Labour's Ed Balls warns the world economy faces a "catastrophe" unless Germany abandons pressure on eurozone countries to cut public spending.

The senior Scotland Yard officer in charge of three linked phone-hacking investigations will retire later this year, the Met Police confirms.

Chelsea fans across the world are celebrating their team's historic Champions League win, as a victory parade in west London is planned.

The Olympic flame is being carried from Plymouth to Exeter on the second day of the torch relay ahead of the London 2012 Games.

A service takes place later to dedicate a new memorial at Britain's National Memorial Arboretum to the 255 Britons who died in the Falklands War.

A teenager's body is found in undergrowth next to a Merseyside observatory, sparking the arrest of a man on suspicion of murder.

A small number of British soldiers could remain in Afghanistan after forces withdraw in 2014, a senior UK government official says.

A 21-year-old woman remains critically ill in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast after a shooting tragedy in Bellaghy on Saturday morning.

The EU is urged to contest Scotland's plans for a minimum price per unit of alcohol.

In the recent years, we saw both a rise of mobile devices such as the iPhone and wide monitors. Responsive websites are website that can adapt to lots of different screen resolution and always look good. In this article, I have compiled tips and best practices to create responsive websites.

Images are indeed a big part of a website, and as a developer or designer you often have to work with them. Sure, there's desktop applications like Photoshop or Gimp, but there's also a bunch of super useful online tools to store, resize, and modify images online. Here's a round up of the best tools available.

Action hooks and filters are very useful in WordPress. They allow you to "hook" a custom function to an existing function, which allows you to modify WordPress functionality without editing core files. Today, here are 10 super usefull action hooks and filters to supercharge your WordPress install!

As a developer, I really like to collect and keep a library of useful code snippets that allow me to save a lot of time when building websites or apps. Today, I have compiled a list of the most interesting websites to find useful code snippets.

Over the years, Short message service (SMS) has become a very important way of communication, and many businesses are looking for easy ways to send automated text messages to their customers. In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how you can send SMS using PHP and a third party service called TextMagic. Its very easy to do!

After years of usage, your WordPress database can contain weird characters, be filled with data you don't need anymore, and so on. In this article, I'm going to show you 10+ SQL queries to clean up your WordPress database.

Among other great features, the new HTML5 specification allow native audio streaming. In this article, I have compiled the 10 most awesome HTML5 audio players available today.

As a developer, I really like to collect code snippets that can be useful when needed. On CatsWhoCode, most popular posts are often the ones filled with lots of ready to use code snippets. This is why I decided to add a new feature to the site, the code snippet library.

cURL, and its PHP extension libcURL, are very useful tools for tasks like simulating a web browser, submit forms or login to a web service. In this article, I?m going to show you some amazing things that you can do using PHP and cURL.

How do you insult someone legally?

The European dream has become a nightmare, laments Will Self

How did Obama make Beckham blush?

What does the word "re-mode" actually mean?

What caused the mystery of the Dark Day?

Grooming tips from a world record holder

People who record every day of a child's life

Is it time to get rid of traffic lights?

What was in the very first sandwich?

Shivnarine Chanderpaul extends his rearguard action as West Indies edge towards making England bat again at Lord's.

England boss outlines expectations.

Former Chelsea star Gianfranco Zola says the club should make interim boss Roberto Di Matteo their permanent manager.

Jonathan Edwards introduces coverage of the Great Manchester Run, which celebrates its 10th staging since being introduced as a legacy to the city's hosting of the Commonwealth Games.

Live BBC coverage of qualifying from Le Mans. (UK users only)

Chelsea fans across the world are celebrating their team's historic Champions League win, as a victory parade in west London is planned.

Rudi Skacel scores twice as Hearts hammer Edinburgh rivals Hibernian to claim the Scottish Cup in a goal-laden Hampden final.

