When she meets people off campus, Junko Tsuchiyagaito, 23, does not usually let on that she studies chemistry at the graduate level. She does not deliberately withhold the information, but she does not volunteer it, either...

An extraordinary fuss about eavesdropping started in the spring of 1844, when Giuseppe Mazzini, an Italian exile in London, became convinced that the British government was opening his mail. Mazzini, a revolutionary who’d been thrown in jail in Genoa, imprisoned in Savona, sentenced to death in absentia, and arrested in Paris, was plotting the unification of the kingdoms of Italy and the founding of an Italian republic. He suspected that, in London, he’d been the victim of what he called “post-office espionage”: he believed that the Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, had ordered his mail to be opened, at the request of the Austrian Ambassador, who, like many people, feared what Mazzini hoped—that an insurrection in Italy would spark a series of revolutions across Europe. Mazzini knew how to find out: he put poppy seeds, strands of hair, and grains of sand into envelopes, sealed the envelopes with wax, and sent them, by post, to himself. When the letters arrived—still sealed—they contained no poppy seeds, no hair, and no grains of sand. Mazzini then had his friend Thomas Duncombe, a Member of Parliament, submit a petition to the House of Commons. Duncombe wanted to know if Graham really had ordered the opening of Mazzini’s mail. Was the British government in the business of prying into people’s private correspondence? Graham said the answer to that question was a secret...

Congratulations are in order again for “Doonesbury” creator Garry Trudeau, Universal Press Syndicate Managing Editor Sue Roush announced in an e-mail to newspaper editors recently.

Trudeau’s “Alpha House,” a streaming video program (like a TV show except not on TV but available through the online Amazon Prime streaming service) was picked by viewers from 14 series pilots for development into a full series. The show, starring John Goodman as one of four Republican congressmen sharing a house in Washington, D.C., is expected to be out in November.

That means Trudeau will need to devote his summer to the show, Roush said. And that means no new “Doonesbury” strips in the News Tribune — or anywhere else — until at least about Labor Day...

Amazon.com Inc decided not to turn pilot project "Zombieland" into a full TV series, but is going ahead with "Alpha House," as the world's largest online retailer enters the next stage of its foray into original video creation...