Zoom in on Iran Zoom out on the Middle East

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made headlines again yesterday, with a speech calling for the downfall of both Israel and the United States. Of Israel, the Iranian leader said, “the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime . . . has reached the end of its work and will soon disappear off the geographical scene.”

Of the United States, he said, “the time for the fall of the satanic power . . . has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has begun.”

Amid such animosity, we decided it was time to zoom in on Iran. So today, we’ll measure the nation by the numbers and place it squarely on your mental map. Then, tomorrow and Thursday, we’ll retrace Iran’s history, from Alexander the Great to the rise of the current regime.

ran, By the Numbers

1935 - The year Iran asked the West to stop labeling the place “Persia” and to start using the name natives use: “Iran.” The language is still called Persian, though, or Farsi–from the modern province Fars (ancient Parsa, called Persis by the Greeks). Today, Persian is written in Arabic script, a holdover from medieval times, when Persian rulers fell to Islamic caliphs in Damascus and Baghdad.

1979 - The year an Islamic revolution forced Iran’s western-supported shah (”king”) into exile and Iranians voted overwhelmingly to establish an Islamic republic. In the republic, all adult citizens can vote, but clerics can veto laws and candidates deemed un-Islamic.

636,300 - Iran’s total area, in square miles (1,648,000 sq km). That’s slightly larger than the state of Alaska, and nearly four times the size of Iraq. The country sits on a vast waterless plateau, ringed by forbidding mountain ranges. Most of the population lives at the foot of these mountains.

70 million - Iran’s total population. That’s more than France or the United Kingdom, but less than Germany or Turkey. It’s a youthful country–about half of its people are under 25–and increasingly urban. In 1950, about a quarter of the population lived in cities. Now, more than 60 percent do.

7.7 million - The population of Tehran, Iran’s largest and capital city. More than 13 million people live in its metropolitan area, at the southern foot of the Elburz Mountains, not far from the Caspian Sea. More than half of the country’s growing industry is based there.

89 - Percent of the population that is Shi’a Muslim. Nearly everyone else is Sunni Muslim. The Shi’ite branch of Islam is the official state religion, and the nation’s post-revolution constitution guarantees Islamic principles of government.

85 - Percent of government revenues that come from oil. Only Saudi Arabia exports more crude than Iran, which is also one of the world’s leading natural gas exporters.

Iran, On the Map

Get a printable map of Iran’s mountainous geography:
http://knowledgenews.net/moxie/pdf/iran_physical.pdf

Get a printable map of Iran’s mixed ethnicity:
http://knowledgenews.net/moxie/pdf/iran_ethno.pdf

Get a printable map of Iran’s population centers:
http://knowledgenews.net/moxie/pdf/iran_pop.pdf

–Michael Himick

A deep sea singer returns

Whale watchers worldwide got a bit of good news this week, with the release of a new study that says humpback whales are making a comeback in the North Pacific.

According to the study, the number of whales in the North Pacific may have reached 20,000 for the period between 2004 and 2006. That’s up from a total of fewer than 1,500 whales 40 years ago, when humpback hunting was banned.

Experts still worry that some humpback subgroups are taking longer to bounce back, but one described the news as “definitely very encouraging in terms of the recovery of the species.” It’s certainly enough to make us want to dive in for a closer look at one of the ocean’s marvelous mammals.

Uproarious Rorquals

Humpbacks hail from the family of whales called “rorquals,” which includes the fin whale, the sei whale, and the blue whale, the world’s largest animal. Blue whales can grow to 100 feet (30 meters) and weigh up to 330,000 pounds (150 metric tons), bigger than any dinosaur we’ve yet discovered.

At 45 feet (14 meters) and 80,000 pounds (36 metric tons), humpbacks aren’t nearly as big as cousin Blue. But they can really sing. In fact, according to a 2006 study, humpback whales sing grammatically, combining sounds into phrases, and phrases into songs, according to complex rules called a “hierarchical syntax.” It’s similar to our ability to combine words into clauses and clauses into sentences.

Humpbacks can dance, too. They are among the most acrobatic of whales, sometimes leaping entirely out of the water. Such breaching is common among males during mating season, when humpbacks migrate from polar feeding grounds to tropical breeding grounds. It’s also during mating season that humpback males sing their syntactically sophisticated songs, presumably in pursuit of humpback gals.

Straining for Snacks

Like all rorquals, humpbacks are baleen whales. They feed by taking huge mouthfuls of seawater–literally tons of it–then forcing the water out between hundreds of plates of baleen (a.k.a. “whalebone”) that hang from the roofs of their mouths. The baleen plates work like a sieve, letting water out but keeping krill and other munchable marine life in.

To catch that seafood dinner, humpbacks sometimes use a special technique called “bubblenetting.” First, one or more humpbacks swim in a circle beneath a school of fish, blowing bubbles that float up to form a wall around their prey. Then the humpbacks swim up through their “bubblenet,” slurping the fish-filled water as they go.

It’s clever, and tremendously effective. A humpback whale can catch, and eat, as much as 3,000 pounds (1,360 kg) of food in a day. But that’s not too surprising–coming from a creature smart enough to sing in syntax.

–Steve Sampson

Terror Fight Blurs

Line Over Domain;
Tracking Email

By SIOBHAN GORMAN
March 10, 2008; Page A1

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans’ privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the data-sifting effort didn’t disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system.

