Nothing personal against expectant mother Vargas, mind you - wonderfully stylish outfit with severly pointed shoes, she looked good and sounded very sweet - even asked about the possibility of a White House wedding one day. But it is to say co-host ‘happy talk’ Gibson, or – what’s the blonde’s name? you know, Mike Nickles wife – would not have done any better. Sometimes serious questions, hence occassional real journalism, died with Jennings (obviously, we did have significant problems with Jennings too, but that's another dozen stories). Still, all we're left with now are the pharmaceutical ads.

Only hope for ABC News is the full & speedy recovery of Bob Woodruff. Not as good yet as Terry Moran, now co-anchor of Nightline, but the bench is empty. 

R.I.P. Peter. The stockholders have spoken and there's not much we can do about it. Although you might be able to get something done, since, you know, you've crossed over and have a better idea of what's actually going on. 

That is a question more for military analysts and security experts. 

But if the findings of a new opinion poll for the BBC are anything to go by, it certainly seems to be losing the battle for global public opinion. BBC

Instead, Mr. Smith said in an interview, his brother, Sean, would grip him in a headlock or stranglehold and punch him repeatedly. NYT (reg/req)

During his trial in Austria, Irving said he had changed his mind over claims the Holocaust did not happen. 

But, speaking from his cell later, he told BBC News the numbers killed at Auschwitz were smaller than claimed..."Given the ruthless efficiency of the Germans, if there was an extermination programme to kill all the Jews, how come so many survived?" he said. BBC

The surprise disclosure came during a hearing on Dubai-owned DP World's plans to take over significant operations at six leading U.S. ports. The port operations are now handled by London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company.

"There are many intelligence gaps, concerning the potential for DPW or P&O assets to support terrorist operations, that precludes an overall threat assessment of the potential" merger," an undated Coast Guard intelligence assessment says. The AP

"Hard to get good case. Need to move swiftly," the notes say. "Near term target needs - go massive - sweep it all up, things related and not."

The handwritten notes, with some parts blanked out, were declassified this month in response to a request by a law student and blogger, Thad Anderson, under the US Freedom of Information Act. The Guardian

For top performance, the brain must mobilise its resources, not only at the moment we get new information, but also in the seconds before. BBC

The Scotsman, a leading newspaper in Scotland, reported Sunday that it had obtained a police report on the early July accident when the president crashed into a Scottish police constable while cycling in the grounds of Gleneagles Hotel during the G8 summit. 

At the time, the focus of U.S. press reports was on the president's injuries--a few abrasions--while noting that that the constable had suffered a "very minor" ankle injury. The fact that Bush was wearing a helmet seemed to be the main accident detail, and that he had called the constable to check on his well-being. 

According to the newspaper, however, the police officer (known in the report only as "Constable X") ended up on crutches and was off work for more than three months. Editor & Publisher

Tens of thousands of National Guard members have been sent to Iraq, along with much of the equipment needed to deal with natural disasters and terrorist threats in the United States, the governors said here at the winter meeting of the National Governors Association. NYT (reg/req)

The state's Forestry Department says Big Foot enthusiasts found on its land without a permit will face up to three years jail or a fine of up to $2,500. 

The hunt for Big Foot has gripped Malaysia after a spate of sightings. Now authorities are determined that if the ape man exists, Malaysians will be the first to find him. BBC

The decision came in response to a ruling last month by Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court in Manhattan on a lawsuit brought last year by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act. NYT (reg/req)

First enacted in Florida last year, "Stand Your Ground" bills are now being considered in 21 states including Georgia, according to the National Rifle Association and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. The South Dakota senate approved one just last week. Christian Science Monitor

"You're in violation of regulations," he said. I thought it was a joke. So did the officer. But the sergeant persisted. So I apologized to my interviewee, stowed my gear and climbed into the Humvee. Editor & Publisher

But this "wisdom" is suspect for two reasons. First, most Americans do not think that freedom is about exercising more and more choice. And second, even for those who do equate freedom with choice, having more choice does not seem to make them feel freer. Instead, Americans are increasingly bewildered — not liberated — by the sheer volume of choices they must make in a day. NYT's Magazine (reg/req)

The battalion, made up of 700 to 800 Iraqi Army soldiers, has repeatedly been offered by the U.S. as an example of the growing independence of the Iraqi military. CNN

The journal report, written by David Michaels of George Washington University's School of Public Health and Peter Lurie of the consumer group Public Citizen, charges that the industry misrepresented the dangers of hexavalent chromium in an attempt to thwart stricter workplace regulation. USA Today

Workers completed two-thirds of their work in an average day last year, down from about three-quarters in a 1994 study, according to research conducted for Day-Timers Inc., an East Texas, Pennsylvania-based maker of organizational products.

