Chatter: What we're hearing

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Need to know: Despite their Digg dialogues and heartfelt television commercials, Toyota remains on the high road to embarrassment, announcing today an official recall of the Prius due to brake problems. The Prius is among the 436,000 hybrid vehicles that were a part of Tuesday's recall.

Iran says it will "punch" the West in honor of this week's 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that his "nation, with its unity and God's grace, will punch the arrogance [Western powers] on the 22nd of Bahman [Feb. 11] in a way that will leave them stunned." The anniversary is expected to become a flashpoint between security forces and supporters of the opposition.

Want to know: Everyone has time for a stranded panda. Villagers in southwestern China's Sichuan province discovered a panda stranded on a steep mountain face, apparently too scared to climb down. Villagers didn't dare attempt a rescue of the endangered animal but called animal conservationists and fed the panda bananas while they waited for help. The giant panda, which is reported to be one of only about 1,600 pandas living in the wild, eventually managed to scramble off the mountain.

Dull but important: India halted the release of their first genetically modified food crop on Tuesday, saying more study was needed to ensure consumer safety of the hybrid eggplant. GlobalPost ran an earlier piece asking whether the high-tech aubergine would solve a hunger crisis?

Just because: Taiwan's betel nut beauties walk that fine line between tourist attraction and national disgrace. These fetching young women wear sexy outfits, and perch in neon-lit, see-through roadside stands to wrap their betel nut in leaves smeared with lyme paste. If they wear too little, they risk getting chastized by authorities. If they wear too much, chances are they won't sell much. GlobalPost gets into it.

A Japanese teenager wrote a three-volume novel on her cell phone that has gone on to sell more than 110,000 paperback copies and gross more than $611,000. The author of "Wolf Boy x Natural Girl," who goes by the alias "Bunny," started writing when she was in the sixth grade, after her parents bought her a cellphone. At first, Bunny mainly used her phone to text friends until she saw a TV ad about a keitai novel website that allowed users a larger word limit in order to write novels on cellphones for free. The LA Times has the story.

Wacky: It's a modern version of lost and found. A tourist in New Zealand got lost on a snowy mountaintop, and was able to orchestrate his own rescue by texting his family in Greece. Marios Symeonidis lost his companion while visiting Mount Ruapehu. His family passed on his messages to police in New Zealand via Greek emergency services. Reuters reports.

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