The central role the NSA has come to occupy in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed. But an inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people’s communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Congress now is hotly debating domestic spying powers under the main law governing U.S. surveillance aimed at foreign threats. An expansion of those powers expired last month and awaits renewal, which could be voted on in the House of Representatives this week. The biggest point of contention over the law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is whether telecommunications and other companies should be made immune from liability for assisting government surveillance.

Largely missing from the public discussion is the role of the highly secretive NSA in analyzing that data, collected through little-known arrangements that can blur the lines between domestic and foreign intelligence gathering. Supporters say the NSA is serving as a key bulwark against foreign terrorists and that it would be reckless to constrain the agency’s mission. The NSA says it is scrupulously following all applicable laws and that it keeps Congress fully informed of its activities.

According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called “transactional” data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA’s own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge’s approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected.

The NSA’s enterprise involves a cluster of powerful intelligence-gathering programs, all of which sparked civil-liberties complaints when they came to light. They include a Federal Bureau of Investigation program to track telecommunications data once known as Carnivore, now called the Digital Collection System, and a U.S. arrangement with the world’s main international banking clearinghouse to track money movements.

The effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called “black programs” whose existence is undisclosed, the current and former officials say. Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach. Among them, current and former intelligence officials say, is a longstanding Treasury Department program to collect individual financial data including wire transfers and credit-card transactions.

It isn’t clear how many of the different kinds of data are combined and analyzed together in one database by the NSA. An intelligence official said the agency’s work links to about a dozen antiterror programs in all.

A number of NSA employees have expressed concerns that the agency may be overstepping its authority by veering into domestic surveillance. And the constitutional question of whether the government can examine such a large array of information without violating an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy “has never really been resolved,” said Suzanne Spaulding, a national-security lawyer who has worked for both parties on Capitol Hill.

NSA officials say the agency’s own investigations remain focused only on foreign threats, but it’s increasingly difficult to distinguish between domestic and international communications in a digital era, so they need to sweep up more information.

The Fourth Amendment

In response to the Sept. 11 attacks, then NSA-chief Gen. Michael Hayden has said he used his authority to expand the NSA’s capabilities under a 1981 executive order governing the agency. Another presidential order issued shortly after the attacks, the text of which is classified, opened the door for the NSA to incorporate more domestic data in its searches, one senior intelligence official said.

The NSA “strictly follows laws and regulations designed to preserve every American’s privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” agency spokeswoman Judith Emmel said in a statement, referring to the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA in conjunction with the Pentagon, added in a statement that intelligence agencies operate “within an extensive legal and policy framework” and inform Congress of their activities “as required by the law.” It pointed out that the 9/11 Commission recommended in 2004 that intelligence agencies analyze “all relevant sources of information” and share their databases.

Two former officials familiar with the data-sifting efforts said they work by starting with some sort of lead, like a phone number or Internet address. In partnership with the FBI, the systems then can track all domestic and foreign transactions of people associated with that item — and then the people who associated with them, and so on, casting a gradually wider net. An intelligence official described more of a rapid-response effect: If a person suspected of terrorist connections is believed to be in a U.S. city — for instance, Detroit, a community with a high concentration of Muslim Americans — the government’s spy systems may be directed to collect and analyze all electronic communications into and out of the city.

The haul can include records of phone calls, email headers and destinations, data on financial transactions and records of Internet browsing. The system also would collect information about other people, including those in the U.S., who communicated with people in Detroit.

The information doesn’t generally include the contents of conversations or emails. But it can give such transactional information as a cellphone’s location, whom a person is calling, and what Web sites he or she is visiting. For an email, the data haul can include the identities of the sender and recipient and the subject line, but not the content of the message.

Intelligence agencies have used administrative subpoenas issued by the FBI — which don’t need a judge’s signature — to collect and analyze such data, current and former intelligence officials said. If that data provided “reasonable suspicion” that a person, whether foreign or from the U.S., was linked to al Qaeda, intelligence officers could eavesdrop under the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program.

The White House wants to give companies that assist government surveillance immunity from lawsuits alleging an invasion of privacy, but Democrats in Congress have been blocking it. The Terrorist Surveillance Program has spurred 38 lawsuits against companies. Current and former intelligence officials say telecom companies’ concern comes chiefly because they are giving the government unlimited access to a copy of the flow of communications, through a network of switches at U.S. telecommunications hubs that duplicate all the data running through it. It isn’t clear whether the government or telecom companies control the switches, but companies process some of the data for the NSA, the current and former officials say.

On Friday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a letter warning colleagues to look more deeply into how telecommunications data are being accessed, citing an allegation by the head of a New York-based computer security firm that a wireless carrier that hired him was giving unfettered access to data to an entity called “Quantico Circuit.” Quantico is a Marine base that houses the FBI Academy; senior FBI official Anthony DiClemente said the bureau “does not have ‘unfettered access’ to any communication provider’s network.”

The political debate over the telecom information comes as intelligence agencies seek to change traditional definitions of how to balance privacy rights against investigative needs. Donald Kerr, the deputy director of national intelligence, told a conference of intelligence officials in October that the government needs new rules. Since many people routinely post details of their lives on social-networking sites such as MySpace, he said, their identity shouldn’t need the same protection as in the past. Instead, only their “essential privacy,” or “what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs,” should be veiled, he said, without providing examples.

