• According to the Associated Press, Nelson Mandela, a famous South African peace activist and former President, has become popular in the art world. The charcoal and pastel drawings Mandela created while he was a political prisoner have sold like wildfire. According to the Nobel Peace laureate, he has sold more than 1,000 lithographs in just five months.
• The AP also reports that six people died in a prison riot in Guatemala City on Wednesday. One of the victims was a man convicted in the murder of a popular Roman Catholic Bishop.
• The religious right in Israel continued its climb to the top of the middle eastern country's political system this week as United Torah Party member Uri Lupolianski prepared to become Jerusalem's first ultra-Orthodox mayor. According to Israeli paper Ha'aretz, Luponlianski is expected to take over for current mayor Ehud Olmert if Olmert accepts a position in the Knesset, Israel's dominant legislative body.
• A professor at a German university reports that people are twice as likely to kiss with their heads tilted to the right. The professor says that this romantic bias reflects a similar head-turning pattern found in unborn babies late in gestation.
• Rapper 50 Cent generated sales 30 million times his namesake last week, breaking the personal sales records of hip-hop veterans Jay-Z, Nelly, and DMX. In fact, according to Rolling Stone, 50 Cent's debut CD, Get Rich or Die Tryin', sold a whopping 872,000 copies in an abbreviates sales week of only five days. In other music industry news, perennial bad-ass Kid Rock has made a major comeback; his 64-week old CD Cocky climbed to number three on the sales charts last week.