Pirates Attack Cruise Ship

NAIROBI, Kenya — The pirates who attacked a luxury cruise liner off Somalia's coast were likely to have been from the same group that hijacked a U.N.-chartered vessel in June and held its crew and food aid hostage for 100 days, a maritime official said Sunday.

Two boats full of pirates approached the Seabourn Spirit about 100 miles off the Somali coast Saturday and fired rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles while the heavily armed bandits tried to get onboard.

The ship escaped by shifting to high speed and changing course. Its passengers, mostly Americans with some Australians and Europeans, were gathered in a lounge for safety, and nobody was injured, said Bruce Good, spokesman for the Miami-based Seabourn Cruise Line, a subsidiary of Carnival Corp.

Andrew Mwangura, head of the Kenyan chapter of the Seafarers Assistance Program, said the location of the attack would indicate the pirates were probably from a group that seized a U.N.-chartered ship on a humanitarian mission on June 27.

Somalia has had no effective central government since opposition leaders ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. The leaders then turned on each other, transforming the nation of 7 million into a patchwork of battling fiefdoms ruled by heavily armed militias.

AP Polkonline.com, 2005.

Giants of Potsdam

"[King Frederick William I of Prussia]'s most famous obsession was his collection of giants, for which he was renowned throughout Europe. Known as the Blue Prussians or the Giants of Potsdam, there were over 1,200 of them, organized into two battalions of 600 men each. None was under six feet tall, and some, in the Special Red Unit of the First Battalion, were almost seven feet tall. The King dressed them in blue jackets with gold trim and scarlet lapels, scarlet trousers, white stockings, black shoes and tall red hats. He gave them muskets, white bandoleers and small daggers, and he played with them as a child would with enormous living toys. No expense was too great for this hobby, and Fredrick William spent millions to recruit and equip his giant grenadiers. They were hired or bought all over Europe; especially desirable specimens, refusing the offer of the King's recruiting agents, were simply kidnapped. Eventually, recruiting in this way became too expensive--one seven-foot-two-inch Irishman cost over 6,000 pounds--and Frederick William tried to breed giants. Every tall man in his realm was forced to marry a tall woman. The drawback was that the King had to wait fifteen to twenty years for the products of these
unions to mature, and often as not a boy or girl of normal height resulted. The easiest method of obtaining giants was to receive them as gifts. Foreign ambassadors advised their masters that the way to find favor with the King of Prussia was to send him giants. Peter [the Great] especially appreciated his fellow sovereign's interest in nature's curios, and Russia supplied the Prussian King with fifty new
giants every year.

Needless to say, the King never risked his cherished colossi in the face of enemy fire. In turn, they provided the ailing monarch with his greatest delight. When he was sick or depressed, the entire two battalions, preceded by tall, turbaned Moors with cymbals and trumpets and the grenadiers' mascot, an enormous bear, would march in a long line through the King's chamber to cheer him up."

From Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert K. Massie.

Let the Ladies Rule

". . Peter the Great's overturning of the laws of succession and his proclamation that every sovereign should have the right to designate the heir led to an anomaly in Russian history: Since the distant days of the Kievan state, no woman had reigned in Russia; after his death in 1725, four empresses reigned almost continuously for the next seventy-one years. They were Peter's wife (Catherine I), his niece (Anne), his daughter (Elizabeth) and his grandson's wife (Catherine the Great). The reigns of three pitiable males (Peter the Great's grandsons Peter II and Peter III and his brother's great-grandson Ivan IV) were interspersed among these women, but their three reigns encompassed only forty months."

From Peter the Great: His Life and World by Robert K. Massie.

brnd ldy GR8!! >:) - CUL8R

Rioting gangs of Arab and African youths, mostly Muslims, torching cars, schools, and buses in Paris suburbs for eight days, have just committed their most gruesome act.

Attackers doused a 50-year-old woman on crutches with a flammable liquid and set her afire as she tried to get off a bus in the suburb of Sevran.

The bus had been forced to stop because of burning objects in its path. The woman was rescued by the driver and hospitalized with severe burns.

A national police spokesman, Patrick Hamon, said rioters were communicating by cell phone text messages or e-mail -- arranging meetings and warning oeach other about police operations.

From The Washington Times, November 5, 2005.

Snakeheads Colonize States

The 300 snakeheads caught in a Potomac River tributary last month were more than an anomaly. They were proof, biologists say, that the predatory Asian fish has bred its way to the top of the river's food chain.

The snakeheads caught in just a few days numbered more than four times the total ever found in the river -- evidence that not only are they thriving, but they also appear to be breeding faster than the river's most beloved game fish.

"I caught 62 in two hours, they were that thick," said John Odenkirk, a Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries biologist. Worse, he said, "there's not a lot we can do."

Having lost the battle to eradicate the snakehead, Virginia and Maryland biologists and federal wildlife officials have recruited a team of researchers to study its adaptation. They hope that the fish will find a place in the Potomac's ecosystem without damaging the other species there.

What they know so far is this: The freshwater northern snakehead was probably introduced into the Potomac about three years ago, perhaps by someone who imported it from Asia, where it is a popular food.

With a mouth as big around as a fist and lined with rows of teeth and an ability to grow to three feet over an estimated life span of a decade, the adult fish has no known predators in the Potomac.

Their apparent quick adaptation shows the northern snakehead . .

". . would have the ability to colonize a large portion of the U.S. and even southern Canada," so says Steve Minkkinen, a snakehead expert at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In 2002, this region's first snakeheads were found in a fetid pond in Crofton. Wildlife experts poisoned the pond and counted the fish. Six adults and more than 1,000 juveniles were proof that the fish bred successfully even in the pond's poor habitat. Already, they outnumbered the bass there.

In May 2004, an angler caught the Potomac system's first snakehead, in Little Hunting Creek near Alexandria. Biologists and anglers caught 20 snakeheads in 2004. This year, they've caught more than 300, 270 during the week-long run at Dogue Creek. DNA tests showed that the juveniles among the 20 fish caught in the Potomac in 2004 were all descended from one or a few related females, making it possible that the Potomac's snakehead problem originated with the introduction of only a few fish.

"It grows fast, bites anything that comes by, fights hard and taste great," with firm, white flesh similar to perch, Odenkirk said.

And that's a bad thing, because when anglers grow fond of a fish they introduce it elsewhere. That is how the walleye, a Midwestern game fish, invaded the Columbia River.

From The Washington Post, November 5, 2005.

Nano Beats Cancer

Experiments on mice have shown promise for the future of nanotechnology in treating cancer. The research brings doctors one step closer to being able to inject patients with nanoparticles that bore inside tumors and release powerful doses of cancer-killing drugs while leaving the rest of the body unscathed.

Nanotechnology is the science of manipulating matter smaller than 100 nanometers and taking advantages of properties that are present only at that level, such as conductivity. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, or about one-millionth the size of a pin head. The prefix comes from "nanos," the Greek word for dwarf.

Nanotech has been around for several decades, but only now is its potential starting to be realized. Medicine is expected to be one of the fields to benefit most. In cancer, it is hoped the technology will allow for more precisely targeted drugs and surgery and less toxic chemotherapy.

The study, conducted by scientists at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which are pioneering cancer nanotechnology, involved engineering nanoparticles embedded with the cancer drug Taxotere. The particles were then injected directly into human tumors created from prostate cancer cell lines and implanted into the flanks of mice.

The technology being tested involves a nanoparticle made of a hydrogen and carbon polymer with bits of drug bound up in its fabric and attached to a substance that hones in on cancer cells. The polymer gradually dissolves, exposing the nuggets of drug little by little.

