News Bytes

Man who helped the US gets asylum An Iraqi lawyer who played an important role in the rescue of US soldier Jessica Lynch who had been captured in Iraq will be granted asylum in the US. Government officials in Washington announced this on Tuesday. His family, too, would be granted asylum in the US. The man had seen 19-year old Jessica Lynch, who had been wounded in an ambush, in a hospital in Nasirija and decided to help. According to the reports he traveled several kilometers on foot to inform the US soldiers. In addition, he drew them a map to help them find their wounded soldier. On April 1 she was rescued and is now being treated in a hospital in the US.

Code name "Parlor Maid" A scandal shook the FBI's counterintelligence department. After a long internal investigation, presumed top agent Katrina Leung and her, by now retired, handler Special Agent James Smith. Leung, 49, born in China and successful business woman in Los Angeles had provided the FBI with information about her Chinese business partners for more than two decades. Whenever official delegations from China visited the Californian city, Leung helped organizing the event s or hosted receptions for the guests. The FBI valued its informant so highly that they paid her 1.7 million Dollars over the years. Over the last years the service had mainly been aimed at the influence of business people born in China on US politics - by generous to the big political parties, especially the Clinton administration. This operation collapsed three years ago - probably due to information that Leung offered to the other side. The resourceful lady had apparently worked for Chinese intelligence as well. The entire extent of the affair has only recently been discovered - Smith, 59, had had an affair with Leung (code name Parlor Maid) for several years - and the secret information she gave to China was information she obtained from her lover. FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted that there had been some management mistakes.

Another way of changing allegiances Ever since the dismissal without notice from the US TV stations NBC and MSNBC and the National Geographic Explorer, Peter Arnett seems to have more new offers than he knows what to do with. Now, the war reporter is also laying into the Pan-Arab TV station Al Arabiya. He had been hired as a freelancer for the duration of the Iraq war. Immediately after he was fired by NBC, he was hired by British tabloid "Daily Mirror." A short while after that he also started working for the Greek TV channel ERT-NET and Flemish channel VTM. Arnett, New Zealander by birth, had criticized US war strategies in an interview with the Iraqi TV channel. As a consequence, he had been dismissed without notice by NBC, MSNBC and National Geographic. Arnett had become widely known during the Gulf war twelve years ago because he had been one of the few correspondents - for CNN at the time - reporting live from Baghdad.

Tough selection process? Roughly 2,000 out of 21,000 applicants were accepted into Harvard last week - not necessarily the best and brightest. Because the selection process is a science in itself. Whether the applicant has enough money is irrelevant. The calculating process starts afterwards - parents submit their tax assessment notes and then the school determines how much they have to pay. With an income of ca. $80,000 a year, the school fees are approx. $15,000 a year, and Harvard grants an aid of $21,000. About half of all students gets financial aid, last year the school spent roughly $70 million on that. For this, Harvard needs donations from wealthy alumni - and it is a well-known secret that a famous family name also helps to get in. George W. Bush and Al Gore both weren't top students, but they were from influential families and made it to Harvard and Yale. People without famous names try to make it in some other way. Some students submit 80 letters of recommendation instead of the required three - one of them from the orthodontist about very even teeth. The admissions office lances at them and files them away. Gifts will be immediately rejected, even cars. However, the applicant who - being a trained pastry cook - made the school emblem out of chocolate and sent it in, was accepted. Maybe even Harvard has a few sweet secrets of success.

Museum in Washington It was the gold of a British aristocrat who had never set foot on the American continent that gave Congress the financial means to build the largest museum complex in the world - the Smithsonian Institute in the capital of the US. James Smithson remains a mystery for the Americans. The British mineralogist had never set foot on American soil. And still he wanted his money to go to the US after his death to found an institution for the promotion of knowledge. And that way, 105 bags filled with gold were being shipped to the US in 1838. Melted and adjusted to the local currency, this was a sum of $500,000. The institute named after the generous donator is today the largest museum complex in the world with its 16 museums and galleries.

A national sense of mission hovers over the National Air and Space Museum, after all aviation and space travel history has been written by the US to a great extent. With approx. 10 million visitors a year it is one of the most popular museums in the world. After the shuttle Columbia's catastrophic accident, many people came here to bring flowers for the killed astronauts. Historical planes can be seen inside the museum - for example the fragile construction that the brothers Wright made the first motorized flight with exactly 100 years ago. Even German engineering skills are being honored - a V2 and a Messerschmitt 262 are among the exhibits. Other houses are displaying modern art, or the history of nature or mail. Not part of the Smithsonian family is the National Gallery of Art. This dates back to the year 1937 and the legacy of another wealthy man. And by 2006, the Newseum, a media museum, will have moved from Arlington to the center of Washington.