Alarm Clock Ultra Brings Power-User Features to a Beautiful Alarm Clock App More »

Dutch Baby pancakes, also known as German pancakes, are pancakes made with flour, butter, and milk that are prepared in a special pan and flipped out when ready forming a ridge that can be filled with cream cheese, fruit jams, or other fillings. If you like this style of breakfast you can easily replicate a smaller version at home by using a muffin tin. More »

Harsh chemical drain unclogging solutions can actually be abrasive enough to make your pipes leak after the clog is dissolved. Instead considering pouring a half bottle of white vinegar down your drain every three months to keep clogs from forming. More »

I grew up making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (PB&Js) using the simplest method possible. Spread peanut butter on one slice of bread, spread the jelly on the other side, and combine. The problem with that is the jelly can make the bread soggy and can leak out after you take a bite. Reddit user ChickenMcFail uses a trick I call the "Jelly Pocket Method". More »

If you love to homebrew but live in an area where summer temperatures get too hot for proper fermentation you can resolve yourself to wait to brew or you can build a badass Arduino Nano-controlled UberFridge which will maintain temperatures set to a tenth of a degree and can be monitored or controlled using a custom webapp. If you have a spare working fridge the build will cost around $100 in parts. More »

When you need to seriously clean your bathroom take the towels out and assemble an arsenal of spray cleaners and wipes and go to town. To keep these supplies close at hand you may want to consider adding a towel rod to your laundry room to ensure your cleanings supplies are always ready to go. More »

To save money or avoid a trip to the store you can make your own reusable dryer sheets by dipping white wash cloths or rags into a little liquid fabric softener until they're completely saturated and allow them to dry completely—you'll be able to use each rag around a dozen times until you need to repeat the process. More »

Ever been told that you should fully discharge your battery to prolong its life? Or that jailbreaking your phone is illegal? Or that you should wait for the newest Intel processor because it's going to be "so much faster"? These are tech myths we hear all the time, and likely spread to our friends—but most are just a waste of your time (and in some cases, they can actually harm your gadgets). Here are some of the worst offenders. More »

We've covered many mouse traps over the years, but they all need to be reset once you've caught a mouse. This means if you have lots of furry intruders you'll need to have several traps or just build this version using a 5-gallon bucket, an aluminum beverage can, a small piece of wood, and a wooden dowel. More »

The human body and its brain are pretty incredible. They're also fragile and dumb. Realizing this can make your life miserable, or you can look at it as an opportunity and take control. This weekend, learn a few built-in superpowers you may not have known you had. All they take is a little practice. More »

Verizon relents a little on unlimited data, Congress considers fighting for some "hearts and minds" at home, and Mac folks can relax about lost hotkeys. More »

A simple 'white' pizza with stringy taleggio or stracchino cheese, lemon, thyme and fresh baby artichokes Read more

Cooking your Italian rice in the oven saves you laborious stirring time - plus this one's low in fat and calories Read more

Vegetarian patties packed with pulses and oozing cheddar cheese- a vibrant Mexican dish with a difference Read more

A chunky, creamy soup with salmon and smoked haddock, mixed shellfish and potatoes - a hearty meal Read more

Take five ingredients and whip up this simple green vegetable fusilli supper for two, plus hit 3 of your 5-a-day Read more

Cook this 'low and slow' in its own sauce til it's so tender you can carve it with a spoon Read more

Individual lemon sponge cakes with crunchy sugar topping that make a perfect addition to a tea stand Read more

This Indian feast has a healthy vegetable count and is a really simple everyday supper Read more

Couscous and harissa are a great pairing in this good-value soup Read more

At least 16 people are killed and more than 130 injured when a car bomb explodes in the centre of Pretoria in South Africa.

Britain's police are to be armed with tear gas guns and grenades for use against dangerous criminals.

Britain sends in Royal Navy ships to protect fishing boats in the disputed Icelandic 50-mile zone.

The British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie celebrate the birth of their fourth child, Leo.

Citizens of the English town of High Wycombe witness a unique ceremony at which the mayor is weighed in public.