The biggest culprit is the technology that was supposed to make work quicker and easier, experts say. Reuters

But scientists are reporting today that they have uncovered fossils of a swimming, fish-eating mammal that lived in China fully 164 million years ago, well before it was thought that some mammals could have spent much of their lives in water.

The extinct species appears to have been an amalgam of animals. It had a broad, scaly tail, flat like a beaver's. Its sharp teeth seemed ideal for eating fish, like an otter's. Its likely lifestyle — burrowing in tunnels on shore and dog-paddling in water — reminds scientists of the modern platypus. 

Its skeleton suggests that it was about 20 inches long, from snout to the tip of its tail, about the length of a small house cat. NYT (reg/req)

The proximate reason: a lengthy article smashing official history of the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, when a peasant cult killed more than 230 foreigners in a spasm of xenophobia. Li ran the story to ask why, in modern China, children are learning to praise the Boxers for being antiforeign. Christian Science Monitor

Diana Marcela Diaz told RCN that the courier had cycled off after groping her, but had been caught by passers-by. When he was arrested, she was given the option of slapping him, letting him go, or filing a complaint. She had chosen to set a precedent that would stop sexist behaviour, she said. BBC

A third development deals with the dark side. It offers a way to look into plant or animal cells to see if the molecule-size nanotech units that bring the blessings may also be doing mischief inside the basic units of biological life. Christian Science Monitor

As shocking as that is, the more astonishing fact may be that the rate has not really changed since the 1930's. "No improvement!" was how an article in the normally exclamation-free Journal of the American Medical Association summarized the situation. NYT (reg/req)

An extended curfew has been called in the capital and dozens of Sunni mosques have been attacked across the country. 

A prominent Arab TV reporter and two of her crew were killed in Samarra, where they had gone to cover the attack on the shrine in the central Iraqi city. 

Iraq's leaders are warning publicly about the dangers of a civil war. BBC

HUGHES: Those pictures are disgusting and, frankly, I'm embarrassed, as an American, to think that people around the world associate those pictures with our country. Those pictures are old and represent crimes for which many people have already been punished, including one who is currently serving a 10-year sentence in prison. We don't want to be defined by those pictures, any more than the people of Germany would want your country to be defined by pictures of crimes. They don't represent America. On the larger issue of Guantanamo, what to do with dangerous terrorists who wish to kill innocent Americans, Germans and others is a very difficult one, but we feel this report is fundamentally flawed. The authors of the report did not even accept the offer to visit Guantanamo. Our government has been wrestling with how to deal with terrorists who don't wear a uniform, who don't represent any state, who therefore don't fit neatly under any international treaty or convention. Nonetheless, we are treating the detainees humanely and consistent with our laws and treaty obligations. Spiegel

But while most of the world's science writers were focusing on the bad news from Greenland, the producers at CNN were zeroing in on a potentially devastating threat facing another important reservoir of the global ice supply -- specifically, the ice at fast food restaurants. Columbia Journalism Review

In These Times has obtained a draft of the proposed regulations now causing widespread concern among state officials. It reveals plans to create a vast database of vital records to be centralized in Washington, and details measures that states must implement–and pay millions for—before next year’s scheduled implementation. 

The draft lays out how some 60,000 already strapped town and county offices must keep the birth and death records under lock and key and report all document requests to Washington. In These Times

Facing a sharp bipartisan backlash, Bush took the unusual step of summoning reporters to the front of Air Force One to condemn efforts to block a firm from the United Arab Emirates from purchasing the rights to manage ports that include those in New York and New Orleans. Washington Post (reg/req)

The problem is that Dubai Ports World is a corporation. It happens to be a corporation that is owned by the government of the the United Arab Emirates, or UAE, a nation that served as an operational and financial base for the hijackers who carried out the attacks of 9-11 attacks, and that has stirred broad concern. But, even if the sale of operational control of the ports to this firm did not raise security alarm bells, it would be a bad idea. 

