Britain's Lord Foster - Norman Foster - was the designer of that extraordinary bridge over the Tarn gorge at Millau in France that opened last week. The Independent says the bridge and a recently-opened building, the Sage music centre in Gateshead are two more projects that enhance his reputation as "the supreme designer of what modernists would think of as machines for working in...Foster is a singularity, a quark of creativity. He has become a self-perfected Achilles, a god without the gimpy heel that a regular deity would have. When the repetitiveness of Foster's perceived 'corporate' architecture was savaged in a very thorough 4,000-word attack by the commentator Rowan Moore in Prospect magazine three years ago, it was simply ignored - left lying, like Hector's remains."

Author and critic Terry Teachout's blog, About Last Night, is an indispensable stop on anyone's net rounds. But despite the risk of preaching to the converted, I must commend to you this little gem of a piece about the 'personalities' of keys in music: "I think most musicians feel that certain keys have 'characters' or 'personalities', though I suspect they feel this way because they have come to associate those keys with specific pieces of music. For instance, I associate A major with a cluster of celebrated compositions whose expressive content I would describe as somehow suggestive of innocence. In addition to the Dvorak Sextet and Schubert's 'Trout' Quintet and A Major Rondo for piano duet, Mozart wrote a great many such pieces, most famously the the A Major Piano Concerto, K. 488, and the Clarinet Quintet. D minor, by contrast, is widely thought to be a 'demonic' key, threatening and unstable, whereas G major strikes most musicians as warm, friendly, and down to earth. (I once told Nancy LaMott that she was 'a real G-major kind of girl', and I didn't have to explain to her what I meant.)"

The Art Newspaper is ringing a warning bell about the damage that dam-building is about to do in Iran. "Iran's cultural heritage is facing almost unquantifiable damage from an ambitious programme of dam building. There are currently 85 dams under construction across the country, part of a programme that the Iranian government promotes with a considerable amount of national pride. It is an understandable concern in a dry country, parts of which are recovering from a seven-year drought...

"By far the most famous site under threat is Pasargadae, ancient capital of the Achaemenids in the sixth century BC and residence of Cyrus the Great, which was registered on Unesco's World Heritage List last July. Situated in Fars province, it is only four kilometres away from the Teng-e Bolaghi gorge, once part of the renowned Imperial route to Persepolis and Susa, which will be flooded by the Polvar River when the Sivand Dam is completed in March 2005. Part of the ancient city will be buried under mud, and even the mausoleum of Cyrus the Great is believed to be at risk. Beginning in January 2005, a salvage team consisting of French, German, Italian, Japanese and Polish archaeologists will collaborate with their Iranian counterparts in a joint operation to save an estimated 100 archaeological sites in the area.

"Another major project, the Sarhand Dam near Hashtrud in East Azerbaijan Province, which will also become operational next year, threatens at least 10 important archaeological sites and substantial archaeological losses are also expected in Gilan Province."

The San Francisco Chronicle points to an excellent website where stumped little Santas can find suggestions about presents for the eggheads in their lives.

Is the US Constitution unconstitutional because it mentions God? Ridiculous question, perhaps, but it illustrates the ridiculous corner into which Americans have painted themselves over the limits of government use of religion. The Washington Times makes approving noises about an interview the Washington Post published with White House speechwriter Michael Gerson on Sunday.

Gerson talked about the circumstances in which it is appropriate for the President to bring God into the equation publicly.

Two Brookings Institution scholars are suggesting in the Washington Times that UN reformers might solve a problem or two by rotating three Muslim countries through a seat on the Security Council at five-year intervals. "Egypt is currently the wrong choice," they say. "It is a sham of a democracy, with President Hosni Mubarak already believed to be grooming his son for possible succession. Presidential elections routinely generate 90 percent or more of the vote for the incumbent. Even at the local and grass-roots levels, Egypt leaves much to be desired politically.

"There are at present three large Muslim countries with varying degrees of democracy - Turkey, Bangladesh and Indonesia. The first has about as many citizens as Egypt, the second twice as many, the third three times as many. For the foreseeable future, they should rotate the permanent seat of the Islamic world among them - even if none is in Africa (the high-level panel wanted geographic balance), and none is Arab. For example, a new reform plan might grant a five-year rotation to each between next year and 2020."

