Next Time You’re in … Johannesburg

Just an hour from Johannesburg, sprawling across hundreds of square kilometers of veld, lies a UNESCO World Heritage site known as the Cradle of Humankind, where many of the world’s oldest human fossils have been unearthed. But while it may be an anthropological El Dorado, the Cradle is also emerging as an unlikely nursery for arts and culture.

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Lolcats: Building a Media Empire Around ICanHasCheezburger.com

Ben Huh is the first to admit his company could easily have wound up on FAIL Blog. For the uninitiated, that’s his wildly popular website to which users submit photos and videos documenting such colossally stupid moves as writing a billboard partly in Braille and using a trash can as a bike helmet. Like the rest of the 20-odd websites Huh owns, FAIL Blog was added to his empire for no more specific reason, he says, than “Dude, I think it’s funny.” These spellbindingly inane blogs were built with the kind of user-generated content that has made Facebook and YouTube tremendously popular

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Japanese jobless for June highest in six years

Japan’s unemployment rate hit a six-year high in June, climbing to 5.4 percent, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said Friday. The site of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon was converted into Camp Alpha shortly after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. The troops and their contractors caused “major damage” by digging, cutting, scraping and leveling while they were revamping the site to meet military standards, the U.N

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Black Philadelphia police sue over message board, say it’s racist

A group of black Philadelphia police officers filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against their department, alleging an online forum geared toward city police is "infested with racist, white supremacist and anti-African-American content." The suit alleges white officers post on and moderate the privately operated site, Domelights.com, both on and off the job. Domelights’ users “often joke about the racially offensive commentary on the site … or will mention them in front of black police officers,” thus creating “a racially hostile work environment,” according to lawyers for the all-black Guardian Civic League, the lead plaintiff in the suit

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Cap-and-Trade Website: Make Money by Going Green

When the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act on June 26, it was a landmark moment for environmental politics. If the bill passes the Senate to become law — no sure thing, given the 60 votes needed in the upper chamber — it would establish the first national caps on carbon emissions. It would also create what would almost certainly be the world’s biggest greenhouse-gas market, since companies would have the option to buy and sell carbon credits and offsets.

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