Bat Mystery

USGS: "A previously undescribed, cold-loving fungus has been linked to white-nose syndrome, a condition associated with the deaths of over 100,000 hibernating bats in the northeastern United States."

Previous: Bat Deaths

Prostitution

Jesse McKinley of the New York Times has more than the bare facts about San Francisco's Proposition K.

Gangster Squad

Gangster Squad - Last of 7 Parts by Paul Lieberman of the L.A. Times

Previous: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Red Square

RIA Novosti: "A group of Muscovite explorers have warned that Red Square and the Kremlin could sink into the earth due to large underground cracks, Russian media reported on Friday."

Heat

RIA Novosti: "Three police officers in the Russian Volga city of Saratov have admitted to burning an Armenian national alive, local media said on Friday."

Never Love a Stranger

RIA Novosti: "A young woman in Russia's East Siberian republic of Yakutsk beat a stranger to death while her friend filmed the scene on a mobile phone, investigators said on Friday."

Cheese

RIA Novosti: "Police in Moscow are looking for three men who stole 20 tons of Belarusian cheese from a lorry driver, a police source said on Friday."

Lawless Men

Business news from Somalia:

"All you need is three guys and a little boat, and the next day you’re millionaires," Abdullahi Omar Qawden said.

Previous: Success

Gangster Squad

Gangster Squad - Part 6 by Paul Lieberman, Los Angeles Times

Related: LAPD's bug man

Previous: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Villains

University of Warwick: "Professor Richard J. Aldrich, Professor of International Security at University of Warwick, says that the once improbable-seeming villains in the Bond movies have become close to the real threats faced by modern security services."

Phoenicians

Press release from the National Geographic Society: "As many as one in 17 men in the Mediterranean basin may have a Phoenician as a direct male-line ancestor."

Fortified Settlement

"Archaeologists are unearthing a city overlooking the Valley of Elah that could reshape views of the controversial period when David ruled over the Israelites," reports Ethan Bronner of the New York Times.

Who Marries Roger Rabbit?

A man initiated a campaign to allow marriages between humans and cartoon characters.

Mumbo Jumbo

RIA Novosti:

High priests from around the globe are reported to have taken part in rituals and prayers in an effort to help U.S. Democratic party candidate Barack Obama become president in November.

In Peru around 11 high priests gathered from around the world burning "magical incense" and waving a sacred skull around Obama's portrait to summon up mystical strength prior to the polls set for November 4.

However, the effectiveness of the ritual may have been diluted somewhat, when it turned out that two of the priests supported Obama's rival Republican, Senator John McCain, and had placed his photographed alongside the presidential favorite.

Priests in New Delhi in India have also danced around a fire chanting in support of Obama.

Gangster Squad

Gangster Squad - Part 5 by Paul Lieberman, Los Angeles Times

Related: Jack Webb, Black Dahlia

Previous: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

A Life in Pieces

Via ABC Online, Australia: "An Indonesian woman has been arrested on suspicion of killing and mutilating her husband before dumping his dismembered and headless body on a public bus, police said."

Pirates

News from Voice of America: "Spain's Defense Ministry says one of its patrol planes has helped prevent a hijacking in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia."

Related: Commercial vessels repelled five pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden yesterday.

Tsunamis

Vince Stricherz at the University of Washington: "A quarter-million people were killed when a tsunami inundated Indian Ocean coastlines the day after Christmas in 2004. Now scientists have found evidence that the event was not a first-time occurrence."

Personal Question

"I read your blog every day," a readers said in an email. "Are you like Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark?"

"No," I replied. "I'm more like Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair."

1918

John Hayes-Fisher at the BBC: "In the closing minutes of World War I, the ceasefire within touching distance, a handful of troops died. As the 90th anniversary of the Armistice approaches, who were these men?"

Political Pins

RIA Novosti: "A court in Paris rejected on Wednesday an appeal by French President Nicolas Sarkozy demanding voodoo dolls bearing his likeness be withdrawn from sale, the France-Info radio station said."

Previous: Voodoo Dolls

Islamabad

"The authorities in Pakistan's capital Islamabad have launched a major cull of wild boars after they broke into a high-security zone," says Aijaz Maher of BBC News.

Sense of Smell

From the University of Calgary: "Although we know quite a bit about the lifestyle of dinosaurs — where they lived, what they ate, how they walked — not much was known about their sense of smell, until now."

Bail Jumper

Amitabha Bhattasali of BBC News: "A Czech man who was sentenced to three years imprisonment by an Indian court for collecting rare insects has fled the country after jumping bail."

Rockets

Headline at RIA Novosti: "Chinese farmers use rockets to scare fruit-eating monkeys."

Used Wife

Another headline at RIA Novosti: "Romanian man advertises wife for sale on used-car Web site."

Gangster Squad

Gangster Squad - Part 4 by Paul Lieberman, Los Angeles Times

Previous: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Egyptian Girl

An Egyptian girl reportedly survived without food or water for more than a year.

Fight Back

RIA Novosti:

Egypt's Al-Azhar University, a major Sunni scientific and cultural organization, has issued a religious decree which says women can hit their husbands in self-defense, national media said on Tuesday.

"A wife has the legitimate right to hit her husband to protect herself," Sheikh Abdel Hamid al-Atrash, who heads the university, said, adding that everyone has the right to self-defense as "men and women are equal before God."

Fethullah Gulen, a prominent Turkish Islamic scholar, said that a woman should counter violence with violence, and could even learn martial arts to defend herself from a violent husband.

The Color Red

University of Rochester:

A groundbreaking study by two University of Rochester psychologists to be published online Oct. 28 by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology adds color — literally and figuratively — to the age-old question of what attracts men to women.

Through five psychological experiments, Andrew Elliot, professor of psychology, and Daniela Niesta, post-doctoral researcher, demonstrate that the color red makes men feel more amorous toward women. And men are unaware of the role the color plays in their attraction.

Most magazine editors and advertising executives know about the power of the color red.

Success

Piracy is a shortcut to success in Somalia. Robyn Hunter of the BBC:

According to residents in the Somali region of Puntland where most of the pirates come from, they live a lavish life.

"They have money; they have power and they are getting stronger by the day," says Abdi Farah Juha who lives in the regional capital, Garowe.

"They wed the most beautiful girls; they are building big houses; they have new cars; new guns," he says.

Love and Murder

RIA Novosti:

A man in south Russia's Astrakhan Region has pleaded guilty to killing his friend after falling in love with an investigator, a spokesman for the Investigative Committee said on Tuesday.

Vyacheslav Grigoryev, 32, was suspected of murdering Yury Kamagin, 31, who went missing in February after they drank alcohol together. Kamagin's body was later discovered in a river.

However, Grigoryev refused to plead guilty at first and there was not enough evidence to convict him, the spokesman said.