Max Temp: 13°C (55°F), Min Temp: 8°C (46°F), Wind Direction: NNE, Wind Speed: 10mph, Visibility: good, Pressure: 1012mb, Humidity: 78%, UV risk: low, Pollution: low, Sunrise: 04:57BST, Sunset: 21:00BST

Max Temp: 17°C (63°F), Min Temp: 9°C (48°F), Wind Direction: N, Wind Speed: 11mph, Visibility: good, Pressure: 1010mb, Humidity: 73%, UV risk: moderate, Pollution: low, Sunrise: 04:56BST, Sunset: 21:02BST

Max Temp: 21°C (70°F), Min Temp: 11°C (52°F), Wind Direction: NNW, Wind Speed: 9mph, Visibility: very good, Pressure: 1015mb, Humidity: 59%, UV risk: n/a, Pollution: low, Sunrise: 04:55BST, Sunset: 21:03BST

I’ve been an iPad owner for almost a year now.  I love it. I feel like I’m holding some magical window to the future whenever I’m using it. One minute I can be reading a biography of Theodore Roosevelt and the next I can be watching a free video lecture about Roosevelt on YouTube. And [...] Related posts: Congratulations to Saddleback Leather Company Man Bag Giveaway Winner Congratulations to the Winner of the Saddleback Leather Company Briefcase Giveaway 4 Manly iPad Cases Saddleback Ultimate Manly Travel Gear Giveaway Saddleback Leather Company Man Bag Giveaway

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Shaun Daws from Beginning Barefoot. For millions of years, our ancestors spread around the globe, treading the earth barefoot over all manner of terrain. As we walked and ran, our feet developed an intricate web of nerves, matched only by those in our hands, which allow us [...] Related posts: Beginner’s Guide to Long Distance Running 30 Days to a Better Man Day 2: Shine Your Shoes 5 Items to Snap You Out of Your Daily Work Out Routine Going Sockless in the Summer Rules on the Proper Wearing of Socks

< This post is brought to you by Life Khaki from Haggar What?s this? An at-a-glance visual guide on how to dress for a first date. Related posts: How To Dress For the Kentucky Derby: Your 60 Second Visual Guide An Illustrated Guide to the Perfect Driveway Car Wash 6 Reasons to Carry a Handkerchief: A Visual Guide Dressing for the Occasion: Your 60 Second Visual Guide How to Dress for a Job Interview: Your 60 Second Visual Guide

