Headlines from April 19, 2011
- Banks ordered to freeze international assets face Arabic spelling challenges.
- Turned down for 826, Austin lures teachers from its local music and film scene to start a creative tutoring center.
- A new business finds there's money to be made introducing unconnected parents to private school administrators.
- Cuba's Communist Party agrees to allow private property for the first time since the revolution.
- The Long Island mansion that may have inspired Gatsby will be razed to make room for five new homes.
- For decades, the thread running through Picasso's personal and artistic life was mistress Marie-Therese Walter, 28 years his junior.
- Elizabeth Abbott on why today's liberal climate means we should be open to the ancient institution of polygamy.
- Mango jelly bean bearing a vague resemblance of Kate Middleton selling for only £500.
- Op: Today's most powerful viruses are the memes that change the face of our civilization.
- Info pirates hope their new religion, based on file sharing, will be officially recognized.
- Scientists trace the smallest discrepancies in language to build a linguistic family tree that debunks some of Chomsky's theories.
- How police officers face the worst part of their jobs: breaking bad news.
- Summary of Nigerian politics: a federal system of fiefdoms ruled by godfatherism.
- Protests in Nigeria, Uganda, and Burkina Faso don't symbolize a broader African movement.
- Cousins of Roomba deployed to Fukushima reactor building.
- See also: Video shot by an unmanned helicopter of the destruction of Fukushima's buildings.
- Hitchens to Kate Middleton: If you really love him, honey, get him out of there, and yourself, too.
- People regularly say "it fits in a handkerchief." Francisco Goldman's short paean to Mexico City's surrealism.
- Our Tournament of Books is currently batting 3-for-5 as a Pulitzer predictor.
- 2011 Pulitzer winners available for long reads on your cellphone/tablet/computer/thingie.
- See also: 2011 Pulitzer-winning poet Kay Ryan's "Sharks' Teeth."
- Verizon man gets his life back, but can no longer wear Buddy Holly glasses in public.
- What to do when you can do anything you want, as in the case of Jeff Bridges.
- Human capital is the bedrock of local and national success. The message of the Sun Belt is more complicated.
- Star Wars producer on why the film worked: People wanted to actually live in the environment created onscreen.
- Video: Moments in symmetry; Yo-Yo Ma plays while Lil Buck jooks.