Publisher Dorothy Bland and Executive Editor Michael Limon abruptly left the Coloradoan yesterday. Everybody involved is understandably tight lipped. Adding to the mystery senior Gannett Company executives including the newspaper group president and human resources manager were reportedly in Fort Collins.

Update: Adding to the growing mystery Gannett named Christine Chinn president and publisher of the Coloradoan on Thursday, one day after the resignations.

China is said to be narrowing the list of possibleastronauts for its second manned space flight. Even the Xinhua News Agency refers to the would-be space travelers as astronauts.

However, when it comes to space travelers from Russia an interesting double standard applies. Look at any story about the International Space Station and you'll see neatly deleniated lines. The crew is divided into cosmonauts and astronauts. Wikipedia lists some additional variations for European and Chinese astronauts.

Certainly there are other words where British and American English differ. (i.e. lorry and truck). However, there are few if any other circumstances where the press is compelled to use two different words to express the same thing.