The criminal probe was led by 27-year-old investigator Regina Pak, who decided to prove that Grigoryev was guilty by collecting new evidence. Two months later, however, the man came to the investigative department where he "fell on his knees and said he was in love with her," the spokesman said.

He then "confessed to the crime, describing all the details of the murder and showed where he had hidden the corpse," the spokesman added. Grigoryev said he strangled his friend during a quarrel and hid his body in the river.

Grigoryev said in court he admitted his crime in order not to "ruin the beloved investigator's career with an unsolved case."

Early Dogs

Here's some information about Paleolithic dogs.

Adulteress

BBC News: "A woman in Somalia has been stoned to death after an Islamic Sharia law court found her guilty of adultery."

Gangster Squad

Gangster Squad - Part 3 by Paul Lieberman, Los Angeles Times

Related: Mobster in pink pajamas

Previous: Part 1, Part 2

French Train

"A passenger on a French train had to be rescued by firemen after having his arm sucked down the onboard toilet," the BBC reports.

Copper

Inga Kiderra at UC San Diego:

Did the Bible’s King David and his son Solomon control the copper industry in present-day southern Jordan? Though that remains an open question, the possibility is raised once again by research reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Read more.

Tall Friends

In the mid-1970s a free-roaming giraffe by the name of Rodney had the ability to recognize my car. He walked over to spend time with me whenever he saw my vehicle. Voice of America has a story about another friendly giraffe, Duse.

Swingers

BBC News: "Egyptian police have arrested a senior civil servant and his wife accusing them of swapping sex partners with other couples, local media reports say."

Death of a Mystery Writer

Author Tony Hillerman died.

Ritual Killings in Russia?

RIA Novosti:

Two 18-year-old female students were found dead near a cemetery in the Russian Urals city of Ufa on Monday, a spokesman for the regional investigative committee said.

"Two girls, second year university students, were found killed near an old cemetery in Ufa. Their bodies contained multiple wounds inflicted with an unknown object," the spokesman said.

Ufa is the capital of Russia's republic of Bashkortostan, in the southwest Urals.

He added that investigators had not ruled out ritual murder.

Poacher

WWF:

A five-year jail sentence for a notorious elephant poacher could provide a lifeline for wildlife in and around an African rain forest that survived the Ice Age.

The recent court judgment was passed in Mundemba, the nearest town to Africa’s oldest and most diverse rain forest, the Korup National Park in southwest Cameroon.

The case arose after security agents raided the hideout of poacher Akah Job who was found to have killed eight elephants.

007

Official Russian news agency RIA Novosti:

A Russian Communist group has attacked the newest Bond girl, Olga Kurylenko, for her "moral and intellectual betrayal" in starring in a film about the "enemy of the Soviet people."

Ukrainian-born Kurylenko, 28, stars in the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, alongside English actor Daniel Craig.

Web site: Quantum of Solace

Fire

Hebrew University of Jerusalem:

The ability to make fire millennia ago was likely a key factor in the migration of prehistoric hominids from Africa into Eurasia, a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute of Archaeology believes on the basis of findings at the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov archaeological site in Israel.

Earlier excavations there, carried out under the direction of Prof. Naama Goren-Inbar of the Institute of Archaeology, showed that the occupants of the site — who are identified as being part of the Acheulian culture that arose in Africa about 1.6 million years ago — had mastered fire-making ability as long as 790,000 years ago. This revelation pushed back previously accepted dates for man’s fire-making ability by a half-million years.

Breakfast

ABC Online, Australia posted an article about breakfast in the olden days.

Young Bride

A Muslim cleric married a 12-year-old girl in Indonesia.

Gangster Squad

Gangster Squad - Part 2 by Paul Lieberman, Los Angeles Times

Previous: Part 1

Spots

On Scotland's Isle of Skye, a leopard man left his life in the wild for the comfort of a one-bedroom house.

Kayaking with Killers

John Flinn of the San Francisco Chronicle:

So it turns out "killer whale" is actually the more polite of the two names commonly given to the five tons of muscle, blubber and teeth torpedoing straight for my kayak.

Its more scientific-sounding name, orca, is short for Orcinus orca, Latin for "demon from hell."

Continue reading "Among the Orcas."

Gangster Squad

The Los Angeles Times launches a seven-part series about L.A. cops and mobsters in the 1940s and 1950s.

Stories

Read online: The Trembling of a Leaf by W. Somerset Maugham.

Colleen

Ireland, 1890s
Photochrom by Detroit Photographic Co.

Ethiopian Folktale

Many Ethiopian women like this folktale:

Abegaz and the Lion
(as retold by Shannon Valencia)

Long ago there lived a young man named Abegaz. He was very, very lonely. Abegaz woke one morning and realized that he could delay the matter no longer. He wanted a wife. Since there were no young women of marriageable age in his village, Abegaz decided to visit a village across the mountainside. Packing up his donkey, he set off in search of a bride.

As Abegaz approached the mountain, he heard the roar of a mighty lioness. Immediately, he jumped off the donkey and ran as fast as he could. Soon, he found himself on the other side of the mountain, with his scared little donkey trailing him. Out of breath, he sat down on a rock that overlooked a peaceful green pasture where sheep were grazing. There, in the middle of the pasture, was a lovely shepherd girl. Abegaz knew instantly that this was the woman he should wed. After introducing himself to her, he asked to meet her father. Within a week, Abegaz was married to the shepherd girl, whose name was Meseletch.

When Abegaz brought his wife home, he was very pleased. No more threadbare pants, no more dirty dishes to wash. Meseletch was as useful as she was beautiful, and Abegaz grew fatter and more content each day.

One day, however, after some years, Abegaz arrived home and Meseletch started to scream. He tried to calm her, but she wouldn't stop. "Be quiet," he said, as he put his hand over her mouth. But Meseletch persisted throughout the night, screaming "Aaagh!" in a high-pitched voice. When the sun rose the next morning, Meseletch's screams had not quieted. Abegaz knew he had to find a cure quickly, so he hastened to the house of the healer.

"Something is wrong with my wife," he told the healer. "She won't stop screaming. Can you give me some medicine to quiet her?"

"I can help you," said the healer. "But first I need a special ingredient. I don't have any lion's hair left. If you'd like me to make the medicine to cure your wife, you will need to climb the mountain, find the lion, and bring me back a single hair from her tail."

Abegaz did not relish the idea of meeting the lion. But he could not bear to go home to his screaming wife. Thanking the healer, he set off for the mountain that he had climbed some years before.

From the foot of the mountain, Abegaz could hear the lion's roars, but he walked steadily in its direction. At last he spotted the lion and, crouching down low, came within 10 yards of her. For many hours, Abegaz watched in silence as the lion chased monkeys from the trees. As he was about to leave, he took a jar of milk from his satchel and placed it in a clearing for the lion.

