Dust

Gregg Jones opens "Honor in the Dust" with a prologue describing the harsh treatment of Philippine rebel Joveniano Ealdama at the hands of American interrogators. He was subjected to what is now called waterboarding but was in November of 1900 known as the "water cure" or the "water torture," and Jones leaves no doubt that it was widely considered to be torture. Then as now, there were those who did not agree and, then as now, they were usually the ones who administered, or approved the administering of, the treatment.

DARLINGTON, S.C. - Those Busch brothers can't seem to avoid the spotlight at Darlington Raceway. A year after Kyle Busch tangled with Kevin Harvick in the pits following Regan Smith's first Sprint Cup win, the crew for Kurt Busch scrummed with Ryan Newman's group while Rick Hendrick and Jimmie Johnson celebrated the car owner's 200th career victory at the Southern 500 on Saturday night. Kurt Busch's temper rose after he slid six laps from the end. Newman was caught up in the incident as well.

Yeah, the occasional brown splotch that smacks the camera lens in "Dust to Glory" is mud. Director Dana Brown's follow-up to last year's invigorating surf hit "Step Into Liquid" finds him ardently profiling the drivers of the Baja 1000, a grueling on- and off-road race that takes place every fall in northwestern Mexico. Speed junkies who don't mind a little sappiness between courses of eating dust shouldn't miss this new documentary. "Dust to Glory" is a collection of you-are-there snapshots from a race that, if a driver is lucky and skilled, can be over in 15 to 20 hours.

Burger King is dusting off its crown and going public again. The world's No. 2 hamburger chain, which is in the midst of overhauling its menu and stores, says it expects to relist its shares on the New York Stock Exchange within the next three months. In a deal announced late Tuesday, the New York-based investment firm 3G Capital said it is selling a 29 percent stake in Burger King for $1.4 billion in cash to Justice Holdings Ltd., a London-based shell specifically set up to invest in another company.

Country-Rock Assembly of Dust Some Assembly Required Missing Piece/Rock Ridge Music ESSENTIAL “Arc of the Sun’’ Assembly of Dust headlines the Paradise Rock Club on Sept. 24. Call this a case of high ambition. But it’s a fully realized ambition in the hands of Reid Genauer, the former singer of Vermont’s Strangefolk who now fronts the even more versatile Assembly of Dust. He has a hauntingly cosmic voice that falls somewhere between Neil Young and Jeff Tweedy, while his lyrics recall the trippy Robert Hunter of Grateful Dead fame.

A massive dust storm has swept into the Phoenix area and drastically reduced visibility across much of the valley. The wall of dust moved across the desert from the south on Tuesday and descended on the valley by nightfall. KSAZ-TV reported the storm appeared to be roughly 50-miles wide. The National Weather Service says strong winds with gusts of more than 60 mph were moving northwest through Phoenix and the cities of Avondale, Tempe and Scottsdale. More than a dozen communities in the area also were under a severe thunderstorm watch until 11 p.m. The Federal Aviation...

Maine health officials are offering free kits to parents of children born in Maine last year to test for lead paint dust in homes. The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention says brochures are being mailed to more than 11,000 families as part of an effort to eliminate childhood lead poisoning. The brochure includes instructions on how to obtain test kits. Dr. Sheila Pinette, director of the Maine CDC, says the kits will help parents determine if they have dust from lead paint, which can be found in homes built before 1978.

A GIRL MADE OF DUST By Nathalie Abi-Ezzi Grove Press, 240 pp., $24 Nathalie Abi-Ezzi was born in Lebanon in 1972 and emigrated with her family a decade later after Israeli troops invaded in pursuit of their Palestinian adversaries. It is a history that infuses “A Girl Made of Dust,’’ her first novel. The narrator is a girl named Ruba, a child in a small, largely Christian town made uneasy by the encroaching boom of warfare rocking nearby Beirut. But under the static of worried adult conversation, Ruba has more immediate concerns.

A cloud of dust has swallowed Phoenix at sundown for the fourth time this summer on the hottest day on record in August. A strong thunderstorm system late Friday afternoon pushed a brown cloud over most of the city, which hit a record 117-degrees hours earlier. Phoenix has been hit by the wall of dust, known as a haboob, on July 5, July 18 and Aug. 19. Friday's haboob didn't appear to be as severe as the previous ones. Weather experts say such massive dust storms only happen in Arizona, Africa's Sahara desert and parts of the Middle East because of dry conditions and...