Ports are essential pieces of the infrastructure of the United States, and they are best run by public authorities that are accountable to elected officials and the people those officials represent. While traditional port authorities still exist, they are increasing marginalized as privatization schemes have allowed corporations -- often with tough anti-union attitudes and even tougher bottom lines -- to take charge of more and more of the basic operations at the nation's ports. The Nation

James Watson and Francis Crick, who wrote “A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid”, have become as famous as rock stars for asking how life works and thereby starting a line of inquiry that led to the Human Genome Project. Stanley Miller, by contrast, though lauded by his peers, languishes in obscurity as far as the wider world is concerned. Yet when it appeared, “Production of amino acids under possible primitive Earth conditions” was expected to begin a scientific process that would solve a problem in some ways more profound than how life works at the moment—namely how it got going in the first place on the surface of a sterile rock 150m km from a small, unregarded yellow star. The Economist 

Yet, a few weeks ago, when I - a Nasa climate scientist - tried to talk to the media about these issues following a lecture I had given calling for prompt reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases, the Nasa public affairs team - staffed by political appointees from the Bush administration - tried to stop me doing so. I was not happy with that, and I ignored the restrictions. The first line of Nasa's mission is to understand and protect the planet. The Independent

The so-called widower effect — where spouses die soon after being widowed — has been common knowledge since it was first described in 1848. But this new study of 518,240 older couples enrolled in Medicare shows for the first time that the illness of a spouse also can hasten death. 

The nine-year study, the largest to quantify caregiver burden and the effect of losing a spouse, found that the period of greatest risk was within 30 days of a spouse entering the hospital or dying. It remains elevated for up to two years. 

"You can die of a broken heart, not just when your partner dies, but also when your partner falls ill," says Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School, co-author of the study, published today in New England Journal of Medicine. The AP

It was a tall order. The then-prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, had been chastised by the Clinton administration for repeated anti-Semitic statements and for jailing political opponents. But it was important to the Malaysians, according to a former Abramoff associate who attended meetings with the Malaysian ambassador and the lobbyist.

Abramoff contacted presidential advisor Karl Rove on at least four occasions to help arrange a meeting, the witness said.

Finally, the former associate said, Rove's office called to tell Abramoff that the Malaysian leader soon would be getting an official White House invitation.

Neither the former Abramoff associate nor any others who spoke about the Malaysian contacts wanted their names used, out of fear they might damage future business opportunities.

In May 2002, Mahathir met with Bush in the Oval Office; his photograph with the president was beamed around the world.

Abramoff received $1.2 million from the Malaysian government for his lobbying services in 2001 and 2002, the former associate said. Documents obtained by Senate investigators appear to confirm at least $900,000 of that amount. LA Times

Valley of the Wolves: Iraq (Kurtlar Vadisi: Irak in Turkish) is set for release in a dozen Arab and European countries and the producer is at the current Berlin International Film Festival to find distributors for the United States and additional markets. Jerusalem Post

But it is time to stop laughing at Dick Cheney's expense. 

Now that the vice president has accidentally shot and wounded a companion on a quail hunt at the elite Texas ranch where rich men play with guns -- spraying his 78-year-old victim, er, friend, in the face and chest with shotgun pellets and sending the man to the intensive care unit of a Corpus Christi hospital -- it has become clear that Cheney was doing the country a service when he avoided service. The Nation

"Only at very, very high levels does money actually have any impact to act as a buffer," said Deakin University researcher Liz Eckerman. AFP

The Organic Consumers Association is urging a boycott of traditional Valentine's gifts in favor of organic and fair-trade chocolate and flowers.

"Most Americans have no idea what goes into these Valentine's Day gifts," said Ronnie Cummins, the group's national director.

The group noted that major cocoa suppliers, Nestle SA, Archer Daniels Midland Co., and Cargill Inc., are accused in a lawsuit of benefiting from child slave labor at cocoa bean plantations in Ivory Coast.

