Queen Elizabeth II (Credit: Agencia Brasil)

If in spite of snippy tabloids, family scandals and austerity riots, you manage to not only maintain your sanity but also your seat on the British throne for a full sixty years and counting, you definitely deserve to throw a gala party, as far as I'm concerned. In honor of Elizabeth II's six-decade-long reign, a cavalcade of celebrations are in the works, ranging from refurbishing her infamous wax statue at the Madame Tussauds Museum to importing an endangered species of eel from North America, an essential ingredient in lamprey pie, a dessert prepared for royals on only the most special of occasions. (Yech!)

A public display of namesake jewelry for the Queen's diamond jubilee will go on display today at the Harrod's retail store in London. Among the more than 30 unique crowns making up the display will be the De Beers Diamond Jubilee crown, which holds a total of nearly 1000 diamonds, 974 in all – 797 of them polished diamonds and 177 of them rough. I don't get it, why couldn't they have gone ahead and polished all 974? What's the numerological significance of the decision? Are they saving something for the next jubilee to come around?

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Amy Poehler (Credit: David Shankb)

When you think about it, it's amazing that we live in a world in which we can poke fun at the people with the most power, and not have to suffer any scary consequences. That's why we are indebted to comediennes like Amy Poehler for satirizing Secretary of State Hilary Clinton on Saturday Night Live. Poehler received has received due honors for tickling our funny bones, receiving Emmy nominations for her SNL performances and more recently, her own comedy series, Parks and Recreation. Read more

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De Beers' Snap Lake Mine (Credit: Photograph reproduced with kind permission of De Beers UK Ltd.)

Conflicts between diamond industry interest groups and communities of indigenous peoples always have the potential to spiral out of control into acts of violence. But it would have been difficult to predict the crazy plot twists and turns that have befallen a woman who worked as a mediator between diamond company De Beers and the Attawapiskat First Nations group in northern Canada.

Cyndy Vanier is going to need all of the skills she used as professional peacemaker to talk her way out of the legal soup she currently finds herself drowning in. Right now she's far from any diamond mines, sitting in a Mexican jail, charged with being the ringleader of a conspiracy to spirit Saadi Gadhafi out of the Middle East. A son of Muammar Gadhafi, the Libyan leader who was summarily executed after a popular revolt and NATO bombing raids swept him from power, Saadi wanted to evade international criminal proceedings against him for his alleged role in human rights abuses.

I bet that right now, Cyndy only wishes she could be freezing her butt off in the frozen tundra of the Northwest Territories if it would mean getting out of jail free.

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