Chatter: What we're hearing

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Need to know: A powerful quake hit southern Taiwan on Thursday, causing panic though there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. The 6.4-magnitude quake was felt in the capital Taipei, where buildings shook for several minutes. Services on the southern half of Taiwan's high-speed rail linking Taipei with the south were stopped.

Italian police have arrested five Italians and two suspected Iranian secret agents on suspicion of illegally trafficking arms and explosives to Iran through Eastern Europe. Police in Milan said that through their investigation, dubbed Operation Sniper, they intercepted optical-precision equipment, scuba-diving jackets and oxygen tanks bound for Iran as well as tracer bullets, incendiary bombs and other "explosive materials."

Want to know: On Thursday, Mexico City will catapult to the front lines of gay rights in Latin America when a city law legalizing same-sex marriage and adoption goes into effect. While a wave of social liberalization has transformed the capital in recent years, the gay marriage act has ignited a far more negative reaction than other reform measures.
Cardinal Norbert Rivera, for one, has called such measures "perverse" and "inadmissible."

Dull but important: And Naomi Klein's controversial opinion on Chile's modern seismic building code, which was drafted to resist earthquakes and adopted in 1972. That year is enormously significant because it was one year before Pinochet seized power in a bloody U.S-backed coup. That means that if one person deserves credit for the law, it is not Milton Friedman, or Pinochet, but Salvador Allende, Chile's democratically elected socialist president.

Just because: It's confirmed: Paris Hilton is too hot for Brazil. A sultry beer ad featuring the socialite has been pulled after consumer complaints and a watchdog agency's investigation.

Wacky: One of the many stresses of being a billionaire is the difficulty in choosing between purchasing a yacht or an island. Fortunately, designers at this week's Abu Dhabi yacht show  unveiled plans for a "moving island" that renders the conundrum redundant. The WHY 58x38 vessel is the result of a collaboration between Monaco yacht brand Wally and Parisian fashion house Hermes. It looks kind of like a spaceship that is mid-takeoff and will probably cost in the ballpark of $160 million. Though work on the vessel has yet to begin, designers said the WHY should use far less energy than a yacht of the same size. It should be able to cross the Atlantic four times without refuelling.

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