In mice scientists injected the targeted nanoparticles containing the drug into . .

"The tumor completely disappeared," a researcher said.

Injecting targeted nanoparticles into the bloodstream and having them seek out tumors and get inside on their own is still the ultimate goal, but direct injection is also promising for cancers where the tumor is accessible and hasn't spread, such as in early prostate cancer.

Researchers say they hope to be able to test this approach on prostate cancer patients within two years.

Pravda, November 1, 2005.

We'll Buy Your Strip Club Says Church

PAINESVILLE, Ohio (AP) - The owner of a strip club says he's considering a six-figure offer from a church to buy and shut down the location.

Bill Martin, owner of the Just Teazin club in Painesville Township, 25 miles northeast of Cleveland, declined Thursday to identify the church or when he might decide whether to accept the unsolicited offer.

His club has been the target of protesters who object to it operating in the community.

Martin said it was a legitimate business protected by the Constitution. "I'm a strong believer in the U.S. Constitution. Until we become more like the Taliban, I don't see why people have a problem with upholding the Constitution," he said.

Martin said the Union Congregational Church bought a former club of his in the township. The building was bought in 1996 for $36,000 and became a recreation center and eventually was sold for use as a homeless shelter, the Rev. Roderick Coffee said.

Union Congregational isn't the church seeking to buy Just Teazin, Martin and Coffee said. Martin said he didn't know if he would open another club if Just Teazin was sold.

Township Trustee Jeanette Crislip said strip clubs bring problems to a community and Trustee James S. Falvey said he hoped the club would be sold and shut down. The township's legal attempt to close the club failed.

The Associated Press, November 3, 2005.

Deer Almost Takes Out Governor

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - He was antlered and dangerous - and he almost took out Gov. Tim Pawlenty. As Pawlenty arrived for work at the Capitol Thursday, he and his entourage heard shattering glass and then saw a big buck charge past about five feet from them. The deer broke two windows at the Capitol before bounding off.

The state's deer hunting season officially opens Saturday, and Pawlenty is headed to the northwestern Minnesota city of Perham for his annual kickoff event.

Pawlenty said the parking lot incident was a good omen.

"We could have had the governor's deer opener right here at the Capitol," Pawlenty said. "If that's any indication, the deer hunting is going to go well this year."

State natural resources officials say the urban deer herd is much larger than usual this year. Ramsey County, which includes St. Paul, is considering hiring sharp shooters to thin the deer population along freeways and other well-traveled areas.

It's the mating season for deer, when rutting bucks sometimes charge their own reflections in windows.

The Associated Press, November 3, 2005.

The Cat Made Me Do It

EVERETT, Wash. - A man was convicted of murder after witnesses testified that he relied on his cat's behavior to decide the victim deserved to die.

A jury Wednesday deliberated for about three hours before convicting 40-year-old Clayton Edward Butsch of shooting Chad J. Vavricka in 2004 as the man slept in a folding chair in Butsch's trailer. Vavricka, 30, was shot twice in the head.

Prosecution witnesses, many of them drug users with criminal records, testified that Butsch said he relied on his cat, Sam, to determine who was good and who deserved to die. When Sam refused to go near the sleeping Vavricka, Butsch shot him, they said.

Butsch's lawyer argued that the witnesses framed Butsch and made up the cat story.

He faces 38 to 50 years in prison at sentencing Tuesday.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Burglar Makes Pizza, Flees with $3,000

SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. (AP) -- A pizza parlor burglar paused to make a pizza before fleeing with $3,000.

A security camera showed the intruder playing pizza chef after breaking into Sonny's Pizza and Pasta through a bathroom window early Monday, said Lt. Ted Boyne of the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

The burglar put on an employee's shirt after entering the pizza parlor about 2 a.m., then he made a pizza, spreading sauce, cheese and pepperoni over the dough and placing it in the oven, the lieutenant said.

Employees arriving about 3 a.m. apparently scared him off before the pizza was ready, Boyne said. The burglar fled with about $3,000.

"We found the pizza burned in the oven," he added.

Source, November 2, 2005.

He Lived on Mars

When 'Boriska' turned two, he started drawing pictures, which looked abstract at first: they were mixtures of blue and violet colors. When psychologists examined the drawings, they said that the boy was probably trying to draw the auras of people, whom he could see around him. Boris was not even three, when he started telling his parents of the Universe.

"He could name all the planets of the solar systems and even their satellites. He was showering me with names and numbers of galaxies. At first I found it very frightening, I thought that my son was out of mind, but then I decided to check if those names really existed. I took some books on astronomy and I was shocked to find out that the boy knew so much about this science," his mother Nadezhda said.

While the world's leading space agencies are trying to find traces of life on planet Mars, eight-year-old Boriska tells his parents and friends everything he knows about the Martian civilization. Boriska remembers his past life.

A Russian journalist has recently talked to the boy about his unique knowledge and experience:

- Boriska, did you really live on Mars as people say around here?
- Yes, I did, it is true. I remember that time, when I was 14 or 15 years old. The Martians were waging wars all the time so I would often have to participate in air raids with a friend of mine. We could travel in time and space flying in round spaceships, but we would observe life on planet Earth on triangular aircrafts. Martian spaceships are very complicated. They are layered, and they can fly all across the Universe.
- Is there life on Mars now?
- Yes, there is, but the planet lost its atmosphere many years ago as a result of a global catastrophe. But Martian people still live there under the ground. They breath carbonic gas.
- How do they look those Martian people?
- Oh they are very tall, taller than seven meters. They possess incredible qualities.

"When we showed our boy to a variety of scientists, including ufologists, astronomers and historians, all of them agreed that it would be impossible to make all those stories up. Foreign languages and scientific terms, which he says, are usually used by specialists studying this or that particular science," Boriska's mother said.

From Pravda, October 29, 2005.

You Wouldn't See It

When the makers of dandruff shampoo Nizoral decided to launch an ad campaign featuring a black-robed Lutheran minister recommending the dandruff shampoo, they failed to win favour with one target group - the Danish clergy.

Denmark's priests call the advert poorly done and have complained to the shampoo's producer.

The priests' problem with the advert - in addition to the bogus recommendation - is that the female priest pictured is not a Danish priest at all. Her vestments, which lack the Danish collar, indicate that she is more likely a Swede, the Danish priests' organisation says.

After learning of the advert for 'the one true dandruff shampoo', the foreman for the Danish Association of Priests, Helle Christiansen, contacted its producers, international pharmaceutical producer Jannsen-Cilag, to find out whether any priests had actually tried the shampoo.

They hadn't, and Christiansen said that discredited the advertising technique.

"The advertisement indicates that our priests have taken an active position regarding Nizoral shampoo, and that isn't the case," she said. "Therefore, the advert is misleading - and laughable. Danish priests have such a big white collar that you'd never see their dandruff - if they had it."

Jannsen-Cilag marketing manager Jens Sandstrøm said to Ritzau that the advert was created by a Swedish agency as part of a joint-Scandinavian campaign, and that it had not caused any problems in either Norway or Sweden.

He pointed out that the detail about the Danish priests' collars meant that the message might have been lost on some Danes.

"The intention was to use the metaphor of the black outfit - but we made the mistake of not considering Danish priests' white collar," said Sandstrøm, a Dane who lives and works in Sweden.

He said the advert would continue its run as scheduled.

The Copenhagen Post, November 1, 2005.

Worth Being a Witch?