Social-Network Analysis

The NSA uses its own high-powered version of social-network analysis to search for possible new patterns and links to terrorism. The Pentagon’s experimental Total Information Awareness program, later renamed Terrorism Information Awareness, was an early research effort on the same concept, designed to bring together and analyze as much and as many varied kinds of data as possible. Congress eliminated funding for the program in 2003 before it began operating. But it permitted some of the research to continue and TIA technology to be used for foreign surveillance.

Some of it was shifted to the NSA — which also is funded by the Pentagon — and put in the so-called black budget, where it would receive less scrutiny and bolster other data-sifting efforts, current and former intelligence officials said. “When it got taken apart, it didn’t get thrown away,” says a former top government official familiar with the TIA program.

Two current officials also said the NSA’s current combination of programs now largely mirrors the former TIA project. But the NSA offers less privacy protection. TIA developers researched ways to limit the use of the system for broad searches of individuals’ data, such as requiring intelligence officers to get leads from other sources first. The NSA effort lacks those controls, as well as controls that it developed in the 1990s for an earlier data-sweeping attempt.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who led the charge to kill TIA, says “the administration is trying to bring as much of the philosophy of operation Total Information Awareness as it can into the programs they’re using today.” The issue has been overshadowed by the fight over telecoms’ immunity, he said. “There’s not been as much discussion in the Congress as there ought to be.”

Opportunity for Debate

But Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the committee, said by email his committee colleagues have had “ample opportunity for debate” behind closed doors and that each intelligence program has specific legal authorization and oversight. He cautioned against seeing a group of intelligence programs as “a mythical ‘big brother’ program,” adding, “that’s not what is happening today.”

READ THE RULING

While the Fourth Amendment guarantees “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” the legality of data-sweeping relies on the government’s interpretation of a 1979 Supreme Court ruling allowing records of phone calls — but not actual conversations — to be collected without a warrant. Read the ruling.¹

The legality of data-sweeping relies largely on the government’s interpretation of a 1979 Supreme Court ruling allowing records of phone calls — but not actual conversations — to be collected without a judge issuing a warrant. Multiple laws require a court order for so-called “transactional’” records of electronic communications, but the 2001 Patriot Act lowered the standard for such an order in some cases, and in others made records accessible using FBI administrative subpoenas called “national security letters.” (Read the ruling.²)

A debate is brewing among legal and technology scholars over whether there should be privacy protections when a wide variety of transactional data are brought together to paint what is essentially a profile of an individual’s behavior. “You know everything I’m doing, you know what happened, and you haven’t listened to any of the contents” of the communications, said Susan Landau, co-author of a book on electronic privacy and a senior engineer at Sun Microsystems Laboratories. “Transactional information is remarkably revelatory.”

Ms. Spaulding, the national-security lawyer, said it’s “extremely questionable” to assume Americans don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy for data such as the subject-header of an email or a Web address from an Internet search, because those are more like the content of a communication than a phone number. “These are questions that require discussion and debate,” she said. “This is one of the problems with doing it all in secret.”

Gen. Hayden, the former NSA chief and now Central Intelligence Agency director, in January 2006 publicly defended the activities of the Terrorist Surveillance Program after it was disclosed by the New York Times. He said it was “not a driftnet over Lackawanna or Fremont or Dearborn, grabbing all communications and then sifting them out.” Rather, he said, it was carefully targeted at terrorists. However, some intelligence officials now say the broader NSA effort amounts to a driftnet. A portion of the activity, the NSA’s access to domestic phone records, was disclosed by a USA Today article in 2006.

The NSA, which President Truman created in 1952 through a classified presidential order to be America’s ears abroad, has for decades been the country’s largest and most secretive intelligence agency. The order confined NSA spying to “foreign governments,” and during the Cold War the NSA developed a reputation as the world’s premier code-breaking operation. But in the 1970s, the NSA and other intelligence agencies were found to be using their spy tools to monitor Americans for political purposes. That led to the original FISA legislation in 1978, which included an explicit ban on the NSA eavesdropping in the U.S. without a warrant.

Big advances in telecommunications and database technology led to unprecedented data-collection efforts in the 1990s. One was the FBI’s Carnivore program, which raised fears when it was in disclosed in 2000 that it might collect telecommunications information about law-abiding individuals. But the ground shifted after 9/11. Requests for analysis of any data that might hint at terrorist activity flooded from the White House and other agencies into NSA’s Fort Meade, Md., headquarters outside Washington, D.C., one former NSA official recalls. At the time, “We’re scrambling, trying to find any piece of data we can to find the answers,” the official said.

The 2002 congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks criticized the NSA for holding back information, which NSA officials said they were doing to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens. “NSA did not want to be perceived as targeting individuals in the United States” and considered such surveillance the FBI’s job, the inquiry concluded.

FBI-NSA Projects

The NSA quietly redefined its role. Joint FBI-NSA projects “expanded exponentially,” said Jack Cloonan, a longtime FBI veteran who investigated al Qaeda. He pointed to national-security letter requests: They rose from 8,500 in 2000 to 47,000 in 2005, according to a Justice Department inspector general’s report last year. It also said the letters permitted the potentially illegal collection of thousands of records of people in the U.S. from 2003-05. Last Wednesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the bureau had found additional instances in 2006.