The next day, Abegaz climbed the mountain once more. This time Abegaz came within a few feet of the lion. Once again he hid behind a tree, watching as the lion closed her eyes and fell asleep. As he left, he took fruit and cheese from his satchel and placed it at the sleeping lion's feet.

On the third day, Abegaz ran up the mountain, carrying a kilo of raw meat. When the lion roared, he said, "Good morning!" and held out his hands to feed her the meat. From that day, Abegaz and the lion became good friends. He brushed the lion's tan coat, helped her chase monkeys, and lay down beside her for afternoon naps.

"May I please take a hair from your tail?" Abegaz asked one day. "My wife needs it."

The lion graciously agreed and plucked a thick hair from her tail.

"Thank you!" Abegaz called, as he ran down the mountain.

"My pleasure," roared the lion.

With the hair in hand, Abegaz knocked on the door of the healer. "I have it," Abegaz said. "I have the hair from the lion's tail." Abegaz told the healer of his friendship with the lion. Then Abegaz asked, "What must I do now?"

The healer smiled and shook his head, saying, "Abegaz, Abegaz. You have become friends with a lioness, but you still have not made friends with your wife? Who is a better friend, a lion or a wife? Now go home and treat your wife better than that lion."

(Editor's note: Shannon Valencia was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia, 1997–1999. She heard the story from a friend.)

Executions

From Angelika Franz at Spiegel Online: "Some contemporary German backyards served as gallows sites hundreds of years ago."

Libraries

Michael Sontheimer of Der Spiegel: "Hundreds of thousands of books stolen by the Nazis are still in German libraries."

Big Teeth

Natural History Museum in London: "A tiny dinosaur with big canine teeth shows for the first time how one of the earliest dinosaurs grew into an adult."

Malay Magic

Read online: Sir Richard Olaf Winstedt's book Shaman, Saiva and Sufi: A Study of the Evolution of Malay Magic.

Deadly Snake

A 13-foot python apparently strangled a 25-year-old woman at a home in Virginia.

Smithsonian Magazine

The November issue of Smithsonian magazine is up!

German Samurai

"A retiree who says he once drove a car for Communist leader Erich Honecker is a suspect in a samurai sword attack in Berlin," Spiegel Online says.

Homestead

RIA Novosti: "Archaeologists in northern Greece have discovered a farmhouse thought to date back 6,000 years containing crockery and wood-fired ovens, the country's Culture Ministry said on Thursday."

French Navy

The French Navy nabbed nine suspected pirates off the Somali coast.

Christmas Shopping

Michael Buchanan of BBC News: "British consumers are being warned they could face shortages of everything from clothes to fuel unless effective action is taken to stop pirates hijacking ships off the coast of Somalia."

Feathers

London's Natural History Museum: "A fossil of a ‘bizarre’ feathered dinosaur giving clues to how birds evolved from dinosaurs has been discovered, the journal Nature reports today."

Lost World

Read online: The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Hired Guns

Alisha Ryu at Voice of America:

Earlier this month, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution calling for states to deploy naval vessels and military aircraft to fight out-of-control piracy off the coast of Somalia.

Several NATO members answered the call, dispatching frigates and destroyers to the region as part of a special antipiracy task force focused on escorting World Food Program ships delivering aid to Somalia.

The NATO group joins allied naval vessels from the Djibouti-based Combined Task Force 150, which recently created a maritime security patrol area in the Gulf of Aden to provide a safe shipping lane for about 200 vessels traveling through it every day.

Chris Trelawny at the International Maritime Organization, the U.N. agency that oversees maritime security, said the industry is relieved to know that a multi-national military effort is under way to try to tackle the piracy problem in the Horn of African region.

"We would very much expect the presence of NATO and other warships will actively prevent further attacks from occurring," he said. "But really we see the navies there as a stop-gap measure, if you like, keeping a lid on it until such time as the political situation can be sorted out by wider action through the United Nations and the African Union. "

Late last month, the hijacking of a Ukrainian freighter loaded with tanks and heavy weapons off the eastern coast of Somalia made global headlines after pirates demanded an unprecedented $20 million ransom for the release of the ship and its crew.

The director of the International Maritime Bureau in London, Pottengal Mukundan, says the capture of MV Faina demonstrated that Somali pirates now have the resources, the experience, and the weapons they need to carry out sophisticated hijackings.

Mukundan said in the past two months, pirates have attacked some of the biggest ships plying the high seas, including supertankers carrying oil and gas.

He added, "They certainly seem to be going for large vessels. They think they may get higher ransoms as a result, and if they do take a vessel carrying oil or chemical cargo, then there is always a risk that the cargo may not be looked after, which may cause an accident with all the environmental consequences."

About 30 ships have been captured this year, mostly in the Gulf of Aden, which provides the shortest maritime route from the Far East to Europe and is vital to global commerce. Pirates have released about 20 vessels after the payment of ransoms that have averaged one- to $2 million per ship.

Attacks are usually conducted from several small speedboats, each carrying three-to-five pirates, armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. The latest maritime report says the number of speedboats involved in each incident is increasing, as are the number of so-called mother ships, which act as launching pads for the attacks.

The deteriorating security situation in the region has opened a window of opportunity for private security firms to offer anti-piracy services to ship owners.

Blackwater, a U.S.-based firm whose security guards were accused of killing 17 civilians last year during a shoot-out in Iraq, announced that it has sent a private military ship to the Gulf of Aden this week to assist the commercial shipping industry.

John Harris, who heads a company called HollowPoint Protective Services in the United States, said shipowners are seeking help from private security firms.

A few weeks ago, the American commander of the Combined Maritime Forces and his British deputy suggested shippers consider hiring private armed security escorts because the coalition lacked the resources to give round-the-clock protection to all merchant vessels in the region.

Harris said, "All these different governments putting their ships in there is really a good thing. But what my company can do — we put people who specialize in this field aboard these vessels and give them one-on-one protection as they go through hostile waters. We only respond to attacks on vessels we protect."

But Pottengal Mukundan at the International Maritime Bureau said there are serious legal issues to consider if armed guards are to be put on board commercial ships.

"Flagged states do not usually permit armed guards on their merchant vessels and also the fact that these vessels may be going through coastal waters of nations whose own laws may prohibit unlicensed armed guards operating. And all this could cause complications, particularly if there is death or injury. This is exactly why these legal issues need to be resolved before going down this path."

Private security firms argue that they are filling a security gap that foreign navies are unable to address. The United Nations has yet to give foreign navies guidelines on what they can and cannot do to stop acts of piracy and what to do with pirates if they are caught.

Recently, the Danish navy seized 10 suspected pirates, but had to set them free on Somali soil because the legal conditions surrounding their detention were not clear.