This is a little article from the Herald in Britain that mentions, briefly, that Glasgow's Allied Vehicles company won a deal in March to provide a fleet of 40 wheelchair-friendly taxis to Bermuda. The only reason I mention it is that I wonder what on earth Bermuda's going to do with 40 such vehicles - I'm not sure we have many more than 40 people confined to wheelchairs. I wonder...and this is a wild and probably grossly irresponsible guess based on no fact whatsoever...whether this is some kind of backdoor way of increasing the number of taxis on our roads, which is controlled by Parliament.

The US commander in Iraq, General George W Casey, Jr, says the Iraqi insurgency is being run in part by former senior Iraqi Baath Party officials operating in Syria who call themselves the "New Regional Command". He is quoted in the Washington Post as having said that the officials, from the former governing party of deposed president Saddam Hussein, are "operating out of Syria with impunity and providing direction and financing for the insurgency."

The Post says "He called on the government of President Bashar Assad to do more to stop the insurgency from being managed by Iraqis hiding in Syria. 'The Syrians are making some efforts on the border,' he said. 'But they are not going after the big fish, which is really the people that we're interested in. And we're really interested in them going after the senior Baathists.'"

Interestingly, the General also said the strength of the Iraqi insurgency should not be overestimated. "They're a tough, aggressive enemy, but they're not 10 feet tall."

I agree that the retirement of journalist Bill Moyers will leave a big hole in coverage, especially on television, of American public and cultural life. But the New York Times characterises Moyers as a kind of elderly Michael Moore, an ultraliberal pebble under the conservative mattress. Writer David Carr does, in a paragraph, acknowledge that "For all his political fervor, Mr. Moyers never confined his reportorial inquiries to hard news. He is primarily responsible for introducing Robert Bly and Joseph Campbell to the American public; he strolled through the history of the 20th century in a long series; and he explored the healing power of the mind." But you get the impression Carr doesn't have much of an idea who Robert Bly and Joseph Campbell are, and doesn't rate that kind of effort very highly at all.

In fact, that kind of effort is what really defines Bill Moyers. He did more for poetry, for example, during his broadcasting life than all the poets laureate in the world combined, I'd guess, exposing Americans to fine young poets like Robert Bly, and in the process creating film material that is now used in classrooms the length and breadth of the United States, if not the world. His series on Joseph Campbell, teacher, author and, as they say on the net, mythologist, exposed many Americans for the first time to one of their most extraordinary countrymen - a man whose work has been unusually influential in the cultural life of the United States.

Moyers has done important work on the role of the mind in healing, on dying, on creativity...his curiosity, his thoroughness and even-handededness on such subjects, his ability to get sometimes unwilling sources to speak coherently, even inspirationally, on camera ought to be hailed as an object-lesson to all kinds of journalists. This is a great man, who is done a disservice to be characterised as he has been in the NYT this morning.

Where Kyoto is concerned, the scales seem to be falling from people's eyes, according to the Washington Times. "Anyone with even minimal knowledge of energy and the science of global warming knows Kyoto is a sham. Europe is not meeting its targets, and, anyway, the rise in CO2 emissions is steepest, not in the United States and Germany, but in China and India, with booming coal-based economies. And China and India, like more than 100 other developing nations, are exempt from Kyoto's strictures. Economic studies show that, to achieve even minuscule temperature reductions, economic growth in the United States would have to fall to stagnation levels. Imagine the impact on the rest of the world of such a decline."

Reporting from the UN's World Conference on Climate Change in Buenos Aires, Tech Central Station's reporter Ronald Bailey quotes Tony Blair has having said that "To stop further damage to the climate we need a worldwide 60% reduction in emissions by 2050.' Setting aside the question of whether or not catastrophic climate change due to adding extra greenhouse gases (GHG) to the atmosphere is really likely, is Blair's goal feasible?

"The World Business Council for Sustainable Development released a report here in Buenos Aires at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change. It shows that achieving such steep reductions is probably impossible. The report assumed a goal of stabilizing carbon dioxide in the air at 550 parts per million by 2050. The current level is 380 ppm. The report further assumed that the poorest people on the planet will want to enjoy the higher levels of prosperity that comes from economic growth fueled by access to energy supplies."