It isn’t known how many Americans’ data have been swept into the NSA’s systems. The Treasury, for instance, built its database “to look at all the world’s financial transactions” and gave the NSA access to it about 15 years ago, said a former NSA official. The data include domestic and international money flows between bank accounts and credit-card information, according to current and former intelligence officials.

The NSA receives from Treasury weekly batches of this data and adds it to a database at its headquarters. Prior to 9/11, the database was used to pursue specific leads, but afterward, the effort was expanded to hunt for suspicious patterns.

Through the Treasury, the NSA also can access the database of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, the Belgium-based clearinghouse for records of international transactions between financial institutions, current and former officials said. The U.S. acknowledged in 2006 that the CIA and Treasury had access to Swift’s database, but said the NSA’s Terrorism Surveillance Program was separate and that the NSA provided only “technical assistance.” A Treasury spokesman said the agency had no comment.

Through the Department of Homeland Security, airline passenger data also are accessed and analyzed for suspicious patterns, such as five unrelated people who repeatedly fly together, current and former intelligence officials said. Homeland Security shares information with other agencies only “on a limited basis,” spokesman Russ Knocke said.

NSA gets access to the flow of data from telecommunications switches through the FBI, according to current and former officials. It also has a partnership with FBI’s Digital Collection system, providing access to Internet providers and other companies. The existence of a shadow hub to copy information about AT&T Corp. telecommunications in San Francisco is alleged in a lawsuit against AT&T filed by the civil-liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, based on documents provided by a former AT&T official. In that lawsuit, a former technology adviser to the Federal Communications Commission says in a sworn declaration that there could be 15 to 20 such operations around the country. Current and former intelligence officials confirmed a domestic network of hubs, but didn’t know the number. “As a matter of policy and law, we can not discuss matters that are classified,” said FBI spokesman John Miller.

The budget for the NSA’s data-sifting effort is classified, but one official estimated it surpasses $1 billion. The FBI is requesting to nearly double the budget for the Digital Collection System in 2009, compared with last year, requesting $42 million. “Not only do demands for information continue to increase, but also the requirement to facilitate information sharing does,” says a budget justification document, noting an “expansion of electronic surveillance activity in frequency, sophistication, and linguistic needs.”

The ghosts of campaigns past

Voters in Ohio, Texas, Vermont, and Rhode Island go to the polls on Tuesday to choose their preferred presidential candidates from both major parties. With 444 Democratic delegates at stake, and 265 Republican ones, it’s a big day for both parties.

But what if you’re fed up with all of your current political party options? What it you want to tell Republicans and Democrats alike to take a hike? And what if you don’t like Ralph Nader, or smaller groups like the Greens, the Libertarians, or the Constitution Party, either.

Never fear. We’ve scoured American history to find you four more major political party options. If only you’d been born in another time, you might have found a home in one of these other, now defunct, packs of partisans. Then again, a quick look back might convince you that your current options really aren’t the worst imaginable ones.

Anti-Masonic Party

Born: 1826
Died: 1838
Most members became: Whigs

Mission: To stop the purported subversion of America’s public institutions by the secretive society of Freemasons, to which President Andrew Jackson belonged (Anti-Masons were generally anti-Jacksonians). The party got its start in a scandal following the mysterious disappearance of a New York bricklayer, who was purportedly preparing to reveal the Freemasons’ secrets.

Claim to fame: First “third party” in U.S. history. It was also the first party to hold a national nominating convention and to present voters with a party platform.

Perfect for: People who distrust Microsoft, the CIA, or any other secretive organization that might just be bent on total world domination.

Free-Soil Party

Born: 1848
Died: 1854
Most members became: Republicans

Mission: To prevent the spread of slavery into territories acquired by the United States in the Mexican War (1846-48). In 1846, Pennsylvania congressman David Wilmot introduced his “Wilmot Proviso,” which would have banned slavery from the southwest. The proviso never passed Congress, but it helped launch the Free-Soil Party, whose members believed in “free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men.”

Claim to fame: The Free-Soilers won multiple congressional seats in 1848 and helped swing that year’s presidential election to Whig candidate Zachary Taylor. During the 1850s, the budding Republican Party, which adopted the Free-Soil mission as one of its major planks, largely absorbed the party.

Perfect for: Decent slavery-hating human beings–especially those who know how to farm.

Know-Nothing Party

Born: 1849
Died: 1860
Most members became: Republicans in the North,
Democrats in the South

Mission: To prevent “foreigners” and Catholics–basically, the newly arrived immigrants of the time–from gaining equal rights. In 1849, the anti-immigrant Order of the Star Spangled Banner set up shop in New York City. Soon the secretive order was opening new branches all over the United States. When asked about the organization, members were told to reply that they knew nothing (hence the name).

Claim to fame: Perhaps the largest and most politically effective organization of xenophobes and anti-Catholics in U.S. history. In 1855, 43 members of Congress were Know-Nothings (insert your own joke about how many members of Congress know nothing now). The party was ultimately undone by the same sectarian strife that led to the Civil War.

Perfect for: Racists, xenophobes, and other people who actually know nothing.