In today's excerpt - between the tenures of two big-city presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy - described by historian Arthur Schlesinger as "patrician, urbane, cultivated, inquisitive, gallant" - came two small-town presidents, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower - described in a Newsweek issue of the time as the Kennedys' "dowdy" predecessors. Though they clashed, Truman and Eisenhower had much in common and grew up only 163 miles apart in Independence, Missouri and Abilene, Kansas: "Harry S Truman and Dwight David Eisenhower, the last American presidents to be born in the nineteenth century, would have much in common. They were both ... grandsons of farmers. They were both sons of fathers who were respected but whose lives were inter­rupted by failure; both were children of forceful mothers in strong fami­lies. As we have seen, they were both small-town boys (in 1890, Abilene's population was 3,547; Independence's, 6,380). "Each of them was born, as the result of reverses in his father's work life, in small towns (Truman in Lamar, Missouri, population 2,036; Eisenhower in Denison, Texas, population 10,768). They were both from the lower-middle class (John Truman, a mule trader; David Eisenhower, a mechanic at a dairy); both were educated in the small town's public schools; both were brought up in a low-church Protestant denomination (Truman a Baptist, Eisenhower an Anabaptist). Both would occasionally refer to the planet Earth, as no other recent president would be likely to do, as 'God's footstool.' Both were graduated, as we have noted, in a class with more girls than boys from the small town's one high school. "They were both externally minded sons of the middle border, active, purposeful. They both did well in school. They both liked history. They both were drawn to generals. They both admired Robert E. Lee, and both of them admired and knew about Hannibal. Neither of them was likely to become a lyric poet or a metaphysician. "Both worked hard when young (Truman at J. H. Clinton's Drug Store; Eisenhower at the Belle Springs Dairy). Neither had an assured college future. Harry Truman wanted to go to West Point but accidentally (because of his eyes) could not; Dwight Eisenhower had no particular desire to go there but accidentally did go. "They were both conscientious midwesterners with a strong sense of duty. They would both spend their entire careers in public service. They were both honest with respect to money. Neither one of them would own the house that he lived in until his entire career was over. Truman lived and died probably the poorest of twentieth-century presidents, certainly the poorest of the last fifty years. Eisenhower, in spite of book sales and rich friends, would not be among the richest. "Both married 'above themselves' and had lifelong marriages. Harry Truman displayed a spectacular devotion to Bess Wallace from the time he met her in the Presbyterian Sunday school when he was six until he died at eighty-eight. Through twenty-nine years of courtship and fifty-three years of marriage, he was faithful, apparently, despite life in the army in France, innumerable road trips as a traveling politician, regular attendance at American Legion conventions, and months of living alone in Washing­ton, eating in Hot Shoppes, while Bess and Margaret went back to Inde­pendence. Dwight Eisenhower kept his marriage together through twenty-five years in the military camps of a peacetime army, seventeen different places of residence, a radical four-year wartime separation while he lived on another continent from his wife and became famous, as well as the focus of gossip because of his relationship with his driver, Kay Summersby, and then through twenty-four more years of fame, power, and retirement. "Both men had a straightforward, uncomplicated patriotism. The chief living moral model for both of them would be the same man: George Marshall. Truman chose him instead of the slippery Franklin Roosevelt; Eisenhower preferred him to the flamboyant Douglas MacArthur. "Although members of the Lost Generation, neither of them was lost. Although members of their generation engaged in the 'revolt from the village' after the Great War and lived in Paris, neither of these villagers revolted. Neither went to Paris, or to anywhere else in Europe, except when sent there by the army."

In today's encore excerpt - the mansions and retinues of such kings and queens as Britain's King Henry VIII and his daughter Queen Elizabeth: "Traditionally, the great house builders (and house accumulators) were monarchs. At the time of his death Henry VIII had no fewer than forty-two palaces. But his daughter Elizabeth cannily saw that it was much cheaper to visit others and let them absorb the costs of her travels, so she resurrected in a big way the venerable practice of making annual royal progresses [lengthy visits to the houses of nobles]. The queen was not in truth a great traveler-she never left England or even ventured very far within it-but she was a terrific visitor. Her annual progresses lasted eight to twelve weeks and took in about two dozen houses. "Royal progresses were nearly always greeted with a mixture of excitement and dread by those on whom the monarch called. On the one hand they provided unrivaled opportunities for preferment and social advancement, but on the other they were stupefyingly expensive. The royal household numbered up to about 1,500 people, and a good many of these-150 or so in the case of Elizabeth I-traveled with the royal personage on her annual pilgrimages. Hosts not only had the towering expenditure of feeding, housing, and entertaining an army of spoiled and privileged people but also could expect to experience quite a lot of pilfering and property damage, as well as some less salubrious surprises. After the court of Charles II departed from Oxford in about 1660, one of those left behind remarked in an understandably appalled tone how the royal visitors had left 'their excrements in every corner, in chimneys, studies, coal-houses, cellars.' "Since a successful royal visit could pay big dividends, most hosts labored inventively and painstakingly to please the royal guest. Owners learned to provide elaborate masques and pageants as a very minimum, but many built boating lakes, added wings, or reconstructed whole landscapes in the hope of eliciting a small cry of pleasure from the royal lips. Gifts were lavished freely. A hapless courtier named Sir John Puckering gave Elizabeth a diamond-festooned silk fan, several loose jewels, a gown of rare splendor, and a pair of exceptionally fine virginals, then watched at their first dinner as Her Majesty admired the silver cutlery and a salt cellar and, without a word, dropped them into the royal handbag. "Even her most long-standing ministers learned to be hypersensitive to the queen's pleasures. When Elizabeth complained of the distance to his country house in Lincolnshire, Lord Burghley bought and extended another at Waltham Cross, in London's Home Counties. Christopher Hatton, Elizabeth's lord chancellor, built a mighty edifice called Holdenby House expressly for receiving the queen. In the event, she never came, and Hatton died £18,000 in debt-a crushing burden, equivalent to about £9 million today. "Sometimes the builders of these houses didn't have a great deal of choice. James I ordered the loyal but inconsequential Sir Francis Fane to rebuild Apethorpe Hall in Northamptonshire on a colossal scale so that he and the Duke of Buckingham, his lover, would have some rooms of suitable grandeur to saunter through en route to the bedroom. "The worst imposition of all was to be instructed to take on some costly, long-standing obligation to the crown. Such was the fate of Bess of Hardwick's husband, the sixth Lord Shrewsbury. For sixteen years he was required to act as jailer to Mary, Queen of Scots, which in effect meant maintaining the court of a small, fantastically disloyal state in his own home. We can only imagine his sinking heart as he saw a line of eighty horse-drawn wagons-enough to make a procession a third of a mile long-coming up his drive bearing the Scottish queen, fifty servants and secretaries, and all their possessions. In addition to housing and feeding this force of people, Shrewsbury had to maintain a private army to provide security."

In today's excerpt - living in near penniless poverty with his alcoholic father Al in Seattle, with his mother long since having left them both and his brother Leon in foster care, sixteen-year-old Jimi Hendrix got his first electric guitar: "Jimi turned sixteen [in the fall of 1958], and music became an increasingly important part of his life. He had become proficient on his acoustic gui­tar, but what he most wanted was an electric model. 'He was fascinated with electronics,' Leon recalled. 'He had rewired a stereo and tried to make it electrify his guitar.' [Family friend] Ernestine Benson, seeing Jimi's interest in music grow, hounded Al to buy the boy a proper instrument. "School continued to be a problem. Even retaking classes he had failed the previous year, Jimi struggled. When he and Al moved again in December to live for a few months with [his niece] Grace and [her husband] Frank Hatcher, it necessitated yet another transfer to Washington junior High. When the spring term was over, Jimi had again failed math, English, and mechan­ical drawing. He couldn't be held back a second time, so school officials approved him for high school in the fall, hoping, no doubt, that the new environment would improve his grades. "Father and son spent only a short time living with the Hatchers, who quickly tired of Al's troubles. 'Al was so inconsistent: drinking, gambling, and coming home any old time,' Frank Hatcher recalled. In April 1959, they moved again, this time to an apartment on First Hill. The building was so rodent-infested, Al never bothered to turn the gas stove on or to use the kitchen. Prostitutes worked down the street. The apartment was across from a juvenile detention center, which perhaps served as a reminder to Jimi of where things could lead. "Despite the degradation around them, it was in that apartment where Jimi found his greatest childhood joy when he received his first electric guitar. Nagged constantly by Ernestine Benson to 'get that boy a guitar,' Al finally relented and bought an instrument on time pay­ments from Myer's Music. He purchased a saxophone at the same time, thinking he would take the instrument up himself. For a brief while, the two Hendrix males jammed together. When the next payment came due, however, Al returned the horn. "Jimi's guitar was a white Supro Ozark. It was right-handed, but Jimi immediately restrung it leftie; that still meant that the guitar's con­trols were reversed, which would have made it difficult to master. Jimi immediately called [girlfriend] Carmen Goudy and yelled into the phone, 'I've got a guitar!' 'You already have a guitar,' she said. 'No, I mean a real guitar!' he exclaimed. He dashed over to her house. As they walked to Meany Park, Jimi was literally jumping for joy with the guitar in his hands. 'Remember,' Carmen said, 'we were kids who were so poor, we didn't get stuff for Christmas. This was like hav­ing five Christmases all rolled up into one. You couldn't help but feel happy for him. I think it was the happiest day of his life.' " Author: Title: Publisher: Date: Pages:

