Geologists have long been at a loss to explain the rocks’ unusual shapes, but physicists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign say they have figured out the answer.... Read more.

“He said, like, ‘Imagine your dad on an ironing board, snowboarding down a mountain with a bunch of guys chasing him,’ ” Mr. Pettyfer, 16, said recently, recounting a preproduction conversation with the screenwriter of “Stormbreaker,” Anthony Horowitz. The full horror of the image is meant to speak for itself: Mr. Pettyfer’s father is “like 47, 48.” ... Read more.

The ballet for 12 dancers told in 12 sections was both strange and something of a perfect fit. The resplendent crown of City Ballet’s Diamond Project, “Russian Seasons,” an endearing, capricious example of playful refinement, are being performed this week in the company’s season at Saratoga Springs, N.Y.... Read more.

Now Mr. Graham is playing an even higher-profile variant of that role, as the Senate’s foremost expert on military law in the midst of the emotional debate over what rights to provide to terror suspects.... Read more.

They knew that she had been born in Mexico, was a 15-year-old student at a Dallas high school and had gone to her prenatal checkups. They knew she was scared about giving birth.... Read more.

“A lot of people move from West Hollywood to the Valley when they have kids,” said Mark Frauenfelder, a Valley resident who co-founded the Web site www.boingboing.net. “They still want to go out at night, but they want to stay closer to home, instead of driving over the hill and wasting a half hour of precious babysitter time.”... Read more.

WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE... Read more.

Rules? What rules? Riga, cultured, energetic and young, is making them up as it goes along. Latvia is the poorest country in the European Union, but high-end Riga, its capital, is the most cosmopolitan city in the Baltics, with upscale shops, new museums, modern hotels and restaurants and only traces of what Latvia now calls the Soviet occupation (a term that’s created a certain chilliness in Latvian-Russian relations). ... Read more.

This year’s show, which continues until Aug. 20, features esteemed members of the Royal Academy, like John Bellany, as well as rank unknowns (at least to me) like Gillian Golding. And most of the 1,326 paintings, prints and sculptures are for sale, at prices from £65 (about $122 at $1.88 to the pound) for Ms. Golding’s etching “Noodles” (in an edition of 160) to £80,000 ($150,400) for Mr. Bellany’s vibrant oil painting “Eternal Voyage.” ... Read more.

Don’t try Helsinki in the off season, no matter what the brochures say. The Finnish capital’s time is now, right now, high summer, when daylight lasts for 20 giddy hours out of 24, when the sidewalk cafes and the waterside markets are thronged by handsome, hardy people, when the procession of crayfish feasts builds toward a climax, and when the pale blue waters of the lakes and the harbor and the white bark of the birch trees match the national flag.... Read more.

But a while ago, there it was on the nightly television news: Josko Joras’s refusal to pay customs duties to Croatia on a washing machine he was installing in his home. It is situated on a strip of land just south of the Dragonja River that Mr. Joras considers part of Slovenia but is treated by Croatia as Croatian territory.... Read more.

The United States and Israel reacted skeptically, with President Bush urging tartly that Mr. Annan telephone President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, a key sponsor of Hezbollah, “and make something happen.” In Russia for a Group of 8 summit meeting, Mr. Bush expressed his views to Mr. Blair, using a vulgarity that was caught by an open microphone.... Read more.

One of the two horses, Barbaro, went on to win the Derby in dynamic fashion only to injure himself in the Preakness Stakes. The other, Showing Up, finished sixth, 10 lengths back.... Read more.

But Truex, a 26-year-old native of Mayetta, N.J., is getting tired of taking notes. More than half of the Nextel Cup season has been completed, and Truex wants better results. His Dale Earnhardt Inc. teammate is Dale Earnhardt Jr. Success is expected from this team.... Read more.

The smile and the sentiment were genuine. Bonds is facing one of his most difficult weeks yet regarding legal matters, but he has looked uncommonly relaxed and confident — even though he could wind up with a federal indictment when a grand jury considering charges of income-tax evasion and perjury meets here Thursday.... Read more.

This is not an easy question for Leon to answer. Weeks later, she is still wrestling with it. She is 41 years old and, to make a living, she works as a substance-abuse counselor at a Staten Island hospital. But when she discovered a women’s football team in New York in 2000, it was as if she had a spiritual rebirth. Even now, Leon, who is nicknamed Cha Chi, cannot discuss it without waving a hand in front of her face to fight off the tears.... Read more.

“Welcome back, Discovery,” Stephen N. Frick, a NASA astronaut communicating with the shuttle from mission control in Houston, said to the shuttle commander, Col. Steven W. Lindsey of the Air Force, after the shuttle had come to a halt.... Read more.

Decoding a person’s genome is at present far too costly to be a feasible medical procedure. But the goal now being pursued by the N.I.H. and by several manufacturers, including the company decoding Dr. Watson’s DNA, is to drive the costs of decoding a human genome down to as little as $1,000. At that price, it could be worth decoding people’s genomes in certain medical situations and, one day, even routinely at birth. ... Read more.

Sony, for example, has sold an HD camcorder, the $2,000 HDR-HC1, for over six months. Next month, it will release the HDR-HC3 HDV, a more compact $1,700 model. ... Read more.

“Obesity is considered one of the most common nutritional problems in cats and dogs,” two scientists from the University of California, Davis, reported last year at the Waltham International Nutritional Sciences Symposium in Washington. “Studies in Western Europe and the United States have indicated that more than 24 percent of dogs and about 25 percent of domestic cats are obese,” the veterinarians, Jon J. Ramsey and Kevork Hagopian, noted. The findings were published this month in The Journal of Nutrition.... Read more.