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Anssa Vanjoki, the 45-year-old executive vice president of Nokia?s mobile phones division, set the record for the costliest speeding ticket when he got a $103,000 fine for riding his motorcycle 46 miles an hour in a 31 mph zone in Helsinki, Finland. He?s fighting to get the fine reduced.

In Finland, traffic fines are not just based on the seriousness of the infringement, they?re also tied to the offender?s income, and there?s no upper limit. Vanjoki?s fine was based on his net income in 1999, when he made $5.2 million because of option sales. He has appealed for the fine to be based on his 2000 income, which dropped from more than $12.4 million to about $970,000.
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This is a dark time for the crop circle miracle. Both the National Geographic Channel and the Learning Channel have recently aired blatantly propagandistic anti-circle documentaries. The fact is, government and media hate this miracle because it’s new and strange and it says that the world is full of mystery.

Lucy Pringle has created two beautiful sets of crop circle postcards. We are hoping that you will send them to your friends as a way of saying there is a real miracle out there, no matter how much the government and the media deny it.

Crop circles last only a few weeks, but these photographs give them the immortality they deserve.
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A new NASA study shows that the rate of growth of greenhouse gas emissions has slowed since its peak in 1980, due to reduced chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) use, slower growth of methane, and a steady rate of carbon dioxide emissions. Overall, the growth of emissions has slowed over the past 20 years, with the lower CFC the most important factor.

?The decrease is due in large part to cooperative international actions of the Montreal Protocol for the phase-out of ozone-depleting gases,? says James Hansen of NASA?s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. ?But it is also due in part to slower growth of methane and carbon dioxide, for reasons that aren?t well understood and need more study.?
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NOAA has announced that warming is being observed over the Tropical Pacific, which could lead to an El Nino by early spring. The U.S. is not expected to see the impact until late summer, and they will last through the fall and into next winter.

NOAA cautions that it?s too early to predict the magnitude of the 2002 El Ni?o, or how long it will last. ?The magnitude of an El Ni?o determines the severity of its impacts,? says Vernon Kousky, NOAA climate specialist. ?At this point, it is too early to predict if this El Ni?o might develop along the same lines as the 1997-98 episode, or be weaker.?
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