Mike's Minutiae

A computer analysis finds no fewer than 33 combinations in which those 11 [battleground] states could divide to produce a 269 to 269 electoral tie.

In West Virginia, one of the state's five Republican electors, South Charleston Mayor Richie Robb, has said he might not vote for Bush (although he calls it "unlikely" he would support Kerry). And in Ohio, the political publication the Hotline reports, one of Kerry's 20 electors could be disqualified because he is a congressman.

• The Germans started officially using DST two years before the U.S.
• "There is also a question whether the savings in lighting costs (people just home from work don't turn on the electric lights because there is enough sunlight through the windows) justifies the increase in summertime air conditioning costs (people home from work DO turn up the air conditioning during the late-afternoon peak load times, because it's still warm outside)."
• Agricultural workers may view DST unfavorably because one can't seem to get animals to recognize the shift
• Indiana has three different flavors of time zones within its boundaries

The outcome of the Redskins' last home game prior to the election has correctly forecasted who would win the presidency every time since 1936.

"The mask sales have been 100 percent accurate," said Daniel Haight, chief operating officer of Buyseasons, which owns Buycostumes.com. "It hasn't failed us yet," he told the Associated Press. Haight's data collecting goes back to 1980 when Ronald Reagan debated President Jimmy Carter.

George Neumann, a UI professor of economics and co-director of the Iowa Electronic Markets [says] "These markets have tended not to be wrong...." The Iowa Electronic Markets are Internet-based, real-money futures markets in which contract payoffs depend on economic and political events, including the 2004 presidential election.

Since 1956, Weekly Reader students have correctly picked the president 11 out of 12 times, making the Weekly Reader poll one of the most accurate predictors of presidential outcomes in history.

Family Circle’s Cookie Cook-Off has actually predicted the past three Presidents.

Researchers gave honey bees various levels of ethanol, the intoxicating agent in liquor, and monitored the ensuing behavioral effects of the drink – specifically how much time the bees spent flying, walking, standing still, grooming and flat on their backs, so drunk they couldn't stand up....

This study is preliminary – the researchers simply wanted to see what effects ethanol had on honey bee behavior. In the future, however, they hope to use honey bees as a model for learning more about how chronic alcohol use affects humans, particularly at the molecular level....

Except for the control bees, bees that had consumed the least amount of ethanol – 10 percent – spent the least amount of time upside down. Even then, it took about 20 minutes for ethanol's effect to set in and cause this behavior.

Simpson had performed her hit single "Pieces of Me" without incident earlier in the show. When she came back a second time, her band started playing and the first lines of her singing "Pieces of Me" could be heard again.

She looked momentarily confused as the band plowed ahead with the song and the vocal was quickly silenced.

Simpson made some exaggerated hopping dance moves, then walked off the stage 35 seconds into the performance. NBC quickly cut to a commercial.

Jude Law hosts "Saturday Night Live," at 11:30 p.m. on Channel 7. Ashlee Simpson is the "musical guest."

The El Paso County Department of Health and Environment has determined that a tree squirrel has tested positive for the plague in the Colorado Springs area.

In the United States, the last urban plague epidemic occurred in Los Angeles in 1924-25. Since then, human plague in the United States has occurred as mostly scattered cases in rural areas (an average of 10 to 15 persons each year).

Scientists in Peru hope a new breed of guinea pig will convert the world to one of their favourite delicacies.

A new super-sized version of the cuddly rodent has been developed at one of Peru's top universities.

Although in most of the world guinea pigs are enjoyed as pets - not ingredients - exporters hope the larger animal will be easier to sell abroad.

"It is really delicious," says Gloria Palacios, director of La Molina National University's export project.

The 1918 flu virus spread across the world in three months and killed at least 40 million people. If it escaped from a lab today, the death toll could be far higher. "The potential implications of an infected lab worker – and spread beyond the lab – are terrifying," says D. A. Henderson of the University of Pittsburgh, a leading biosecurity expert.

Yet despite the danger, researchers in the US are working with reconstructed versions of the virus at less than the maximum level of containment. Many other experts are worried about the risks. "All the virologists I have spoken to have concerns," says Ingegerd Kallings of the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control in Stockholm, who helped set laboratory safety standards for the World Health Organization.

