The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration has released the results of its April impact inspections, and two Kentucky coal mines were among the eight cited. MSHA began conducting impact inspections after last year’s explosion in a West Virginia coal mine, and the agency targets mines with a history of compliance problems.

The very funny web site Go Fug Yourself, which tackles red-carpet fashion adventures and has entire categories for things like formal shorts and feathers, used to have a sidebar that included some of the more negative comments its writers, Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan*, had received. One in particular used to make me laugh every single time I read it.

If you fly a lot you've had this happen.

Seconds after the jet's in the air, the @#$%^&* in front of you reclines his seat, crunching your knees and raising some questions:

-- 1. Do you recline your seat as well and spread the pain to the person behind you?

-- 2. Do you grin and bear it like the stoic person you think you are?

-- 3. Do you ask the offender to give you a break and put the seat up at least a little?

The Italian film director Luchino Visconti was also a great opera director, working with Maria Callas in some of her greatest roles. His version of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro was one of the most memorable and realistic opera productions I've ever seen.

Literary wags love to point out the blunders of short-sighted editors of yore who, failing to recognize genius, took a pass on such later-acknowledged masterpieces as James Joyce's Ulysses, Dr. Seuss' And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street and John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. What we hear less about are the initially — and perhaps deservedly — rejected manuscripts that later ride into print on the coattails of their author's renown. Gertrude Stein's To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays falls squarely into this group.

Pining for another suspenseful summer in Scandinavia?

While the government of Bahrain today officially lifted the state of emergency that it declared in March when the "Arab spring" spread there and protests erupted, NPR's Kelly McEvers reports that activists say they've been warned against doing anything that authorities don't like.

David Smick is founder and editor of the International Economy magazine and author of The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy.

Tuesday night marked the return of America's Got Talent, one of summer's most erratic sources of actual entertainment.

There were singers, there was a magician, and there was a guy who tried to do some kind of a stunt thing with a horse while Cee-Lo Green's "[Forget] You" played, but he fell off a lot until they made him stop.

But what was good was this parrot right here. I don't know if America's actually got talent or not, but I nominate this parrot to represent us in the next International Talent-Having Olympics.

Well done, parrot.

Faye Coakley took a phone call late Sunday night that she had been waiting a week to receive. On the line was her cousin, Robert Huff, calling from Joplin, Mo., to tell her his parents, Floyd and Martha Huff, and Coakley’s aunt, Cherry Huff, had all survived an EF5 tornado that ravaged the town on May 22. “I was so relieved to hear from them,” Coakley said. “It was a miracle.” Since the twister struck, Coakley had searched frantically for information on the Huffs’ whereabouts without much luck. Hopkins County Sheriff Frankie Latham assisted her in the search and “really got the ball rolling,” she said.