The Washington Post has managed to get its hands on a UN report that details the misconduct of which the UN's mission in Congo (established five years ago, employing 11,000 peacekeepers from 50 nations) has been accused.

"U.N. peacekeepers threatened UN investigators investigating allegations of sexual misconduct in Congo and sought to bribe witnesses to change incriminating testimony, a confidential U.N. draft report says. The 34-page report, which was obtained by The Washington Post, accuses UN peacekeepers from Morocco, Pakistan and Nepal of seeking to obstruct UN efforts to investigate a sexual abuse scandal that has damaged the United Nations' standing in Congo."

And, speaking of the UN, the Washington Times today publishes an editorial condemning "anti-Semitic despots" who are objecting to a move to hold a special session of the UN General Assembly on or about January 27, to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps. "Unfortunate as it is," says the Times, "the 'international arena' is full of anti-Semitic despots, whose views on Hitler's 'final solution' are anything but condemnatory...The world should be reminded just how far certain hatred can go if not stopped dead in its tracks."

The Amerikansky Tovarishch, the Moscow Times seems sad to note, has died. "Joseph Beyrle, who is believed to be the only American soldier to fight for both the US and Soviet armies during World War II, died Sunday, his family said. He was 81. A native of Muskegon, Michigan, Beyrle served in the US airborne forces and spent months in Nazi prisoner-of-war camps after being captured by the Germans. Surviving torture, he escaped and joined a Soviet tank brigade. His unusual war service earned him medals from US President Bill Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin on the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994."

Interesting that of the major US media, only MSNBC has so far covered this really rather excellent story.

What a great idea - a living dictionary! You log on to www.collins.co.uk/wordexchange, suggest a word and then wait for other logophiles to commend or berate you. The site has been trialled for the past two weeks, says the Guardian, and there have already been squabbles. Not that that should be taken as meaning the Guardian approves of and enjoys such things...

This is the Guardian doing what the Guardian does best - asking a score of experts to write about what they thought were the year's cultural best and worst events. It makes for a thoroughly readable piece right from the start, when film director Ken Russell says Master and Commander was his high note - "it was simply the best film depiction of the sea I've ever witnessed. I was feeling quite wet in the front row of the Odeon - I could almost smell the salt. As an old sailor in the merchant navy, I can say it's the only film I've ever seen with a full crew. Normally films only have about 10 people on the ship. This seemed to have over 100, the right sort of amount. And it made the lower deck scenes such a realistic evocation."

The Guardian even quotes Tom Paulin, the British poet who said Israeli settlers should be shot dead (he says he was misquoted, but it fit to a T some of the other anti-Israeli remarks he made, so I doubt it), as having said something I agree with. "...A very fine Lucian Freud exhibition included his extraordinary picture of Andrew Parker-Bowles - a portrait of a traditional Englishman as a poignant museum piece." It's true - a wonderful piece of work. You can see a small (sorry, biggest I could find) reproduction of it here.

And this is a kind of companion article - the worst science of the year. After flaying several publications for making health stories out of nothing, or next to it, the Guardian lists the worst products of the year.

"Durex Performa were in a slightly different category of bad, meaning 'evil': a new condom with a special cream in the teat 'to help control climax and prolong sexual excitement for longer lasting lovemaking'. The magic ingredient was benzocaine, a local anaesthetic, which made the judges' tongues go numb. We didn't even think about trying it on our genitals...Then there's Cussons' Carex, a soap that 'effectively removes bad bacteria on hands, whilst gently protecting the good'. It was never made entirely clear how it was supposed to do this in the company's evidence to the ASA for a complaint which they lost on. 'Carex knows the difference.'

"However the winner was Space Tomato Number One, part of the Chinese government's 'space breeding' project, where radiation in space is used to create comic book mutations and giant space plants, including tomatoes weighing almost a kilogram. It was never made entirely clear why the mutations would be beneficial, or why you needed to be in space to get irradiated. The Chinese news agency Xinhua stated that, 'in China the radiation effect is always positive, leading to bigger and better vegetables that will revolutionise agriculture.'"

Here's an agenda to make even a liberal pale around the gills: Multiculturalists do not see the United States as a good country with common values worth transmitting. They grossly divide Americans into "oppressors" (all whites of European descent) and the "oppressed" (all persons of color from minority cultures). And, according to a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute, writing in the Washington Times, they want to "mold future teachers into agents of social transformation who will reject the continuing Anglo/Western influences on the core curriculum and denounce what they contend is a legacy of unrelenting oppression that should cause all white Americans to carry a heavy burden of guilt."

