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Castro to Relinquish Cuban Presidency

Prior to the Soviet Union's collapse, support from the Kremlin sustained Cuba as a socialist outpost on the doorstep of the United States, and placed Castro and his country in the middle of events central to the Cold War, including the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis.

Bush said he hoped this would be "the beginning of a democratic transition for the people of Cuba ...

Pleasing Penn palates

The problem with food served in a cafeteria is that invariably it tastes like cafeteria food. The steam-table aura is hard enough for any cafeteria to deal with - add to that requiring patrons to prepay nearly $4,000 a year, and you've got a college dining hall. Inmates in state penitentiaries may be easier to please. At the University of Pennsylvania, where freshmen are required to buy a $3,884 two-semester meal plan (it's optional for all other students), expectations run high, said Laurie Cousart, who oversees Penn Dining. "Our students come from many places across the country and around the world," Cousart said. "They have sophisticated tastes." So, just as with academics and athletics, she said, Penn works hard to stay competitive. Penn Dining already offers Seafood Tuesdays and Restaurant Thursdays (with table service in lieu of cafeteria lines and a menu that features lobster and lamb chops).

Close knit: Weekly gatherings tie knitters together

A group of knitters, calling themselves "Stitch N Bitch," meet for a Wednesday night gathering at the Good Food Store Cafe. The group welcomes knitters of all skill levels. "(It's) people who get together and stitch and talk about fun things," says Shelli Martineau.
Watch an audio slideshow of one of their meetings here. .

Naive to think music can change the world: Neil Young

I won't be doing anything else and I don't want to sing any ... pretty songs; we can only sing about war and politics and the human condition."

Young did have one good thing to say about U.S. President George W.

Climbers Missing on Mount Hood Call to Say They're on Way Down

PORTLAND, Ore. — A pair of climbers missing in treacherous weather on Mount Hood reported by cell phone Tuesday that they were on their way off the mountain after getting lost and spending the night in a snow cave.

Although they had been expected to be somewhere above Timberline Lodge, where they parked their car, they turned out to be at an elevation of only about 3,800 feet, near a tree line on the 11,239-foot mountain, Strovink said.

2007 Holiday Guide

Birdhouses from a Dutch design group, tea kettles, tabletop art, rare pieces, and work from the MoMA are all up for grabs in the Design Shop.

Gifts For You! Gifts For Me!, noon-6 p.m. Dec. 1, Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center, 40 S. Carroll St., Frederick, (301) 698-0656, www.delaplaine.org, free. Jewelry, cards, paintings, decorative items, and gifts from Frederick artists beat the cheap junk at Target and makes you look thoughtful for picking up something hand-crafted.

First certified manuka honey launched

Thomas Henle, Head of the Institute of Food Chemistry at the Technical University of Dresden, writing in Molecular Nutrition and Food Research, refers to the results of a Dresden study which “unambiguously demonstrates for the first time that Methylglyoxal is directly responsible for the antibacterial activity of manuka honey.”

Prof Henle notes the high amounts of Methylglyoxal found in manuka honey have not been found in any other food.

Researchers at the university analysed 40 samples of honey from various sources around the world, including six New Zealand manuka honeys.

They found Methylglyoxal levels in the manuka honeys, including a Manuka Health product, were up to 1000-fold higher than in the non-manuka products.

Their tests found a median Methylglyoxal level in non-manuka honeys of 3.1 mg/kg.

Enterprise photo by Angela Schneider

Caldwell said Evergreen can use the survey feedback to improve its facility to get off the SFF list and will graduate from the program by making significant improvements in quality of care over the next 18 to 24 months.

Redfield said he wonders how long it will be until a court order injunction will take control away from the state.

Science Life in the Fast-lane: Human Evolution Accelerating

Humans are evolving at frenetic, previously unobserved pace according to a new paper titled "Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution", which was published Monday in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal. The paper, which was based on research spearheaded by University of Utah anthropologist Henry Harpending, examined 3.9 million gene segments of 270 individuals, 90 of European descent, 90 of African descent, 45 of Han Chinese descent and 45 of Japanese descent. The conclusion was that humans evolved rapidly, and apart from each other. Evidence indicates that this rapid evolution has not stopped either. If the human genome had evolved at the current pace during the period of 6 million years since the human lineage separated from the Chimpanzee lineage, as is currently believed, than there should have been 160 times the current number of genetic variations in human DNA. Further by comparing dental and skeletal variations of the last 10,000 years of human history, the team came to the conclusion that man underwent a relatively slow paced change over the first couple of million years, but is now entering into an era of unprecedented evolution, which would explain why the current rate is so much higher than the previous rate.