Sunday, 8-6-06: Researchers have been using x-rays to read a 10th century copy of a work by Archimedes. It's hard to read, because 3 centuries after it was written, a monk scraped it off and wrote prayers over it. The x-ray beam is about the size of a human hair, and it takes 12 hours to scan a page. The x-ray makes iron particles left from the original ink glow, without harming the parchment. In local news, 1874 people in Hillsboro set a world record by all wearing balloon hats at the same time. The previous record was set in Singapore in 2005. Monday, 8-7-06: Susan Butcher has died of cancer. She won the Iditarod four times, the first woman to win. Tuesday, 8-8-06: In Sao Paulo, Brazil, yesterday, there were 78 attacks on government buildings, banks and other businesses. 15 buses, 3 gas stations and a subway station were torched, and automatic gunfire sprayed police. One branch of a bank had a car driven through a plate glass window, and it set the building ablaze. The attackers are thought to be the First Capital Command Gang, who launched a wave of violence 3 months ago that's killed 200 people so far. Authorities admit that FCCG controls life inside 80% of Sau Paulo's prisons. The police commander said, "I have absolutely no doubt that we will win this war." Wednesday, 8-9-06: The American Bar Association, meeting in Honolulu, approved a resolution condemning President Bush's practice of writing exceptions to legislation he signs. On Monday Heather McCartney came home to find the locks had been changed, so she had one of her bodyguards climb the wall to let her in. One of the guards called the police. They talked to her, and then she went in the house with their 2-year-old daughter, Beatrice, and stayed the night. The McCartneys seem to be in the middle of a bad divorce. Paul has frozen their joint account, and he sent her a letter complaining about three bottles of cleaning fluid that she took from his home to her office. A little town in northern Canada called Fort Providence has been beseiged for weeks by a group of seven bull bison. They kicked dogs, rammed a truck, scared small children and rubbed the siding off houses. Things are quiter now because most of them left for the rutting season. The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would make it legal for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel to use some forms of torture. The amendments would alter a law passed in the mid-1990s criminalizing violations of the Geneva Conventions. Bush's law would make it legal to use things like forced nakedness, dog collars and leashes, forcing men to wear women's underwear, that kind of thing. The battle in Sao Paulo went on for a second day yesterday. Police killed four yesterday. Gunbattles between rival gangs have killed 12 since Sunday. Police with automatic weapons took over 3 densely populated slums. Thursday, 8-10-06: The Humane Society of the United States said yesterday that it will give China $100,000 to vaccinate dogs against rabies if it will stop the mass slaughters in areas where humans have died from rabies. "There are far better ways of addressing rabies control," said the Humane Society's president. Saturday, 8-12-06: "In London a woman who claimed she had persistent sexual arousal, and had up to forty orgasms a day, was jailed this week for welfare fraud. Ironically, they claimed she was faking it." Jay Leno