I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE
Internet geeks have been unearthing some remarkable China secrets. Using Internet programs like Google Earth to view satellite and aerial images of the world they have spotted an underwater submarine tunnel off China's Hainan Island, a mock-up of a Taiwanese air base in China's remote western desert, and a huge and startlingly accurate terrain model in northwest China that replicates a sensitive border area with India.
(COMMON DREAMS)

ABU GHRAIB FILES
"279 photographs and 19 videos from the Army's internal investigation record a harrowing three months of detainee abuse inside the notorious prison -- and make clear that many of those responsible have yet to be held accountable.
(SALON)

YOU'VE GOT MAIL: YOU'RE FIRED!
Radio Shack executives defended their impersonal approach of sending termination notices to 400 employees by email. They said it was more merciful than face-to-face interaction because it was quicker and gave workers more privacy.
The workforce reduction notification is currently in progress,' the bloodless message Read. 'Unfortunately, your position is one that has been eliminated.
(OREGONIAN)

STING NABS ILLEGAL TRADERS
"It began with a tip. A phone call from a concerned woman to a federal agency that an illegal trade was about to take place. That was in August 2004. A small player was arrested, but the call set investigators on a trail that led them from coast to coast, and they eventually arrested nine persons and accused them of illegal trading.
(WASHINGTON POST)

WTF!?!
"An Ohio grandmother fought for and won the right to keep her personalized license plate after allegations that they were profane.
(MSNBC, unearthed by Thomas DiGiulan)

PORN BOOB-BOOB
"Sweden's state broadcaster SVT on Monday faced ridicule for their porn boo-boo. They mistakenly showed a porn movie in the background of a news broadcast over the weekend. Viewers of a five-minute news update at midnight on Saturday could see explicit scenes from a Czech porn movie on a TV screen behind news anchor Peter Dahlgren.
(AP, unearthed by Kate Varner)

BIN LADEN'S DREAM GIRL
Although he claimed music was evil, Bin Laden spoke of spending vast amounts of money to go to America and try and arrange a meeting with her.
(ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION)

ALABAMA CHURCH GROUP FINED FOR CUBAN TRAVEL
"U.S. Treasury officials have fined an Alabama church group $34,000, accusing members of Baptist Church of the Covenant in Birmingham and several other churches of engaging in prohibited tourist activities while in Cuba last year for religious purposes.
(BIRMINGHAM NEWS, unearthed by Jack Zylman)

DUTY TO DO JUSTICE
The problem is that lawyers' often considerable skills can be harnessed to extraordinarily undemocratic and troubling ends. To be sure, it is sometimes the advocate's job to make weak arguments look strong, and vice-versa. But government lawyers have a different calling. They have a duty to argue what is right, not just what is convenient. Their motto is, 'The government wins when justice is done' - not, 'The government wins when it gets to do whatever it wants.'
(FINDLAW, unearthed by Paul Whitehurst)

HOW TO GIVE NOTICE
This link automatically downloads an mp3 file. It's a hysterical resignation speech by a Mobile Alabama Radio disc jockey who has decided to move on to greener pastures and uses a novel way to give her notice to her bosses at WBLX.
(Suggested by Matt McCarthy)

JILL CARROLL'S STORY
"'You're my brother, you're truly my brother,' I said in Arabic. 'Promise me you will use this gun to kill me by your own hand. I don't want that knife, I don't want the knife. Use the gun.'
(THE FOURTH PART OF THIS SEQUEL WAS PUBLISHED TODAY. FOLLOW THE LINKS)
(SEATTLE TIMES)

WONDERFUL PICTURES OF HAVANA
I'm not quite clear how to get around all of the flashy web mechanisms on this site. So, I've just posted the main site and trust that, if you want to see some truly amazing photography, especially some real street scenes of Havana, you can follow the links to his portfolio. Truly impressive.

DOUBLE SET OF BOOKS
"The Chimera is primarily known as a creature of Greek legend - a fire-breathing monster with parts of a goat and a lion with a serpent for a tail. In biology the term has come to refer to any organism that contains more than one set of genes."
(DAMN INTERESTING, unearthed by Brent Gourley)

HE'S A HOLE MAN
From the outside, William Lyttle's house in Hackney, east London, looks no different. But since the early 1960s,Lyttle has been digging a network of burrows underneath and noone knows how far they stretch. But according to the authorities, which used ultrasound scanners to ascertain the extent of the problem, almost half a century of nibbling dirt with a shovel and homemade pulley has hollowed out a web of tunnels and caverns, some 8m (26ft) deep, spreading up to 20m in every direction from his house.
(GUARDIAN, unearthed by Matt McCarthy)

9/11 TRANSCRIPTS RELEASED
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) this week released full transcripts of the air traffic control recordings from the four flights hijacked on September 11, 2001, and meticulous Flight Path Studies for three of the flights, in response to a Freedom of Information request by the National Security Archive. The studies, posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive, provide the most detailed technical information available to date related to the hijackings, and the transcripts of the aircraft-to-ground communications are the first complete government disclosure of each flight's air traffic control recordings.

The transcripts provide additional details to the information summarized in the 9/11 Commission Report. For example, the NTSB transcript differs slightly from the Commission's text of the warning that United Airlines Flight 93 received only minutes before the hijackers attacked. At 9:23am, the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) shows a text message to Flight 93 reading: "BEWARE OF ANY COCKPIT INTROUSION [sic]. TWO AIRCRAFT IN NY, HIT TRADE CNTER BUILDS [sic]." Five minutes later at 9:28am Flight 93 was sending the message "***(mayday)*** (hey get out of here) ***" as it was being hijacked.
(NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVES)