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| Put N Korea On Trial |
 SHIN Dong-hyuk was 14 in 1996
when prison guards suspended
him from the ceiling of an
underground torture chamber
by his hands and legs, all
because his mother and brother had
tried to escape.... |
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| BRUTALITY OF
SERVILITY |
 MAYBE we gave up on
John Edwards too soon.
His hair still looks great,
even though he now gets
cuts for $12.95, not
$400. And the man clearly has a gift
for multitasking under pressure.... |
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 | Deluge of breakup songs straight from Norah's heart AT 6 pm on a Tuesday in mid-March the people streaming into the Living Room, a Lower East Side club geared to singer-songwriters, weren't there for happy hour. Word had quietly gone out to friends and associates that Norah Jones and her band would be performing songs from....
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| | A prefab home, not so fabricated | | WHEN Zoe Bissell was a nine-year-old living in New York's East Village, her newly divorced father, a sculptor, built a rough-cut lumber cabin with an outhouse and a woodburning stove. There was no running water and, at first, no electricity.
"It was very eccentric," said Bissell, 41, a welding artist with a self-deprecating sense of humour.
"It was borderline squalor." So when her father died in 1994 and Bissell and her brother inherited their father's six acres (with the cabin on the brother's side), she knew exactly what kind of house she wanted to build on her half: "Clean, crisp, no wood – I wanted the complete opposite," she said.
Last year, she got her wish: a modern box of galvanised steel with a 1,450-square-foot interior awash in light and air, thanks to a rear wall that is almost entirely glass. Bissell lives there with her partner of a decade, Bryan Buryk, 39, a cabinetry designer; their four-year-old daughter, Shelby; and two small dogs named Pearl and Angus.
The house is prefabricated, built from a kit Bissell found online called the LVL Home, designed by Rocio Romero, an architect.
Affordability, along with a minimalist aesthetic, were the reasons she decided on a prefab house – points on which Buryk, who had years before remodelled a 100-year-old house in Portland, wholeheartedly agreed. "I, similar to Zoe, was coming from a place of not wanting to do that again," he said.
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| | The preschool race is no joke | | WILDLY implausible faux news stories appear each April Fool's Day, some of which are taken seriously. This year's clear winner was the National Public Radio feature about a preschool's new requirement that all applicants submit DNA profiles.
As the segment begins, the host Guy Raz is greeted by Rebecca Unsinn, described as headmaster at a school called the Porsafillo Preschool Academy, located in Manhattan.
Unsinn walks Raz through gleaming computer labs where toddlers master C++. She proudly describes the school's Mandarin Chinese immersion programme.
We are also told that Unsinn, a pediatric neurologist, was recruited to oversee the school's new genetic tests, designed to help winnow 12,000 applications for 32 available spots in next year's class. As she explains, "We now know that simple DNA testing can determine whether a child will end up at Yale or at Yonkers Community College." It's a preposterous claim, of course, but some took it seriously.
One website recounted t h e tale this way: "Parents being what they are today, the applicants to Porsafillo don't even blink at the requirement, some going so far as to have the sample for the DNA test taken while the child is still in the womb, according to an NPR story." Such reactions bespeak how bitterly competitive the battle for elite preschool slots has become in New York and elsewhere.
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| | Beyonce named People's most beautiful woman | | GRAMMY-AWARD winning singer and new mother Beyonce was named the world's most beautiful woman for 2012 on Wednesday by People magazine.
The 30-year-old entertainer was awarded People's top spot after she and her rapper husband Jay-Z welcomed their first child, a daughter named Blue Ivy Carter, who was born in New York in January.
"I feel more beautiful than I've ever felt because I've given birth. I have never felt so connected, never felt like I had such a purpose on this earth," the singer told the magazine.
Beyonce topped the magazine's annual list and joined other women who have held the title including Michelle Pfeiffer, Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, Halle Berry, Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie and last year's winner Jennifer Lopez.
The former Destiny's Child singer, who married Jay-Z in 2008, is preparing for her first post-baby concert in Atlantic City, New Jersey next month... |
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