Mark Memmott

A BBC report this week about a project in the Philippines that has brought virtually free light to dark homes in some of that country's poorest neighborhoods brightened our day so much that we went looking to find out more.

It seems that taking a plastic bottle, filling it with clean water and a little bleach and then suspending it from a ceiling through a hole to the sky can bring about the same amount of light into a room as a 50-watt bulb. It's all due to the way the light of the sun refracts.

The word is spreading about the $2 million — in cash — paid recently for a double-wide mobile home in Malibu, Calif.

The "future of the American way of war," The Washington Post writes this morning, may be:

"A day when drones hunt, identify and kill the enemy based on calculations made by software, not decisions made by humans. Imagine aerial 'Terminators,' minus beefcake and time travel."

At attack at his home in Kabul has left former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani dead, "two government sources" tell The Associated Press.

Reuters also reports that Rabbani, who most recently was chairman of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, was killed. "Rabbani has been martyred," Mohammed Zahir, head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Kabul Police, told the news agency.

Radiolab co-host and producer Jad Abumrad is among this year's 22 recipients of "genius" grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Each MacArthur fellow receives $500,000 "to advance their expertise, engage in bold new work, or, if they wish, to change fields or alter the direction of their careers."