BAGHDAD -- Blinding sandstorms swept across the Iraqi capital yesterday for a fourth straight day, disrupting air travel, slowing traffic, and blanketing the city in a gritty film. A gray dust hung over Baghdad, making it impossible to see across the Tigris River, which divides the city. Central Baghdad's famous Ramadan mosque was enshrouded in sand, leaving it almost invisible from just down the street. Some Iraqis coped with the storm -- common in this largely desert country -- by tying scarves around their faces to avoid inhaling the dust.

Gregg Jones opens "Honor in the Dust" with a prologue describing the harsh treatment of Philippine rebel Joveniano Ealdama at the hands of American interrogators. He was subjected to what is now called waterboarding but was in November of 1900 known as the "water cure" or the "water torture," and Jones leaves no doubt that it was widely considered to be torture. Then as now, there were those who did not agree and, then as now, they were usually the ones who administered, or approved the administering of, the treatment.

Another brief interlude of wintry precipitation is expected Saturday in Massachusetts. But it won't pack much punch. Saturday should start out as a pretty nice day, considering it is February, with temperatures rising to the low to mid-40s, forecasters say. Then scattered snow showers will arrive late in the afternoon and evening. A National Weather Service snow total forecast map showed some areas in Central and Western Massachusetts getting up to 2 inches, but Eastern Massachusetts along the coast getting no snow at all. Dry weather is expected...

Hollywood's Snow White rivalry is heating up. Movie studio Relativity Media on Thursday pushed back the release of its lighthearted fairy tale starring Julia Roberts, "Mirror Mirror," by two weeks to March 30. That cuts the time between it and Universal Picture's pulsating action movie, "Snow White and the Huntsman," to nine weeks instead of 11. Relativity insists its PG-rated version of the Brothers Grimm story is a family comedy while Comcast...

A fight is brewing over dirt at housing development in North Smithfield. Providence-based Narragansett Improvement Co. wants permission to build a 122-lot subdivision. Opponents claim the subdivision is a cover for the company's real mission, which is to level ridges and sell the dirt as fill. The Providence Journal reports ( http://bit.ly/uGz8Jy) that the fight is over eskers, a geological remnant of the last ice age. As glaciers moved out, water drained out of crevasses in the ice, leaving behind long ridges of dirt 80 or more feet high.

THE GHOSTS of RV, flower, and dog shows past haunt the barren Bayside Exposition Center in Dorchester. The 275,000-square-foot trade show crypt might pass for the creepiest place in town if not for the company of Keith Motley, the eternally upbeat chancellor of UMass Boston. "Every time I go in here I get excited," said Motley. "We can have it all right here. " When UMass Boston bought the property last year, college officials made noise about retrofitting some of the expo spaces for classroom use. Motley clings to that belief.

LANDOVER, Md. - Two Irish guys from Boston got into an argument during an NFL game. Somebody alert the obvious police. That only happens in every watering hole from Scituate to West Newbury on Sundays and Mondays from September through January. And, apparently, on a sober Patriots sideline at FedEx Field late in the fourth quarter when the Patriots were clinging to a 34-27 lead. There it was, the Real Irishmen of Patriot Place, playing out for the world to see. Quarterback Tom Brady threw an interception on third and goal from the Redskins'...

NEW YORK — There is no doubt that Richard Volpe is sick, and no doubt that the former police detective spent Sept. 11, 2001, breathing in clouds of soot at the World Trade Center. Yet that is no guarantee that Volpe, or many others like him, will qualify for a substantial share of the $2.78 billion Congress has set to compensate people who fell ill after being exposed to ground zero toxins. Like thousands of other rescue and recovery workers, Volpe suffers from an ailment that is not expressly covered by the law. Only a few diseases were singled out by name in the...

WASHINGTON — A bill that would have provided up to $7.4 billion in aid to people sickened by World Trade Center dust fell short in the House this week, raising the possibility that the bulk of compensation for the ill would come from a legal settlement hammered out in the federal courts. The bill would have provided free health care and compensation payments to Sept. 11 rescue and recovery workers who fell ill after working in the trade center ruins. It failed to win the needed two-thirds majority, 255 to 159, late Thursday.

Maine health officials are offering free kits to parents of children born in Maine last year to test for lead paint dust in homes. The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention says brochures are being mailed to more than 11,000 families as part of an effort to eliminate childhood lead poisoning. The brochure includes instructions on how to obtain test kits. Dr. Sheila Pinette, director of the Maine CDC, says the kits will help parents determine if they have dust from lead paint, which can be found in homes built before 1978.