Every morning in this mountain village in eastern Afghanistan , four dozen girls sneak through a square opening in a mud-baked wall, defying a Taliban edict. A U.S.-funded girls school about a mile away was shuttered by insurgents in 2007, two years after it opened. They warned residents that despite a new government in Kabul and an international aid effort focused on female education, the daughters of Spina were to stay home. For a while, they all did. Read full article > >

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In Afghanistan, underground girls school defies Taliban edict, threats

COMBAT OUTPOST SAYED ABAD, AFGHANISTAN — In a big war, Army Spec. Cherry Maurice believed that one small gesture could make a difference. Temperatures at her mountain base plunged to 20 degrees below zero in January, and snow covered the ground. Maurice noticed that the eight Afghan workers on the outpost were coming to work in rubber flip-flops. The 35-year-old soldier labored with the men in the outpost’s kitchen, which is not much bigger than a walk-in closet. She dug into her personal savings and spent $135 to buy them eight pairs of boots. Read full article > >

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U.S. soldier’s gift to Afghan workers at her base underscores divide

Apple surprised the tech world Thursday when it announced its new operating system, Mountain Lion. The system incorporates several of iOS’s most notable features. Here’s a quick rundown of the top Mountain Lion features for the Mac, many aimed at users who have more than one Apple product: Read full article > >

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Apple’s Mountain Lion: Top 10 features

ATHENS — Add the prospect of running out of oil to the mountain of problems that Greece is already facing. Iran’s threat this week to cut off oil to some European countries ahead of a boycott planned for July would do little harm to the continent’s powerhouse countries. But Greece has been deeply dependent on Iran’s oil, which it purchases on generous terms of credit, crucial when few others trust Greece to ever pay them back. Read full article > >

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Iran oil threat leaves Greece facing crisis on more than one front

ATHENS — Add the prospect of running out of oil to the mountain of problems that Greece is already facing. Iran’s threat this week to cut off oil to some European countries ahead of a boycott planned for July would do little harm to the continent’s powerhouse countries. But Greece has been deeply dependent on Iran’s oil, which it purchases on generous terms of credit, crucial when few others trust Greece to ever pay them back. Read full article > >

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Iran oil threat leaves Greece facing crisis on more than one front

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook on Thursday revealed a new version of its operating system for the electronics maker’s laptop and desktop computers. Cook said the product, dubbed Mountain Lion, will be made available to developers Thursday with a wider release to consumers slated for this summer. Read full article > >

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Apple’s Mountain Lion operating system is a move toward technological convergence

An 11 year-old boy is airlifted to hospital after falling during a walk on Sugar Loaf Mountain in Monmouthshire.

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Boy rescued on mountain walk

Bad weather around Nepal’s iconic Mount Everest has stranded more than 1,500 trekkers in the area of a town near the mountain.

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Trekkers stranded near Mount Everest

Through no fault of his own, the North Carolina writer Charles Frazier fell from everybody’s favorite success story to a symbol of the publishing industry’s profligacy. After he came out of nowhere in 1997 to sell millions of copies of a Civil War odyssey called “ Cold Mountain ,” New York publishers bid like drunken sailors on a one-page outline for Frazier’s second book. Random House trounced all opponents at auction by tossing off an absurd $8 million advance, the kind of money that might have paid for manuscripts from hundreds of promising literary novelists. No one was particularly surprised — though some were fiendishly delighted — when the book Frazier eventually produced, “ Thirteen Moons ,” received jeering reviews and sold far fewer copies than his debut. Read full article > >

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Ron Charles reviews ‘Nightwoods,’ by Charles Frazier

Call it an Alpine fever dream. Or disorientation from a nearly utopian week in Italy’s vertiginous, bone-white Dolomite Mountain region , hiking through verdant valleys and along exposed ridgelines, dining on impeccable rustic fare and drinking too much red wine. Or just chalk it up to childlike enthusiasm mixed with overconfidence. Read full article > >

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High on hiking in the Dolomites

Stanford is the ideal setting for Andrew Luck , a 21-year-old quarterback who so shuns the spotlight that his unconventional decision to return to school was announced in a mundane two-sentence news release . At Stanford, Luck can blend in to his idyllic surroundings merely as an architectural design major pedaling his mountain bike around campus, rather than stand out as the possible top pick in the NFL draft. Considered by some to be the best college quarterback prospect since Peyton Manning, Luck also will share the spotlight in his own conference. As the curtain rises on the college football season, no conference in the country is poised to feature as many elite, experienced quarterbacks as the new-look Pacific-12 Conference . In the first season of its expanded 12-team, two-division configuration, the league whose footprint now stretches inland to Salt Lake City and Boulder, Colo., has simply been dubbed the “conference of quarterbacks.” Read full article > >

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Led by Stanford’s Andrew Luck, Pac-12 is ‘Conference of Quarterbacks’

Late at night and high on the mountain, all that seemed to exist for Brenda Carawan was throbbing pain — in each muscle, in every joint. She had to muster everything inside to simply move one foot in front of the other. “How much farther?” Carawan asked. “Two-point-six miles,” she was told. Read full article > >

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The Death Valley ultramarathon

DEMOCRATS ON THE House Energy Committee unloaded on the Obama administration last Wednesday. “The abject failure to follow federal law here is most disturbing,” said Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.). “I’m embarrassed,” said Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.). What had Messrs. Inslee, Butterfield and others so upset? Yucca Mountain, a lonely lump of earth in the Nevada desert. Read full article > >

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Radioactive politics over nuclear storage at Yucca Mountain

Bill Haney devotes only one-third of his time to filmmaking. But at this precise moment, he’s 100 percent focused on “The Last Mountain,” his documentary about the coal-mining technique known as “mountaintop removal.’’ The movie covers a range of issues, from health and safety to the future of the national economy. In conversation, Haney reaches much further, invoking the American Revolution and World War II. The battle over coal mining in West Virginia is an opportunity, he contends, “to stand up for democratic principles that Americans have spilled blood over for 300 years.” Read full article > >

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Filmmaker puts his energy behind a coal-mining movie

The National Spelling Bee , now underway — or it it weigh? — is a hilarious concept. What better way to announce to the world at large that you have a totally useless and unmarketable skill — besides, I guess, framing your sociology degree? You’re a world-champion speller, eh? Do you also play the mountain dulcimer? That might have more practical applications in the workforce. The Olympics will at least earn you sponsorship money. Yes, there are machines that do everything Michael Phelps does, but at least he looks sort of studly while doing it, and you will never find a compromising picture of a machine with a bong during the off-season. Read full article > >

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Scripps National Spelling Bee is a wast of tym