“A meteor streaked across the sky above Russia's Ural Mountains on Friday morning, causing sharp explosions and injuring more than 500 people (20 had been hospitalized in serious condition), many of them hurt by broken glass. “There was panic. People had no idea what was happening. Everyone was going around to people's houses to check if they were OK”, said Sergey Hametov, a resident of Chelyabinsk, about 1500 kilometres (930 miles) east of Moscow, the biggest city in the affected region”. (Photo by Alexey Bulaew/RIA Nowosti)

“The most serious health problem in the U.S. today is obesity.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But that pronouncement about obesity’s primacy in the hierarchy of national health problems is not new. Rather, it’s the opening line to a remarkable article published 60 years ago in LIFE magazine. This photographs made by Martha Holmes to illustrate that March 1954 article, titled “The Plague of Overweight.” Photo: Dorothy Bradley (left), photographed for LIFE magazine article on obesity, 1949. (Photo by Martha Holmes/Time & Life Pictures)

“In a nutshell and to prevent my english readers from experiencing eye bleeding after having read too many syntax errors, I’m a french journalist – I work as an editor, not as photographer – who happens to be nuts about photography. Being the happy owner of too many Leica M for a man to shoot, I spend most of my free time shooting my friend and my town, Strasbourg, in b&w and sometimes in colors”. – Manuel Plantin

Photo: “Even detectives got the blues”. Strasbourg, 2011 (Photo by Manuel Plantin)

“The arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus), also known as the white fox, polar fox, or snow fox, is a small fox native to the Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere and is common throughout the Arctic tundra biome. It is well adapted to living in cold environments. It has a deep thick fur which is brown in summer and white in winter. It averages in size at about 85.3 cm (33.6 in) in body length, with a generally rounded body shape to minimize the escape of body heat. – Wikipedia. (Photo by Trond Eriksen)

Last Friday, in Afghanistan's mountainous northeastern province of Badakhshan, an enormous landslide took place, burying much of a small village, and killing hundreds. Officials say that at least 300 residents of Abi Barik village were killed, but are uncertain about exact numbers, cautioning that the final number could be 500 or more. Rescue teams gave up hope on Saturday of finding any survivors, focusing energy on helping the hundreds suddenly made homeless. Many of the surviving families have struggled to get aid. Some have gone to nearby villages to stay with relatives or friends, while others have slept in tents provided by aid groups.

Sprout A Pencil That Grows is a very simple but excellent concept. We all know that as soon as a pencil gets down to the point where there’s only an inch or so left it’s pretty much useless. The Sprout lets you put that little stub to get use. The end of the Sprout has a seed capsule that is water activated, after you plant your pencil and water it a few times the capsule dissolves and the seed’s start germinating. The plants usually take about a week to sprout. The Sprout pencils come in a number of varieties including vegetables, herbs and flowers like rosemary, tomato, marigold, and many more.