In Britain, Mother Shipton is considered to be one of the famous old witches. The woman was born in 1490 in a cave close to the village Knaresborough where many witches and sorcerers were living in that time. Locals believed the girl's mother was a witch; she died as soon as gave birth to the daughter. The girl, Ursula, began to cry loudly and a woman going by the cave heard the crying and took the newborn girl.

When the girl grew up she became a very kind sorceress. She always cured people of the neighborhood for free and warned them of various natural disasters. The Royal Court also knew about the girl because she exactly predicted when the huge Spanish fleet would approach the English coast in 1588 and when London would be gripped with fire.

The legend says the young witch loved men. When still young she married carpenter Tony Shipton, but he died several years later. Then the widow began to seduce young handsome men. Though an old woman now, she met boys in the forest and seduced them as a young beautiful girl. Villagers said they often saw young men having sex with the old lady in the forest.

From an article by Alexander Zotov in Pravda.

It's Just Fine, Thank You

Franklin Roosevelt vetoed 635 bills during his presidency. Lyndon Joyhnson vetoed 30, and Jimmy Carter 31.

President Bush has yet to veto a single bill.

The Washington Post

You Know You Have Been In Finland Too Long, When . .

1. You rummage through your plastic bag collection to see which ones you should keep to take to the store and which can be sacrificed to garbage. (plastic bags - formerly free, now costing - supplied by Finnish shopkeepers are vastly superior to those in other countries. Something to do with the weight of bottles they need to be able to withstand?)
   
2. When a stranger on the street smiles at you: a. you assume he is drunk; b. he is insane; c. he's an American.
   
3. You don't think twice about putting the wet dishes away in the cupboard to dry. (Finnish houses and apartments have excellent draining cupboards over the sink-unit, where the plates can dry off.)
   
4. A friend asks about your holiday plans and you answer: "Oh, I'm going to Europe!" meaning any other Western European country outside Scandinavia.
   
5. You see a student taking a front row seat and wonder "Who does he think he is!!??" (Is it only Finnish university students that do not volunteer information for discussion at lectures?
   
6. Silence is fun.
   
7. Your coffee consumption exceeds 6 cups a day and coffee is too weak if there is less than two spoonfuls per person.
   
8. You associate pea soup with Thursday. (Several hundred years ago, when Finland was still a part of Sweden and taxes were levied for the King, money was scarce and peas were used for payment. However, since peas had hitherto mostly been used as pig food, something had to be done to raise their status. The population was thus encouraged to eat pea soup. Soldiers got a weekly portion of pea soup, sometimes strengthened with pig's trotters and the fatty parts of pork. After the meal the bones were used for magic. Thursday became pea soup day, since the Catholic religion proscribed meat on Fridays and people needed a solid dinner the day before. Over the centuries pea soup has acquired at least nine different names in Finnish; moreover it has also become a traditional Shrovetide food, before Lent. Today pea soup is also inseparably connected with the Finnish oven-baked dessert pancake.)
   
9. Hugging is reserved for sexual foreplay.
   
10. You refuse to wear a hat, even in -30°C weather.
    
11. You hear loud-talking passengers on the train. You immediately assume: a. they are drunk; b. they are Swedish-speaking; c. they are Americans; d. all of the above.
    
12. You enjoy salmiakki. ("chloride of ammonia" is found as a white encrustation around volcanoes. It is used in chemical analysis, in medicine, in dry batteries, as a soldering flux, and in textile printing. Salmiakki is the name given to a salty licorice candy containing this strange stuff, and is immensely popular among Finns, particularly when they are not in the country and therefore cannot get it. It even became a drinks fad almost as threatening to the nation as absinthe was to France, when mixed with vodka to make "salmiakkikossu". Along with hard rye crispbreads and other delicacies, it is a staple of web-sites advertising Finnish goods for the poor souls who are no longer resident here.)
    
13. You accept that 80°C in a sauna is chilly, but 20°C outside is freaking hot.
    
14. You know how to fix herring in 105 different ways.
    
15. You eat herring in 105 ways.
    
16. "No comment" becomes a conversation strategy.
    
17. You can't understand why people live anywhere but in Finland.
    

Too Sweet for New York

NEW YORK -- New York City has many odors, but when the city began to smell a little too good, New Yorkers became alarmed.

Residents from the southern tip of Manhattan to the Upper West Side nearly 10 miles north called a city hot line to report a strong odor Thursday night that most compared to maple syrup, The New York Times reported Friday.

There were so many calls that the city's Office of Emergency Management coordinated efforts with the Police and Fire Departments, the Coast Guard and the City Department of Environmental Protection to find the source of the mysterious smell.

Air tests haven't turned up anything harmful, but the source was still a mystery.

"We are continuing to sample the air throughout the affected area to make sure there's nothing hazardous," said Jarrod Bernstein, an emergency management spokesman. "What the actual cause of the smell is, we really don't know."

Although many compared the smell to maple syrup, others said it reminded them of vanilla coffee or freshly-baked cake. All seemed to agree that it was a welcome change from the usual city smells.

"It's like maple syrup. With Eggos (waffles). Or pancakes," Arturo Padilla told The Times as he walked in Lower Manhattan. "It's pleasant."

Copyright 2005 Associated Press.

Who Wants Exxon?

U.S. oil giant Exxon-Mobil has dismissed a proposed bid to buy it from a little known Chinese firm for $450 billion. Texas-based Exxon is the world's biggest publicly-traded oil company.

Last week Exxon posted a quarterly profit of $9.9bn, the largest in U.S. corporate history, on the back of record oil and gas prices.

King Win Laurel has filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission offering to buy the firm in a dollars and yuan deal worth $70 a share.

Exxon said it did not believe King was "financially capable" of such an offer.

King Win Laurel, which said it was incorporated in New Zealand on 21 October, said the offer was subject to financing and included incentives for shareholders if the price of oil kept on rising.

"We do not believe that King Win Laurel Limited is financially capable of making such a tender offer," Exxon spokesman Dave Gardner said in a statement.

The booming Chinese economy is in need of increasing oil supplies, and earlier this year its oil producer CNOOC withdrew an $18.5bn bid for U.S. firm Unocal, after American political opposition.

"It is not out of the realm of possibility that the Chinese government could fund a bid for Exxon, so we can't ignore it entirely, even though that's my initial inclination," said debt analyst Jon Cartwright of BOSC.

From BBC News, October 31, 2005.

Who Got Moons?

Two small moons have been discovered orbiting Pluto, bringing the planet's retinue of known satellites to three and leaving scientists to wonder how it could be.

The newfound moons orbit about 27,000 miles (44,000 kilometers) from Pluto, more than twice as far as Charon, Pluto's other satellite. They are 5,000 times dimmer than Charon.

While scientists had predicted there might be more moons, the newfound setup is surprising nonetheless, in part because Pluto is smaller than our own Moon.

"It's almost like a mini solar system," said Hal Weaver of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. "How can something about 70% the size of Earth's Moon have all these satellites? How can that happen? We're going to have to explain that."

The two new moons are between 30 and 100 miles (45 to 160 kilometers) in diameter, Weaver said. There is not enough data to pin their size down exactly, however. Pluto is 1,430 miles wide and Charon's diameter is about 730 miles.

The moons were found using the Hubble Space Telescope. The presumed moons are 23rd magnitude, far to dim to be seen with a typical backyard telescope but "relatively easy to see with Hubble," Weaver said.

From an article appearing in Space.com

Football Coach Sought in Alabama

A football coach in Montgomery, Ala., is being sought by police who say he is accused of shooting the boyfriend of his star player's mother because the man pulled the boy from the team.

