SISTINE CHAPEL FRESCO TRANSLATED INTO GRAFFITI
Lying on industrial scaffolding, his legs dangling high above the ground, graffiti artist Paco Rosic reaches for a can of Leather Brown paint. With a quick, rattling shake, he squeezes the nozzle and adds subtle highlights to the hand of God reaching for Adam, as he attempts to recreate Michelangelo's famous Sistine Chapel frescoes in his own street style.
(From a Seattle Times Story)

INSULTED TURKEYS
All caught up in issues like rendition, wiretaps and secret tribunals, we tend to forget that things are really screwed up elsewhere. Turkish novelist Elif Shafak has been acquitted in the case against her which was for, get this, "insulting Turkishness", a case stemming from remarks in her latest novel. She had faced up to three years imprisonment. Here's the best part of this: Shafak, who gave birth to her first child on Saturday, was unable to attend the trial and it was not postponed."
(CIHAN NEWS AGENCY, unearthed by Zaman Online)

RENTAL FEES FOR ROTARY PHONE WERE $14,000
Relatives of an elderly woman in Ohio are outraged. They say that over the past 42 years she has paid approximately $14,000 U.S. in rental fees for her two landline rotary dial phones.
(NEWS.COM, unearthed by infopackets)

"SORRY" SEEMS TO BE THE HARDEST WORD
"A government commission on Monday exonerated a Canadian computer engineer of any ties to terrorism and issued a scathing report that faulted Canada and the United States for his deportation four years ago to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured.

The report on the engineer, Maher Arar, said American officials had apparently acted on inaccurate information from Canadian investigators and then misled Canadian authorities about their plans for Mr. Arar before transporting him to Syria.
(NEW YORK TIMES)

14,000 ARABS IN LIMBO
In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law. Defenders of the system say it's an unfortunate necessity in the battles to pacify Iraq and Afghanistan, and to keep suspected terrorists out of action. But many say that the detention system often is unjust and hurts the war on terror by inflaming anti-Americanism in Iraq and elsewhere.
(AP, unearthed by Common Dreams)