In today's excerpt - an unconventional approach to education: "In 1999 the Indian physicist Sugata Mitra got interested in education. He knew there were places in the world without schools and places in the world where good teachers didn't want to teach. What could be done for kids living in those spots was his question. Self-directed learning was one pos­sible solution, but were kids living in slums capable of all that much self-direction? "At the time, Mitra was head of research and development for NIIT Technologies, a top computer software and development company in New Delhi, India. His posh twenty-first-century office abutted an urban slum but was kept separate by a tall brick wall. So Mitra designed a simple exper­iment. He cut a hole in the wall and installed a computer and a track pad, with the screen and the pad facing into the slum. He did it in such a way that theft was not a problem, then connected the computer to the Internet, added a web browser, and walked away. "The kids who lived in the slums could not speak English, did not know how to use a computer, and had no knowledge of the Internet, but they were curious. Within minutes, they'd figured out how to point and click. By the end of the first day, they were surfing the web and-even more importantly-teaching one another how to surf the web. These results raised more questions than they answered. Were they real? Did these kids really teach themselves how to use this computer, or did someone, perhaps out of sight of Mitra's hidden video camera, explain the technology to them? "So Mitra moved the experiment to the slums of Shivpuri, where, as he says, 'I'd been assured no one had ever taught anybody anything.' He got similar results. Then he moved it to a rural village and found the same thing. Since then, this experiment has been replicated all over India, and all over the world, and always with the same outcome: kids, working in small, unsupervised groups, and without any formal training, could learn to use computers very quickly and with a great degree of proficiency. "This led Mitra to an ever-expanding series of experiments about what else kids could learn on their own. One of the more ambitious of these was conducted in the small village of Kalikkuppam in southern India. This time Mitra decided to see if a bunch of impoverished Tamil-speaking, twelve-year-olds could learn to use the Internet, which they'd never seen before; to teach themselves biotechnology, a subject they'd never heard of; in English, a language none of them spoke. 'All I did was tell them that there was some very difficult information on this computer, they probably wouldn't under­stand any of it, and I'll be back to test them on it in a few months.' "Two months later, he returned and asked the students if they'd under­stood the material. A young girl raised her hand. 'Other than the fact that improper replication of the DNA molecule causes genetic disease,' she said, 'we've understood nothing.' In fact, this was not quite the case. When Mitra tested them, scores averaged around 30 percent. From 0 percent to 30 percent in two months with no formal instruction was a fairly remark­able result, but still not good enough to pass a standard exam. So Mitra brought in help. He recruited a slightly older girl from the village to serve as a tutor. She didn't know any biotechnology, but was told to use the 'grand­mother method': just stand behind the kids and provide encouragement. 'Wow, that's cool, that's fantastic, show me something else!' Two months later, Mitra came back. This time, when tested, average scores had jumped to 50 percent, which was the same average as high-school kids studying bio-tech at the best schools in New Delhi. "Next Mitra started refining the method. He began installing computer terminals in schools. Rather than giving students a broad subject to learn-for example, biotechnology-he started asking directed questions such as 'Was World War II good or bad?' The students could use every available resource to answer the question, but schools were asked to restrict the num­ber of Internet portals to one per every four students because, as Matt Rid­ley wrote in the Wall Street Journal, 'one child in front of a computer learns little; four discussing and debating learn a lot.' When they were tested on the subject matter afterward (without use of the computer), the mean score was 76 percent. That's pretty impressive on its own, but the question arose as to the real depth of learning. So Mitra came back two months later, retested the students, and got the exact same results. This wasn't just deep learning, this was an unprecedented retention of information. ... "Taken together, this work reverses a bevy of educational practices. Instead of top-down instruction, [these 'self-organized learning environments'] are bottom up. Instead of making students learn on their own, this work is collaborative. Instead of a formal in-school setting for instruction, the Hole-in-the-Wall method relies on a playground-like environment. Most importantly, minimally invasive edu­cation doesn't require teachers. Currently there's a projected global short­age of 18 million teachers over the next decade."