The conservative estimate is 21 million people, but people suggest that it may be forty to fifty million people actually died worldwide.

Charges were dropped Thursday against a pregnant woman arrested and forced to the ground by Metro Transit Police for allegedly talking too loudly on a cell phone.

"I'm happy that it's over with," defendant Sakinah Aaron said of the incident that has raised questions about the conduct of the transit police force.

"We didn't want our action to be taken as a reflection on our view about the officer's credibility," said Deputy Montgomery County, Md., State's Attorney Katherine Winfree. "We just felt that under the circumstances, this was the appropriate disposition at this time."

[...]

"It's all about money," [Transit Police Chief Polly] Hanson said Thursday. "I think initially the gal was offered community service, and she requested a jury trial," said Hanson, adding that she wanted Aaron's case to go forward but understood the prosecutor's decision.

Transit Police remain defensive about their actions in this and other cases that have gained them unflattering publicity. On July 16, a woman was handcuffed and jailed for eating a candy bar on a subway station escalator. In 2000, a 12 year-old girl was arrested for eating a french fry on a subway platform. And in 2002, a wheelchair bound rider was ticketed for using profanity when he could not find a working elevator to exit the system.

College student Chris van Rossman got more than he wanted with his Toshiba set when emergency and law enforcement officials came knocking.

Earlier this month, Rossman's year-old 20-inch flat-screen TV started broadcasting over the 121.5MHz frequency, the channel used for distress signals. Such signals are used by search and rescue workers to find airplanes that have crashed or boats that are missing at sea. Rossman's TV was picked up by search and rescue satellites and emergency crews were alerted.

"These sorts of alerts are not uncommon, but usually happen in airports when someone has accidentally activated a transponder," said Mike Bamberger, emergency manager for Benton County, Ore., who went to Rossman's apartment with U.S. Air Force and Corvallis, Ore., law enforcement officials. "Most of these are false alarms, but we check them out anyway. By morning, we had narrowed the signal to an apartment, and later to a point on the wall of the apartment where the TV was located."

[...]

Van Rossman was instructed to cease emitting a false distress signal--that is, to stop watching TV--or face a fine by the Federal Communications Commission of $10,000 per day.

As China gets richer and stronger, the world is coming to share its belief that it merits recognition and respect as a great power.

Through a combination of economic dynamism, skilful diplomacy and understated threat, it is already regaining much of its old imperial supremacy across Asia.

Filling the void left by the former Soviet Union, it has also emerged as the likeliest challenger to the United States as a global superpower.

"China doesn't want to accept US leadership. Confrontation is inevitable."

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kerry railed against President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in Pittsburgh yesterday for creating a culture of fear to boost their re-election campaign.... The Democrat [spoke to] a crowd of thousands of students and other potential Western Pennsylvania voters gathered yesterday evening on the muddy lawn of the Carnegie Mellon University campus in Oakland.

A new campaign to encourage young Americans to vote on election day is using a novel incentive - sex pledges.

Americans who sign up to Votergasm can pledge to withhold sex from a non-voter for up to four years until the next presidential election in 2008.

A spokeswoman told the BBC that the internet-based campaign aims to boost voter turnout among young people, as well as promoting safe, consensual sex.

"Almost all of my CDs are pirated. I also tried downloading from the web, but do it very little, because I don't want to pay for internet traffic. I think in Russia piracy is not such a bad thing, since it compensates for our low incomes. At least it becomes possible for people to educate themselves about computer programs, for example."

Altman's key-chain fob was a TV-B-Gone, a new universal remote that turns off almost any television. The device, which looks like an automobile remote, has just one button. When activated, it spends over a minute flashing out 209 different codes to turn off televisions, the most popular brands first.

For Altman, founder of Silicon Valley data-storage maker 3ware, the TV-B-Gone is all about freeing people from the attention-sapping hold of omnipresent television programming. The device is also providing hours of entertainment for its inventor.

At a Laundromat and cafe down the street, a lone man sorted clothes in the glow of larger-than-life bikini babes on a 60-inch Sony HDTV. A punch of the button and the screen instantly went dark. He went on folding his T-shirts, seemingly unaware of the change.

