Reuters - One thing can be said about the Environmental Film Festival: it's not Cannes or Sundance. It may not even be Missoula. But it is part of a U.S. trend to feature movies about nature and the assaults on it.

AP - It's considered bad luck to ask a Yoruba how many children the family has. Asking a herdsman about his cows or camels likely will get you shown the door. And what is a male census worker to do when Muslim women are home alone?

AP - The Supreme Court said Friday that it would hear arguments a second time before ruling on the constitutionality of a Kansas death penalty law, apparently so new Justice Samuel Alito can break a tie.

AP - Banking deals worth billions. The privatization of a massive steel plant. A boom in construction.

NewsFactor - Virtual Reality had a genuine buzz going for it about 10 years ago, when movies like The Lawnmower Man and Virtuosity were getting the green light, and Nintendo's Virtual Boy game system attempted to bring the so-called artificial world into everyday living. The possibility of complete immersion in a computer-generated environment seemed, for a time, to fire up the public's imagination.