In today's excerpt - Huey P. Long. From his swearing-in as Louisiana governor in 1928 to his assassination in 1935, Huey Long was a firebrand without equal in American politics. Leaving a non-stop trail of vitriol and controversy in his wake, Long was not above a fist-fight with a former governor:"It was lunchtime and a crowd of visitors attending a bottlers conven­tion filled the plush lobby of New Orleans's Hotel Roosevelt. A group of Orange Crush salesmen were relaxing in the hotel grill after finishing their fried oyster sandwiches when they heard yells and scuffling outside the door. Rushing into the lobby, they were surprised to see an elderly overweight gentleman grappling with a younger man on the marble floor. Many of the onlookers recognized the two men fighting. The older gen­tleman was J. Y. Sanders, sixtyish and the former governor of the state, and the younger was the red-haired Huey P. Long. "An old-fashioned Southern orator full of cliches about the Lost Cause and the virtues of white supremacy, Jared Y. Sanders was a household name in Louisiana politics. Supported by the New Orleans Ring, he served in the state House of Representatives from 1892 to 1904, as lieu­tenant governor from 1904 to 1908, governor from 1908 to 1912, and U.S. congressman from Louisiana's Sixth District from 1917 to 1921. A fire-breathing Protestant who fought liquor and gambling, Sanders ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1912,1920, and 1926. While gover­nor, Sanders accomplished little and succumbed to the conservative backroom politics of gentlemanly know-nothingness that kept Louisiana mired in the nineteenth century. His refusal to improve the state's ar­chaic highways earned him the nickname 'Gravel Roads' Sanders. "Huey claimed he had opposed Sanders in every election since 1908, including the 1926 Senate race when he campaigned across the state for incumbent Senator Ed Broussard and against that 'long-legged sap-sucker' Sanders. Sanders now was bent over by age, prompting Huey to call him 'Old Buzzard Back.' J.Y. detested Huey, writing that 'when it comes to arousing prejudice and passion, when it comes to ranting and raving, when it comes to vituperation and vilification, when it comes to denunciation and demagoguery, there is one who stands out by himself alone. [Huey] has many imitators but no equals.' Any meeting between the two men usually turned ugly. "Ugly indeed was the scene on Tuesday, November 15, 1927, when Huey and Sanders clashed in the Hotel Roosevelt lobby. Huey had just arrived in New Orleans for a week of campaigning and headed to his head­quarters on the hotel's twelfth floor. Unexpectedly he ran into J.Y, who was just leaving the dining room. When he spotted Huey, Sanders yelled across the marble-columned lobby that he was a 'damned liar.' Huey jumped on the ex-governor, punched him, and turned and ran to the ele­vator at the other end of the hotel. Sanders, portly and puffing and bent over with age, chased Huey to the elevator and squeezed in before the doors shut. The two men wrestled on the floor as the boy operating the elevator watched in stunned silence. Bystanders broke up the scuffle. "Neither man was injured and both claimed victory. J.Y. declared that Huey crouched in the elevator like a 'terror-stricken kitten' and Huey's oppo­nents branded him as a coward who fled from the sixty-year-old ex-governor. Later that afternoon Huey strutted through the lobby viciously chewing on a six-inch cigar and flaunting a part of J.Y.'s shirt cuff ripped off in the elevator. That evening, he still waved J.Y.'s torn cuff and bragged of his elevator triumph as he spoke to a huge crowd in Palmer Park on Carrollton Avenue."

