Free Republic

In Tennessee, a judge is legally required to be “patient, dignified and courteous” with people in court. He is also required, not unreasonably, “to respect and comply with the law”. But not all judges do. The Supreme Court of Tennessee recently disciplined Judge Durwood Moore for unlawful judicial conduct. Presiding in court one day, the judge happened to glance at Benjamin Marchant, a friend of someone who had court business. Marchant was not a witness, just a spectator. Yet after observing him, the judge ordered court officers to seize the man, get a urine sample from him and have it...

Experts who examined a cache of long-lost photos from the 1930s Spanish Civil War say it yielded a lot of new information, but failed to solve the biggest mystery whether legendary photojournalist Robert Capa took the famous picture of a man at the instant he was killed by a bullet. Answering that question was a principal goal of curators at the New York-based International Center of Photography when they first delved into the so-called Mexican Suitcase, a collection of 4,300 frames shot by Capa, his companion Gerda Taro and close friend David "Chim" Seymour. The negatives, long believed to have...

Wombat droppings are helping an industrial city in Australia fight the effects of the global financial crisis. Burnie, in the north-west of the state of Tasmania, has been hit by repeated rounds of job cuts. But despite the gloom, one local industry is thriving by producing handmade paper out of a material no-one else wants - wombat poo. The novelty paper is a hit with tourists keen to buy a distinctly Australian souvenir from the area. The wombat, a furry marsupial, lives in the wild only in Australia.