Bull Moose Party

Born: 1912
Died: 1916
Most members became: Republicans, when the party’s central figure, Teddy Roosevelt, rejoined the GOP

Mission: To enact the direct election of senators, women’s suffrage, controls on monopolies, restrictions on child labor, and tariff reform. The party formed when progressive Republicans split with the more conservative wing of the GOP, led by then-president William Howard Taft.

Claim to fame: Fought for progressive policies that, for the most part, everyone else has since taken up. The Bull Moosers nominated Teddy Roosevelt for president in 1912 and won 25 percent of the popular vote. That was more than enough to split the GOP, and Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson won.

Perfect for: People who are highly progressive by early 20th-century standards (or those who advocate the return of Teddy Roosevelt to politics).

–Steve Sampson

That’s no movie robot– that’s a real great white shark

An Austrian man died this week after being bitten by a shark not far from the Bahamas–in waters that had been baited to make it more likely that he and other divers would come face to face with sharks.

The incident launched a worldwide debate among divers, conservationists, underwater photographers, and other shark enthusiasts about whether such “uncaged” dives with sharks should be allowed. While they debated the pros and cons of close encounters with ocean predators, we decided to learn more about the scariest shark of them all: the great white.

Feel the Fear

Known to scientists as Carcharodon carcharias, the great white shark is one of the most feared predators on Earth. Spanning up to 20 feet (6 meters) and weighing up to 4,000 pounds (1,800 kg), it is built to kill.

It primarily likes seals, sea lions, turtles, smaller sharks, and other fine-flavored denizens of the deep. If you’re an animal on that list and a great white gets a whiff of your succulent aroma, you’re in a sea of trouble.

A Nose for Trouble

Great whites have a highly acute sense of smell. Their nostrils, called nares, aren’t used for breathing–that’s what gills are for. Instead, white sharks use their nares to sniff the water, picking up scents at a distance of a quarter-mile (0.4 km) or more, and then tracking them to their source.

A big part of every great white’s brain is dedicated to sniffing. If you’re a prey animal and you’re bleeding, don’t bother looking for a Band-Aid. A great white can smell extremely small amounts of blood in the water from a long way off–and it figures wounded prey is easy prey.

An Eye for the Fishies

The great white’s eyesight is also excellent for hunting. Like cats, great whites come equipped with a tapetum lucidum (literally, “bright carpet”), a special reflective layer behind the retina that magnifies light and enables the shark to hunt in the dark. This adaptation makes shark eyes several times more light-sensitive than human ones.

Great whites even have extra shark-senses to help them zero in on dinner. Their snouts are dotted with small pits, called ampullae of Lorenzini, that detect the electrical fields of fish and other creatures. And, running in a “lateral line” down each side of their bodies are motion sensors. Great whites can still sense what they can’t see.

The Better to Eat You With, My Dear

Still, the great white’s real weapon of bass destruction is a terrifying set of teeth, which can grow to a length of three inches (8 cm). Shaped like triangular, serrated blades, they’re arranged in six rows of around 26 teeth each, though these numbers can vary from specimen to specimen. A great white sheds and regrows its teeth throughout its life, ensuring a fresh and healthy supply for every feeding frenzy.

A great white’s bite packs tremendous power, and in the case of larger and potentially dangerous prey, it typically takes one bite, retreats, and waits for the animal to bleed to death before settling down to dinner. They’re fearsome predators, no doubt. But they’re more into ambush attacks than epic battles between creatures at sea.

Scary as they are, we probably have less to fear from great whites than they have to fear from us. They’re now protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Meanwhile, shark attacks on humans are rare. Statistics say you’re more likely to get zapped by lightning–or killed by a deer crashing into your car–than you are to be mercilessly hunted by a shark.

It used to be part of Yugoslavia. Now it wants independence from Serbia.

Kosovo declared its independence on Sunday. Depending on whom you ask, it is now either a new nation in the Balkans or a renegade province that belongs within Serbia. The United States, the United Kingdom, and France were quick to recognize Kosovo as a country. Serbia, Russia, and China were quick to deny that it’s any such thing. Clearly, it’s time for us to ask some Kosovo questions.

A provisional government handles many of Kosovo’s daily affairs (and proclaimed its independence). But the region has been under UN administration since 1999, when a NATO bombing campaign forced Serbian security forces out. Those forces had been battling an armed revolutionary group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), since 1996.

While NATO’s bombs ended the Kosovo War, they didn’t resolve the underlying issue. Ethnic Albanians–the vast majority of Kosovo’s population–want independence from Serbia. The Serbs, however, insist that the Kosovars can’t just carve up Serbia to start their own country.

The news often says that Kosovo is “culturally important” to the Serbs. Why it that?

Eight centuries ago, Kosovo was the center of a Serbian empire–the heart of Serbia during what many Serbs consider a golden age. Ever since, the region has been home to important Serbian Orthodox religious sites, including the Decani Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Still, for most of the intervening years, Kosovo was not a part of Serbia. In 1389, the Ottoman Turks defeated the Serbs and their allies at the “Battle of Kosovo.” Serbia did not retake Kosovo from the Ottomans until 1912.

How did the heart of an old Serbian empire become a home for mainly ethnic Albanians?

During the Ottoman era, ethnic Albanians–who are mainly Muslim but not Turks–began to migrate into Kosovo. As they moved in, many ethnic Serbs moved out.

