Short Takes: Qaddafi's gay son, rich French willingly pay more taxes, FCC wants answers for 911 earthquake cellphone outages

The FCC is asking wireless providers the extent of, and why there was a logjam of 911 callers after Tuesday's earthquake. They don't like what they saw. 

While Muammar Qaddafi seems to have had a crush on Condoleeza Rice, his son al-Saadi seems to be more of a man's man.

Sixteen French tycoons, including L'Oreal Heiress Lilian Bettencourt, Total's Christophe de Margerie,  of oil firm Total, Societe Generale banker Frederic Oudea Air France's Jean-Cyril Spinetta offered, in an open letter, to pay a "special contribution" (more taxes) to curb that country's deficit and the government will oblige them.

Why I got arrested over the Keystone XL pipeline.

Hurricane Irene's impact on flights to and from Omaha's Eppley Airfield.

Here's a trippy Randy Halverson stop-motion video shot in South Dakota from June-August with Canon 5D Mark II, 60D and T2i cameras with Canon 16-35 and Tokin 11-16 lenses. Yes, that's a Whitetail buck at the 1:57 mark, he says. RAW format. Manual mode, Exposure was 30 seconds on most Milky Way shots, 20-25 on some of the storm shots, ISO 1600 or 3200 F2.8. Watch in full screen mode if you can.


Tempest Milky Way from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.