"It's always like that," Altman said. "It's so much part of the environment in the U.S. that people don't even notice when it disappears."

Advocates of a propulsion idea for spacecraft claim that it would enable a 90-day round trip to Mars.

Using current technology, it would take astronauts about 2.5 years to travel to Mars, conduct their mission and return to Earth, US scientists estimate.

It would use a space station to fire a beam of magnetised particles at a solar sail mounted on a spacecraft.

The living arrangements of parents at the time a baby is conceived may play a role in determining its sex, research suggests.

A US study found parents who were married or living together before conception were slightly more likely to have a boy than those who were not.

Male embryos are less robust than their female counterparts, and so require a greater degree of nurturing through pregnancy if they are to survive to full term.

It may be that a woman who is in a stable relationship may be in a better position to provide this care.

NetGear Inc. is designing a broadband modem for use with a long-range wireless data service called Flash-OFDM that is currently being trialed by Nextel Communications Inc., T-Mobile International and Vodafone PLC.

US scientists have discovered that every desktop printer has a signature style that it invisibly leaves on all the documents it produces.

They have now found a way to use this to identify individual laser printers.

The work will help track down printers used to make bogus bank notes, fake passports and other important papers.

Before now it was thought that the differences between cheap, mass-produced desktop printers were not significant enough to make individual identification possible.

But a team from Purdue University in Indiana led by Professor Edward Delp has developed techniques that make it possible to trace which printer was used to produce which document.

In 11 out of 12 tests, the team's methods identified which model of desktop laser printer was used to print particular documents.

"We also believe that we will be able to identify not only which model of printer was used but specifically which printer was used," Professor Delp said.

Across the Bible Belt this Halloween, some little ghosts and goblins might get shooed away by the neighbors -- and some youngsters will not be allowed to go trick-or-treating at all -- because the holiday falls on a Sunday this year.

"It's a day for the good Lord, not for the devil," said Barbara Braswell, who plans to send her 4-year-old granddaughter Maliyah out trick-or-treating in a princess costume on Saturday instead.

Some towns around the country are decreeing that Halloween be celebrated on Saturday to avoid complaints from those who might be offended by the sight of demons and witches ringing their doorbell on the Sabbath.

Others insist the holiday should be celebrated on October 31 no matter what....

"You just don't do it on Sunday," said Sandra Hulsey of Greenville, Georgia. "That's Christ's day. You go to church on Sunday, you don't go out and celebrate the devil. That'll confuse a child...."

"We don't need to confuse people with this," Councilman George Alexander said.

The City of Huntsville [AL] is encouraging residents to plan trick-or-treating and other Halloween activities on Saturday, October 30 this year. The decision was made in response to numerous citizen requests, according to Mayor Loretta Spencer....

Florence [AL] Mayor Bobby Irons is encouraging his city's residents to celebrate Halloween on October 30 this year....

Decatur's [AL] Mayor Don Kyle is suggesting that Decatur residents do their trick-or-treating October 30 this year.

Trick-or-treating should take place in Page [AZ] on Sunday, Oct. 31 this year, "suggested" Page City Council, opting against a Saturday alternative.

~~The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

• Mission:

  World Trade Magazine covers all aspects of supply chain logistics, important to decision makers at the highest levels as they integrate global elements of the supply chain into U.S. manufacturing and ultimately into moving products to both domestic and foreign markets. Today’s top level executives want the timely and unbiased information provided by WTM. (pdf link)

  (I find this quite refreshing--all of the other magazines serving supply chain execs are so shamelessly BIASED and PARTISAN!)
  
  
• How they fancy themselves:
  
  
  • "For U.S. executives with global vision." (link)
  • "For the integrated global logistics decision maker." (pdf link)
  
  (Hmmm... what if I'm a segregated decision maker who is globally myopic? Is World Trade right for me?)
  
  
• Target demo:

  World Trade is targeted to the senior management of mid-sized American manufacturers actively involved in exporting and importing, as well as the service industries supporting their efforts. (link)

  (Senior management of mid-sized firms...and the service industries who love them. I must say, I admire their "big fish in a mid-sized pond" outlook.)
  
  
• Upcoming trade-related educational events:

  Uh, no current events found. (link)

• Didja know?

