Yo. Boris Yeltsin died. I can’t exactly remember how he became president of Russian Federation but I recall seeing video of Gorbachev’s last words as the official leader of the former CCCP. That was probably close after the August Putsch of 1991. Those were weird days.
I was briefly following the Tillman hearings (Crooks and Liars video) and read up on several statements (and more photos). I picked out the photo above because normal Americans are expected to make a sworn testimony and US government employees are apparently not. And then the LA Times comes with a report that says that the Office of Special Counsel will investigate the political activities of the Bush administration. (Oh dear)100
Closer to home, the CBC wants you to help find the Seven Wonders of Canada. You can nominate your favourite landmark right on that page too.
And, I guess, the biggest news comes from Europe, where astronomers claim they’ve found a planet that most likely resembles Earth and is only 20 light-years away1. The discovery is, for sure, a milestone in planetary research and the search for extraterrestrial life.
1 A light-year is the distance that light travels in one year, which approximately is 9.45 trillion kms (9.45 x 1012) (wikipedia). There’s nothing magic about this number: if you take the speed of light (in m/s) and multiply it with the amount of seconds in a year you get 299792458 * 365 * 24 * 60 * 60 = 9.45×1015 m, which we can convert to KMs by dividing that number by 1000 (Google calculator)