Web link: www.si.edu

Where blue grass gets you high - Kentucky The music style of bluegrass is almost omnipresent in Kentucky. The air in that southern state of the US always smells like the blue-ish grass. The roots are deep - in 1939 entrepreneur and country music fan John Lair made Renfro Valley near Lexington a stronghold of this music. Each Saturday he organized the "Valley Barn Dance," an evening with music and comedy. Soon this was also broadcasted over the radio and became an important source of income for the poor rural population. These days, the small town is hosting the Bluegrass Festival every year. Around the old barn, motels, restaurants and souvenirs shops have opened, also a pioneer museum and a new country music museum.

Today, the pioneer's every day life is being reenacted for the visitors at Fort Boonesborough State Park. Women in long dresses and petticoats are cooking, baking, weaving and sewing with tools from the late 18th century. Men are working on furs, clean their guns, or are roasting pigs or game on the village square. The company town Stearns is a leftover from the mining period. Today, visitors can have a look at the administration building as well as the shafts from which the "black gold" was extracted. Among the main attractions of Kentucky are also the many nature reserves in the state parks. Mountains, woods and rivers offer the perfect setting for hiking, horseback riding, climbing, canoeing and swimming. One point of criticism is the food, at least for weight conscious people - it is very rich in calories.

Kentucky information: www.state.ky.us
Bluegrass music: www.ibma.org

Monkey gives away $1 billion In an unequalled advertising campaign Pepsi offers the chance of winning $1 billion. Whether there will be a winner at all will be determined by a monkey. "Play for a billion" is the slogan of this campaign that starts on May 1 in the US. Participants have to collect the caps of Pepsi, Mountain-Dew or Sierra Mist bottles with special codes in them, one million of those had been printed. One million of them were instant cash prices of up to $15. In addition, all codes could be sent in to win the jackpot. There's an entire music show called Pepsi Smash that massively advertises the lottery. However, Pepsi is hoping for the biggest publicity by word of mouth. 1,000 codes will be drawn from all sent in and in a two-hour show this will be reduced to ten finalists.

Those ten will play for the jackpot live on the show. The winner has $1 million guaranteed. Whether he is going to be a billionaire will be decided by a monkey. The winner gets a multi-digit code and only if the monkey draws that same code, the winner will go home with $1 billion. And Pepsi has already taken the necessary precautions in case they really do have to pay the $1 billion. For a seven-figure premium, an insurance company has underwritten the contest. Interesting detail: the insurance company is owned by a major stockholder of Coca Cola. So he might now have to sponsor the competition...

We are not alone - even our celebrities want to go...

... TO FLORIDA

Roughly one year after he separated from his wife Martina, Stefan Effenberg wants to be near his family again. Apparently, he wants to buy a house in Florida, in the neighborhood where his ex-wife lives. The German tabloid "Bunte" says that he wants to buy a house near the one he had bought a few years ago together with his wife. His ex-wife and children who are loving in Naples had been quite okay with the fact that he had decided to leave VfL Wolfsburg. Effenberg now wants to be there for his children. It remains to be seen whether his current girlfriend Claudia Strunz will accompany him to the US. The 37-year old first had to get divorced from her husband Thomas, Effenberg said in an interview.

... TO NEW YORK

Prince William, oldest son of the British heir to the throne Charles, is said to be planning to move to the US. After graduating from university in Scotland in 2005, the 20-year old would like to go to New York to have more privacy than he has in his home country. The Prince either wants to go for another academic degree there or work in a gallery or a auction house for art. Several tabloids reported that William was in love with 20-year old Kate Middleton who he met at university.

... SOMEWHERE

Peter Kloeppel, anchorman at German television channel RTL, doesn't want to give up his American dream and move to the US one day. He said that his attitude toward the US had not changed since the war in Iraq. For him it would simply prove a development that he had observed for years and that had been intensified by September 11 - a development towards a pronounced patriotism that sometimes became nationalism. Now some Americans were starting to see themselves as the ultimate rulers of the world, Kloeppel said in the German talk show "Beckmann" on April 28. He added, however, that not all Americans felt that way and that many of them were opposed to the war, a fact that should not be forgotten. So for him as the husband of an American, his wish to be once living in the US had not changed.

New Hampshire mourns famous landmark In New Hampshire, the state's landmark, the "old man" collapsed. The famous granite rock with the profile of an old man that attracted hundreds of thousands of tourists a year and was even depicted on a special edition of quarters, became a victim of erosion. www.visitwhitemountains.com