The Marine Director for the London-based International Chamber of Shipping, Peter Hinchliffe, said despite the limitations foreign navies face, shipowners should not hire private guards.

"Companies that are in the business of providing private security, of course, one would expect to offer those services. That is fine," he said. "But I think what navies are forgetting, and perhaps governments are forgetting as well, is that we are not talking about the protection of an individual ship in a piece of water. What we are talking about is the fundamental obligation of nations to provide safe passage for world trade. So, therefore, it is totally unsatisfactory for naval authorities to try to devolve that responsibility to innocent merchant ships."

Hinchliffe said he and many others in the industry believe that the presence of more warships, a clear set of legal rules, and more aggressive rules of engagement to deal with pirates will reduce the number of attacks and discourage piracy in the future.

Witchcraft in Kenya

Gwen Thompkins of NPR:

In May, 11 people died in a "witch" burning in southwestern Kenya, but questions linger over whether neighbors in that particular region of Kenya believed the people killed were witches.

Previous: Arrests

Wolves

"Residents of the Lausitz region of eastern Germany are growing increasingly fearful of wolves," Steffen Winter of Der Spiegel says.

Archaeology

News from Press TV in Iran:

• Russians the first potters on earth?
• Ancient Isis temple found in Bulgaria
• Peru discovers 3,000-year-old temples

Luxury Hotels

RIA Novosti:

Authorities in Cairo plan to restore historical buildings in the Egyptian capital and turn them into luxury hotels, the Al-Ahram newspaper said on Wednesday.

Officials and academics believe the move could rescue several historical buildings. The plan concerns primarily Egyptian roadside inns, called caravanserais, located in the Islamic part of Cairo.

Traders, pilgrims and other travelers have stayed at these inns, located along famous caravan routes in the Middle East, for centuries, and they have become a feature of pre-Muslim and Muslim architecture.

Talking Goat

During a meeting in rural Liberia, the chief of a village told the story of the "The Talking Goat."

John Acree, U.S. Peace Corps volunteer, Liberia (1983–1985), put the African folktale on paper:

Once there was a rich man named Tugba, who dressed in fine and fashionable robes. Every day he strolled through the village, arm-in-arm with his elegant wife. The villagers held their breath as the two passed: Never before had they seen such a handsome couple.

But Tugba wasn't admired only for his good looks and pretty wife. Farmers would travel many miles to Tugba's village just to catch a glimpse of his fields. Tugba's corn was more golden, his tomatoes more plump, and his cassava more abundant than any in the land. His animals, too, were fat and strong. He had two cows, five chickens, two roosters, three donkeys, and four goats.

Now Tugba's fortune wasn't just a matter of luck. He was a good and hard-working man who always remembered to thank the seeds for growing and the sky for raining. And Tugba took extra care to ensure that his animals were well fed and content. He kept his eye on one goat in particular, and always brought a special bundle of hay for her to chew on. This goat was Tugba's favorite. He had found her when she was just a kid, lost and wounded in the jungle.

One year, little rain fell. Throughout the land, crops wilted and animals died of thirst. Tugba's fields alone remained fertile. But Tugba no longer strolled through the village each day, since the villagers now rushed upon him, begging for food. Although Tugba always gave the villagers whatever cassava or corn he could spare, his wife was not so generous. Angered by his inability to say "no" to the villagers' pleas, she left Tugba, taking with her all the gold she could carry.

Meanwhile the hungry villagers devoured Tugba's crops and, one-by-one, they ate his animals, too.

Except for his favorite goat. Tugba refused to let the villagers eat the goat that he had found in the jungle many years before.

One day, when his fields were completely wasted and his stockroom empty, Tugba threw a cloak across his shoulders and walked out of his house. With only his favorite goat as a companion, Tugba left the village and journeyed into the jungle.

After traveling many miles, Tugba and the goat found a home for themselves inside a cave. During the day, Tugba gathered berries and nuts for the two to eat; at nightfall, he would lie beside a mountain stream, staring up at the sky to admire the stars.

Seven years passed. From time to time, Tugba would remember the life he had known in the village. Once he wore elegant robes; now he wore a rotting sheepskin. Once he slept each night with his beautiful wife at his side; now his only companion was a goat. Once he harvested the most delicious crops in the land; now he survived on little more than nuts. Still Tugba remained a good and hard-working man, who always made sure that his favorite goat had the choicest leaves to chew on.

One day, as he was gathering nuts, the goat spoke. "Thank you for saving me, Tugba," said the goat in a deep voice. "You are a good man."

Tugba turned around in surprise. Even in the jungle, goats didn't talk. "Did you just say something?" Tugba asked the goat.

"I said that you are a good man," the goat repeated. "And I thanked you for saving me."

"But a goat ... talking?" Tugba asked incredulously.

"It is so," the goat replied calmly. "Again, thank you." With this, the goat turned her attention to a pile of leaves.

Tugba could not contain his excitement. "My luck is changing!" he shouted as he danced through the jungle. "A talking goat!" he laughed.

Sitting down next to a tree, he sketched out a plan. "If I take the goat to the village, I will be rich again," he reasoned."The villagers will certainly pay to hear my goat talk. Soon I will have enough money to buy a house and field once more."

The next morning, Tugba tied the talking goat to a tree and hastened to the village that he had left behind seven years before.

When Tugba arrived in the village square, he discovered that all of the villagers he had once known had died in the drought. A different tribe had settled there — none of whom remembered hearing any stories about a rich man named Tugba. Although disappointed that no memory of him had survived, Tugba remained in good humor and asked to speak with the village chief and elders.

Within the hour, the chief and elders, dressed in richly textured ceremonial robes, entered the village square to greet the stranger. Overlooking the rotted sheepskin draped across his waist, the elders offered Tugba a cool drink of water. As soon as Tugba finished the water, he joyfully announced, "My goat can talk!"

The chief and the village elders listened carefully as Tugba told them of his talking goat, and his seven years in the jungle. When Tugba finished, the chief deliberated with the elders for a few moments. Then, he stood up to deliver his verdict.

"If your story is true, this is a great fortune," said the chief. "But if it is not true, you have wasted our time and have made us fools for listening to you." The village elders nodded in agreement.

"If your goat can talk," the chief continued, "we will give you half of everything in the village. If your story is false, we will arrest you, tie you, and beat you until you are dead." Looking Tugba in the eyes, the chief announced, "Bring your goat to the square!"

Tugba promptly returned to the jungle and, as quickly as could, ran back to the village center, carrying the talking goat in his arms. The entire village was waiting for him.

"Speak to them, sweet goat," Tugba urged. But the goat was silent. The chief and elders raised their brows skeptically.

"Please, goat, speak!" Tugba asked again. The goat, however, was busy chewing on the chief's robe.

