Presumed twin removed from 4-month-old boy’s belly, Cairo newspaper reports.

The Call From the Wild . Stories of cell phone calls saving lives in the wilderness are becoming common, yet using a cell phone in the backcountry risks raising the hackles of other climbers or backpackers. Objections arise from the aesthetic violation of the isolation of the wilderness, the perception that having a cell phone facilitates a backcountry traveller taking more risks than is prudent, and the wastefulness of unnecessary search and rescue missions “resulting from frightened people giving in to the temptation to call when they get tired or lost, instead of relying on themselves.” Washington Post

Cold War Oncology – Bismuth-213, part of the decay chain from uranium-233 left over from weapons-grade uranium stockpiles at Oak Ridge TN, may be a boon to cancer chemotherapy.

Planet lovers campaign to save Pluto Express – NASA’s first unmanned expedition to Pluto and the Kuiper disc is threatened with cancellation, partly because of the two failed missions to Mars. The Planetary Society wants its 10,000 members to lobby Congress to preserve the Pluto trip.

The letter carrier wants to know your email address. If you sign up for this service the U.S. Postal Service wants to offer, your existing email address will be cross-referenced in a giant USPO database with your street address. Anyone could send you an email if all they know about you is your snailmail address. Think about the spam possibilities! ZDNet

Please Change Beliefs is conceptual artist Jenny Holzer’s May ’99 web installation. Holzer’s subversive aphorisms are playing a prominent part at the anti-Republican demonstrations in Philadelphia, acording to news sources. Artcyclopedia

World War II prisoner emerges. He is presumed to be a Hungarian thought to have died in WWII but in reality incarcerated in a Russian mental hospital for the 55 years since. Piecing together the story is complicated, however, since he is confused and does not recall who he is or what happened to him. This man never learned Russian and can barely speak his native Hungarian; he has had no one to speak to since another prisoner’s release twenty years ago. BBC

Sounds like a plot from one of those tacky Indian films…

National Abortion Rights Action League’s factsheet on the record of Republican vice-presidential nominee Dick Cheney: “During his ten years in the U.S. House of Representatives, former

Rep. Cheney cast 27 votes on abortion and reproductive rights. Of

that number, 26 were anti-choice votes.” The details follow.

Fusing Beauty and Terror, Reverence and Desecration: The Fallen Concorde. “Critic’s notebook” commentary in the New York Times. Abit over-the-top but has a useful punchline. “The Concorde crash,

in other words, ought to shock people out of retro ways of

thinking in all spheres of culture.”

Asylum Plea by Chinese Sect’s Leader Perplexes the U.S.. We either deny asylum and turn a religious leader over to persecution, or we grant it and tell the Chinese we harbor elements they find offensive. Complicating the matter further, China has accused him of criminal activities. The U.S. and China have no extradition treaty, so it appears to be a matter of U.S. discretion. New York Times