Over the years, there was a good deal of ethnic ebb and flow, especially after Serbia retook Kosovo. Yet the overall demographic trend, even after 1912, saw the local Albanian population continue to grow. Today, ethnic Albanians account for about 90 percent of Kosovo’s people.

What’s Yugoslavia got to do with it?

At the end of World War II, many ethnic Albanian Kosovars wanted to unite with Albania. Instead, a new Balkan nation, the “Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,” absorbed Serbia and compelled Kosovo to remain within it as an “autonomous province.” The new nation didn’t last 50 years. In 1991, Yugoslavia began to disintegrate into its constituent republics (all the colorful states on the map above).

Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo again called for separation. But they crashed headlong into a tide of Serbian nationalism. Before long, the KLA formed and went to war against Serbian forces. Serb reprisals led to charges of ethnic cleansing and to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians. Eventually, NATO intervened, and after 11 weeks of bombing, Serbian forces withdrew from Kosovo.

What’s Russia got to do with it?

In addition to being a longtime ally of the Serbs, Russia is worried about the example an independent Kosovo might set for secessionists across the former Soviet Union–including the ones in Chechnya. It isn’t alone in this fear, either. Along with China, other countries facing separatist movements have also come out against Kosovo’s declaration of independence, including NATO members Spain and Greece.

In front of a half-tough crowd

President Bush will deliver his final State of the Union address tonight. Well, maybe not his final one. After all, nothing in the Constitution says the State of the Union has to be an annual affair. Article II, Section 3 just says the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

Nothing in there about doing it once a year. Nothing in there about making a speech, either. In fact, presidents from Thomas Jefferson to Woodrow Wilson put their statements in writing. So, how did the State of the Union address get to be the way it is? It all started with George Washington.

Precedents for Presidents

In 1790, President Washington delivered the first State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress convened in New York City (then the nation’s capital). At 1,085 words, Washington’s address is among the shortest ever. After hearing the president’s proposals, Congress debated, drafted, and delivered a courteous reply promising its cooperation.

So such speeches went until 1801, when Thomas Jefferson became president. Jefferson thought Washington’s approach reeked of royalty. (In fact, the idea for the State of the Union address did derive from a British tradition in which the king opened Parliament with a “Speech from the Throne.”) What’s more, Jefferson thought the Congress had better things to do than debate replies to presidential speeches.

Rather than speaking, Jefferson submitted his message in writing–saving Congress from “the bloody conflict which the making an answer would have committed them.” The next 24 presidents followed Jefferson’s lead rather than Washington’s, delivering written “information” instead of speeches.

Memorable Moments

In 1823, James Monroe used his written message to Congress to lay out the Monroe Doctrine, which declared that “the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.”

In the midst of the Civil War, in 1862, Abraham Lincoln used his message to propose emancipation of the slaves. “The fiery trial through which we pass,” he wrote, “will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free–honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.”

Finally, in 1913, Woodrow Wilson decided to follow Washington’s lead and not Jefferson’s. He gave a speech to both houses of Congress–reestablishing, as he put it, that “the President of the United States is a person, not a mere department of the government hailing Congress from some isolated island of jealous power.”

Media Darlings

Ten years after Wilson’s speech, Calvin Coolidge delivered the first State of the Union address to be broadcast by radio. But most agree that the master of the radio address was Franklin Roosevelt, who in 1941 famously looked forward to a future founded on four freedoms: “The first is freedom of speech and expression. . . . The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. . . . The third is freedom from want. . . . The fourth is freedom from fear.”

President Harry Truman delivered the first televised State of the Union speech in 1947, but he didn’t do it in prime time. The first president to take full advantage of the power of prime-time TV was Lyndon Johnson, in 1965. The following year saw the first televised opposition response immediately following the address. So much for carefully debated replies.

Economists’ two cents on economic stimulation

“Economic stimulation” is the phrase of the day. Last week, President Bush outlined a $150 billion program to boost the U.S. economy. This weekend, leaders from both parties promised a bipartisan effort to pass stimulating legislation. Meanwhile, stock markets worldwide plunged–thanks partly to fears of a U.S. recession.

When the economy starts to slide, it’s natural to look for ways to stimulate it. The trick is coming up with the right strategy. Fortunately, the world is full of economists ready to give you advice. Unfortunately, they rarely agree with each other, so you’ll have to choose from their competing theories. Here a quick review of three fiscal policy ideas you could adopt–if you decide to run for office.

Idea #1: Create Jobs

That’s what British economist John Maynard Keynes thought. Keynes learned classical economics, which held that market forces alone could produce full employment and a robust economy. Yet he worked during the Great Depression, when it looked like high unemployment might never go away.

It was a vicious circle. High unemployment meant low demand, since fewer consumers were drawing a good salary. And once production outstripped demand, businesses cut costs by laying off even more workers.

Keynes’s solution: create jobs. Governments can spend revenue on public works projects, artificially creating jobs for the unemployed. That will increase their buying power and lift consumer demand. Once businesses see this increase in demand, they will ramp up production, hire new workers, and eliminate the need for the government spending.

Idea #2: Cut Taxes

The economic rationale for cutting taxes is straightforward: tax cuts can put more money in people’s pockets. Like government spending to create jobs, they can increase consumers’ buying power and lift consumer demand.

“Supply-siders” go further, arguing that it’s not just about increasing consumer demand. They point out that high taxes can reduce people’s incentive to work and invest–that you’re less likely to try to make a buck if the IRS takes 70 cents than if the IRS takes 35.