  "World Trade magazine is also carried on two major airlines including; United and Delta offering exceptional visibility to high-level business travelers." (link)

  (Please note; World Trade writers have not yet attended the seminar on the difference between the colon and the semicolon: also, get the subtle joke? "HIGH-LEVEL" business travelers? HA! ROFL!)

Sergei Abramov, who heads Chechnya's pro-Moscow government, said on Friday that the park would be built next year along with a range of cultural and entertainment facilities, including a new football stadium.

"We have now made a fundamental switch from the principle of reconstruction to the principle of development," Mr Abramov told a news conference on the rebuilding of the republic's shattered economy.

"Therefore, next year, we will launch not only a multifunctional sports centre for the Terek football club, but a Disneyland and a swimming/leisure complex," he said in remarks broadcast by the Ekho Moskvy radio station.

Mr Abramov did not make clear whether he was referring to an official Disneyland, or a generic theme park.

A former intelligence official named Ben H. Bell III, is taking his ideas to a private company offshore, where he and his colleagues plan to use some of the same concepts, technology and contractors to assess people for risk, outside the reach of U.S. regulators, according to documents and interviews.

Bell's new employer, the Bahamas-based Global Information Group Ltd., intends to amass large databases of international records and analyze them in the coming years for corporations, government agencies and other information services. One of the first customers is information giant LexisNexis Group, one of the main contractors on the government system that was known until recently as the second generation of the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening Program, or CAPPS II. The program is now known as Secure Flight....

Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, said he worries that Global will become a contractor for government work that government officials could not get backing to do themselves. "He is making a highly controversial program more controversial," Lewis said about Bell. "Now he's doing it offshore and making money off of it."

STEWART: See, the thing is, we need your help. Right now, you're helping the politicians and the corporations. And we're left out there to mow our lawns.

BEGALA: By beating up on them? You just said we're too rough on them when they make mistakes.

STEWART: No, no, no, you're not too rough on them. You're part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks.

[...]

BEGALA: We're 30 minutes in a 24-hour day where we have each side on, as best we can get them, and have them fight it out.

STEWART: No, no, no, no, that would be great. To do a debate would be great. But that's like saying pro wrestling is a show about athletic competition.

[...]

STEWART: But the thing is that this -- you're doing theater, when you should be doing debate, which would be great.

BEGALA: We do, do...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: It's not honest. What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery. And I will tell you why I know it.

CARLSON: You had John Kerry on your show and you sniff his throne and you're accusing us of partisan hackery?

STEWART: Absolutely.

CARLSON: You've got to be kidding me. He comes on and you...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: What is wrong with you?

If you want to find a way of forecasting who is going to win the race for the presidency, look at the lengths and origins of their names. The pattern since World War II has been for candidates with increasingly short, poster-friendly names. And preferably sounding like they could be the lead characters in a mini-series.

In the last electoral battle, in 2000, the names couldn't have got any shorter, with a two-syllable play-off between George Bush and Al Gore.

[...]

If you want to find a president with a three-syllable surname you have to go back to John Kennedy in 1960. Latter-day tri-syllabics, such as Michael Dukakis in 1988, went down in flames.

If you go back to the slower-paced 1950s, it was possible for Dwight Eisenhower to get his name squeezed onto a ballot form.

Apart from the slight profile-raising advantage of having been supreme allied commander during the war, he was also helped by running against someone with a name as long as his own: Adlai Stevenson. And to make the point even clearer, his supporters cut the name right back to the no-nonsense, movie-star brevity of "Ike".

Russian space researchers will lock six men in a metal tube for more than a year in an effort to mimic the stresses and challenges of a manned mission to Mars.

The 500 Days experiment, under development by the Russian Institute of Medical and Biological Problems, will isolate human volunteers in a mock space station module for -- as its namesake suggests -- a complete 500 days to study how a long mission to Mars might affect its human crew....

During the 500 Days study, six volunteers will depend on a preset limit of supplies, including about 5 tons of food and oxygen and 3 tons of water. A doctor will accompany volunteers inside the module to treat illnesses and injuries. Volunteers will only be allowed to quit the experiment if they develop a severe ailment or psychological stress.

Andenaes struggled to catch up after Fernandez's buying spree. But his fate was sealed when he rolled an unlucky six, moved his wheelbarrow to Tennessee Avenue and lost his shirt.