Tearing his robe from the goat's teeth, the chief roared, "You have made us all fools for listening to your story. Now you must die."

Immediately, the elders tied Tugba's arms and feet, and beat him with a whip. They then dragged his body up a mountain where a large tree grew. Along the way, everyone who saw him spit at him and threw stones. But just before they were about to tie a lasso around Tugba's head and hang him from the tree, the goat ran up the mountain and, at the foot of the tree, said in a loud and clear voice, "You must not kill him. Let him go."

The villagers were stunned. It was true! The goat could talk.

The elders released Tugba, and carried him back to the village center. There, the chief lay a carpet on the ground for Tugba to rest on, and ordered the women to attend to Tugba's bloody wounds.

"Gather up half the goods in the village," the chief further declared, "and bring them here as an offering to Tugba."

As Tugba lay on a carpet, he fell into a dazed sleep. When he finally opened his eyes, the goat was standing beside him, watching him.

"How could you act that way?" Tugba said to the goat as he slowly rose to his feet. "Look at me. They beat me. They almost killed me. What took you so long to speak?"

"What you do not suffer for," the goat replied, "you do not enjoy."

Protest in Orissa

Survival International:

Hundreds of members of the Dongria Kondh tribe danced and sang through the capital of the Indian state of Orissa on Monday, armed with traditional weapons, to mark their opposition to British company Vedanta’s plans to mine their sacred mountain.

Previous: Sacred Site

Joseph Conrad

Read online: Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Pirates

Memo to Admiral Mark P. Fitzgerald:

I want results, not excuses.

Brown Bear

A brown bear mauled a villager in Siberia.

Pirate News

"Security forces in northern Somalia have raided and freed an Indian ship hijacked by pirates, capturing four of the hijackers in a gun battle," says Peter Greste of BBC News.

Business Heritage

In the 19th century, Australian Aborigines held Arthur Savage captive for a year.

Stanley and Livingstone

Read online: How I Found Livingstone by Henry M. Stanley.

Heads Are Gonna Roll

BBC News: "The severed heads of four men have been delivered by a courier service to a police station in northern Mexico, according to the local authorities."

Voodoo Dolls

RIA Novosti: "French President Nicolas Sarkozy wants voodoo dolls bearing his likeness to be withdrawn from sale, the Le Monde paper quoted his lawyer as saying on Tuesday."

Annapolis, Maryland

University of Maryland:

University of Maryland archaeologists have dug up what they believe to be one of the earliest U.S. examples of African spirit practices. The researchers say it's the only object of its kind ever found by archaeologists in North America — a clay "bundle" filled with small pieces of common metal, placed in what had been an Annapolis street gutter three centuries ago.

The bundle appears to be a direct transplant of African religion, distinct from hoodoo and other later practices blending African and European traditions.

"This is a remarkably early piece, far different from anything I've seen before in North America," says University of Maryland anthropologist Mark Leone, who directs the Archaeology in Annapolis project.

Child

Assailants murdered a 9-year-old albino girl in Tanzania.

Battle of the Alamo

John Henry Brown, History of Texas from 1685 to 1892:

At dawn on the first of March [1836], Capt. Albert Martin, with 32 men (himself included) from Gonzales and DeWitt's Colony, passed the lines of Santa Anna and entered the walls of the Alamo, never more to leave them. These men, chiefly husbands and fathers, owning their own homes, voluntarily organized and passed through the lines of an enemy four to six thousand strong, to join 150 of their countrymen and neighbors, in a fortress doomed to destruction. Does American history, or any history, ancient or modern, furnish a parallel to such heroism?

Related: Reinforcements for John and Sarah

Night of Broken Glass

An Israeli journalist may have found wreckage from Kristallnacht.

Cannibal Chef

The BBC has a report about the violent past of Britain's cannibal chef.

Previous: British Chef

Footprints

Via ABC Online, Australia: "A team of Japanese adventurers say they have discovered footprints they believe were made by the legendary yeti said to roam the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet."

Dinosaur Dance Floor

University of Utah:

University of Utah geologists identified an amazing concentration of dinosaur footprints that they call "a dinosaur dance floor," located in a wilderness on the Arizona-Utah border where there was a sandy desert oasis 190 million years ago.

The three-quarter-acre site — which includes rare dinosaur tail-drag marks — provides more evidence there were wet intervals during the Early Jurassic Period, when the U.S. Southwest was covered with a field of sand dunes larger than the Sahara Desert.

X-Files

BBC News:

A passenger jet bound for Heathrow Airport had a near miss with a UFO, Ministry of Defence files reveal.

The captain of the Alitalia airliner shouted "Look out" to his co-pilot at the sight of a brown missile-shaped object shooting past them overhead.

Civil Aviation Authority and military investigations could not explain the 1991 incident near Lydd in Kent.

Little Bighorn

Here is a 1991 article about ghosts along the Little Bighorn.

El Degüello

Subject: Battle for the White House, 2008

Colin Powell deserted the GOP today. Let the Democrats blow their bugles. I'm stickin' with John McCain Bowie and Sarah Palin Crockett.

Business Heritage

According to old-timers, gunfighter Clay Allison danced naked on the bar at the St. James Hotel in Cimarron, New Mexico.

Related: St. James Ghosts

Good Day at Black Rock

Simon Worrall of the BBC wrote a feature story about the discovery of the Belitung Shipwreck.

Pink Panthers

Interpol news release: "Two men suspected of being members of a gang believed responsible for a series of worldwide jewelry robberies worth over 100 million EUR have been arrested in Monaco after a police officer identified them from a photo circulated by Interpol."

Headless Stalker

A 35-year-old woman used a sickle to chop off the head of a sex pest in India.

Searching for Genghis Khan

Researchers hope to find the hidden tomb of Genghis Khan.

Italy

News fron the BBC: "The tomb of a general thought to have been an inspiration for the main character in the Oscar-winning film Gladiator has been unearthed in Rome."

Caligula

RIA Novosti: "Archeologists in Rome said they have unearthed the place where the cruel dictator Emperor Caligula may have been killed, local media said on Friday."

Gold Miners

Survival International:

Two Yanomami Indian communities have written to the Brazilian government, denouncing the invasion of their land by illegal gold miners.

Over a thousand gold miners are working illegally on Yanomami land, transmitting deadly diseases like malaria and polluting the rivers and forest with mercury. Illegal mining has recently boomed due to the rise in the price of gold.

Insect

The Natural History Museum in London unveiled the world's longest insect.

Trial of Titans

Spiegel Online has a piece about France's biggest bribery scandal:

The story, the actors and the exclusive scenery are the stuff of movies. The cast includes former cabinet ministers, billionaires, financial experts and glamorous celebrities.

Presidential Horse Race

Gallup's daily tracking poll: Obama, 49 percent; McCain, 43 percent.

