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...Mondragon story began in 1941, when a Catholic priest, Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta (often shortened to Arizmendi), found in the Basque town war-torn devastation where there had been a thriving manufacturing base. He opened a polytechnic school, which in 1956 spawned its first cooperative, a stove factory. Half a century later, the Mondragon enterprise encompasses firms making everything from machine tools to electronics to bicycles, along with a retail division, a university and a significant financial sector, with the large cooperative bank Caja Laboral at its core...
...bluntness, Montazeri has lived under virtual house arrest since 1997, when his religious school was alsoclosed down. His office has occasionally been attacked; religious vigilantes once smeared "Heretic of the Age" across his wall, and guards were often posted outside to cut off contacts. But in 2000, he began using the Internet to reach beyond his jailers, corresponding with other clerics and supporters seeking his rulings...
...comes from a different tradition altogether, albeit a similarly ancient one. In England, the word wassail - derived from the Old Norse ves heill meaning "be well, and in good health" - came to mean the wishing of good fortune on your neighbors. No one is quite sure when the custom began, but it did give us the song, "Here We Come-A-Wassailing" - sung as carolers wished good cheer to their neighbors in hopes of getting a gift in return. ("A Wassailing" also evolved into the popular "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" - its last verse, "Bring us some figgy pudding...
...traditions of singing and visiting first merged in Victorian England, as church carols began to merge with Christian folk music. At that time, it was far from a Christmas tradition; festivals like May Day were deemed worthy of caroling, too, but the repertoire as well as early records of this are pretty unclear. In the 19th Century, as Christmas became more commercialized and popular, publishers began churning out anthologies of carols, many which were ancient hymns, also circulating them in broadsheets...
...trouble began Friday evening when five locomotives abruptly stopped on the tracks in the Channel Tunnel between London and Paris, trapping more than 2,000 passengers with no food, water or news about what was going on for up to 16 hours. Those people eventually made it out of the tunnel -but nobody else has boarded a Eurostar train between the cities, or to Brussels, since then. Service is due to restart on Tuesday, provided officials can ensure that the trains won't break down in the tunnel again. (See pictures of snow crippling London...