This is a long and detailed article by Bill Aherne, the Managing Director of Wealth and Tax Advisory Services at HSBC Private Bank, on the recent history of offshore financial centres. In a very small nutshell, he writes in FinanceAsia.com that 9/11 and the attacks on OFCs by organisations like the OECD and the G7's Financial Action Task Force have combined to make information about their customers much more readily available to tax authorities. That means that "cheating on taxes is more dangerous than ever and it means that legitimate tax planning requires more care than ever. But the good news is that in the cross-border context in particular, there is still lots that can be lawfully done to achieve what most people consider to be an acceptable rate of tax. Zero tax is often, but not always, an overly ambitious goal these days.

"The careful use of corporate vehicles, trusts and partnerships still allows for significant and entirely legitimate reduction in exposure to income, capital gains and inheritance taxes. The use of life insurance and retirement schemes is becoming increasingly popular in shielding income from tax in high tax countries whilst at the same time allowing for tax efficient inter-generational wealth transfers. Rome wasn't built in a day; nor is most family wealth. It is more important than ever to get smart about the impact of taxes. The old approach of meeting tax circumstance with guile is finished; the smart money now meets tax circumstance with strategy."

I guess it's an advertisement, but it contains a lot of useful information.

Nick Schultz, the editor of TechCentralStation.com (if you haven't visited, you should) says that discussion about climate change has reached an impasse. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, he says that "At some level, science probably will never resolve what to do about global warming. Climate change is complex, with scores of variables and time-frame considerations of decades and even centuries. Both sides have substantial data that support their points of view. Both sides also believe that to the extent the science is 'settled', it's settled in ways that undergird their respective policy prescriptions.

"But science is inherently descriptive, not prescriptive. It can only inform us about the likely consequences of actions. It doesn't tell us - and shouldn't tell us - if those actions should be taken. That arena is reserved for politics, where moral judgments and philosophical views matter alongside scientific truth. Morality and philosophy are often best examined and illustrated not through scientific discourse but through narratives, theology and storytelling."

In the Bible version, Jesus Christ was crucified at Calvary and rose from the dead three days later to save mankind from sin. Didn't happen, says local legend in Shingo, Japan. The Independent reports that Shingo residents believe the man who died on the cross was Jesus's bother, Isukuri.

"In reality, Christ escaped the clutches of the Romans, fled across land carrying his brother's severed ear and a lock of hair from the Virgin Mary and settled down to life in exile in the snowy isolation of Northern Japan. Here he married a woman called Miyuko, fathered three daughters and died at the age of 106. Two wooden crosses outside the village mark the graves of the brothers from Galilee and a museum makes the case that the man we call Jesus Christ the carpenter was known around these parts as garlic farmer Daitenku Taro Jurai."

In a speech he had no idea was going to be made public, a leading Hamas preacher has made public a growing rift between the terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Haaretz has obtained a copy of the film that was made of the speech, and quotes Fathi Hamad as having said "There was a time when there were more Islamic Jihadists than us, but now we are more than them, but nonetheless they have managed to take over the media and to get ahead of us, and are now intensively competing with us." Hamad is a member of the Sura Council, the supreme Hamas religious body in Gaza responsible for the the organization's communications system in Gaza. "An Islamic Jihad takeover," he said, "would means the Shi'ites take over, and if that happens you will all be turned into heretics...We must fight and clash with all those who are not Sunni and guarantee our faith remains pure."

The San Francisco Chronicle's guest book reviewer, John Freeman, writes about two new books dealing with the epic Sumerian poem Gilgamesh. It's a fascinating work. Freeman says "it wasn't discovered by Westerners until 1844. A British surveyor on his way to Ceylon, passing through what is now Iraq, inadvertently unearthed a piece of the epic poem in Mosul. The man had paused to join an excavation, and wound up finding the palace of Nineveh. In addition to your usual palace loot, the archaeologists exhumed tens of thousands of baked clay tablets covered in wedge-shaped script.