Police said Timothy Campbell, 32, was shot Tuesday outside the mother's home.

Montgomery police spokesman Lt. Huey Thornton said Campbell had forced the 12-year-old boy to quit the team as punishment for some trouble he had gotten into. Campbell told police the coach confronted him with a gun.

"An argument ensued between the two about this, and it escalated into the suspect actually shooting the victim once in the back," Thornton said. "The coach wanted him to play."

. . .
by William M. Welch, USA TODAY, October 19, 2005.

Just Checking

MOSCOW -- A member of the Kyrgyz parliament was among four people taken hostage and killed by inmates during an inspection of a prison camp near the capital, Bishkek, RIA Novosti news service reported, citing the Interior Ministry.

Tymychbek Akmatbayev, president of the parliamentary commission on law and order, was murdered Thursday when inmates began to riot during his visit to the camp at the village of Moldavanovka, Nosti said.

DAILY NEWS, October 23, 2005.

They Did It With Mirrors

Did Archimedes really produce a death ray 2,200 years ago? According to Greek and Roman historians, he set Roman warships afire with a polished mirror that focused the sun's rays from afar during the siege of Syracuse. Last year the Discovery Channel program "MythBusters" declared the story a myth after failing to reproduce the feat.

But David Wallace, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, posed it as an offbeat class project in product development. Setting up 127 cheap on-square-foot mirrors 100 feet from a wooden mock-up of the side of a ship, with just 10 minutes of clear sky the "ship" burst into flames.

"We're not trying to assess whether Archimedes really did it or not," Dr. Wallace said. Instead, his students have shown that "It's at least possible."

From an article appearing in The New York Times, October 18, 2005.

Libya death sentence for medics

SOFIA, Bulgaria -- In 1998, at a time when her country was mired in hyperinflation, Valya Chervenyashka left her rural Bulgarian village and went to work as a nurse in Benghazi, Libya, for $250 a month, to pay for her daughters' college education.

Today, Chervenyashka and four other Bulgarian nurses, as well as a Palestinian doctor, are under death sentence in a Libyan jail and facing a firing squad, accused of intentionally infecting more than 400 hospitalized Libyan children with the AIDS virus - in order, according to the initial indictment, to undermine Libyan state security.

They were also charged with working for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.

Although the motive of subversion has since been dropped, the death sentence stands.

The nurses' final appeal is scheduled to be heard by the Libyan Supreme Court on Nov. 15.

"Nurses from little towns in Bulgaria acting as agents of Mossad?" said Antoanetta Ouzounova, one of Chervenyashka's daughters, now 28. "It all sounds funny and absurd until you realize your mother could die for it."

Libyan officials have suggested that the Bulgarians pay $10 million in compensation for each of the 420 children allegedly infected with AIDS, according to Bulgarian and EU diplomats.

From an article appearing in the International Herald Tribune, October 14, 2005.

Intelligent Design

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania, October 17 -- Michael J. Behe, a biochemistry professor at Lehigh University, has spent the last eight years traveling to colleges promoting intelligent design as a challenge to the theory of evolution. . .

He says the "best and most striking example of design" is the bacterial flagellum, "the outboard motor bacteria use to swim." His projected drawing depicts what he calls a "rotary motor" attached to a "drive shaft" that pushes a propeller. He says it's impossible to avoid concluding that the mechanism represents a "purposeful arrangement of parts".

He was called as the first expert witness for the defense in the Dover, Pennsylvania federal trial where 11 parents are suing the Dover school board for requiring students to hear a statement about intellent design in a high school biology class. When asked whether intelligent design is religion, or "based on any religious beliefs," Mr. Behe said . .

"No, it isn't. It is based entirely on observable physical evidence from nature."

Mr. Behe is the author of Darwin's Black Box, a book published in 1996 that spurred the intelligent design movement.

Adapted from an article appearing in The New York Times, October 18, 2005.

Second-Grader Brings Pot On School Trip

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. -- A Bridgeport second-grader who brought more than a dozen bags of marijuana to school will not face criminal charges -- but his uncle will.

Police said the 8-year-old found his 18-year-old uncle's stash, and brought it on a school field trip Friday to show friends.

A teacher found the boy stuffing bags of marijuana into his pockets during the trip to Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History.

The school said the boy will not face any discipline because officials did not find any malice on his part.

His uncle, 18-year-old Albert Davidson of Stamford, was charged with possession of marijuana with intent to sell, possession of marijuana with intent to sell within 1,500 feet of a school and risk of injury to a minor. He was released after posting a $1,000 bond.

NBC-30, Connecticut News, October 18, 2005.

Centaurs Lived

Archeologists have discovered rock paintings depicting strange creatures and called them "teriantrops", hybrids of humans and animals. Researchers believe that ancient artists made the paintings from life.

Paul Takon from the Australian Museum in Sydney, and anthropologist Christopher Chippendale from the University of Cambridge, say that such hybrids, including centaurs, were likely living side-by-side with primitive man. In Australia and South Africa, the researchers discovered dozens of rock paintings showing animals with human heads and humans with animal heads that may be over 32,000 years old.

The study covered about 5,000 rock paintings of our ancestors. The researchers systematized the frequency and the types of depicted teriantrops and determined their ages. They arrived at a conclusion that animal men actually existed in the remote past. They believe that primitive man could hardly have drawn what he never saw.
 
Myths of ancient Greece and Rome tell us about animal men, frequently centaurs: creatures with having the head, arms, and trunk of a man and the body and legs of a horse.

The word centaur is a compound of KEN (kenw) meaning "I kill" and TAUROS meaning "bull", and it reveals astronomic knowledge of our ancestors. When the constellation of Sagittarius (Centaurus throwing a spear) appears in the night skies, we can no longer see Taurus, one of the Sun symbols.

The ancient legends say that centaurs came down from the Greek mountains where they failed to keep up friendly relations with the local population. Having a taste for wine, they easily flew into rages and conflicts with people.
 
Mythology expert Alexander Guryev says that animal men were the result of buggery, sexual activity between man and beast, quite typical of ancient epochs.

From Pravda (online), October 11, 2005.

B.U.S.T.E.D.

CORRY, PENNSYLVANIA -- A man charged with stealing beer was caught by the very cans he stole.

Frank Martin, the owner of Alibi Bar, knew someone had been stealing beer, so he took two six-packs and wrote "BUSTED" on the bottoms of the cans, one letter per can.

Mr. Martin suspected that it was an inside job because no one appeared to be breaking in.

Then, police called on a man who used to work at the bar, and checked his recycling bin. Sure enough, 10 of the marked cans were inside.

From an article in The Washington Times, October 17, 2005.

"Often Imitated, Never Invalidated"

JEFFERSON, TEXAS -- Next to a lifelike replica of a giant ape head, the believers milled around tables Saturday covered with casts of large footprints, books about nature's mysteries and T-shirts proclaiming: "Bigfoot: Often Imitated, Never Invalidated."

But the search for the legendary Sasquatch is no joke for many of the nearly 400 people who came here to discuss the latest sightings and tracking techniques at the Texas Bigfoot Conference.

Outlandish theories about the origin of Bigfoot abound, including that it might be an extraterrestrial. Many think that a towering, apelike creature descended from a prehistoric 9- to 10-foot-tall gorilla called a Gigantopithecus and that it now inhabits North American forests.

From The Washington Times, October 17, 2005.

The Galloping Ghost

"this man Red Grange of Illinois is three or four men rolled into one . . . Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, Al Jolson, Paavo Nurmi* and Man o'War."