In addition, Organic Consumers said, a study showed that flower workers in Ecuador had been sickened from pesticide use. The AP

Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

"We are no longer accepting new orders" was the announcement posted Wednesday on two such sites, locatecell.com and celltolls.com. 

"Thank you for your patronage. It was a pleasure serving you," the sites said. 

The Federal Trade Commission this week conducted a sweep of 40 sites known to have been selling private phone records. According to the FTC's Lydia Parnes, more than 20 sites have recently shut down or stopped advertising for new business. 

The agency has sent letters to about 20 other sites, warning them that they may be violating the law and should review their business practices, said Parnes, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. The AP

In her new book, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, Heather Rogers answers these questions by focusing on the post-WWII boom, when planned obsolescence—the manufacturing of consumer goods designed to wear out—changed the way Americans consume and, consequently, the way we waste. In These Times

Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted. NYT (reg/req)

This week, it's New York City apartment brokers who are being told that a listing fee is on its way. Later this year, Washington area employers may be asked to cough up some money for an ad on the region's job listings page.

It's an out-of-character move for the site, which is best known for allowing users to post their ads free of charge. But it's the users who begged the site operators to do something about the number of repeat listings on the site.

Starting March 1, a $10 fee will be imposed for listings in New York with hopes of deterring the brokers who list the same apartment several times in a single day, Craigslist Inc. chief executive Jim Buckmaster said. There are no plans to impose fees for real estate listings in other cities.Washington Post (reg/req)

Coming as it did on the eve of his big set piece speech to the American people, the election was a problem for President Bush. Here was a free and fair democratic election, a model of the political process that he has supposedly committed himself to promoting throughout the region, and it produced winners who were not what Washington would have liked or chosen. Arab News

Britain's Channel Four TV network, which says it has seen the minutes of the meeting, reports that during the meeting, Mr. Bush raised the idea of painting US U-2 spy planes in the colors of the United Nations, in the hope that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein would fire on the planes, and thus give the US and Britain a legal basis to attack Iraq. Bush also supposedly said the war against Iraq would start on March 10, 2003. It actually started 10 days later. 

In his book, "Lawless World," author Philippe Sands writes that the purpose of the meeting was focused on the need to "identify evidence that Saddam had committed a material breach of his obligations under the existing UN Resolution 1441." 

"I think no one would be surprised at the idea that the use of spy-planes to review what is going on would be considered. What is surprising is the idea that they would be used painted in the colours of the United Nations in order to provoke an attack which could then be used to justify material breach. Now that plainly looks as if it is deception, and it raises some fundamental questions of legality, both in terms of domestic law and international law."

The bill passed by a vote of 216-214, largely along party lines. Republicans hailed the five-year, $39 billion budget-cutting bill as an important first step to restoring discipline on spending. Democrats attacked the measure as an assault on college students and Medicaid patients and said powerful Washington lobbyists had too much influence on it.

President Bush said he looked forward to signing the bill into law. The AP

Roughly 12 million U.S. women are thought to have heart disease, and as many as 3 million of them have a condition called coronary microvascular syndrome, the scientists write in a supplement to the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. In women with this condition, plaque has accumulated in the tiniest arteries of their heart, reducing oxygen flow.

Standard X-rays of the coronary arteries, or angiography, miss the problem; only additional tests of coronary blood flow can tip doctors off.

Women with this condition might seek medical care because they're unable to perform their normal daily activities. They complain of low energy and shortness of breath, but not necessarily the chest pain experienced by men with coronary artery disease. USA Today

Sheehan, who was invited to attend the speech by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D- Calif., was charged with demonstrating in the Capitol building, said Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider. The charge was later changed to unlawful conduct, Schneider said. Both charges are misdemeanors. 

Sheehan was taken in handcuffs from the Capitol to police headquarters a few blocks away. Her case was processed as Bush spoke. 

Schneider said Sheehan had worn a T-shirt with an anti-war slogan to the speech and covered it up until she took her seat. Police warned her that such displays were not allowed, but she did not respond, the spokeswoman said. 

