Visitors to the Gaia Napa Valley Hotel and Spa won't find the Gideon Bible in the nightstand drawer. Instead, on the bureau will be a copy of ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' former Vice President Al Gore's book about global warming.
They'll also find the Gaia equipped with waterless urinals, solar lighting and recycled paper as it marches toward becoming California's first hotel certified as ''green,'' or benevolent to the environment. Similar features are found 35 miles south at San Francisco's Orchard Garden Hotel, which competes for customers with neighboring luxury hotels like the Ritz-Carlton and Fairmont.
''I'm not your traditional Birkenstocks and granola type of guy,'' said Stefan Muehle, general manager of the Orchard Garden, who said green measures are reducing energy costs as much as 25 percent a month. ''We're trying to dispel the myth that being green and being luxurious are mutually exclusive.''
A federal judge sentenced an Idaho inmate to three years in prison for threatening to kill George W. Bush in a letter in which the accused called the U.S. president "stupid," federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.
Ricky Arnell Ward, 20, put his name and address on the January 2006 letter he sent to the FBI claiming he planned to kill the president because "he is a stupid ... man."
Ward said Bush needed to be killed before he got "all the people in the USA killed," according to a release by the U.S. attorney's office in Idaho. He was sentenced on Monday.
PATNA, India - Villagers at a wedding in eastern India decided the groom had arrived too drunk to get married, and so the bride married the groom's more sober brother instead, police said Monday.
TWIN FALLS, Idaho - Canoeist Dennis Bohrn and his companions were stunned when they saw a woman jump off the Perrine Bridge, her body landing near them in the Snake River. Many in the group were crying by the time they managed to reach the woman and paddle her body to shore.
In a culture that finds it hard to love most bugs, spiders are nonetheless the ones we tend to accept or at least admire at a distance for their ingenuity with locomotion, insect hunting and home-building.
In each of those areas, the web's the thing, as any Spider-Man fan can see starting Friday when "Spider-Man 3" opens. Spider silk could stop a Boeing 747 in flight, is stronger than bullet-proof Kevlar and more elastic than nylon, biologists say.
It's a tragic fact of life. Celebrity polar bear cub Knut, now almost five months old, is gradually mutating from a fluffy porridge-lapping cub into a heavy bruiser with a penchant for meat off the bone. But the visitors are still flocking to see him.
Knut's days of extreme cuteness are numbered now that he has acquired a markedly longer snout and weighs a chubby 17 kilograms (37 pounds), twice as much as when he first appeared before an adoring public five weeks ago.
"His teeth are sharper and he's stronger, he still gets porridge but we now feed him beef on the bone occasionally," the zoo's bear expert Heiner Klös told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "He's calmed down a bit, he doesn't potter around as much as he used to and he's happy to sit on his own more often. But he still wanders back to his keeper to tank up on security."
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Huibers' ark stands at 150 cubits (68 metres) - three-quarters of the length of a football pitch
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Following in Noah's footsteps, Dutchman Johan Huibers is ready for any floods Holland may experience - thanks to his own special ark.
APSun, 29 Apr 2007 00:39 UTC
ALAPAHA, Ga. - Hogzilla, a near-mythical monster hog that roamed south Georgia, is about to get a little bigger. An independent filmmaker is producing a horror movie about the super swine called "The Legend of Hogzilla," and has even enlisted the beast's killer on the set as an adviser.
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Chris Griffin, 31, poses beside the half-ton wild hog he shot near Alapaha, Ga., in a Thursday, June 17, 2004
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Comment: In other news: Godzilla's agent is reported to be missing.
RICHARD ELIAS AND JEREMY WATSON
ScotsmanSun, 29 Apr 2007 23:08 UTC
THEY had gathered before dawn for the spectacle and in the end they got the promised "fiery streak across the sky".
And all were agreed - Trekkies, anxious relatives and the gathered ranks of the media - that last night Scotty the Scottish engineer from Star Trek got the send-off he deserved.
Comment: In other news: Godzilla's agent is reported to be missing.