So said columnist Damno Runyon after witnessing what is regarded as the greatest single-game accomplishment of any running back in football on October 18, 1924. That was the day Harold "Red" Grange sped into college football history as the Galloping Ghost.

Playing as a junior that day with the Fighting Illini of Illinois against Michigan he first zig-zagged 95 yards for a touchdown on the kickoff. Five minutes later he ran 67 yards for another. Later in the first quarter he bolted 56 and 44 yards for two more.

That's when the coach took him out, mercifully, with the score Grange 27, Michigan 0.

In the third period he ran 11 yards for his fifth TD, then he passed (in those days you played boths sides) for 20 yards.

His stats for the day: 212 yards rushing, 64 yards passing (6-for-6), and 126 on kickoff returns for a titanic total of 402 yards.

Taken from an article appearing in The Washington Times, October 17, 2005.

*Finnish long-distance track star of the 1920s.

New 'Botticelli Code' Unveiled

(ANSA) - Rome, October 14 - One of the most famous and most studied paintings of the Renaissance hides a carefully coded map of 15th-century Italian politics, it was claimed on Friday.

Sandro Botticelli's 'Primavera' (Spring), painted in 1478, has been pored over for decades and a wealth of interpretations have been produced explaining the enigmatic arrangement of the eight figures and the cupid.

The most common identifies the figures with eight months of the year, starting on the right with February and ending on the left with September. Each figure also has a mythological identity so that their positions relative to each other can be seen as telling a story with philosophical implications on life and beauty.

But Enrico Guidoni, a lecturer in art history at Rome's La Sapienza University, believes that although this may be true it is far from being the whole story.

Presenting his new book in Rome, he said it was crucial to remember who Botticelli was working for when he painted the picture. His employer was a cousin of Lorenzo de Medici, the powerful and art-loving ruler of Florence who has gone down in history as 'the Magnificent'.

The Primavera painting shows a secret strategy Lorenzo de Medici' had worked out to unite the major Italian city states in peaceful co-existence, Guidoni argued.

The nine figures represent important cities in 15th century Italy, he continued, listing what he said were linguistic links between the some of the characters portrayed and the cities they stood for.

The figure covered in flowers usually identified as Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, is Florence; the cupid representing love, or 'Amor' in Italian, is Rome; the falling girl on the right, named as Ver (Latin for spring), is Venice. Guidoni said the three women who formed a small group on the right, apparently representing the three graces of mythology, were three key maritime powers: Pisa, Naples and Genoa.

The military-looking figure on the far left was Milan, source of weapons and arms at the time; the serene, motherly figure in the centre was Mantua; and the cold-looking one on the extreme right, bearing down on 'Venice', was Bolzano.

Guidoni's deductions and interpretations are explained in a recently published book, which outlines Lorenzo de Medici's efforts in the 1480s to begin forging his alliances.

© Copyright ANSA. All rights reserved 2005-10-14 19:34

Estonians break ground, vote online

TALLINN, Estonia - This tiny former Soviet republic nicknamed "e-Stonia" because of its tech-savvy population is breaking new ground in digital democracy.

This week, Estonia became the first country in the world to hold an election allowing voters nationwide to cast ballots over the Internet.

Fewer than 10,000 people, or 1 percent of registered voters, participated online in elections for mayors and city councils across the country, but officials hailed the experiment conducted Monday to Wednesday as a success.

Election officials in the country of 1.4 million said they had received no reports of flaws in the online voting system or hacking attempts.

Posted on Fri, Oct. 14, 2005 by JARI TANNER with the Associated Press.

Iceland's First Sitcom

Iceland’s first ever sitcom debuted last night on state television station RÚV. Kallakaffi (Karl’s Café) is set in a run-of-the-mill café which is owned by Margrét and Kalli. A little gang of quirky regulars is usually around, including Margrét’s half-brother Gísli, a bus driver, the owners’ daughter Silja, her rocker boyfriend Sjónni, and Áslákur, the medical student who is burdened with an unrequited passion for the daughter (actually the latter two haven’t appeared yet, but I took a peek at details of the upcoming episodes online). Sagafilm, the production company behind this series, says the show focuses on “grey Icelandic daily life” (think the UK’s Coronation Street with a laugh track and fewer characters).

From Iceland Review_Online, September 26, 2005.

Grid-Iron League Born

October 6, 2005
By Róbert Mosolygó

HUNGARIAN sporting history was made at the weekend with the launch of the Hungarian American Football League.

Fittingly, the opening game was played on Saturday, October 1, between the Gyôr Sharks and the Debrecen Gladiators, teams that have have been in existence since American Football first came to Hungary.

The Budapest Sun

ROMANIAN MOVIE WINS FRENCH FILM PRIZE

PARIS, Oct 16 (AFP) - The Romanian film "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu", depicting the fate of an elderly man living alone, on Sunday won top prize at the film festival of Essonne near Paris.

Directed by Cristi Puiu, it follows the struggle of an isolated 63 year-old man, who suddenly takes ill one evening and calls an ambulance, while desperately trying to hang on till help comes.

The film came first against competition from eleven other full-length movies in this annual festival of European cinema.

It also took the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes this year.

Reported Sunday, 16 October 2005 in The Tocqueville Connection.

Longevity

Only two men in U.S. baseball history have ever hit homeruns as teenagers and when they were in their forties: Ty Cobb and Rusty Staub.

As a teenaged Detroit Tiger, Cobb hit two homers; then later he had six with the Philadelphia A's after he'd turned 40. Staub had six as a teen with the Houston Astros and two as an over-40 New York Met.

From "Who Hit That Home Run?" in Parade, October 16, 2005.

It's Tradition

Two students confessed to stealing the hands of Healy Hall's westward-facing clock, bringing a two-week investigation to a close.

One of the confessors' roommates turned in the hands the day before they admitted their involvement in the incident. The hands were undamaged and can be reattached to the clock.

The two students had used temporary scaffolding erected on the west side of Healy Hall to access the building. Additional enhancements have been made to the building to prevent such incidents in the future.

The identification of the students responsible for the theft concluded an intensive investigation and a period of heightened campus interest in the incident, which the two admit said was an attempt to revive an old Georgetown tradition. Students have attempted to climb the Healy clock tower and take the hands for several decades, although the hands have only been stolen on two other occasions in the past 11 years.

It was just two buddies, it wasn't malicious at all", one of the students said. "We had no intention of keeping the hands."

His fellow participant also said he wanted to take the hands as part of a prank, not a criminal act.

"When I learned of the tradition of stealing the Healy clock hands freshman year, and reading various publications about the history associated with the tower, I decided that I eventually wanted to contribute to the survival of the tradition before I graduated," he said. "I intended no destruction or ill-will to the university in taking the hands, simply to contribute to one aspect of what makes this a special place."

The roommate, who lives with one of the two but was not involved in the theft, said he decided to turn in the hands after learning that the students were trying to find a way to return them anonymously.

Adapted from an article in The Hoya, October 14, 2005.

Where to Put the Body

MOSCOW, October 4 - Time has been unkind to Vladimir Lenin, whose remains here in Red Square are said to sprout occasional fungi, and whose ideology and party long ago fell to ruins. Now the inevitable question has returned. Should his body be moved?

Revisiting a proposal that thwarted Boris N. Yeltsin, who faced down tanks but in his time as president could not persuade Russians to remove the Soviet Union's founder from his place of honor, a senior aide to President Vladimir V. Putin raised the matter last week, saying it was time to bury the man.