So, they say, cutting taxes–especially high taxes that distort people’s choices–can make markets work more efficiently and spur overall economic growth. Some even argue that cutting taxes can increase tax revenues, as the tax cuts will have such a stimulating effect on the economy that tax revenues will actually rise despite the lower rates.

Idea #3: Go on Vacation

Economists like to talk about “three lags” that hamstring efforts to stimulate the economy: the time it takes for policymakers to realize there are problems, the time it takes for them to do something about it, and the time it takes for their efforts to have a measurable effect.

By the time these three lags have run their course, the economy might well have changed direction–and your stimulus policy could do more harm than good. So, some economists think that the best stimulus is no stimulus at all: take a break, leave the economy alone, and you can be sure at least that you won’t make things worse.

Extra! Extra!
What’s the Fed Got to Do with It?

“Okay,” you say, “but you haven’t even mentioned the Fed. Its rate cut this morning made big news. How does that work?” To find out, review what the Fed does.

Like President Bush, we’ve been touring Arabian states all week, from Kuwait to the UAE. While we’re in the neighborhood, we figured it made sense to go back to the biggest state on the Arabian Peninsula’s block: Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia has been a U.S. ally and a key Middle East trading partner for decades, but it’s not exactly the sort of country Uncle Sam would bring home to meet the founders. It’s an absolute monarchy where mosque and state are thoroughly interwoven. And, along with lots of oil, it keeps producing terrorists, including Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 9/11 hijackers. Here’s a look at Saudi Arabia, by the numbers.

Size Matters

830,000 – Saudi Arabia’s total area, in square miles (2,150,000 sq km). That’s a little larger than Mexico, a little smaller than Greenland, and roughly one-fifth the size of the United States. Saudi Arabia covers about four-fifths of the Arabian Peninsula, which it shares with Oman, Yemen, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. (Another small nation, Bahrain, is an island near Qatar.)

27,600,000 – Saudi Arabia’s total population, including some 5.6 million non-nationals who call the kingdom home. That’s more people than live in Texas, but not nearly as many as live in California. Take away the non-nationals, and Saudi Arabia would have just a few more people than Australia. Add in the more than 2 million Muslim pilgrims who visit each year, and it would have almost as many people as Canada.

4,700,000 – Population of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital and largest city. Riyadh gets more rain than many parts of Saudi Arabia, but it still relies on hundreds of miles of pipes to carry water from desalination plants on the Persian Gulf.

Religious Matters

100 – Percentage of Saudis who are Muslim. Sound impossible? Well, Saudi Arabia is Islam’s birthplace and home to its two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina. Its constitution is the Qur’an and Sunnah (the “trodden path” of the prophet), its legal system is based on Sharia (Islamic law), and its religious “police” enforce traditional values. Blasphemy is punishable by beheading. So is conversion from Islam to other religions, whose public practice is banned. Oh, and the government requires that citizens be Muslims.

0 – Number of drivers licenses issued to women. Despite a handful of recent reforms, it’s still illegal for women to drive a car in Saudi Arabia. Human rights groups also regularly condemn the Saudi government for its treatment of political and religious minorities (including Islamic ones). The government generally brushes such claims aside.

Money Matters

264 billion – Barrels of oil in Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves, according to the leading oil industry survey. That’s around 22 percent of all of the world’s proven crude. (For more on what “proven reserves” actually means, click here.)

90 – Percentage of Saudi Arabia’s export earnings that come from oil. Much of that money flows from the United States. And much of it goes to fund generous social welfare programs. But times aren’t as good as they once were. In 1980, oil exports raked in $22,589 for every man, woman, and child in the kingdom. Thanks to a population boom and a changing market, the number these days is around $5,000.

7,000 – Estimated number of members of the Saudi royal family. Some 200 of those are direct descendents of Abd al Aziz al Saud, the king who founded the country in 1932. The nation’s current king, Abdullah, officially assumed the throne in 2005, but he’s no newcomer to power. Abdullah has effectively run Saudi Arabia since 1995, when the previous king–his half-brother Fahd–suffered a stroke.

Events in Pakistan matter to the world.
In this special reference issue, we’ll show you why.

A Peek at Pakistan

Pakistan makes world news headlines all the time. You know that the nuclear-armed nation is both a key U.S. ally in the fight against al-Qaeda and a major base for al-Qaeda. But what else do you know about it?

Find out what you should know now
Get the PDF

Pakistan, By the Numbers

With nearly 165 million people, Pakistan is the world’s sixth most populous country. Only China, India, the United States, Indonesia, and Brazil have more people. Among mainly Muslim countries, Pakistan is the second largest (after Indonesia), and the only one with nuclear weapons.

Put Pakistan squarely on your mental map–
with our summary of its key stats

Pakistan, On the Map

The news often talks ominously of “instability in Pakistan.” With our Pakistan slideshow, you’ll understand why. We’ll show you–using seven different maps–how the nation emerged from British India just 60 years ago and why it faces challenges from practically every side now.

Learn visually about Pakistan–
with our slideshow of detailed maps

Why Kashmir Gives People the Sweats

For 60 years, India and Pakistan have been on the brink of war in Kashmir. Why have both nuclear nations been willing to risk the ultimate conflict? The territorial tiff goes back to Britain’s imperial shrinkage after World War II. Yet the conflict’s cultural roots go far deeper.