Crests

National Science Foundation:

Paleontologists have long debated the function of the strange, bony crests on the heads of the duck-billed dinosaurs known as lambeosaurs. The structures contain incredibly long, convoluted nasal passages that loop up over the tops of their skulls.

Scientists at the University of Toronto, Ohio University and Montana State University now have used CT-scanning to look inside these mysterious crests and reconstruct the brains and nasal cavities of four different lambeosaur species.

At the annual meeting of the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology in Cleveland, Ohio, the team today announced new findings that suggest the crests were used for communication.

Island Ghosts

In the 1990s Gardner D. Smith spent two years in America's Peace Corps, working as a teacher at an elementary school in Micronesia. This is his story:

Ghosts are taken very, very seriously on Fefen, an island in Chuuk, Micronesia. They can come in many different forms, from old, child-devouring men to beautiful women who lure young men into the mangrove swamps to drown. They can trick you into giving up your land or teach valuable lessons about loyalty, honesty, and sharing food.

Or they can just scare the hell out of you.

I'm not a big believer in ghosts, despite the stories of apparitions in Japanese bunkers from the Second World War, the tricksters who shake the trees and make the breadfruit and coconuts fall in your path, or the ghost of the mountain who leads people astray into the thickest jungle.

On the other hand, I am a fan of Halloween, the day when all the spirits come out to play. None of my elementary school students, however, had ever heard of it. So, in the week leading up to Halloween, I decided to build my lessons around themes of the undead. We made masks, wrote scary stories, drew pictures of the local ghosts, and even carved a jack-o-lantern out of a round watermelon.

Then, on October 31, we had a party in the uut, or meeting place. My mother had sent me some face paints, candy, and a freakish devil mask that I was sure would cause quite a commotion, especially considering how missionaries have affected people here in the past.

To start out, some of the teachers told ghost stories in Chuukese. The students from grades one through eight were enthralled. This is how education here should be, I thought, especially in this oral culture. It didn't matter just then that our school didn't have walls, or electricity, or basic materials. What mattered was the passing on of knowledge, history, and values, all through stories.

Afterward, when all the kids were primed for scaring, I came flying in wearing the devil mask and a lava lava cape, roaring for all I was worth. The reaction was a little more than I expected. Half the first graders ran away. Some ran all the way home. Some didn't come back. I chased the rest all over the place and roared myself hoarse. After a while, the kids remembered to shout, "Trick or Treat," and I threw the candy to them. The other teachers painted their faces as ghouls and chased the children around some more. Then we ate and we sang and we danced.

That night I visited with some of the families whose kids had run away. We all laughed about it and shared more stories.

But on the way home the strangest thing happened. The huge mango tree near our house shook and the leaves fluttered violently. But there was no wind. No wind at all.

Croatia

RIA Novosti:

The former Croatian interior minister Berislav Roncevic's cat clocked up 150,000 km (93,000 miles) on regular chauffeur-driven weekend trips in his owner's official car, local media reported on Thursday.

Roncevic, who was defense minister until 2007, used his car and driver to ferry the cat the 520-km (323 miles) round trip from his family house in Osjek near the Serbian border to the capital Zagreb.

The cat was driven to his Zagreb apartment to spend the weekend with the ex-minister before being returned to the family home during the week.

The cat was the only passenger in the car.

Statue of Lenin

RIA Novosti:

Russian police detained a man in the Volga city of Nizhny Novgorod as he tried to destroy a monument to Vladimir Lenin, the father of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, a police spokesman said.

"The man, who was slightly drunk, attempted to pull off the head of Lenin's statue," the spokesman said. "He brought a ladder from a nearby construction site and tried to destroy the monument," he said, adding that the attacker had only managed to tear off Lenin's right arm.

Beatnik

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen coined the word beatnik in 1958. Jesse Hamlin wrote about it in 1995.

Background: Herb Caen (1916-1997)

Presidential Horse Race

Gallup's daily tracking poll: Barack Obama leads by seven points.

Tax Man

Charles Hurt of the New York Post: "You won't find it in his campaign ads, but Barack Obama let slip his plans to become a modern-day Robin Hood in the White House, confiscating money from the rich to give to the poor."

Bahia

Two snakes guarded a drug cache in the Brazilian state of Bahia.

Business Heritage

Milk sellers, Brussels, Belgium, 1890s

Photochrom by Detroit Photographic Co.

Lioness

In South Africa a lioness mauled a ranger at Kruger National Park.

Dead

A wild elephant crushed a 55-year-old man at a village in the Indian state of Orissa.

Hurricane Katrina

Did Formosan subterranean termites help Hurricane Katrina destroy flood walls in southern Louisiana?

Missing Boy

A leopard apparently killed a 6-year-old boy in India's state of Jammu and Kashmir. Villagers found some blood and shreds of clothing, but no body.

Flying Insect

Tufts University:

While paleontologists may scour remote, exotic places in search of prehistoric specimens, Tufts researchers have found what they believe to be the world's oldest whole-body fossil impression of a flying insect in a wooded field behind a strip mall in North Attleboro, Mass.

Deadly Legacy of World War II

David Crossland at Spiegel Online: "Germany remains contaminated with unexploded bombs that are becoming increasingly unstable with age, warns one of the country's most experienced bomb defusers."

Short Marriage

A man allegedly murdered his bride on their wedding night.

Texas

UT Austin has news about extinct primates.

Baby Can't Swim

In Russia a newborn baby drowned in a toilet.

Raisin Weekend

Spiegel Online: "Each fall, on Scotland's foggy eastern coast, the hallowed, medieval halls of the University of St. Andrews play host to one of the strangest — and messiest — rituals of contemporary European civilization."

Romanian Horse

RIA Novosti: "Traffic police tested a horse for being over the alcohol limit after it went out of control and killed an elderly man in the southwestern Romanian county of Gorj, the Ananova news agency said on Tuesday."

McCain and Obama

Susan Stamberg of America's National Public Radio: "They're fierce political opponents, but it turns out that the presidential candidates do agree on a literary matter: Each man picks Ernest Hemingway's 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls as a favorite."

African Exodus

University of Bristol, United Kingdom:

The widely held belief that the Nile valley was the most likely route out of sub-Saharan Africa for early modern humans 120,000 year ago is challenged in a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A team led by the University of Bristol shows that wetter conditions reached a lot further north than previously thought, providing a wet "corridor" through Libya for early human migrations.

Bonobos

Henry Fountain of the New York Times: "A new study indicates that bonobos conduct group hunts for other primates, behavior that was thought to be specific to the common chimp."

Presidential Horse Race

Gallup's daily tracking poll: Among all registered voters, Obama leads McCain by 10 points. Among typicial "likely voters," the Democratic Party's candidate leads McCain by seven points.