"Our country has been shaken by strife, but only a few people were held accountable for that in our lifetime," said the aide, Georgi Poltavchenko. "I do not think it is fair that those who initiated the strife remain in the center of our state near the Kremlin."

Lenin, who led the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, died in 1924 at the age of 53. A near theology rose around him in the ensuing decades. But not all agree with the religion . .

"Vast funds are being squandered on a pagan show," says Nikita Mikhalkov, a prominent film director and chairman of the Russian Cultural Foundation, adding that Lenin himself wished to be buried beside his mother in St. Petersburg. "If we advocate Christian ideals, we must fulfill the will of the deceased."

Others describe an opportunist who ushered vicious cronies to power, resulting in a totalitarian police state.

"It is time to get rid of this horrible mummy," said Valeriya Novodvorskaya, head of the Democratic Union, a small reform party. "One cannot talk about any kind of democracy or civilization in Russia when Lenin is still in the country's main square." She added: "I would not care even if he were thrown on a garbage heap."

Informal polls conducted Monday by the radio station Ekho Moskvy found that 65 percent of people who called in, and 75 percent of people who contacted the station via the Internet, said that not just Lenin but all of the Soviet figures should be evicted from Red Square.

But the youngest Russian adults barely recall the Communist times, and some show little interest in looking back.

"Lenin," mused Natasha Zakharova, 23, as she walked off Red Square on Tuesday, admitting that she was not quite sure whose body she had just seen. "Was he a Communist?"

Adapted from an article appearing in The New York Times, October 5, 2005.

Wedding Rings Cause Impotence

A wedding ring, which many men constantly wear on the fourth finger, may initiate a variety of sexual disorders and eventually end up with partial or even complete impotence. A recent research work conducted by Belarussian scientists revealed that widespread beliefs of losing strong virility after many years of wearing the wedding ring on the ring finger are based on certain scientific reasons.

A well-known bio-therapist, healer Sergei Gagarin, comments on the latest scientific discovery . .

"The Slavs used to wear wedding rings for not more than four hours a day. Their sexual powers were rather strong, which can be seen in ancient Slavic tales. Slavic families traditionally had a lot of children."

He goes on to say . .

"If a man takes his wedding ring off periodically, the positive effect of the energy current on the sexual sphere manifests itself explicitly. However, if a man wears the ring all the time, the situation may change for the worse. . . On the whole, one may come to the following conclusion: those who do not wear wedding rings 24/7 may have a lot fewer problems in their sex lives."

Adapted from Pravda online, October 10, 2005.

Swiping Condoleeza

Political toilet paper will soon be launched in the Ukraine. The new paper has printed portraits of famous international political figures.

U.S. president George W. Bush, Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, and British PM Tony Blair are among those who are afforded the honor of being depicted on the paper.

The toilet paper also contains the images of the Russian disgraced businessmen Boris Berezovsky and the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

It is not reported whether the Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko will be portrayed.

The printing house is planning to produce small lots of Political toilet paper; at the moment just 2,000 for the Ukraine. Russia and England have already placed their orders.

The paper will be rather cheap: one or two hryvnias for a roll ($ 0,2-0,4).

The Political toilet paper is printed at the Zhucheng Senke Paper-Making Co.Ltd. plant in China.

Adapted from FunReports.com, October 6, 2005.

The Truth About Quicksand

Although horror films frequently depict victims disappearing in quicksand, the truth is much tamer. People cannot fully sink into this type of soil, and laboratory simulations now bear out this little-known fact.

Quicksand is simply ordinary sand that is so saturated with water that the friction between sand particles is reduced, making them unable to support any weight.

The mixture most frequently appears near the deltas of mighty rivers. It can also form after an earthquake releases water from underground reservoirs. When quicksand causes the collapse of bridges and buildings, it truly can be dangerous, experts say.

The probability that a person will be completely sucked into the sand, on the other hand, is nil.

"The Hollywood version is just incorrect," says Thomas Zimmie, an expert in soil mechanics at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Reported online in Nature magazine, September 28, 2005.

World's Easiest Quiz

1. How long did the Hundred Years War last?
   
2. Which country makes Panama hats?
   
3. From which animal do we get catgut?
   
4. In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
   
5. What is a camel's hair brush made of?
   
6. The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?
   
7. What was King George VI's first name?
   
8. What color is a purple finch?
   
9. Where are Chinese gooseberries from?
   
10. What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane?
    

1. 116 years.
   
2. Ecuador.
   
3. sheep and horses.
   
4. November.
   
5. squirrel fur.
   
6. dogs.
   
7. Albert.
   
8. crimson.
   
9. New Zealand.
   
10. orange.
    

He Taught Them Well

When a masked man attacked them inside their bedroom in the middle of the night Sunday, twin 10-year-old girls responded just as they had been taught in their martial arts class: they fought back.

The commotion woke their parents, who rushed in and thought they recognized the tall, pony-tailed intruder. The girls' father whacked him with the base of a table lamp and yanked off part of his mask. As the intruder ran from the Vienna townhouse, the parents were pretty sure it was "Andy," an instructor at Mountain Kim Martial Arts studio in Vienna, where their daughters take classes every week.

Hours later, Andrew Jacobs, 42, a part-time instructor at the studio who holds a black belt, was arrested at the brick house he shares with his sister, not far from the girls' home. Yesterday, he appeared in court, with a black eye and bruises on his face, on charges of assault, attempted abduction and burglary. A judge ordered him held without bond.

SOURCE: Washington Post, October 4, 2005.

1-Step Program

MOSCOW -- In the last 20 years, hundreds of thousands of people in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union have been "coded" against the desire to drink. "Coding" involves the manipulation of the alcoholic's psyche--often with the help of hypnosis--to create the belief that alcohol equals death.

Alcohol abuse, marked by binge drinking, has soared to all-time highs in Russia. More than 50,000 people die annually from alcohol poisoning, compared with about 400 annually in the United States. It is not unusual for Russians to consume one or more bottles of vodka at a single sitting.

For many Russians, the only available treatment is "coding", created by a Soviet psychiatrist, Alexander Dovzhenko, who assumed cult-like status in the treatment of alcoholism.

"The Dovzhenko method is basically a form of hypnosis: You drink, you die," said Andrei Yermoshin, a private psychotherapist who no longer uses the method, preferring long-term therapy. "It's fast and cheap, and supposedly you don't have a problem for a year or two years or five years, depending on how long you have been coded for."

Bad Memories

Britney Spears is having a boy. Her husband, former backup dancer Kevin Federline, likes the name "Vegas", but Britney--who is due in October--favors the names "London", "Preston", or even "London Preston". "Vegas", a friend told Star, brings back "too many bad memories of Kevin's party days there," not to mention her own ill-fated 55-hour Vegas marriage.

Brand Loyalty

Gauloise Brune, once famously smoked by the likes of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and novelist Albert Camus, moved its factory from Lille, France to the Spanish coastal town of Alicante. French smokers are beginning to turn to light cigarettes, while Gauloise is known for its strong, almost bitter flavor. The conservate daily Le Figaro lamented "the end of one of our greatest symobls of national identity."

Enough Is Enough

The family of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Argentine-born Marxist, plans to launch a series of lawsuits to regain control of his image. Executed in 1967 in Bolivia, eight years after helping Fidel Castrol seize power in Cuba, today his image can be found on posters, Swatch watches, Zippo lighters, and even Brazilian lingerie.

Prima Donnas

"So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway," former first lady Barbara Bush said, "so this is working very well for them."