Police handcuffed Sheehan and removed her from the gallery before Bush arrived. Sheehan was to be released on her own recognizance, Schneider said. The AP

Wacky? Science fiction? It might happen this summer. The AP

Fourteen huge, permanent bases are currently under construction in Iraq, along with the world's biggest embassy in Baghdad (3,500 employees, and counting). Bush will continue on a permanent war footing in the Middle East in order to protect U.S. dollar hegemony. There is no other option. All future wars will be run out of Iraq. Iran has been making noises lately about ditching the U.S. dollar in favor of the euro, as have the Saudis. They're next. The U.S. will dismantle OPEC and surround Saudi Arabia, keeping their hand firmly on the oil spigot. This is the essence of the petro-dollar warfare that we are witnessing, in a nutshell. Torah Ministries

In many cases, the troops earn a higher gross salary in civilian life. But when the federal tax exemption and other allowances approved by Congress for troops in combat are factored in, about 72% are better off, according to a study by the RAND Corp., a research institute. USA Today

The lack of oversight had a tragic outcome in one case, when a hospital lift, supposed to have been fixed, crashed killing three people. 

The report said US post-war planning was limited by a desire for secrecy.

There were no detailed, overt preparations for the reconstruction of Iraq in the run-up to the 2003 invasion "to avoid the impression that the US government had already decided on [military] intervention", the report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) said. 

Nevertheless, the US has allocated billions of dollars to rebuilding Iraq, and large amounts have been raised through the sale of Iraqi oil.

Significant sums of this have been disbursed without any accounting procedures, SIGIR said. 

One official kept $2m (£1.1m) in a bathroom safe, while another allegedly stole $100,000 from a colleague's unsecured stash to balance his own books, investigators found. BBC

Dick Marty, a Swiss parliamentarian conducting a formal inquiry, said evidence pointed to a system of "relocation" of torture of terror suspects, and that reliable indications suggested secret interrogation centres may have existed in Europe. The Independent

Announcing the voluntary program, officials of the agency said Wednesday that full compliance by the companies and their overseas affiliates would lead to a 95 percent reduction by 2010 in use of the substance, perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, and to their total elimination by 2015. NYT (reg/req)

Whether it be career advice, helping people through an illness or finding a new house, 45% of Americans turn to the web for help, a survey by US-based Pew Internet think-tank has found. 

It set out to find out whether the web and e-mail strengthen social ties. 

The answer seems to be yes, especially in times of crisis when people use it to mobilise their social networks. BBC

Within minutes of the launch of the new site bearing China's Web suffix ".cn," searches for the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement showed scores of sites omitted and users directed to articles condemning the group posted on Chinese government websites. 

Searches for other sensitive subjects such as exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, Taiwan independence, and terms such as "democracy" and "human rights" yielded similar results. 

In most such cases, only official Chinese government sites or those with a ".cn" suffix were included. The AP

But he can't. He's been warned by the NSA that the information is so highly classified that even members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees - who are charged with overseeing the work of the intelligence community - don't have clearance to hear about them. If Mr. Tice talks at the hearings early next month, he could face criminal prosecution. Christian Science Monitor

The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches.

In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.

The Mountain View-based search and advertising giant opposes releasing the information on a variety of grounds, saying it would violate the privacy rights of its users and reveal company trade secrets, according to court documents. Mercury News

Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.

More than 50% of students at four-year schools and more than 75% at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.

That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school. The AP

In the study, when male subjects witnessed people they perceived as bad guys being zapped by a mild electrical shock, their M.R.I. scans lit up in primitive brain areas associated with reward. Their brains' empathy centers remained dull. 

Women watching the punishment, in contrast, showed no response in centers associated with pleasure. Even though they also said they did not like the bad guys, their empathy centers still quietly glowed. 

The study seems to show for the first time in physical terms what many people probably assume they already know: that women are generally more empathetic than men, and that men take great pleasure in seeing revenge exacted. NYT (reg/req)

And therein lies the tale of a society with its own norms and scale of human values and customs.

With the Saudization program going in full swing, young Saudis are honing their skills as mechanics, electricians, tailors and technicians in different fields. Yet, when it comes to marriage, they discover that Saudi girls do not prefer them as grooms.

The government launched its Saudization program with all good intentions: To rehabilitate unemployed Saudis in technical jobs that are currently held by expatriates. Preparations are now in full swing for opening 50 technical colleges and some 100 polytechnics all over the Kingdom at a cost of SR6 billion.

While these graduates enter the employment market and may find a job in their chosen field, they are fighting a losing battle on the marriage front.

