Crossing the pacific on Junk
An environmental organisation is trying to raise awareness about plastic waste by crossing the pacific ocean on a raft made of plastic bottles. You can sponsor a bottle by going to http://junkraft.blogspot.com/ and buying a bottle, in which you can put your own message.

Thousands of Brazilians made their way to the house of a convicted Columbian drug lord whose possessions were being sold off. They bought plush sofas, designer footwear, plasma Tvs and thousands of Hello Kitty toys, dirt cheap, and the police had to use pepper spray to control them.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUKN0838255420080409?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

Today is Black Day in South Korea. It is celebrated 2 months after Valentines Day by people who have still not found love. They wear dark clothing, eat black coloured noodles, and generally feel miserable.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUKSEO18852320080414?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews

Global Warming is causing barley and hops crops to fail, which means that we could have a serious beer shortage within the next thirty years.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/effects-of-global-warming-beer-shortage.php

Last year, Modbury became the first town in Europe to completely ban plastic bags. One year later, here's a report on how the people have learnt to do without them.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/modbury-bans-plastic-bags.php

'Young at heart' is a documentary about rock bands made up of senior citizens - some of them as old as 92.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUKN1242512920080413?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&sp=true
----------------------------------
He Wrote 200,000 Books (but Computers Did Some of the Work)
Philip M. Parker has generated more than 200,000 books, as an advanced search on Amazon.com under his publishing company shows, making him, in his own words, "the most published author in the history of the planet." And he makes money doing it.
But these are not conventional books, and it is perhaps more accurate to call Mr. Parker a compiler than an author. Mr. Parker (..) has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/business/media/14link.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Coconut oil as fuel
A small island in the Pacific called Malekula is developing a coconut oil that could be used as alternative fuel. For 3 years now, the eletricity company Unelco-Suez uses a mixture of coconut oil and diesel to make its generators work and it believes that soon they will use only the fruit oil to do so.
news from Le Monde http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=1032041
translated here to portuguese http://noticias.uol.com.br/midiaglobal/lemonde/2008/04/14/ult580u3024.jhtm

An Atlas of Radical Cartography
Artists Lize Mogel and Alexis Bhagat have just released their new book, An Atlas of Radical Cartography, which is a collection of 10 maps and 10 essays about social issues from globalization to garbage; surveillance to extraordinary rendition; statelessness to visibility; deportation to migration. The book provides a critical foundation for an area of work that bridges art/design, cartography/geography, and activism. The maps and essays in this book provoke new understandings of networks and representations of power and its effects on people and places. These new perceptions of the world are the prerequisites of social change.
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/04/book-review-an-atlas-of-radica-1.php