Sacred Site

Headline on a press release from Survival International: "Tribe vows to fight mine with axes and arrows."

Wanderlust

WWF:

A young rhino that went on a 14-day trek across India, through villages as well as countryside, was finally persuaded to abandon its wanderlust by conservation specialists and return to where its journey began.

Human Remains

ABC Online, Australia: "Queensland police believe human remains found in a crocodile captured in the state's far north are those of missing tourist Arthur Booker."

Yeti

BBC News: "Scientists in the U.S. who have examined hairs claimed to belong to a yeti in India say that in fact they belong to a species of Himalayan goat."

Previous: Mande Barung

Naked City

From a 1951 script for Broadway Is My Beat (crime drama series, CBS Radio, 1949-1954):

There's a time on Broadway when the crowd gives up, goes home. The lights buzz fitfully — die. Then it's a street of dim moonlight and dark whispers, and the wind of the autumn night, the wind that scatters everything. Yesterday's headline, yesterday's dreams, yesterday's people. It's Broadway. The gaudiest, the most violent, the lonesomest mile in the world.

From a story in tomorrow's New York Daily News:

It's still a good time to be morally bankrupt.

Cold Drinks

The New York Times has an article about bootleggers in Alaska.

KC-135 Stratotanker

NPR:

More than 50 years after its first flight, the KC-135 tanker is the workhorse of the U.S. Air Force, a flying gas station that loiters over the skies of Iraq and Afghanistan every day. It is likely to keep flying for at least 30 more years.

Presidential Horse Race

Gallup's daily tracking poll: Obama, 50 percent; McCain, 43 percent.

Free Speech

Michael Barone tells readers about the attempts of Obama supporters to stifle free speech in America.

Ready to Die

BBC News: "Somali pirates holding a Ukrainian ship with a cargo of military tanks off the Somali coast have threatened to blow it up if they are not paid a ransom."

Presidential Horse Race

Gallup's daily tracking poll: Obama, 51 percent; McCain, 41 percent.

Hard Times

The financial crisis has no impact on me. I'm bulletproof. No business debt. No personal debt. No investments in publicly traded companies. Everything I needed to know about finance I learned from Amish farmers.

During hard times in the past, I never forgot two old saws: "One man's calamity is another man's opportunity" and "You won't catch many chicken dinners if you wait for birds to fly into your mouth."

Pirates

Somali pirates seized another cargo ship.

Related: Pirates released 20 Filipino seamen.

Phone Calls

A Norwegian politician phoned fortune-tellers.

Hunter

In Germany a wild boar killed a hunter.

Kenya

Maasai warriors in full war dress, Kenya

Sometime between 1890 and 1923

Photo credit: U.S. Library of Congress

Presidential Horse Race

Gallup's daily tracking poll: Obama maintains his 11-point lead.

Mighty Mouse

A mouse killed a snake.

Attack

Late last night a wild elephant trampled a 30-year-old man to death near a small village in India's state of West Bengal.

Ransom

"The Somali pirates who hijacked an arms-laden Ukrainian freighter nearly two weeks ago may soon be getting their ransom," Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times says.

British Chef

Via IOL: "A British chef, a former Mr. Gay UK, has appeared in court accused of killing a male lover and then carving up parts of the body and cooking them seasoned with fresh herbs."

The Mr. Gay UK contest is an annual beauty competition for gay men.

Presidential Horse Race

Gallup's daily tracking poll: Obama, 52 percent; McCain, 41 percent.

Vulture

RIA Novosti: "A Korean Air aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing in Brazil on Wednesday after hitting a vulture shortly after takeoff, a spokesman for Brazil's INFRAERO said."

Business Heritage

Hotels are part of an international executive's life. The Most Famous Hotels in the World researches the history of notable hotels around the globe. The organization publishes a wonderful series of books.

Heart of India

A tiger killed a middle-aged woman in the heart of India.

"On Saturday the woman entered a forest to gather leaves," a tourist told me. "Villagers heard screams and notified the forest department. The next day a search party found the woman's partially eaten body."

Bruno's Half Brother

David Crossland at Spiegel Online:

The last bear to venture into Germany, Bruno, was shot and killed after a sheep-killing rampage that made him a media star. Now a bear thought to be his half brother has been spotted in Austria near the German border, but he is far better behaved, experts say.

Presidential Horse Race

Gallup's daily tracking poll: Obama, 51 percent; McCain, 42 percent.

Change

Memo to Senator Barack Obama:

The great industrialist Andrew Carnegie said, "Pioneering don't pay." Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller believed the same thing.

Some pioneers get rich in business. But few of the most successful businesspeople were pioneers.

In government, President Lyndon B. Johnson liked to experiment with tax money. Unfortunately, many of his Great Society programs failed to achieve their goals.

To avoid costly mistakes, you need well-tested ideas rather than left-wing assumptions. Who tested your ideas, Senator Obama? Which countries do you want to emulate? Give me the names. Show me the results.

One more thing:

We live in an age of globalization. Entrepreneurs no longer have to endure tax-happy politicians in the United States. Remember this quote from banker Walter Wriston: "Capital goes where it's welcome and stays where it's well treated."

Obama Nation

CNN: "Kenyan immigration officials on Tuesday questioned the author of a book that is highly critical of Sen. Barack Obama, Kenyan police said."

Big Turtles

Jim Yardley of the New York Times:

Scientists trying to save one of the world’s most endangered species of freshwater turtles say waiting is their only recourse after a complicated attempt to mate two elderly turtles during this year’s breeding season ended without producing any offspring.

Sa-rah! Sa-rah!

Some pundits still mention Sarah Palin's recent television interviews with ABC’s Charles Gibson and CBS’s Katie Couric.

The Alaskan governor's weak performance during those encounters didn't bother me. In baseball the legendary Ty Cobb holds the record for the highest career batting average with .366. Nobody hits the ball every time.

Sarah has expertise in two important areas — energy and commercial fishing. I already know her thoughts on energy. I want to hear more about commercial fishing. The world's oceans are in serious trouble.

Matricide

RIA Novosti:

A man from the Volgograd Region in central Russia has been charged with the frenzied murder of his elderly mother in an apparent ritual murder, investigators said on Monday.

The 80-year-old woman, who lived with her son in the village of Preobrazhenskoye, died on Saturday after she was repeatedly stabbed in the chest with a sharpened wooden pole. Police said the son admitted murdering his mother for "being a witch."

Presidential Horse Race

Gallup's daily tracking poll: Obama, 50 percent; McCain, 42 percent.

Pirates

Der Spiegel offers more details about the hijacking of the Ukrainian arms ship.

Dispatches

RIA Novosti has a report about hungry bears in Siberia. The Russian news agency also has a report about a lost train in India.

Python

A python tried to swallow a German zookeeper.