Antonio Zafra Fernandez, 36, of Madrid pumped his fist in the air after he bested Norwegian Bjorn Andenaes of Oslo in the beloved board game to take home the $15,140 prize — equal to the amount of play money in a Monopoly set.

"I'm extremely happy and so proud," Fernandez said after hoisting a giant winner's check in the air. He said he and his wife would spend the prize money on a new car, but added: "It's not about the money. I'm going home as a champion, which doesn't happen often in a person's life."

A cartoon-style nude painting of US President George W Bush has been taken down by a museum in Washington.

Kayti Didriksen's Man of Leisure, King George, shows a nude Mr Bush being attended to by a man resembling Vice-President Dick Cheney.

It is based on Edouard Manet's work Olympia, which hangs in a Paris museum.

Over the past decade, the Mercedes spinoff called Smart has emerged as Europe's most daring car company. It has rolled out a four-wheeled motorcycle. It has introduced a novel interlocking design that allows owners to change the car's color panels as often as they change cell phone faceplates. It has opened the world's first online dealership and sells cars out of towering glass vending machines across Europe. And it has experimented with Bluetooth, offering smartphone and iPod integration before any other carmaker.

All that - plus a sticker price starting at $13,000 - has helped the company snag the youngest average buyer of any global auto manufacturer, a snappy 37. And Smart's buyers are an enviably affluent bunch. Nearly half pay in full and in cash.

Now Smart is making a play for the US market. Even as Smart cars surged across Europe and spread to 31 countries, conventional wisdom in the States dismissed the diminutive city car as the Speedo of the automotive world - fashionable abroad but way too small. Smart's solution: Make the micro a mini SUV. Based on the Fortwo design, the Smart SUV will debut in January at the Detroit Auto Show and arrive for sale in 2006 for about $20,000.

BUSH: Yes, that's a great question. Thanks. I hear there's rumors on the Internets that we're going to have a draft. We're not going to have a draft, period.

A waiter walks by with a cart of pies. Homer Simpson looks at the cart.
Homer: Boy those pies look good!
A waitress walks up to Homer with a pie.
Waitress: Open your gullet, you human blob.
Homer takes a taste.
Lisa: Well, what do you think?
Music starts playing.
Homer: What do I think of the pie? WHAT DO I THINK OF THE PIE?! [singing] Goodness gracious! It's delicious! That's what I think of the pie!

Blended with spices and condensed milk, the pumpkin mixture is poured into pie shells and baked. Pfeifer walks across the linoleum floor, grabs a knife and cuts a slice no wider than his thumb.

"Every day, there are pies that we have to taste. That's every day we work, every day for 10 weeks or more," Pfeifer said. "I'm on my feet for 13 hours a day, working in 100-degree heat, and I'm still 20 pounds overweight."

MSNBC: The burden in this second debate seems to be on President Bush to rebound and even the score with Sen. Kerry.

Russert: Even his closest supporters acknowledge the first debate was a lackluster performance. It reminded me very much of Ronald Reagan in 1984, where, after a dismal first debate, he bounced back in the second one against Walter Monday with that witty line about, "I won’t use your youth and inexperience against you."

A handheld device that enables a user to chat in another language - without having to learn any words or phrases for themselves - has been developed by Japanese electronics firm NEC.

The system is about the size of a handheld PDA and converts spoken Japanese to English and vice versa. It is planned for launch in Japan in the next few months.

It consists of three components - a speech recognition engine, translation software and a voice generator. Spoken English or Japanese is recognised and converted into text by the speech recognition engine. The text is then converted from Japanese to English or the other way by translation software and the resulting text is vocalised by a voice synthesiser. The entire process takes about one second.

With less than a month before the presidential election, an Associated Press test article declaring President Bush the winner was picked up by WBAY.com's automated system. The headline of the AP story apparently did not bear that all-important word for the automated filters... "test."

[...]

The article appeared on WBAY.com for 35 minutes.

Technology companies and the record industry are nearing a last-minute showdown on Capitol Hill over a controversial bill aimed at quelling file swapping.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and dubbed the "Induce Act," was introduced earlier this year, in large part as a response to court rulings that have said that file-sharing software companies were not liable for the copyright infringement of their customers.