In today's excerpt - after almost a millennium as an independent kingdom, in the 1800s Vietnam (French Indochina) became a French colony and its people suffered under the colonial lash. It was then occupied by Japan during World War II, and sensing an opportunity upon the end of the war, Vietnam declared its independence from France under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh. Vietnam's independence was brief, however, as the French ignored Vietnam's declaration and reasserted their rights to the colony. It took three wars of independence -- first against the French, then against the U.S., and finally against the Chinese -- before the country finally regained genuine independence. "Uncle" Ho became revered in Vietnam as fervently as George Washington was after the American Revolution, and today his body is viewed by thousands each day in an imposing mausoleum in the heart of now-capitalist Hanoi: "Born Nguyen Sinh Cung on May 19, 1890, in the village of Hoang Tru near Vinh, just north of Hue in central Viet­nam, Ho [Chi Minh] spent his young life looking over his father's shoulder as [he] studied to be a mandarin (high government offi­cial). While living in Hue, he saw his mother and sister die -- experiences that steeled him for a harsh life later. Ho's father was a thinker and had many friends who were active in radical poli­tics, and from an early age Ho was exposed to lots of revolutionary talk [against the French]. Ho studied only briefly at university before setting out on his own, walking the length of Vietnam and working as a teacher here and there from 1906 to 1911. ... Like Che Guevara's motorcycle trip around South America, Ho Chi Minh's formative wanderings in Vietnam were a major part of his identity. He developed his compassion and understanding of the Vietnamese people and also saw up close their struggles under a colonial yoke. "Leaving Saigon in 1911, Ho set sail as a cook on a ship. Reputedly, this was the time when he gained his worldly perspective and began to understand notions of the world as a class struggle, a kind of Darwinian fight that can have only one solution: an ongoing peasant/proletariat revolution. He connected with other free thinkers abroad, working in kitchens in London, and then moved to Paris, where he changed his name to Nguyen Ai Quoc ('Nguyen the Patriot'). His ideas began to gain clout among fellow dissidents, and he became involved in underground print journalism while building a Rolodex of fellow revolutionaries. "He traveled between Moscow and China, a revolutionary peripatetic, for most of the 1930s, and grew a large fol­lowing. As a founder of the Indochinese Communist Party, he was under constant suspicion and surveillance, at one point fleeing to Hong Kong and then on to the south of China, where he formed the League for an Independent Vietnam, whose members, later soldiers, were called the Viet Minh, and then Viet Cong in the war with the United States. Imprisoned by Chiang Kai-shek in 1940, Ho changed his name to Ho Chi Minh ('Enlightened One') and returned to Vietnam via surreptitious border cross­ings and long stays in hide-out caves in the far north (near Cao Bang). "On August 19, 1945, after the surrender of the Japanese in World War II, Ho Chi Minh made his 'Declara­tion of Independence' that borrowed language from U.S. and French docu­ments of freedom. Thus began the armed revolution. Outwardly an ascetic, Ho was reput­edly a ladies' man, and stories of his nighttime dalliances, real or imagined, pepper more recent histories. He is even said to have taken up with a French woman and to have fathered a number of children. Diminutive and delicate, Ho was a leader who lived a spartan exis­tence, upholding the ideals of egalitarian revolution, living in a simple two-room building on the grounds of the former imperial palace. "Ho Chi Minh died from natural causes in 1969, just 6 years short of seeing his dream of a unified Communist Vietnam. Nearing death, Ho was explicit about his wishes to be cremated, his ashes divided into three separate portions and distributed at sites in the north, center, and south to celebrate the reunification of the country. He asked for no pomp or circumstance, no grand tomb or homage to his remains. The hulking mausoleum [is where he is now] embalmed and set on a palanquin for general public viewing. ... "Following a long tradition of deifying war heroes, Ho Chi Minh's image is everywhere [in Vietnam]: on cabs, in shrines, and in long rows of portraits hung in family rooms, sanctified in the family pantheon as one of the great immortals."