While Bob takes a well-deserved day off after covering the flood in Moorhead — if you haven’t read the [Saving Riverview Circle series](http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/archive/floods/), please do — Steve Mullis and I will be house-sitting here at News Cut today.
A quick flood update… well, [it’s snowing now](http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/03/31/flood_tuesday/). A lot. Perhaps the linguists among us can help with a cogitation I tooted about yesterday: [What’s the portmanteau for blizzard + flood?](http://twitter.com/thanland/status/1421083644)
LIFE has partnered with Getty Images to put together a massive, time-sucking image library at [life.com](http://life.com). Apparently there are 7 million images on the site now, which, if viewed at a rate of one per second during your work day (excluding holidays), you’d finally get to your TPS reports around March 5th, 2010. It will be an interesting complement/competitor to Boston.com’s well-edited [Big Picture](http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/red_river_flooding.html).
Laura Yuen has been writing fantastic stories about the disappearance of young Somali men from Minneapolis. (U.S. officials fear the men were recruited to join a terrorist group in Somalia.) Yuen’s latest story about [relatives of the men using their ties to their homeland](http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/03/30/somali_search/) in their search for the young men is no exception.
If you’re not familiar with the story, consider this [primer on the group known as Al-Shabaab](http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2009/03/02_somali_alshabaab/).
The U.K. is apparently in [a tizzy over Google Street View](http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article5976443.ece), the mapping function that allows you to get a glimpse of life as it was when the Street View car and its 360-degree, panoramic camera drives past. This ‘outrage’ seems a little odd coming from the country with the [most surveillance cameras per capita in the world](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/334853.stm).
The Brits have been having fun with it though, spotting a(n allegedly) [cheating husband](http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2350771.ece), [UFOs](http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2348570.ece) and (allegedly) [rocker Liam Gallagher](http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/article2338939.ece).
OK, the weather outside is reminding me where I live — Fargo — so I have to pass on a couple of flood links. The NY Times has a story that asks whether Fargo-Moorhead will [‘lose’ by winning the flood fight](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/us/30grand.html).
In other words, since the DIY levees are holding, the opportunity to have the feds pick up the tab for a massive flood abatement project is gone. After the catastrophe in 1997, Grand Forks now has flood protection that in some cases is nearly 6 feet higher than the ’97 crest.
Also worth reading: profiles of Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker from the [Fargo Forum](http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/235900/) and [MPR’s Stephanie Hemphill](http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/03/30/walaker_profile/).
Than Tibbetts