SinceSlicedBread.com: What's Your Common Sense Idea?
By Staff, The Service Employees International Union
The Service Employees International Union wants ordinary folks to take a dip in the think tank. So it's sponsoring a search for fresh, practical ideas that could improve the lives of Americans and bolster the economy. A panel of judges will select 21 finalists, and after that, a general vote will decide who wins the $100,000 grand prize. The site already has received more than 6000 ideas ranging from raises for Congress to free meals at work. -- Archie Ingersoll
http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/

Whisper in Mandarin and the Words Come Out in English
By Staff, We-Make-Money-Not-Art
Szu-Chen Stan Jou, a doctoral student at Carnegie Mellon University, is in the process of making a seemingly science-fiction technology a reality. Last month he debuted a mechanism that translates whispered language into other tongues almost instantly. The device consists of 11 electrodes attached to the speaker's face to pick up movements of the jaw and relay them to a computer that translates the mouthed words into other languages. -- Rose Miller
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/007338.php

In Bogota, All-Female Team Runs City for Mayor
By Angela Castellanos, Women's eNews
Mayor Luis Eduardo Garzon of Bogota, Colombia, attested to having a pro-woman bias when appointing the city's 20 'minor mayors.' But some feel like the anti-corruption crusading Garzon has gone too far in appointing women to fill all the positions. -- Rose Miller
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2489

Eco-Labels Could Face WTO Ban
By Staff, Environment News Service
Energy-efficiency, recycled content, and other green consumer info could be banned from product labels if proposals before the World Trade Organization succeed, warns Friends of the Earth UK. 'Countries including Korea, the United States and China are claiming that eco-labeling damages their competitiveness and acts as a barrier to trade,' the Environment News Service reports. Fortunately, it looks like disagreements on other issues may bring the upcoming WTO summit in Hong Kong to a halt, like earlier meetings in Cancun and Seattle. -- Leif Utne
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2005/2005-10-21-04.asp