Extra! Stories

Carnival goes to the dogs with Rio pet parade

Most pre-Carnival street parties in Brazil are all about samba, but the moves on display at Sunday's Blocao parade were focused more on wagging and strategic sniffing than on fancy footwork. (full story)

US faces tough fight in cash smuggling crackdown

Jeanette Barraza-Galindo conspicuously left her bags of teddy bears and throw pillows on a bus during an inspection at the Texas-Mexico border - and professed ignorance about the $277,556 officers found hidden inside. The bags were handed to her at a bus station, gifts to be given to a child upon her return to Mexico, she told investigators. (full story)

Wagging tails replace sad eyes in Westminster ads

Pet lovers won't have to look away anymore when those heart-wrenching TV ads appear during the Westminster dog show - the ones with the pitiful little faces peering out from behind those rusted bars of a cage and wondering "how I ended up in here." (full story)

Brown U. student uncovers lost Malcolm X speech

The recording was forgotten, and so, too, was the odd twist of history that brought together Malcolm X and a bespectacled Ivy Leaguer fated to become one of America's top diplomats. (full story)

NJ museum finds recording of Otto von Bismarck

For the first time, 21st-century audiences are able to hear the voice of Otto von Bismarck, one of the 19th century's most important figures. (full story)

Hackers intercept FBI, Scotland Yard call

Trading jokes and swapping leads, investigators from the FBI and Scotland Yard spent the conference call strategizing about how to bring down the hacking collective known as Anonymous, responsible for a string of embarrassing attacks across the Internet. (full story)

Mass hysteria rare, but usually seen in girls

Fifteen teenage girls report a mysterious outbreak of spasms, tics and seizures in upstate New York. But tests find nothing physically wrong. (full story)

US Archives unveils Magna Carta after repairs

A 715-year old copy of Magna Carta will soon return to public view at the National Archives after a conservation effort removed old patches and repaired weak spots in the English declaration of human rights that inspired the United States' founding documents. (full story)

WWI vet to be considered for honor that anti-Semitism may have thwarted

WASHINGTON -- Almost a century after her father's act of wartime bravery, 82-year-old Elsie Shemin-Roth of Missouri is nearing the end of her own determined battle. (full story)

Population, warming taxes planet's resources

Humans have mined resources from the remote and rocky coast of Peru and Chile for more than a century and a half, gathering the guano deposits of seabirds for fertilizer and gunpowder. Those seabirds flourished on anchoveta in the coastal waters, while Peruvians in the highlands ate the same fish as dried snacks. Now fishing vessels haul 7.5 million tons of the small silvery fish out of the water every year. Almost all the catch is reduced to fish oil and fish meal, which is fed to pigs, poultry and salmon being raised thousands of miles away to satisfy demand in the industrialized and rapidly growing developing world. (full story)