Two More

Stephen Farrell and Peter Gelling (thanks, Alex): The bare statistics will record that in the 71st minute of a soccer tournament 5,000 miles from Iraq, a Kurd from Mosul kicked a ball onto the head of a Sunni from Kirkuk, who ricocheted it into the goal to secure a 1-0 victory for Iraq over Saudi Arabia on Sunday in the final of the 2007 Asian Cup. What weeping, shouting, horn-honking, flag-kissing, Kalashnikov-firing Iraqis will remember is that their team, known as the Lions of the Two Rivers, overcame virtually insurmountable sporting and societal odds on Sunday to vanquish the land of the Two Holy Mosques. It was one of the few unifying moments in the recent history of a perhaps fatally disunited country.

What weeping, shouting, horn-honking, flag-kissing, Kalashnikov-firing Iraqis will remember is that their team, known as the Lions of the Two Rivers, overcame virtually insurmountable sporting and societal odds on Sunday to vanquish the land of the Two Holy Mosques. It was one of the few unifying moments in the recent history of a perhaps fatally disunited country.

And Ralph Blumenthal: How this one-time steamboat landing on Caddo Lake got its name is, well, uncertain — as uncertain as the fate that now clouds this natural wonder, often called the state’s only honest lake. With more submerged acreage than Minnesota, Texas has just 166 bodies of water commonly considered lakes. All but one of them, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, are artificial reservoirs, most created in the 1950s to fend off drought. Now that one, Caddo Lake, a mystical preserve of centuries-old mossy cypress breaks, teeming fisheries and waterfowl habitats, is under siege by a fast-spreading, Velcro-like aquatic fern, Salvinia molesta, also known as Giant Salvinia.

With more submerged acreage than Minnesota, Texas has just 166 bodies of water commonly considered lakes. All but one of them, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, are artificial reservoirs, most created in the 1950s to fend off drought.

Now that one, Caddo Lake, a mystical preserve of centuries-old mossy cypress breaks, teeming fisheries and waterfowl habitats, is under siege by a fast-spreading, Velcro-like aquatic fern, Salvinia molesta, also known as Giant Salvinia.