Survey

Brendan McGarry of the Military Times: "Sen. John McCain enjoys overwhelming support from the military’s professional core, though race appears to be a decisive factor for career-oriented black service members, a Military Times survey of nearly 4,300 readers indicates."

Legs

Ohio State University:

The fossilized trail of an aquatic creature suggests that animals walked using legs at least 30 million years earlier than had been thought.

The tracks — two parallel rows of small dots, each about 2 millimeters in diameter — date back some 570 million years, to the Ediacaran period.

Business Heritage

Annin & Co. supplied all of the U.S. flags for Union troops during the American Civil War.

Presidential Horse Race

Gallup's daily tracking poll: Obama, 50 percent; McCain, 43 percent.

Madness in America

Michael Goodwin of the New York Daily News: "Some day, we will look back with disgust at the abuse Palin has taken and wonder how it could happen in this great nation, circa 2008."

Everest Jump

"Three skydivers in Nepal entered the record books Sunday as they made the first ever parachute jump over Mount Everest," Voice of America says.

Goods Train

A freight train killed an elephant in the Indian state of West Bengal.

War in Afghanistan

Martin Patience of BBC News:

In seven stark words, Brigadier Mark Carleton Smith — a man known for bold statements — summed up Britain's military campaign in Afghanistan.

"We're not going to win this war," he said during an interview with a British newspaper, the Sunday Times.

Striped and Dangerous

A tiger killed a man and mauled two other people in India's state of Uttar Pradesh. The attack took place near a railway station.

Last month a tiger injured three farmers in the same area.

Revenge

"About seven weeks ago, ten villagers vandalized a Hindu temple of the elephant-headed god Ganesha," an American friend writes from the Indian state of Jharkhand. "Afterward, a wild elephant damaged the houses of the vandals."

Business Heritage

Husqvarna is one of the world's oldest industrial companies.

Presidential Horse Race

Gallup's daily tracking poll: Obama, 50 percent; McCain, 42 percent.

Brazil

Gary Duffy of BBC News: "Hundreds of penguins have been returned to their native territory in the South Atlantic Ocean by an air force plane after being found along Brazil's coast."

Class Warfare in America

News release from North Carolina State University:

The election year is in full swing, complete with allegations of class warfare and claims about which candidates cater to the rich and which candidates will best serve the interests of the poor and the middle class. But a new study, co-authored by North Carolina State University researcher Dr. Chris Ellis, explores the idea that Congress and the White House act on behalf of the wealthy — and shows that it would be impossible to cater solely to any socioeconomic group, because people's preferences tend to be overwhelmingly similar when it comes to how the federal government should spend its money.

The study shows that "Even if government wanted to respond only to the interests of the rich, it couldn't," Ellis says, "because the rich and the poor tend to share similar political viewpoints — at least on economic issues."

In the study, researchers used data from the long-running General Social Survey to measure public opinion on government spending from 1973 to 2006 — and found that political sentiment was very similar between the various socioeconomic groups. Basically, trends among rich, poor and middle-class voters toward becoming more liberal or more conservative tended to take place at the same time. Ellis explains that the trends happened at the same time because both rich and poor responded to changes in the nation's economic health, or the actions of the federal government, in broadly similar ways. Ellis, an assistant professor of political science at NC State, co-authored the study with Dr. Joseph Ura, an assistant professor of political science at Texas A&M University.

The study concludes that the federal government acts on the preferences of all income groups either because it can't tell the difference between the preferences of the rich versus the poor, or because officeholders wish to represent the desires of the public as a whole. The study, "Income, Preferences, and the Dynamics of Policy Responsiveness," was published in the Oct. 3 issue of the journal Political Science and Politics.

"This does not mean that the government is actually acting in the best interests of the poor," Ellis says, "only that what the poor want is similar to what the rich want in terms of how the government appropriates its funds." For example, the public's views of what the federal government should do with respect to education, health care and the environment are similar regardless of socioeconomic level. Ellis notes, however, that social issues — such as abortion — were not considered in the study.

Somali Piracy

Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times: "It is one thing to haggle over a price for a pirate’s ransom. But it is apparently a whole other matter to figure out who, exactly, should pay it."

BBC News: "Russia's foreign minister has called for joint international action to halt pirate attacks off the Horn of Africa."

Great Communicator

"Last night was a big, big win for Sarah Palin," Dick Morris and Eileen McGann declare in the New York Post.

Presidential Horse Race

Gallup's daily tracking poll: Obama, 49 percent; McCain, 42 percent.

"Most of the interviewing in today's three-day rolling average was conducted before Thursday night's vice-presidential debate between Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin," Gallup says.

Joe and Sarah

Subject: Vice-Presidential Debate

"Don't sell the steak — sell the sizzle," supersalesman Elmer Wheeler advised marketers decades ago.

During last night's debate, Joseph Biden tried to sell a piece of meat. Sarah Palin sold the sizzle. In my opinion, she did an excellent job.

Bombing

Frederick Taylor at Spiegel Online:

The question of how many people died in the World War II Allied bombing of Dresden has been politically charged for decades. Now, a commission of historians has said the real total could be much lower than previously thought.

Chores

A mob killed a 76-year-old man in the Indian state of West Bengal.

"People accused him of being a wizard who hypnotized young girls and made them do his household chores," the Hindustan Times said.

Presidential Horse Race

Gallup's daily tracking poll: Obama, 48 percent; McCain, 43 percent.

Canada

3-D computer rendering of the skeleton of Pachyrhinosaur lakustai

Researchers unveiled a new dinosaur species.

(Photo credit: Pipestone Creek Dinosaur Project)

Istanbul

RIA Novosti: "Turkish archaeologists have found artifacts showing that Istanbul, earlier believed to be founded 2,700 years ago by the Greeks as Byzantium, is 8,500 years old, local media said."

Two Albinos

Via News24, South Africa: "Two albinos were murdered and cut into pieces in Burundi by attackers suspected of seeking to sell the body parts in Tanzania where witch doctors use them for lucky potions, officials said on Thursday."

Previous: Wicked Witchcraft

Pirate News

Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times:

Negotiations over the arms-laden freighter hijacked by Somali pirates intensified on Wednesday and several people close to the talks said the showdown had come down to price.

Presidential Horse Race

Gallup's daily tracking poll: Obama, 48 percent; McCain, 44 percent.

False Teeth

A Croatian man's dentures stopped a bullet.

Eindhoven

Geraldine Coughlan of BBC News:

The Dutch city of Eindhoven is to award credit points to street prostitutes in exchange for good behavior.

Prostitutes with enough points will get street miles from the City Hall which they can use to buy designer clothes and furniture.

Potion

Via IOL: "Three people died in Malawi after they were forced by a herbalist and a mob of villagers to drink a potion meant to cleanse them of witchcraft, police said on Wednesday."