Well, its the weekend, and even if domestic commitments keep me away from the beach, perhaps a lighter note is in order. The press have gotten hold of the Polish ‘anti-plummer’:
“He is blond, strapping and sexy. He holds the tools of his trade in a suggestive pose. But the news for the French people is [...]

Astronomers have found a rocky world orbiting a star about 15 light years from our own corner of the universe. With apparently about twice earth’s diameter, and about seven and a half times the mass, it’s the smallest extra-solar planet yet discovered.
“We keep pushing the limits of what we can detect, and we’re getting closer [...]

The sensitivities of German officials with respect to the alleged British obsession with the Nazi era have surprisingly often seen the public limelight in recent years, the most recent example being the British tabloids’ reaction to the election of Joseph Kardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI.

[...]

Doug Muir here, blogging from Tirana, Albania, where I’ll be for the rest of this week.
Albania is, as we all know, in a dead heat with Moldova for the not-coveted title of Europe’s Poorest Country. But downtown Tirana is surprisingly peppy: coffeeshops, restaurants, tree-lined boulevards, nightclubs, parks. Granted, non-downtown Tirana is concrete blocks [...]

But it took a long time to arrive because the power went out…

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Two years ago, when New York City was paralyzed by a massive blackout, Russian energy officials [...]

No really.
“Local environmental workers in Hamburg have described it as a scene out of a horror or science fiction movie, with the bloated frogs agonizing and twitching for several minutes, inflating like a balloon before suddenly bursting.”
The arrival of Hollywood agents is probably only a matter of time…

(Latin speakers from the previous thread will be swift to offer corrections, I am sure.)
Linguistic confusion reigns in the early days of Benedict XVI. One local tabloid said a German was Pope, another claimed him as a Bavarian, the third as a M?nchner. The Bild-Zeitung said “Wir sind Papst,” which would literally mean “We’re Pope,” [...]

Or the flamingo? Or the penguin? Or the whale?
They’re all there. Here.

I’m a bit of a fan, given my dyed-in-the-wool Protestantism, but the unctuous coverage on CNN leaves me with an urge to say something irreverent.

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So here’s hoping for [...]

With sagans of words being written and broadcast about the death of John Paul II, there’s not too much to add. So here’s just a little.
Was he the last European Pope?
Brazil has 137.5 million Catholics, Mexico 89 million, the Philippines 61 million and the United States 58 million. The Europe appears with 55 million in [...]