* There are 16 countries that use the euro as currency. Germany was an early proponent of a move to a unified currency among European countries, but now it finds itself in the position of having to bail out one of the euro-using countries whose economy is weak due to too much spending, Greece. If Germany (with some assistance from France) doesn't offer financial assistance to Greece--in the form of loans, loan guarantees or buying Greek government bonds--the effects would ripple throughout euro-using nations, including Germany.
* The diary of a wealthy plantation owner living in Mississippi in the mid-1800s has surfaced and was revealed to be a rich source of information--from events to character names--for William Faulkner. The diary belonged to Francis Terry Leak, whose great-grandson Edgar Wiggin Francisco III, 79, can remember Faulkner visiting the plantation in the 1930s, and how fascinated Faulkner was with the diary's several volumes, which included entries about slave sales. Faulkner "was always taking copious notes," Francisco said.
* As the East Coast of the U.S. copes with blizzards, people on both sides of the disagreement over whether global warming is occurring have used the cold weather to bolster their arguments. The family of Republican Senator James H. Inhofe built a six-foot-tall igloo on Capitol Hill and placed a cardboard sign in front that said, "Al Gore's New Home."
* Polaroid estimates that in the 1960s about half of all Americans at that time owned one of their cameras. Ansel Adams captured iconic images in Yosemite National Park with a Polaroid, and Andy Warhol used the camera for portraits. With the advent of the digital camera, Polaroid, started in 1937 by Edwin H. Land, went out of business twice, getting first bought out in 2001, then in 2008 it fell victim to a Ponzi scheme run by the founder of the company that bought Polaroid out. To pay off creditors, a bankruptcy court is forcing Polaroid to sell some of its collection of Polaroid art at auction. The collection includes images by Ansel Adams (400 prints), Chuck Close, William Wegman, Robert Rauschenberg, David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Andy Warhol.
* Scientists have decoded the genome of a man who lived 4,000 years ago on the western coast of Greenland.