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Signs There's something spooky in the field next to the farmhouse where Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) lives with his two kids (Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin) and his brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix): gigantic crop circles. Are they an elaborate prank or the harbinger of an alien race's intervention? Given M. Night Shyamalan's earlier hits (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable), you can forget prank. The writer-director wants you to believe in signs, from beyond the grave or the solar system, from the Bible or a good man's troubled heart - for Graham is still in mourning...
...Bolivia--and why his formidable political power is giving U.S. officials fits--pay attention when he and his top advisers open their mouths. That is, see what they're chewing: coca leaves, treasured by Andean Indians like Morales as a sacred tonic and as their most lucrative cash crop but better known to Americans as the raw material of cocaine. Over the past five years, the U.S. has got Bolivia to uproot almost all of its coca shrubs--only to see Morales, 42, and his left-wing Movement to Socialism engineer an astonishing protest this year that could force Bolivia...
Remember not so long ago when the latest crop of low-cost airlines first appeared on the aviation scene? Travelers tisked that the low-cost carriers didn't have enough planes. They quibbled that the carriers were based at - and flew into - remote airports. They complained that their Internet booking facilities meant little customer contact. Even some of their names - easyJet, Buzz, Go - had an unsettling air of impermanence. And weren't those prices just a bit, er, too good to be true...
...modern animal-rights movement, is that it would save Babe the pig and Chicken Run's Ginger from execution. But what about Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse? asks Steven Davis, professor of animal science at Oregon State University, pointing to the number of field animals inadvertently killed during crop production and harvest. One study showed that simply mowing an alfalfa field caused a 50% reduction in the gray-tailed vole population. Mortality rates increase with each pass of the tractor to plow, plant and harvest. Rabbits, mice and pheasants, he says, are the indiscriminate "collateral damage" of row crops...
...wildfires blaze across the west and workers clear the last pieces of debris from the World Trade Center site, readers with no more courage than it takes to drive to Barnes & Noble are snapping up the many new firefighter books on store shelves and best-seller lists. The current crop precedes what will be a glut of 9/11-anniversary-pegged books this fall, including former New York Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen's memoir and a history of his department. It's clear firefighters are hot. The simmering question: Will enough vicarious heroes buy books to sustain the trend? --By Rebecca Winters...