26 October 2007: Morning

  • Death count from California fires rises to seven; threat to homes diminishes, but what's to come is unknown.
  • Oil experts know they'd prefer no one goes around attacking Iran, especially since they don't have contingency plans.
  • Conservatives organize confrontations with Rice over diplomacy with North Korea and Syria's ghost reactor.
  • Organized crime in Italy estimated to earn $128 billion per year.
  • Interesting variety of answers when experts are asked, what's the single best way to help people living on less than $1 per day?
  • Why California's wildfires are America's future.
  • Travelodge has seen its future, and it's a seven-fold rise in sleepwalkers, with 95 percent being scantily clad men.
  • Explaining the U.K.'s black-actor drain: "In Britain, white actors have careers and black actors have jobs."
  • Study finds depressed people are likely to see negative emotions in ambiguous faces.
  • Video: Vilayanur Ramachandran walks you through Capgras syndrome, phantom limbs, and synesthesia.
  • TMN's Matthew Baldwin to synthesize a mess of art and pot-shots in today's match of Layer Tennis.
  • The postscript to Pavarotti's death has become a messy opera about cash, real estate, and stinky family relations.
  • Mitt Romney looks like Brother Shithead. Part one of TMN's Sarah Hepola's hilarious interviews with two Mormon teenagers (and part two).
  • Seven topics to avoid if you don't want to be a bore in conversation.
  • Video: Zombies in plain english.
  • That's right, it's Gothtober, and this year the theme for artists is nautical.