"Some 25,000 of these tablets were shipped to the British museum, where the fragments of Gilgamesh languished for an additional 30 years. Finally, after being translated and catalogued, the first part of the poem was published in 1876, and since then many more fragments have surfaced."

It's been discovered that there were many editions of Gilgamesh, in the sense that many versions of the poem were copied down over many centuries. Hundreds of fragments of various editions of this set of tablets have been identified and fitted together like a giant jigsaw. But almost 20 per cent of the epic is still missing and a further 25 per cent is so fragmentary that it is only partially legible.

Worth reading - it's a good tale.

There are straws in the wind all over the Middle East this morning. Haaretz says Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Mahmoud Abbas told the London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat that the violence of Arafat's intifada was a mistake, and should stop.

Israel, Egypt and the US signed an historic trade accord today, according to the Jerusalem Post, giving certain jointly produced goods in three Egyptian areas duty-free access to US markets.

A senior aide to Jordanian Al Qaeda ally Musab al-Zarqawi has been killed by Iraqi security forces, ABC-News is quoting Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi as having announced. Mr Allawi said police had killed Hassan Ibrahim Farhan and seized two of his aides, but did not say when or where.

AlJazeera is reporting that Mullah Omar's security chief has been arrested with another top Taliban aide in Afghanistan. The Taliban are reported to be arguing among themselves about whether to accept an offer of amnesty for lower-level fighters by the Afghani government. Their disagreement is said by DEBKAfile to have been made worse by the arrests of 27 of their members since Saturday, following an insider tip-off.

The Christian Science Monitor has more on the Taliban's debate about whether to reconcile with the new government of Afghanistan. I gotta warn you about this story, though. The authors, Gretchen Peters and Aleem Agha, no ages given, must have cut their teeth writing bodice-rippers for the pulp market. They interview Maulvi Haider, who they describe as "a battle-hardened Taliban commander": "'Amir Ul Momineen [Mullah Omar) is our supreme leader, and we will fight for him until the last drop of our blood is shed,' he growls, his eyes as hard as the rugged peaks that hide him."

Puhleeze!

The big reason the American military hadn't equipped its vehicles properly for Iraq is that war is unpredictable, and the conditions in which people are fighting change from campaign to campaign. All a decent force quartermaster can do to prepare is to try to make sure his staff are flexible enough to meet challenges quickly. Unfortunately, peacetime bureaucracies are mortal enemies of flexibility. And the Wall Street Journal reports that the military's bureaucracy in this Iraq war is as unflexible as any. The military could, for example, install two-inch thick ballistic glass instead of the optimal four inches. It would likely stop 80% of the shrapnel that penetrates ordinary windshields. "But the military is loath to adopt an interim, if imperfect, remedy. It prefers to wait for the '100% solution', Mr. Hunter said. In other words, in military procurement, the perfect has become the enemy of the good." It was ever thus.

Not too many months ago, articles appeared in a number of publications, drawing attention to one of the silliest of bureaucratic miscalculations - armed sky marshalls being forced to cut their hair like Marines and wear suits and ties to go to work. It made them stick out like sore thumbs among more casually dressed passengers, and even Tom Ridge admitted that was not smart. But, according to the Washington Times, Federal Air Marshal Service director Thomas Quinn thinks he knows better.

Since the November election, nobody's going to deny that Karl Rove is one smart cookie. The Washington Post says he's got a secret weapon - Pete Wehner, whose job is to bug him.

If you've been there long enough to eat, it's hard, when you think of Barbados, not to think also of flying fish in the next thought, or perhaps the thought after that. If you or I caught one of these creatures and tried to cook it, we'd quickly find it is little more than a wrapper for the peskiest bunch of bones in the sea. But Bajans have perfected a method of stripping the bones away in a couple of quick flicks of a knife that allows it, in their hands, to become a delicate and delicious little morsel. But perhaps I should put that in the past tense, because the flying fish that was once ubiquitous in the waters off Barbados has, for reasons unknown, buggered off and settled in Trinidad.

That, apparently, has frayed a lot of nerves, dropped a lot of cats among pigeons. The Los Angeles Times says gobsmacked Bajans are claiming that wherever the flying fish goes, it's theirs and they have the right to harvest it. "Fishermen pursued the fish into Tobago's waters at the end of last season, setting off a diplomatic snit that continues to roil Caribbean relations," the paper says.

