The Beaver changes name

Canada's second-oldest magazine, The Beaver, is changing its name after 90 years because the title is too often censored by online porn filters, preventing it from reaching new online readers.

The Winnipeg-based magazine was launched in 1920 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Hudson's Bay Company and the fur trade that led to the early exploration of Canada.

But in modern times, the term "beaver" has become slang for women's genitals.

The magazine that chronicles Canada's past will publish its last issue under the old banner in February/March. Thereafter, it will be known under the less evocative name of Canada's History

Read the Yahoo story

The team bus of the Togo national football team was attacked by terrorists on January 8 as the team traveled from the Republic of the Congo to Angola on the way to the 2010 African Cup of Nations tournament, due to begin on January 10

The bus driver, the team's assistant manager Abalo Amelete and media officer Stanislas Ocloo were killed, with several others injured. Togo government officials have withdrawn the team from the tournament.

Read the BBC story

R.I.P Art Clokey

Animator Art Clokey, whose bendable creation Gumby became a pop culture phenomenon through decades of toys, revivals and satires, died Friday. He was 88.

Clokey, who suffered from repeated bladder infections, died in his sleep at his home in Los Osos, CA.

Gumby grew out of a student project Clokey produced at the University of Southern California in the early 1950s called "Gumbasia."

That led to his making shorts featuring Gumby and his horse friend Pokey for the "Howdy Doody Show" and several series through the years.

Eddie Murphy brought a surge in Gumby's popularity in the 1980s with his send-up of the character on "Saturday Night Live" as a cigar-smoking show business primadonna.

Read the Globe and Mail story

Addictions and bad dreams

My current obsessions, time wasters and indulgences, in no particular order, are:

baking banana loaf
shoveling snow
my new long underwear
Aron Sorkin-written television programs
AE Sports' Tiger Wood 2010 for the Wii
danceradio chillout

War and Peas

Israel has taken the upper hand in a new kind of Middle East conflict.

Cooks in an Arab town near Jerusalem whipped up more than four tons of hummus, which doubled the previous record for the world's biggest serving - set in October in Lebanon - and broke an earlier Israeli record.

Hundreds of jubilant Israelis, a mix of Arabs and Jews, gathered around the satellite dish used to prepare the hummus in the town of Abu Ghosh.

Guinness World Records confirmed the Israelis now held the record putting the exact amount of hummus in the giant dish at 9,017 lbs (4,090 kilograms).

Lebanon and Israel have officially been at war for six decades. Three months ago, when the Lebanese chefs prepared their record-breaking dish, they called it a move to reaffirm ownership of a Lebanese food they claimed had been appropriated by Israelis.

The hummus war has been simmering for some time. In 2008, a group of Lebanese businessmen announced plans to sue Israel to stop it from marketing hummus and other regional dishes as Israeli.

Read the Los Angeles Times story.