played.

Go here and scroll down to view a photo gallery of Amanda Knox's childhood.

(Image courtesy of The Stranger)

AC360°

There are still unsolved questions surrounding the case of Maurice Clemmons. Questions that prompt us to take a deeper look at the legal system and why Clemmons had been released from jail just last week despite pending felony charges and a lengthy criminal history.

According to a document posted by the Seattle newspaper, The Stranger, Clemmons had posted bail on his recent charges allowing him to walk free after being charged with assualt and child rape. The bail had been set at $190,000 but records indicate that he had only paid $15,000.

These charges were separate from those which were commuted in 2000 by then-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Clemmons had received a 95-year prison sentence in Arkansas in 1989 for a host of charges, including robberies, burglaries, thefts and bringing a gun to school.

Take a look at Maurice Clemmons bail receipt...

U.S. troops search for militants in the mountainous Taliban stronghold in Paktika Province in Afghanistan.

David Gergen | BIO
AC360° Contributor
CNN Senior Political Analyst

In his Afghanistan speech tonight, Barack Obama will face one of the toughest tests of any president in modern times.

Presidents usually seek public support for sending U.S. combat troops into action just after another country has attacked us or threatened our national interest – think FDR after Pearl Harbor, Harry Truman after the invasion of South Korea, John Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis, George H.W. Bush embarking on the Persian Gulf war, George W. Bush after 9/11 and even his decision to invade Iraq. In each case, vital interests seemed at stake, presidents acted decisively and Americans rallied ’round the flag.

But in this case, Obama is asking the public to support an escalation in a war that has already gone on so long that Americans have lost sight of why it is important and are intensely divided over whether we should spend more blood and treasure. The cold reality is that the U.S. government has done a horrible job persuading the American people that the Afghan war matters.

While the President deserves credit for engaging in serious deliberations before acting, his pause for reflection has also gone on so long – 94 days from the day of the McChrystal request to the day of his public response – that he has also sent a clear signal of inner doubts and uncertainty about next steps.

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David Mixner
Author, Political Strategist

As the nation debates reforming our health care system, there is one topic I'm not hearing enough about – how the fight against HIV/AIDS will remain a national priority and how the prevention of such costly diseases such as this will become a foundational element of our health system.

Phenomenal progress has been made against HIV/AIDS since it first appeared in the United States a quarter-century ago. But this very progress has dulled our sense of urgency about preventing the disease and finding a cure. Today is World AIDS Day and we should take a moment to reflect on how we've made progress and why there is a bubbling fear that the worst of the crisis may lie ahead. To finally put a stop to the epidemic, we need to re-energize our commitment and pass smart health care reforms now.

A critical moment in the fight against HIV/AIDS occurred a decade ago, when powerful new protease inhibitor drugs showed remarkable effectiveness in treating the disease and raised hope that the epidemic's end was around the corner. Unfortunately, our progress led to overconfidence in science – a perception that the protease inhibitor regimen guarantees quality of life for people living with HIV/AIDS, and thus that contracting the disease is no longer a big deal.

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