BLOOMINGTON So far no smokers have been ticketed by police in the Twin Cities smoking ban, and 39 taverns and restaurants in Bloomington have temporary exemptions. The indoor smoking ban began Jan. 1 in Normal, Bloomington and unincorporated areas of McLean County.

And is this your crispy mole Letters The fire just won't go out. We've tried pouring sand on it, water, throwing blankets at it, but all we got was the odd feeling we'd been on an English seaside holiday. We're talking of course, about the flames licking up the edges of the pages we used to publish any mention of the new phone from that company. You know, the fruity one

Happy Anniversary! Well...almost. While scanning down my blogs, I realized that tomorrow will mark the one year anniversary of this blog. Wow! A whole year condensed into a series of blog entries. This really is fun.

Signs, labels and menus are being prepared for the Olympics in Beijing that, for example, welcome them to a park celebrating diversity named..."R acist Park."

WHITE House defends troop 'surge' in Iraq as policy criticism grows

A York City woman won a $100 prize earlier this month for reading a cell phone manual and, well, as she says, just being a Yorker. Nancy Shue picked up third place in the Wacky Warning Labels Contest for finding a quirky instruction in a manual for her Motorola V325I cell phone.

TONY Blair marked the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union yesterday by warning that it would be "crazy&quo t; for Scotland to break away from the UK.