A round of negotiations between the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and technology organizations closed this week without reaching compromise, according to people familiar with the talks. As of late Wednesday, Hatch's Judiciary committee was scheduled to vote on a version of the bill Thursday morning. That prospect prompted a flurry of last-minute protest letters from technology and consumer organizations.

"The recording industry (proposals) would effectively put at risk all consumer electronics, information technology products, and Internet products and services that aren't designed to the industry's liking," read one letter sent Wednesday and signed by lobby groups representing technology companies, including News.com publisher CNET Networks. "We urge you not to move forward now."

Hollywood producers have said they are willing to go to court to stop people receiving bogus "producer" credits.

The Producers Guild of America said undeserved credits are too often given to boost the career records of actors, agents or managers.

President Kathleen Kennedy refused to reveal who had received bogus credits but said guidelines would be clarified.

Federal Aviation Administration chief Marion C. Blakey this week visited Xcor Aerospace, a rocket developer just down the Mojave Airport flight line from SpaceShipOne's home. She talked of partnership with the new industry and said it was important for the United States to be the world leader.

She made clear, however, that broad safety issues are the agency's topic No. 1.

"Our first concern will be the safety of the uninvolved public, making sure that as this grows and develops that we're doing everything we can to protect the folks on the ground, to make sure that the people who go into space understand the risks," she said. "It will be a risky business for many years to come, no doubt."

Dallas plans to allow tourists into the underground garage where U.S. President John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was gunned down more than 40 years ago, city officials said on Wednesday.

Nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot Oswald in the basement of what was then the Dallas police headquarters on Nov. 24, 1963.

TV footage and photos of Ruby emerging from a crowd and firing a handgun at Oswald as he was handcuffed to a Dallas police officer have been among the most-seen news images in the world.

Visitors will be allowed to see the basement as well as a cell in the same building complex where Oswald was jailed.

Whenever a book contains content that matches your search terms, we'll show links to that book in your search results. Click on the book title and you'll go to a "content page," where you can see the page containing your search terms and other information about the book.

Fish are much brainier than previously thought - and can learn quicker than dogs.

Oxford scientists have dubbed them "very capable" after building an aquatic obstacle course....

Dr Theresa Burt de Perera said: "The public perception of fish is that they are pea-brained numbskulls who can't remember things for more than a few seconds.

"We're now finding that they are very capable of learning and remembering, and possess a range of mental skills that would surprise many people."

She added: "We know that fish can recognise their owners - some will even go into a sulk if somebody else tries to feed them."

Surgeons were carrying out complicated skull operations in medieval times, the remains of a body found at an archaeological dig show.

A skull belonging to a 40-year-old peasant man, who lived between 960 and 1100AD, is the firmest evidence yet of cranial surgery, say its discoverers.

The remains, found in Yorkshire, show the man survived an otherwise fatal blow to the head thanks to surgery.

Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo is facing a backlash after TV audiences heard him harangue and insult a presenter in a live telephone call.

Opposition politicians and the press voiced shock at the outburst, which was prompted by a critical broadcast.

Mr Toledo accused presenter Carlos Espa of cowardice and "gutter" journalism for airing footage apparently proving allegations of electoral malpractice.

Recent opinion polls suggest Mr Toledo is South America's least-liked leader.

In seventeen presidential elections since 1932 the Republicans have never won without Richard Nixon or someone named "George Bush" on the ticket.

In thirteen--fourteen if you count 2004--presidential elections since 1952 the Republicans have only nominated three tickets without Nixon or a "George Bush". They were Goldwater/Miller ('64), Ford/Dole ('76) and Dole/Kemp ('96).

Government scientists raised the alert level Saturday for Mount St. Helens after its second steam eruption in two days was followed by a powerful tremor. They said the next eruption was imminent or in progress, and could threaten life and property in the remote area near the volcano.

Italian actor and director Roberto Benigni is to make a film about the Iraq war.

La Tigre e la Neve (The Tiger and the Snow) is set in Iraq in March 2003 - right at the beginning of the US-led campaign.

In spite of the subject matter, Oscar-winner Benigni intends the film - which is due for release in 2005 - to be a comedy.