Word watchers will be fascinated by two facts...and if you live over on this side of the pond you may be learning them simultaneously. First, that the hottest new word in Britain in 2004 was chav, and that second, that the predominant explanation is that it is short for Cheltenham average. The Telegraph has the details.

Researchers at Rutgers University have developed a trio of drugs they believe can destroy HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to a report in the Globe and Mail this morning. Tests conducted in conjunction with Johnson and Johnson have shown the drug to be easily absorbed with minimal side effects. It also can be taken in one pill, in contrast to the drug cocktails currently taken by many AIDS patients.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting a trend in American universities away from racially-exclusive programmes. Since 2002, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, Williams, Indiana University and dozens of others have opened up scholarships, internships and summer programs to all students, regardless of race, ending the practice of reserving some for minorities.

The first step is taken to hand over to the Palestinian Authority some ($600 million, actually) of the ill-gotten dosh that that gangster Arafat had squirrelled away and, suprise, surprise, something's gone wrong. Man says he gave it to a man named Fayad, Fayad says he doesn't know what the man's talking about. Gosh. What a mystery. Stay tuned.

"The ruinous role of Zimbabwe thug-in-chief Robert Mugabe", says the Washington Times in an editorial, "is causing much misery in his country and eroding the credibility of the African Union and the democratic leadership of African governments." The Times notes that last week, Zimbabwe's Parliament, approved legislation that would effectively bar foreign or foreign-supported nongovernmental organizations from speaking about what they saw as the government's failings.

Quite a lot of organisations are sounding alarm bells about Zimbabwe - the International Bar Association on Friday accused Mugabe of a long list of atrocities, and said it thought the International Criminal Court should take a hand because African nations had failed to do so. The Globe and Mail quoted Mark Ellis, the IBA executive director, as saying there was "well-documented and staggering evidence that Mr. Mugabe's government has committed murder, torture, rape, abduction and enslavement."

The Los Angeles Times lists some of the current and choice theories about what it is that makes terrorists terrorists. Apart from those virgins, that is.

An article in the New Yorker this week about the Sherlock Holmes fanatic who, it seems, killed himself and made it look like the kind of murder that would have engaged the Baker Street team in a big way, has sparked follow-ups in newspapers around the world. This one's in this morning's Telegraph, which notes that "Although the coroner returned an open verdict, friends and relatives of Mr Lancelyn Green now claim that the evidence suggests he took his own life in a manner that would implicate an American rival. In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, James Gibson, who co-edited the first comprehensive Conan Doyle bibliography with Mr Lancelyn Green in 1983, concludes that his colleague had 'wanted [his death] to look like murder', and that he had set up a trail of 'false clues'. Mr Lancelyn Green's body was found in his flat in Kensington, west London, on March 27 with a shoelace tied round his neck and a wooden spoon, which had been used to tighten the noose, still entangled in the cord."

The New Yorker has not posted the article on the net, but has provided this link to an interview with its author.

This is bizarre. "Post-modern Christmas lights in the form of words dangling in the sky are provoking a considerable rumpus in Madrid, confusing, delighting and annoying locals who stop in their tracks to try to make them out."

The Independent says that "Strung along the Recoletos boulevard that bisects the Spanish capital from north to south, are groups of seemingly random illuminated words. Patatas, Conejo, Alubias - Potatoes, Rabbit, Beans - they read. Memories, Cinnamon, Silk...Tenderness, Valve...People crane perilously from traffic jams to intone the words with wonder and bafflement." The artist, of course, has an explanation.

I wrote here about Google's ground-breaking desktop search tool the other day, and felt I should also mention Microsoft's catch-up freeware as well. Now, according to the Globe and Mail, Yahoo is adding software of its own to search computer hard drives as it scrambles to catch up with Google and stay a step ahead of Microsoft. "Yahoo announced the plan late Thursday," the Globe says, "but will wait until January to introduce the free tool for searching e-mails and a wide variety of other files stored on computers that operate on Windows."

Google's software has become indispensable to me in the short time it has been out, but has the drawback that it will only catalog email in Outlook. Since I use Netscape, I'm out of luck in that department. Yahoo's is apparently not going to be able to operate within a browser at all, which means desktop searches won't be co-mingled with on-line searches conducted at its website.