* Reports of looting were heard from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in the aftermath of the earthquake that devastated the country on Tuesday. In the absence of law and order, there was also a report of an incidence of vigilante justice--the lynching of one looter as police officials stood aside.
* Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who died of brain cancer this past summer, was a member of the U.S. Senate for 46 years.
* The now-iconic mask that the Michael Myers character wears in the "Halloween" movies was created from a William Shatner mask, painted white, with the hair teased and the eyeholes cut larger. The prop department originally used the Shatner Halloween mask because the budget was tight.
* A Iranian journalist named Nazila Fathi was one of many reporters covering her country's election in June, the results of which were widely thought to be fraudulent. The government forbade the press from covering the protests and repression that followed, as well as executions that it had announced within the country, and reporters working for foreign news outlets were banned from leaving their offices. A sympathetic hard-line source who spoke to Fathi for her articles warned her that she would be shot by snipers if she were seen out on the street--but Fathi continued to go out to report. She only left the country when a squad of surveillance vehicles tailed her car one day. She now reports from the outside on what is going on in her country.
* Last year more than 1,000 pedestrians had to be taken to the ER following accidents in which they were injured because they had been distracted while talking or texting on their cell phones.