Learn why India and Pakistan fight
Get the PDF

Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?

Who knows! But lots of experts think he’s holed up somewhere in the arid, punishing, mountainous terrain along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border–hiding in a tiny crack in colonial history. Here’s how that crack came to be.

Learn why Pakistan has “tribal areas”
Get the PDF

What would Ben Franklin think?

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Friends, America’s Federal Communications Commission voted on Tuesday to let media companies own both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the nation’s 20 largest media markets. The controversial decision reverses a longstanding ban on such cross-media conglomeration.

Opponents of the change say the old rule helped prevent major media companies from becoming too dominant. Supporters say the new rule simply recognizes a changing media landscape, in which newspapers are struggling to find readers and more folks find the information they need online.

Either way, we say it’s a good time to look back at American media’s roots–to a time when local voices like Ben Franklin’s dominated. After all, before he messed around with lightning or charmed French royalty, old Ben was a newspaperman.

An Ink-Stained Wretch

Back then, printers did it all–interviewing recently arrived ship captains for out-of-town news, writing articles, plagiarizing stories from other newspapers, selling ads, printing the pages, and distributing the final product. In fact, most colonial newspapers sprang from small printshops that employed just the owner and his teenage apprentice.

Ben Franklin started in the printing trade as an apprentice to his older brother, James, who ran a small printshop in Boston. Working there exposed the young Franklin to different kinds of writing and gave him a chance to borrow books on the sly from booksellers’ apprentices.

In those days, printers had to be smart and strong. Composing the pages was a mental feat–type was set letter by letter, using little blocks of metal, and for the page to appear correctly when printed, every line had to be composed in reverse. (Many printers were as adept at reading backward as forward.) After the pages were made, the printer personally pulled the lever on the heavy wooden press to stamp the image–one page at a time. No wonder few colonial newspapers had a press run of more than 300.

The Life and Times of Silence Dogood

James Franklin wanted his publication, the New-England Courant, to be more than the usual collection of 6-month-old news that appeared in other colonial newspapers. So he solicited articles. In 1722, 14 letters appeared in the New-England Courant signed by “Silence Dogood.” The middle-aged widow had a lot to say about the clergy, fashion, and political matters, and people loved it–even if they didn’t know who the Widow Dogood really was.

Using a pen name was common at the time, so everyone knew “Dogood” wasn’t her real name. But no one knew that 16-year-old Ben had actually written the letters, sliding them under the printshop’s door at night.

A year after the Silence Dogood letters were published, Ben ran away from his brother’s employ. (Things got rough for James after he was thrown in jail for suggesting the local authorities were in cahoots with pirates.) Still in his teens, Ben apprenticed with a Philadelphia printer before sailing for London and working there for two years. By 1729, he was back in Philadelphia and publishing his own newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette.

All the News Ben Could Print

The Gazette was like most newspapers of its day–no headlines, few illustrations, and it ran only four pages. What set it apart was Franklin’s lively version of local news. He filled the columns with anecdotes like this one: “And sometime last Week, we are informed, that one Piles a Fidler, with his Wife, were overset in a Canoo near Newtown Creek. The good Man, ’tis said, prudently secur’d his Fiddle, and let his Wife go to the Bottom.” The Pennsylvania Gazette became one of the most successful newspapers of its time.

Colonial newspapers had no separate editorial pages, but they were packed with opinions. Just as he had done in his Silence Dogood days, Franklin often wrote an article in the voice of a fictional citizen. In 1735, he printed a letter purportedly written by an elderly gentleman, who encouraged his fellow Philadelphians to establish a volunteer fire department. The imaginary old man described leaping out the window of a burning house. By the end of the year, the Union Fire Company of Philadelphia had formed.

“Poor Richard” Makes Ben Wealthy

Franklin’s most successful editorial alter ego was “Poor Richard” Saunders, the pen name Franklin used for the 25 years he published Poor Richard’s Almanack. In the colonies, practically every printer published an annual almanac. These thick pamphlets, showing the phases of the moon and predicting the weather, were moneymakers because most literate households purchased one every year.

In 1732, Franklin threw together a 24-page publication with a first-person preface signed by Richard Saunders. The “author,” a destitute stargazer whose shrewish wife threatened to burn all his books and astronomy instruments if he didn’t “make some profitable use of them,” admitted the reason he wrote the almanac was to make a little money and get her off his back.

From 1732 to 1757, Poor Richard’s grew in popularity as readers found more than the usual astronomical charts and tidal tables. Tucked into this almanac were proverbs such as “Early to Bed, and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy and wise.” Franklin said he saw the almanac as a way to educate folks who might not buy any other books and so “filled all the little spaces that occurred between the Remarkable Days in the Calendar, with Proverbial Sentences, chiefly such as inculcated Industry and Frugality.”

Some years Franklin sold 10,000 copies. Combined with good investments and lucrative printing contracts, the profits from the almanac allowed him to retire from printing at the ripe old age of 42. Of course, Franklin’s “retirement” was more active than many a person’s working life. And though he was hailed as a scientist, diplomat, patriot, and philosopher, at the end of his days, Franklin was still proud of his printshop roots. When he wrote his will at the age of 82, he began: “I, Benjamin Franklin, printer, . . . “