News In Brief

DUBYA WAS AN ALSO-RAN

Al Gore may not end up as the 43rd US president. But it turns out there's an election he did win Nov. 7. On the basis of delayed returns, he beat the other write-in candidates for director of the Marion County, Ore., district water conservation board, which had no declared office-seekers listed on the ballot. Well, actually, more voters chose Donald Duck. But the cartoon character was disqualified. Alas, Gore also is ineligible because he owns no property there.

I WONDERED WHERE IT GOT TO

Last weekend's voting in Haiti followed several acts of political violence, among them exploding pipe bombs. So it was understandable that in Petion-ville, a suburb of the capital, Port-au-Prince, hotel guests were asked to move their cars because of a suspicious object discovered in the parking lot. Nervous emergency crews crept up to a silver metal cylinder, wrapped in tape. It turned out to be ... a microphone belonging to an American radio news reporter who'd dropped it in covering the election.

World's leading pop artists pick their own all-star team

If you were able to ask famous pop, rock, and rap artists to choose which musician they'd rank as the most influential of their era, whom do you think they would pick? Which one, in other words, would win the unofficial title of musicians' musician? In fact, the weekly British publication New Musical Express conducted just such a poll of hundreds of artists, and the winner was ... rocker David Bowie, who burst upon the global music scene in the late 1960s and remains a star to this day. The 10 most influential artists as published in this week's issue of New Musical Express:

1. David Bowie

2. Radiohead

3. The Beatles

4. Public Enemy

5. Miles Davis

6. Kraftwerk

7. Sex Pistols

8. Eminem

9. Nick Drake

10. The Smiths

- Reuters

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