Free Republic

An Indian villager burrowed for 14 years with a hammer and chisel to cut a tunnel through a mountain so that his neighbours could reach nearby fields and he could park his truck outside his home. Ramchandra Das, 53, who lives in eastern Bihar state, carved a 10m-long, 4m-wide tunnel through the hill range from his village of Kewati. Das took up the Herculean task after villagers found the 7km trek over the mountain increasingly arduous. When the authorities refused to help to cut the journey time, Das began carving his way through the earth in the direction of the...

U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Andrew Giermann takes an Afghan boyÂ’s hand during a visit to Rechah Lam in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, March 11, 2006. Giermann, of the Scout Sniper Platoon of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, joined other Marines in distributing food, blankets, clothing and toys. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Joe LindsayMore Photos Marines Stymie Taliban, Earn Afghan Villagers' Trust The Marines of 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment have a dual mission: to track down insurgents and to ensure Afghan villagers have the opportunity to live in peace. By U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Joe Lindsay...

washingtonpost.com The Villager, Imitated but No Longer Flattered By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, August 4, 2003; Page C01 Some journalistic sins are crystal clear, like Jayson Blair plagiarizing out-of-town stories without leaving New York. And some situations are much murkier. John Sutter, publisher of the Villager, says the New York Times has been stealing story ideas from his small Greenwich Village paper. There's no hint of plagiarism here; in each case, Times staffers did their own reporting and filed stories that read very differently. And it's hardly unusual for big-city papers, including The Washington Post, to follow...