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* Dr. Bruce E. Ivins, the U.S. Army bio-defense expert thought to have mailed anthrax-laced letters that killed five people in 2001 and who killed himself in 2008, had included in the notes a coded message thought by the FBI to be based on DNA biochemistry; the FBI's theory is that the messages were about two female former colleagues with whom he had been obsessed, according to information released as the FBI closed its investigation into the case on Friday. The report stated that an FBI surveillance agent watched as Ivins walked out of his Frederick, Maryland home in his long johns at 1 a.m. to dispose of a book--"Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hofstadter--that he worried might make him seem suspicious because it revealed his interest in codes. The report also included details of exchanges with friends and colleagues, including this from an e-mail sent the year he killed himself: "I can hurt, kill, and terrorize. Go down low, low, low as you can go, then dig forever, and you'll find me, my psyche."
* Nigeria's acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, promoted from his position as vice president while President Umaru Yar'Adua convalesces in a Saudi Arabian hospital for going on three months, is a change of pace as Nigerian leaders go: He was not elected, did not seize power in a coup (unlike many who've held the role before him), and his past seems untainted by corruption. A mild-mannered academic, a biologist with a doctorate in zoology, he is an incongruous leader of Africa's most populous country, a nation plagued by rebellions and sitting on 36 billion barrels of oil reserves. A leading citizens' group is calling for him to be installed as full-fledged president.
* Fox pulled a planned show called "Our Little Genius," even after promoting it heavily, after a parent of a child recruited for the quiz show wrote a letter to the Federal Communications Commission stating that the child had been given specific answers to questions that he would be asked on the show, sparking an FCC inquiry.
* One of the animated short films nominated for an Oscar this year is "Logorama," from a French studio called H5. The New York Times calls the film "an astonishing piece of anticorporate provocation," with a crazed killer who is recognizably Ronald McDonald, police pursuers who are clearly Michelin men, all inhabiting a world that is thoroughly logoed and branded.
* In his televised apology for cheating on his wife, Tiger Woods said he had drifted from the Buddhist principles he had been taught as a child.