"We've got four houses, but in every one of them I end up sleeping in the cleaning cupboard or the corridors" confesses Madonna's husband Guy Ritchie, whose celebrity wife kicks him out of bed virtually every night because of his loud snoring.

Only In America

A mayoral candidate in Durham, N.C., is wooing young voters on the strength of her "hip-hop agenda." Jackie Wagstaff, 46, a member of Durham's school board, has taken to calling herself "J-Dub" and wearing orange Chuck Taylor sneakers to campaign rallies. If elected, Wagstaff promises to consult regularly with a "hip-Hop cabinet" of gang members and troubled teenagers. "Until we start to listen to them, " Wagstaff said, "all we're going to be doing is beating a dead horse."

American Scene

LOS ANGELES -- A woman is suing ABC's reality television show "Extreme Makeover" for unspecified damages, claiming its decision to cancel her appearance contributed to her sister's suicide.

Deleese Williams, 30, of Conroe, Texas, claims the producers subjected her to needless humiliation and goaded her sister, Kellie McGee, into insulting her appearance.

Miss Williams says a psychologist and numerous doctors told her she needed an "eye life, ears pulled back, chin implant and breast implants."

She also was told she needed dental surgery for a successful "makeover," the lawsuit said.

Just hours before the dental surgery was to take place, Miss Williams was told she was being dropped from the show because the recovery time wouldn't fit into the schedule, the lawsuit said.

Miss Williams said she returned to Texas devastated.  Four months later, her sister killed herself.

The Washington Times, Thursday, September 22, 2005.

They Dared Rob the Mob

NEW YORK CITY - In the annals of New York City crime, few undertakings were more ill-advised, foolhardy and just plain dangerous than the one that prosecutors say was chosen by Thomas and Rose Marie Uva, a young married couple from Queens.

The Uvas set out more than a dozen years ago to solve their financial difficulties in a most unusual fashion: walking into mob social clubs with an Uzi submachine gun and separating the Mafiosi within from their ill-gotten gains.

The crime spree was predictably short-lived. They were killed in 1992 in one of the more public executions in the recent history of organized crime in New York. On Christmas Eve, in broad daylight on a busy Queens thoroughfare, they were each shot several times in the head as they sat in a car at a traffic light.

Yesterday F.B.I. agents and police detectives arrested Dominick "Skinny Dom" Pizzonia, silver-haired at 63, and are looking into the role of another Gambino figure, Ronald "Ronnie One Arm" Trucchio. It is believed a third man drove the getaway car.

Federal prosecutors have said in court papers that John A. Gotti once boasted that his group, the Gambino family, was responsible for the hit, not the Bonannos, who had also claimed credit.

One former high-ranking mob figure, who became a government witness several years ago, said

"It's embarrassing if wise guys get held up."

Adapted from an article appearing in the The New York Times, September 23, 2005.

The Japanese Did It

Meteorologist Scott Stevens, a nine-year veteran of KPVI-TV in Pocatello, Idaho, states at his website that Japan's Yakuza mafia used a KGB-made electromagnetic generator to cause Hurricane Katrina to strike America at a most vulnerable point. The artificially-created hurricane was a bid to avenge Japan for the Hiroshima atomic bomb attack, he says, and the technology will be wielded again to hit another U.S. metropolis.

As reported in The Washington Times, September 26, 2005.

"She wants to eat everything and anything."

PLANTATION, Florida -- Veterinarian Jon-Paul Carew had seen strange items in the stomachs of dogs, including kebab skewers and small utensils, but a 13-inch serrated knife in a 6-month-old puppy was a new one. The knife was removed last week from Elsie, whose owner, Jane Scarola, thinks one of her six other dogs somehow got the knife off a counter, then it eventually made its way to the puppy.

As reported in The Washington Times, September 26, 2005.

Lost Tribe Converts

CHURACHANDPUR, India -- Rabbis from Israel have begun converting to orthodox Judaism about 9,000 members of an impoverished tribe here that is thought to be one of the 10 lost tribes of biblical Israel.

Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based group that has been trying to locate descendants of lost Jewish tribes and bring them to Israel, believes that all Chins in Burma, Mizos in Mizoram, and Kukis in Manipur -- three prominent tribes of the region -- are descendants of Menashe, an ancient Jewish leader.

There are up to two million Bnei Menashes in the hilly regions of Burma and northeastern India.

After an Assyrian invasion around 722 B.C., Jewish tradition says, 10 tribes from Israel were enslaved in Assyria. Later the tribes fled Assyria and wandered through Afghanistan, Tibet, and China. Around A.D. 100, one group moved south from China and settled in northeastern India and Burma.

The conversions culminate an almost a decade-long investigation, which included DNA tests.

As reported in The Washington Times, September 26, 2005.

Serious Mental Disorder

Specialists identified symptoms of shopping addiction in the 1990s. This mental and spiritual disorder is common mostly with women. Addiction to shopping has been shaping up as an epidemic lately. Researchers found out that about twenty percent of German women acknowledge their insuperable desire to buy something all the time. The addiction has conquered 40 percent of American women, whereas 52 percent of British females said they found shopping a lot more enjoyable than sex. There is no such statistic data as far as Russian women are concerned, although the passion for shopping has been developing in Russia steadily.

As reported in Pravda online English-version, September 23, 2005.

The Clinton Condom

Participants in one of the most scandalous adulteries in the modern history, ex-US president Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, suddenly became involved in the sexual life of the Chinese.

As China Daily newspaper reports, Chinese company Guangzhou Haojian used their names as trademarks for condoms.

Company’s representative Li Wenhua said that this was the first case of famous names registered as trademarks in China. According to Wenhua, the company does not pay for this as these are “just ordinary Western names” and their usage does not violate intellectual property.

“Clinton” condoms are produced for consumers with income higher than average and cost 29,8 yuan ($3,7) for a 10-pack. “Lewinsky” condoms are aimed at mass consumer. They are sold for 18,8 yuan ($2,3) for a pack.

Each pack contains a package insert with erotic images on one side and an X-rated joke on the other side.

Fun Reports, September 21, 2005.

Are You Obnoxious?

The courteous co-worker will not find himself described in the following statements. How many of them apply to you?

1. You make provocative statements to "foster dialogue" or needle others.
   
2. You often find yourself delivering a discourse consisting solely of buzzwords and catchphrases.
   
3. You make up nicknames for all your co-workers and refer to them only by these names. (e.g. "Good job, Chachi!"; "I'm going to have to disagree with you there, T-bone!")
   
4. Your office is completely decorated with your children's pictures and artwork.
   
5. You have plastered your cubicle with photos of yourself taken with famous people.
   
6. It is your trademark to recite rhyming or other cutesy messages as your voice mail greeting.
   
7. The questions you ask at meetings are preceded by long monologues of your views and accomplishments.
   
8. You routinely eat odoriferous lunches at your desk.
   
9. You bring in dishes that you tried to cook -- but didn't turn out quite right -- as "special treats" for your co-workers.
   
10. People seem tense -- even panic-stricken -- when they see you coming their way.
    
11. Others back away from you as you speak.
    
12. You send flurries of e-mails to the rest of the company telling them what you are doing. (e.g., "If anyone needs me, I'll be in the bathroom.")
    
13. You vigorously chew or pop your gum.
    
14. You wear strong perfume or cologne.
    
15. You assume your co-workers are fascinated by your personal problems and exploits.
    
16. You interrupt others while they are speaking or are deep in conversation.
    
17. You are moody and don't care who knows it.
    
18. You often give others assignments as they're walking out the door for lunch or to catch the train home.
    
19. You borrow staplers, scissors and tape from others' desks and forget to return them.
    
20. Your dialogue with others often end with the other person shouting, "You are so annoying!"
    

Source: http://www.careerbuilder.com/.