“If I get married to a mechanic or a technician, my family and Saudi society in general will not accept me, because they look down upon such jobs,” said 18-year-old Saudi high school student Atheer Al-Zahrani.

Mona Al-Harithy, a student of King Saud University, echoed a similar view.

“I would have an inferiority complex if I married a Saudi technician. I don’t have any qualms about such a marriage, but social values and status symbols are something else,” she said. Arab News

"It's my belief that we should get out now," Cronkite said in a meeting with reporters. 

Now 89, the television journalist once known as "the most trusted man in America" has been off the "CBS Evening News" for nearly a quarter- century. He's still a CBS News employee, although he does little for them. 

Cronkite said one of his proudest moments came at the end of a 1968 documentary he made following a visit to Vietnam during the Tet offensive. Urged by his boss to briefly set aside his objectivity to give his view of the situation, Cronkite said the war was unwinnable and that the U.S. should exit. 

Then-President Lyndon Johnson reportedly told a White House aide after that, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America." The AP

According to a report in the journal Ethology, when a woman is at the most fertile part of the menstrual cycle her armpit odour is at its mildest. 

But when she is having a period, and not ready for pregnancy, the smell changes to an acute, repellent odour. The BBC

So says a new study on life's negatives from the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, which conducts social science research for government agencies, educational institutions, non-profit organizations and private corporations.

The researchers surveyed 1,340 people about negative life events and found that the 2004 respondents had more troubles than those who were surveyed in 1991, the last time the study was done.

"The anticipation would have been that problems would have been down," says Tom Smith, the study's author. He says good economic years during the '90s would have brought an expectation of fewer problems, not more. 

Overall, the percentage who reported at least one significant negative life event increased from 88% to 92%. Most of the problems were related to increased incidents of illness and the inability to afford medical care; mounting bills; unemployment; and troubled romantic relationships. USA Today

"I'm concerned that the image of America as a haven of state legality where the state protects the personal freedom of individuals has suffered," said Karsten Voigt, the German Foreign Ministry's co-ordinator for German-American cooperation, who will be traveling in Merkel's delegation during her visit on Jan. 13. "I hope people in the US are aware of the problem." Der Spiegel

In documents last week in which Mr. Abramoff pleaded guilty to mail fraud and conspiracy to bribe public officials, he revealed that he and an unidentified Congressional aide worked to stave off an increase in postal rates - a significant benefit for an industry that depends on the postal service. 

The plea document said that Mr. Abramoff and the Congressional aide performed "a series of official acts, including assisting in stopping legislation regarding Internet gambling and opposing postal rate increases."

The corruption scandal could involve dozens of members of Congress, political operatives and lobbyists suspected of arranging bribes in exchange for favorable legislation and other benefits. NYT (reg/req)

They admitted in a TV documentary on Sunday they cannot say for certain whether the skull is that of Mozart. 

"For the time being, the mystery of the skull is even bigger," said researcher Dr Walther Parson.

The investigation comes in the lead-up to the 250th anniversary of the birth of the composer. 

Mozart, widely regarded as one of the most influential classical composers, died in 1791 at age 35 and was buried in a pauper's grave at Vienna's St. Mark's Cemetery. The exact position of his final resting place was not known. BBC

But now he believes that the relationship has somehow sparked the interest of the Department of Homeland Security and led the agency to place him under surveillance.

Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words “by Border Protection” and carrying the official Homeland Security seal. MSNBC

Feelings of lust actually may be rooted in women's biology, according to a small study of 38 college women to be published online Wednesday in the scholarly journal Hormones and Behavior.

Studies from the University of California-Los Angeles and the University of New Mexico-Albuquerque suggest an evolutionary tendency toward infidelity during ovulation, which is the most fertile part of the menstrual cycle. The studies suggest the propensity is more likely if women don't view their partners as sexy.

"Something biologically wakes up around high fertility and says, 'Is your romantic partner the best sexual partner for you, given that you're likely to conceive?' " says Martie Haselton, assistant professor of communication and psychology at UCLA's Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture.

Along those evolutionary lines, men more than women desire a variety of sexual partners because genes carrying that trait were passed along in men, Haselton says.

Women tend to be choosier, she says. USA Today