Colombia’s Farc rebels say French journalist Romeo Langlois, who was captured a month ago, will be released on Wednesday.

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Rebels to free French reporter

Lakhdar Boumediene, who spent seven years at Guantánamo Bay before being released for lack of evidence, says he still does not understand why he was detained and just wants a return to normalcy.

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The Saturday Profile: Lakhdar Boumediene Starts Anew in France After Years at Guantánamo

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt addressed News Corp lobbyist Fred Michel as “daddy” and “mon ami” in text messages released by the Leveson Inquiry.

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Hunt texted ‘mon ami’ to lobbyist

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati confirms that 11 Lebanese Shia pilgrims kidnapped in Syria have been released after being abducted in Syria on Tuesday.

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Lebanese hostage pilgrims freed

In an election year in which the economy ranks as Americans’ top concern, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney holds significant advantages over President Obama among white voters who are struggling financially and buffeted by job loss, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll . Read full article > >

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Romney holds key advantages among financially struggling white voters

Firefighters extinguished a blaze in a nuclear submarine early Thursday at a U.S. Navy shipyard in Maine after battling it for hours, according to a statement released by the shipyard.

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Fire on nuclear sub extinguished

In newly released recording from after ride-along.

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Zimmerman Criticized Cops in ‘11

Robert Champion, a drum major, agreed to walk to the back of a bus as band mates beat him — a hazing ritual that led to his death, according to documents released by prosecutors.

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Hazing Ritual of a Band Is Described in Documents

Chelsea are set to release both Salomon Kalou and Jose Bosingwa when their contracts expire this summer.

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Blues to release Kalou & Bosingwa

Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour announces that 13 Lebanese Shia pilgrims kidnapped in Syria have been found and should be released soon.

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Lebanese pilgrims ‘to be freed’

Former England midfielder Owen Hargreaves is released by Manchester City after one season at the Etihad Stadium.

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Hargreaves released by Man City

Sales of existing homes rose in April and remain higher than a year ago, while home prices continued to climb during the month, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Association of Realtors. Read full article > >

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Existing home sales and home prices ticked up in April

Sri Lanka must co-operate with any international war crimes probe, ex-army chief Sarath Fonseka tells the BBC, a day after his release from jail.

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Sri Lanka ‘must face war probes’

YouTube users are now uploading three days’ worth of video to the site every second — a whole 24 hours more than the site had last year. To celebrate its 7th birthday, Google’s video-sharing site released all-new metrics about itself, including its new upload numbers as well as the fact that subscriptions increased 50 percent in the past year. Another cool fact? The site logs 3 billion hours of viewing time per month. Read full article > >

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YouTube uploads 72 hours of video a minute

Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic is a Bay Area writer and editor. Her first book Suffering Succotash: A Picky Eater's Quest to Understand Why We Hate the Foods We Hate , a humorous non-fiction narrative and exposé on the lives of picky eaters, will be released by Perigee Books on July 3. My husband is a calculus professor and one who brings food items into the classroom with surprising regularity. No, he doesn't bring pies on Pi day – though he can recite the string up to a couple dozen digits – but he does bring Pringles. As a teaching aid. This afternoon when I walked into his study, I nearly tripped over a plastic Safeway bag filled with six red cans of Pringles. “Is it Pringles Day already?” I asked, nudging the bag. Pringles Day is the day Dr. Mathra lectures on the classification of critical points in multivariable calculus , and he uses the saddle-shaped Pringles to illustrate his points. After class, the students get to eat his illustrations. It's their favorite day. However, this Pringles Eve, Dr. Mathra is kicking himself because in addition to stocking up on Pringles, which were invented by Proctor & Gamble & heaven in the 1960s, he also got an oblong can of Lays Stax, the parvenu potato chip that's only been around since 2003. Personally, I've never been turned on by Lays Stax. Not only are they covered with the stink of being the unoriginal upstart that is so obviously trying to rip-off the adored-for-decades potato chip, but they're not thin and delicate enough, they're not oily enough, and they're not addictive enough. However, none of the above is Dr. Mathra's complaint with them. “It's ridiculous!” he fumed, “They set themselves up as a Pringles competitor, but it's an entirely different curvature!” The shape of the Lays Stax – known as a parabolic cylinder – is way less mathematically interesting than the hyperbolic paraboloid of a Pringles, which is also known as a saddle. In math, the Pringles saddle shape exemplifies how you can stand at the flat point of a surface and not be at the highest point of your surroundings or at the lowest point of your surroundings. Basically, you could call the saddle “the taint” of critical points. T'aint the highest point, t'aint the lowest. “Um, sure. If you wanted to be crass about it,” Dr. Mathra mumbles. The big three types of critical points in multivariable calculus are the bottom of a bowl (aka the local min), the top of a dome (the local max), or in the middle of a saddle (saddle point). “The Lays Stax shape isn't even as interesting as a bowl – it's a wishy-washy bowl. I mean, you can make the Lays shape with a piece of paper ,” Dr. Mathra explains. (In my twelve years of being married to him, I have frequently found that being able to make something with paper is met with derision.) See, you can't replicate the Pringles saddle shape with a piece of paper without cutting the paper and actually adding more paper to it and that makes it more mathematically desirable. Sensing he has my attention throughout all of this raving, Dr. Mathra continues, “They've got these Lays Stax right next to the Pringles as though they are equivalent. How can they do that? One is a positive semi-definite quadratic form and the other is an indefinite quadratic form – they're not even the same definiteness!” When I don't react, he insists, “Oh, come on – that will KILL in class tomorrow!” And why should you, the non-calculus student, care about the Pringles saddle form? The principal application of calculus is optimizing, or determining whether you are at a maximum. You use calculus whenever you want to optimize, well, anything. “If you are at a local max (the top of a dome), everywhere you go moves you down. If you're at a saddle, there's a way you can go that will take you up.” Knowing this is important when thinking about increasing filthy lucre, precious time, diminishing resources, or a supply of Pringles. And that, my friends, is why Pringles will always, always beat Lays Stax. Flavor is subjective. Math is irrefutable.

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Saddle up for maximum snack satisfaction (mathematically speaking)