History Repeats Itself

In a conversation recorded in the Oval Office on September 10, 1965 at 2:36 in the afternoon, the day after Hurricane Betsy (a Category 4 storm) hit New Orleans, Senator Huey Long of Louisiana started President Lyndon B. Johnson off with a geography lesson:

"Mr. President, aside from the Great Lakes, the biggest lake in America is Lake Pontchartrain.  It is now drained dry.  That Hurricane Betsy picked up the lake and up and put it inside New Orleans and Jefferson parish."

After noting that his own house had been destroyed, he stated that his true concern was . .

". . my people -- oh, they're in tough shape . . If you want to go to Lousiana right now -- you lost that state last year . . . you could save yourself a campaign speech.  Just go there right now and say 'My God, this is horrible!  These federally-constructed levees that Hale Boggs and Russell Long built is the the only thing that saved 5,000 lives!"

When Johnson replied that he "had a hell of a two days" ahead on his schedule, Long went in for the kill:

"If you go there right now, Mr. President, they couldn't beat you if Eisenhower ran!"

President Lyndon Johnson then called his director of emergency planning, Buford Ellington, telling him that the people of Louisiana . .

". . feel like nobody cares about them, and they voted against us, and they feel like they're kind of on the outside." Johnson made clear: "I feel about them like a 17-year-old girl; I want them to know they're loved."

At 5:18 pm Air Force One took off from Andrews Air Force Base.

Upon arrival Johnson shouted his statement, as there was no power for the loudspeakers that had been set up:

"I am here because I wanted to see with my own eyes what the unhappy alliance of wind and water have done to this land and its people."

(adapted from an article appearing in The New York Times, September 24, 2005)

In Line of Fire

BAGHDAD, Sept. 20 -- Nine Americans were killed in insurgent attacks across Iraq in the last two days, military and diplomatic sources said Tuesday.  The dead included an embassy official and three security contractors killed Monday morning in a suicide car bombing in the northern city of Mosul.

Witnesses in Mosul said a lone driver smashed his red sedan into the second vehicle in a convoy of three sport-utility vehicles, triggering a fiery explosion.  Security forces immediately cordoned off the area and administered first aid, but the contractors and an assistant regional security officer, Stephen Eric Sullivan, had died instantly, according to a U.S. official in Baghdad.

Two others riding in the diplomatic convoy, which was leaving a U.S. embassy satellite office, suffered minor injuries.

Sullivan, whose job involved coordinating security and overseeing contractors, was the third American diplomat killed since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.  Diplomatic security agent Edward J. Seitz died in October in a mortar attack on a U.S. base near Baghdad International Airport.  The following month, James Mollen, an American special adviuser to Iraq's Higher Education and Scientific Research Ministry, was shot to death near the capital's fortified Green Zone.

Adapted from a The Washington Post article appearing Wednesday, September 21, 2005.

"23 Skidoo!"

"23 skidoo", sometimes written as "23 skiddoo", is American slang popularized in the early 20th century. First appearing before World War I, it became popular in the Roaring Twenties

It generally refers to leaving quickly. One nuance of the phrase suggests being rushed out by someone else. Another is taking advantage of a propitious opportunity to leave, that is: "getting out while the getting is good."

Webster's New World Dictionary derives skiddoo (with two d's) as likely from skedaddle, meaning "to leave" with a sense of the imperative.

The "23" part of the phrase has a wide diversity of explanations. Among the best . .

1. New York City's Flatiron Building, on 23rd Street, is shaped as a triangle thereby causing frequent winds that would stir ladies' skirts, revealing ankles which, in the early years of the Twentieth Century, were seldom seen in public. Rogues would loiter around the Flatiron Building hoping for glimpses. Local constables, shooing such rogues away, were said to be giving them the 23 Skidoo.
   
2. An early 1900s Death Valley town had 23 saloons (basically tents many of them). A visit to all, going 23 skidoo, meant having a really good time.
   
3. Sydney Carton, the protagonist of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, is the 23rd person sent to the guillotine in a series of executions in a popular stage production of the book.

Wentworth and Flexner (Dictionary of American Slang) describe it as "perhaps the first truly national fad expression and one of the most popular fad expressions to appear in the U.S."

Adapted from Wikipedia.

See also

Unintended Consequence

FOR PAYNE, ALA.  A gas station owner was run over and killed when he tried to stop a driver from leaving without paying for $52 worth of gasoline, police said.

The driver was at large Sunday, and police said the case was being investigated as a robbery-homicide.

Witnesses told police that Husain Caddi, owner of Fort Payne Texaco, "grabbed onto the vehicle" Friday when the driver began to drive off.

Caddi was dragged onto a highway, and was run over by a rear wheel of the thief's sport utility vehicle, police said. (AP)

As reported in Express, August 22, 2005.

In Case the North Invade

SEOUL, South Korea -- A 28-year-old South Korean man died of exhaustion in an Internet cafe after playing computer games nonstop for 49 hours, police said.

The man, identified by police only by his last name, Lee, collapsed Friday after having eaten minimally, shunning sleep and refusing to leave his keyboard while he played the battle simulation game "Starcraft."

Lee was quickly moved to a hospital but died after a few hours from what doctors presume was a heart attack.

Lee had been fired from his job last month because he kept missing work to play computer games, police said.

Computer games are enormously popular in South Korea, home to professional gamers who earn big money through sponsorships and to TV stations devoted to broadcasting matches.

As reported in the Washington Examiner, Tuesday, August 16, 2005.

All In Self Defense

"A man who was convicted of killing the head of a D.C. modeling agency has been sentenced to 48 years in prison.

Markus Johnson, 22, of Southeast was sentenced yesterday on his April conviction for first-degree murder in the death of Michael Myers.

Prosecutors said Johnson attacked Mr. Myers in March 2002 with a knife, a screwdriver, a hacksaw, computer components and a floor buffer.  Investigators think Johnson confronted Mr. Myers because he was frustrated about a lack of modeling jobs.

Johnson reportedly also stole Mr. Myers' wallet and other items from his office.

A jury rejected Johnson's assertions of self-defense."

From The Washington Times, August 5, 2005.

How Russians Think

78% of respondents in a 2003 survey said that democracy is a facade for a government controlled by rich and powerful cliques.  Only 22% expressed a preference for democracy; 53% disliked it.

Asked to choose between "freedom" and "order," 88% went for order.  Only 11% would be unwilling to surrender their freedoms of speech, press, or movement in exchange for stability.  29% were prepared to give up their freedoms for nothing in return, because they attached no value to them.  76% of Russians favor restoring censorship over the mass media. 

Asked in 1999 to list the ten greatest men of all times and nations, respondents named nine Russians.  The only foreigner was Napoleon, perhaps because he was defeated on Russian soil.

The first five people on the list were Peter the Great, Lenin, Pushkin, Stalin, and the astronaut Iurii Gagarin.  As to why they admired Stalin, people answered "He raised the country."  When asked how they would like their country to be perceived by other nations, 48 % said "mighty, unbeatable, indestructible, a great world power."

74% of Russians regret the Soviet Union's passing.  Only 12% regard the post-communist regime as "legitimate".  In an October 2003 survey they were asked how they would react to a Communist coup:  23% would actively support it, 19 would collaborate, only 10% would actively resist.

(taken from "Flight from Freedom:  What Russians Think and Want" by Richard Pipes, published in the May/June 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs)