The Joe Bob Report

Edward Lu, an American, and Yuri Malenchenko, a Russian, travelled to the International Space Station in a Soyuz space capsule in order to relieve the three guys who were stranded by the grounding of the Space Shuttle. Lu and Malenchenko will basically housesit until October. Fortunately it's impossible to play the stereo too loud or leave potato chip crumbs on the floor.

* A 20-pound carp shouting in Hebrew appeared to the Skver sect of Hassidic Jews in New Square, New York. Local merchants quickly rushed into production a wall-sized singing version of the miracle fish, called Caleb Chaim Carp. * Holly Jones of Sherrill, New York, is accused of urinating in the office coffee pot, resulting in a nasty brew consumed by eight people, now suing her. Two other people in the office thought it was "just decaf." * The following Wall Street firms--Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney, Credit Suisse First Boston, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, J.P. Morgan, Lehman Brothers, UBS Warburg and U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray--agreed to pay $1.4 billion for ripping off investors during the bull markets of the 1990s. Since that list would include just about all of Wall Street, we're inclined to ask the question: did the nineties really happen, and, if so, do we get those $40 disco cover charges back? * When two New York lawyers started arguing over their real estate investments, one of the lawyers, Lawrence Omansky, punched the other one, Lawrence Schlosser, then threw him on the bed of Omansky's luxury apartment, put a knife to his throat, threatened to kill him, bound his hands and feet with duct tape, blindfolded him, gagged him, forced him at knifepoint to sign over property they jointly owned, then forced Schlosser through a trap door in his bathroom leading to a 20 by 20 by 3-foot crawlspace, according to police and court filings. Schlosser was imprisoned there for the next 30 hours, unable to sit or stand, until he finally forced open the trap door, extricated himself, and called police. Since the charge was made by a New York lawyer against another New York lawyer, the expected defense will be: a) I wasn't there, b) it's not my apartment, c) I don't have an apartment, and d) who's Lawrence Schlosser? * The stuffed remains of Dolly the cloned sheep went on display in Edinburgh, and everyone remarked on how natural she looked. * Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Nazi hunter, closed up shop after tracking over a thousand Third Reich fugitives. His last message was: "Hans, wherever you are, I can unretire." * The Transportation Security Administration started handing out .40-caliber semiautomatic handguns to airline pilots at a training center in Glynco, Georgia, where local residents noticed a slight decline in the rabbit population. * A man dressed as the Easter Bunny was assaulted at a mall in Wausau, Wisconsin, by a man who jumped into his lap, put him in a headlock, and punched him three times in the mouth. That gooey stuff on the inside of the candy egg has a lot of sugar in it. * Debra Hughes hit a $12,000 jackpot on a slot machine in Tulalip, Washington, but the casino refused to pay off, saying that slot technicians had left the machine in "demonstration mode" and failed to turn it back to normal play when they left. Debra intends to "demonstrate" the legal system. * Adultery was legalized in Rolling Hills Estates, California, after the city council repealed a 46-year-old morals ordinance. Tiffany, call Carl, but hang up if a woman answers. * A shoplifter in Bonita Springs, Florida, filched a DVD player, but when security guards tried to nail him, he fled, leaving his infant daughter behind. So far the baby refuses to talk. * Ten million people have registered on a Web site called Reunion.com, a service that gives you a "second chance" to find the boy or girl you never hooked up with in high school but now want to date or marry. A little advice here: don't expect her to fit into the cheerleading uniform. * Eric Walderman, a British marine, posed for pictures in Umm Qasr wearing a helmet riddled with bullet holes, failing to mention to photographers that the helmet was lying on top of his pack when it was shot by fellow marines trying to explode an anti-tank weapon. The astute British tabloids, having declared him "the luckiest man alive," later revised their assessment of the capacity of the brain to be pierced by 40 bullets. * People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals claim Al-Jazeera refuses to run their commercial showing bloody footage of slaughterhouse cattle, goats being killed, and chickens being abused. American networks won't run the commercial either, but PETA thought it had a slam dunk with all that Iraqi war carnage. They're incensed that a human carcass is considered more newsworthy than an animal carcass, and their pets agree. * Paul McCartney and Heather Mills announced they were turned down as contestants on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" Paul Paul Paul, you would have to play "Who Wants To Be Flat Broke?" * Fifteen prisoners escaped from Kigo prison near Kampala, Uganda, by urinating on the wall so much it weakened and caved in. Corrections officials announced new security measures that involve forcing inmates to "Just hold it." * A 15-year-old patient at the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital called an escort service and had a hooker sent to his room. He liked her more than the clowns. * San Francisco's acting police chief, Alex Fagan, ordered officers to stop wearing red, white and blue patriotic symbols on their uniforms, because it pisses off the demonstrators they have to arrest every day, and besides, it clashes. * Michael R. Ostrander went around Alton, Illinois, putting pictures of himself with his male member exposed on the windshields of women's cars. Police who arrested him said it was not that impressive. * A senior at George Washington High School in Charleston, West Virginia, sneaked into the girls locker room but got trapped behind the shower wall and couldn't get out for several hours. He called his father on his cell phone, and eventually Dad showed up and liberated him with an ice pick. They didn't talk about it at dinner. * Scenes from domestic life:
* When Kevin Abrahams and his common-law wife Jessica Morgan got kicked out of their apartment in Burlington City, New Jersey, for doing drugs and partying too much, Kevin apparently took out his frustration on their eight-month-old son, Sage Tyler Morgan- Abrahams. Jessica went to visit her mother in Bayville, but Grandma grew suspicious when she showed up without the baby. Two days later the parents fled to Florida, where they lived in motels for three months, and eventually the nervous grandmother called police. Inside the abandoned apartment cops found the charred remains of an infant and an empty can of baby formula inside a pillowcase that was hidden in a closet. There were no ashes in the fireplace, but investigators found snaps from a baby's one-piece outfit there and believe that the baby-formula can was used to scoop out the ashes. The operative police theory is that Kevin beat the baby--he has a history of abusing girlfriends--and the couple let him die in his crib, then tried to get rid of the body. They've both decided not to party anymore. * Scenes from our secure republic:
* An ATA flight aborted its takeoff at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington after a cadet at the Air Force Academy handed the flight attendant a note on a napkin and asked her to give it to the cockpit crew. The note said "fast-neat- average." For the last 20 years it's been a tradition for academy graduates to pass this message to cockpit crews, in order to get the proper response: "friendly-good-good." It's a standard response used at the Academy to evaluate the quality of food and service. This particular flight attendant obviously thought it meant "I run the sleeper cell in Colorado Springs." * The Hong Kong Tourist Board launched a new ad campaign with the slogan "Hong Kong will take your breath away." Yes, that's what we said. * Omar Portee, leader of the Bloods gang in the Bronx and better known as O.G. Mack (for "Original Gangsta"), pled for mercy after being convicted of racketeering, conspiracy to commit murder, illegal possession of an AK-47, conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine and other charges, with the following speech: "I was nothing like them guys have testified. I wasn't no church guy. I was no angel. But where the money at? Where the guns at? The leader of the East Coast massive Bloods should have some kind of homicides under my belt. I should have some kind of property." After this emotional appeal, which brought tears to the eyes of many spectators in the Manhattan courtroom, Portee was sentenced to 50 years in prison by heartless judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, who callously ignored the "Where the money at? Where the guns at?" issue. * Restaurants in Cameroon were banned from serving gorilla meat, chimpanzee steak and elephant veal, even if it's just a little appetizer portion to prepare the palate for gibbon monkey later. * Dr. Robert C. Atkins, of Atkins Diet fame, died after slipping on the sidewalk in front of his Atkins Center for Complementary Medicine in New York. The sidewalk is being tested for bacon grease. * The Puffy-Cheeked Bandit is in the slammer. Cazzie L. Williams of East Orange, New Jersey, admitted to being the goofy guy who robbed 27 banks in five states over a four-year period, disguising himself by puffing out his cheeks throughout the course of each robbery. His hauls ranged from $1,000 to $16,300, which hardly seems worth the breath. * Rodney King lost control of his SUV while weaving through traffic at 100 miles per hour, crashed into a utility pole, then a chain-link fence, then a house, which caused him to to be hospitalized with a broken pelvis and to be drug-tested by Los Angeles police. This would apparently qualify as a self-beating. * Masanori Murakawa, a professional wrestler who never takes off his demon mask, was elected to the Iwate Prefectural Assembly from the city of Morioka, Japan, and says he'll continue to wear the mask throughout the legislative session. So far his colleagues are not saying anything. * Heidi Fleiss is opening a 30-room brothel in Sydney, with a restaurant, bar and staff of 200 prostitutes who are eager to be trained by the Americans, with their reputation for global sluttiness. * In related news, ten priests were suspended from the Romanian Orthodox Church for blessing brothels and sex shops. Obviously the church hierarchy is unaware of what Heidi Fleiss can do with her pelvis. * Cypress Gardens, Florida, home of the water-skiing pyramid of bikini girls, closed its gates after 67 years. Esther Williams wept. * After 27 years at Mach 2.2, the Concorde will go into mothballs this October. Air France will stop flying the world's only supersonic passenger plane in May, and British Airways will follow suit on Halloween. Nobody is in a hurry to get to Europe anymore. * Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far right leader of France's National Front, was kicked off the European Parliament for bitch-slapping a Socialist in 1997. It took the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg six years to make up its mind as to whether bitch- slapping should be deemed non-European behavior, or regarded as "just a French thing." * Voodoo priests in Haiti are now allowed to perform marriages. Oddly enough, they're also allowed to perform divorces. * A 15-year-old boy, asked to lead the Turkish pledge of allegiance in his village school of Bismil, said he didn't want to because his stomach hurt, according to a report in The New York Times. When he was forced to go ahead by his teachers, he failed to say the line "Happy is the one who calls himself a Turk." Instead he said, "Happy is the one who calls himself a Kurd." The teachers sent him home from school, reported him to the police, and now he faces five years in prison for "inciting hatred and enmity on the basis of religion, race, language or regional differences." And we thought extra study hall was bad. * A special celebration of the 15th anniversary of "Bull Durham" was canceled by the Baseball Hall of Fame because Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey thinks Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, stars of the movie, are unpatriotic and are undermining the troops. Petroskey informed Robbins and Sarandon of the cancellation in a letter which read, "In a free cuntry such as ours, every American has the right to his or her own opinions, and to express them. Public figures, such as you, have platforms much larger than the average American's, which provides you an extraordinary opportunity to have your views heard--and an equally large obligation to act and speak responsibly. We believe your very public criticism of President Bush at this important-- and sensitive--time in our nation's history helps undermine the U.S. position, which ultimately could put our troops in even more danger. As an institution, we stand behind our President and our troops in this conflict." Robbins wrote back: "You belong with the cowards and ideologues in a hall of infamy and shame. . . . I didn't realize baseball was a Republican sport. I am sorry that you have chosen to use baseball and your position at the Hall of Fame to make a political statement. I know there are many baseball fans that disagree with you, and even more that will react with disgust to realize baseball is being politicized. To suggest that my criticism of the president put the troops in danger is absurd. . . . I wish you had, in your letter, saved me the rhetoric and talked honestly about your ties to the Bush and Reagan administrations. Long live democracy, free speech and the '69 Mets--all improbably glorious miracles that I have always believed in." All right, class, compare and contrast. Petroskey was formerly the assistant White House press secretary under Ronald Reagan--in other words, a guy who writes press releases and makes public statements for a living. Robbins is an actor. Isn't this sort of like a guy from single-A ball hitting a grand slam against the Yankees? * The governing board of Virginia Tech voted to bar advocates of "extreme political views" from speaking on campus, then, at the same meeting, voted to allow discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. So what brought this on? The "extreme political views" were apparently expressed in February, not by Al Qaeda, but by a member of Earth First, an activist environmental group that is disliked by the university's department of forestry. (Also, it may not be a coincidence that the resolution was introduced by board member Mitchell O. Carr, president of the Augusta Lumber Company and a former director of the National Hardwood Lumber Association.) And the reason for the gay and lesbian discrimination? According to a board member, so that Virginia Tech would conform with federal and state laws, which do not include homosexuals as a "protected class." We should check this with legal first, but we're pretty sure that another unprotected class is the moron. * Scenes from domestic life:
* Unemployed forklift operator John Wyatt of Long Island was babysitting five children, aged 1 to 13, when three-year-old Tijuan Mayo wet his bed. Wyatt's solution was to discipline him with "several blows" to the stomach. The boy later fell down the stairs, after which Wyatt called 911 to report his injuries. The child died--odd, since Wyatt is well known as one of the finest forklift-driving babysitters in the greater Long Island area. * Scenes from our secure republic:
* The Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago was evacuated after a zoo employee found a white flour-like substance on the ground outside. Police, firefighters and hazardous materials experts were all dispatched to the scene, where mobile testing equipment identified it as something "in the anthrax area." Members of a running club came forward to say that they sometimes marked jogging trails with a white substance and that they'd run near the zoo the day before. The substance they used, they said, was flour. And the mobile testing equipment? "False positives," was the official explanation. Translation: the equipment sucks. * On the fifth anniversary of Viagra's introduction, two new competitors are hitting the market--Cialis, which supposedly lasts longer than Viagra, and Levitra, which kicks in faster. Still waiting for FDA approval is Disskagra, which makes ugly girls seem really hot. * Cosmopolitan magazine will launch its own network to compete with Lifetime, which is the highest rated channel on cable. No, ladies, it is not in our best interest to take the quiz together. * The female animal trainer for the Flying Mushrooms, a Swiss circus, ran off with the ringmaster's son while the circus was visiting Melle, Germany, and the ringmaster is upset, not so much because of his son but because they also stole eight lions and two tigers. Now that is a kinky honeymoon. * British tabloids report that Julia Roberts has fallen out of love with cameraman husband Danny Moder, which puts him in a club with exes Liam Neeson, Dylan McDermott, Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric, Lyle Lovett, Daniel Day-Lewis, Matthew Perry and Benjamin Bratt, all of whom recently qualified for group medical care. * Vandals scrawled graffiti on the graves of fallen British soldiers buried in northern France. "Dig up your garbage," one poet wrote, "it is contaminating our soil." French President Jacques Chirac apologized to the queen, saying "These unacceptable and disgraceful acts are unanimously condemned by the French people." Well, obviously not unanimously. * General Motors discontinued production of electric cars, saying they'll be pulled off the roads as the leases expire. Now that California has backed off its strict pollution enforcement, the car is no longer economical, said company officials. They were also demonstrated to be kind of wimpy. * The City Council of West Hollywood, California, has made it illegal to declaw a cat. And those black-leather sofas were already looking nasty. * Mecca-Cola, the soft drink introduced last November to compete with Coca-Cola in places with heavily Muslim populations, has sold 3 million bottles in France alone and is now strong enough to build its own bottling plant in Casablanca. Can a new diet version, called Medina-Cola, be far behind? * Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov is accused of conspiring with a fisheries research institute to illegally harvest 2,200 tons of giant red crabs and sell them abroad for $6 million. The Kamchatka crab is considered a delicacy in Japan, where it sells for $45 a pound, and where it's especially tasty when served with a side of whale sushi. * Michael Jackson bought two paintings at a Sotheby's auction- -a Cupid by French artist William Adolphe Bouguereau for $504,500, and a woman with a baby and sheep for $724,500--then refused to accept delivery or pay for them because, he said, they no longer fit into his art collection. Apparently he had purchased "Blue Boy" in the meantime. * George Kelley, a retired flower shop owner in Nashville, founded the Ten Commandments Project, offering $10 to every child who memorized and recited the Ten Commandments. Flooded with letters, he now says he can't pay. Thou shalt not tease. * Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have sold their Watergate notes and papers to the University of Texas for $5 million, to be catalogued and stored at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Austin. Among the material in 75 file-drawer-size boxes is the identity of "Deep Throat," who won't be revealed until his or her death. That rules out the late Linda Lovelace. * In Germany, where the U.S. had been widely ridiculed for calling French fries "Freedom Fries," a linguists group is proposing that all American words be replaced with French equivalents--"billet" instead of ticket, "d'accord" instead of okay, "tricot" instead of T-shirt, and "sacre bleu" instead of dagnabbit. * Human rights groups say that more than 2,000 alleged drug dealers have been executed in Thailand during the last two months, as Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra shows what John Ashcroft could do if he just had a little public support. * The FBI recovered one of the original copies of the Bill of Rights--138 years after it was stolen from the North Carolina Capitol by a Union soldier on his way home to Tippecanoe, Ohio. His relatives finally got tired of packing it up again every time they moved. * A British court sentenced Mohammed Azam to a year in prison for having books at his house about bomb-making and terrorism. That whole First Amendment thing never took hold over there. * Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia agreed to go to Cleveland to accept the City Club's Citadel of Free Speech Award- -but only if television and radio stations were forbidden from broadcasting the event. The event went on, but the award was renamed the Exposed Flank of Free Speech Award. * Three Moroccan musicians were convicted in Casablanca of "undermining the faith of a Muslim" by playing heavy-metal music as part of the bands Nekros, Infected Brain and Reborn. They each got a year in jail, later reduced by a court to 45 days after one of the judges watched "Footloose" on late-night cable. * Fishermen off Antarctica captured a 300-pound squid, only the second colossal squid ever caught. It's a young female, 16 feet long, and was going to have dating problems anyway. * An elaborate manger scene, complete with the baby Jesus, Joseph, Mary, the shepherds, and all the wise men, turned out to be made of pure cocaine when police discovered it at Fiumicino Airport in Rome. The owner, who brought it from Peru, said he was a collector of sacred art. He won't be seeing the Vatican galleries on this trip, however. * Hedgehog enthusiasts in Britain are airlifting the prickly critters from the Outer Hebrides to the mainland so that they won't be killed by wading-bird enthusiasts. (Hedgehogs eat the eggs of the wading birds.) There's a current bounty of $8 per hedgehog for anyone rescuing one without harming it, although hedgehogs squashed on the highway won't affect the general market value, as locals had hoped. * The recording industry filed multi-million-dollar lawsuits against four college students--one at Princeton, one at Michigan Tech, and two at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute--for operating computer networks that allow people to download songs and share them. Also, there are too many used pizza boxes in their dorm rooms. * Nineteen states are considering new taxes on beer, led by Pennsylvania, which wants a more than 300 percent increase. Pittsburgh steelworkers regard this as a 50 percent tax on real income. * The Portland Trailblazers will lose $100 million this year, the largest deficit in pro sports history. The Trailblazers are owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who has also invested his $40 billion fortune in troubled Charter Communications, VaxGen (the biotech firm whose AIDS vaccine failed), the anemic women's channel Oxygen, and the failed wireless Internet provider Metricom. It's estimated that Allen has lost $20 billion in four years--but, hey, how bout them Blazers? * Scenes from domestic life:
* Two 69-year-old men went at it with a knife and a baseball bat at the Saratoga Squares Senior Citizens Home in Brooklyn. Ransford Forbes stabbed Fred Horton four times. Horton responded with a bat blow but ended up in critical condition. Reason for the fight: they're neighbors. In Old Fart terms, this is suffi- cient reason. * Scenes from our secure republic:
* Two hundred guests were evacuated from the EconoLodge in Erie, Pennsylvania, after reports of a suspicious chemical smell near the swimming pool--chlorine. * Mayor Edward "Buddy" Tyler Sr. and the Borough Council of tiny Fieldsboro, New Jersey, banned the display of yellow ribbons on public property, creating a firestorm of controversy that resulted in two days of angry phone calls from all over the country and several caravans of people from faraway places determined to plaster yellow ribbons all over town. Can anyone say "radio talk shows"? * Elene Vis, a madam in Amsterdam, has founded a new school to teach women how to be better prostitutes, so that they can make more money per trick and retire at an earlier age. Presumably wearing Earth Shoes to class is out. * The Japanese fleet returned from five months at sea with 400 minke whales, which they say is all they'll need for this year's "scientific research" purposes, most of which involve studies of the relative utility of chopsticks. * Twelve bales of marijuana weighing about 500 pounds with a street value of $1.5 million washed up on shores near Delray Beach, Florida, prompting a search for one of those really cool submarines with a hydroponic garden inside. * A Renoir painting that hasn't been seen since 1937 will be auctioned on May 6 by Sotheby's. "Dans Les Roses (Portrait de Madame Leon Clapisson)" is a portrait of a socialite painted by Renoir in 1882, but the socialite's husband thought it was too modern and rejected it, forcing Renoir to do a second one in a more conventional style. That second one hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago, but is worth considerably less than the $20 million to $30 million Sotheby's expects to get on May 6. And heirs of the socialite are really really hacked off about what great-grandpa did. * When Vitaly Oustinow, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, retired in 2001, he quickly became disenchanted with his replacement, Metropolitan Laurus--so he moved from New York to Canada and started a new church called the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile. Church officials decided he must be senile--he's 93--so they told a New York court that, in fact, Oustinow had been kidnapped from New York, spirited away to Canada by people working against the church, and that they should be awarded custody of him because he has a psychiatric ailment and needs to be institutionalized in a nursing home. Supreme Court Justice Phyllis Gangel-Jacob examined the evidence, decided Oustinow is sharp as a tack, and expressed the opinion that the real battle was over "control of church property." She dismissed the action, leaving Oustinow free to pad around Canada in his house slippers, granting absolution. * The Otis Elevator Company celebrated the 150th anniversary of the invention of the elevator by recreating the very first one demonstrated by founder Elisha Graves Otis in 1853. The first elevator was used at the Bedstead Manufacturing Company in Yonkers, New York, in 1852, but the first three sold by Otis--for $300 each--were manufactured the following year. Business took off after P.T. Barnum paid Otis $100 to build and demonstrate his safety hoist at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in New York. The first passenger elevator was sold to E.V. Haughwout and Company, a New York City department store, in 1857, and today Otis employs 60,000 and sells 80,000 elevators per year. All of them take too long to arrive and have "Close Door" buttons that don't work. * Nicholas De Genova, a professor of anthropology and Latin studies at Columbia University, received hundreds of death threats after making a speech against the war, resulting in cancellation of his Tuesday afternoon class in Latin History and Culture. Disappointed students tucked their Catullus into their knapsacks and sighed audibly. * Irv Kupcinet of the Chicago Sun-Times celebrated the 60th anniversary of his column, which is the longest-running newspaper column in the country. Irv is 90, which just proves that there's no such thing as a columnist ever shutting up. * The 22nd floor of the Park Lane Hilton in London will be reserved for single women only. The special floor will be monitored 24 hours a day by security cameras, and all doors have been fitted with enlarged spy holes and more secure locks than the rooms in the rest of the hotel. This raises two questions: 1) Just what have you naughty Brits been doing to the gals at the Park Lane? And 2) Are the Brits familiar with the term "panty raid"? * Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago sent a demolition crew in the middle of the night to destroy the runway of an airport. Meigs Field, located on the lakefront near downtown, was a security risk, he said, even though he admitted "there has been no specific threat." The airport had been there since 1948 and still has 12 stranded airplanes with no way to take off--which is a GOOD thing, because that means they can't fly into any non- specifically-threatened buildings. * Only 20 journalists were killed in 2002, the lowest number in 17 years, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The small number was attributed to growing goodwill between the public and reporters caused by the increased use of crossword puzzles and horoscope columns instead of hard news. * The trial of Major Charles Ingram, winner on Britain's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?," had to be adjourned when the jury started coughing. Ingram is accused of cheating on the quiz show by using his wife and friend to tip him off to the correct answers--by coughing. If everyone in the courtrooms comes down with SARS, we'll know he's innocent. * Computer hackers went berserk during the first ten days of the war, shutting down 3,000 to 5,000 websites per day, including those run by Al-Jazeera (diverting users to a porn site), the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Popular Party in Spain, the South Carolina Secretary of State, the Veterans of Foreign Wars. American authorities are shrugging their shoulders--there's a war on, you know--but Europe is sending Interpol to the rescue, endangering the freedom of pimply-faced 16-year-olds everywhere. * Israel switched to Daylight Savings Time, but Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza refused to move their clocks ahead one hour, in an apparent effort to get a one-hour jump on the enemy. * When a bill to outlaw toy guns was introduced in the New York City Council, the Manhattan Libertarian Party announced a "Guns for Tots" drive, collecting water pistols and cap guns for the city's children. "Playing with a water pistol is one of the most cherished rites of childhood," said spokesman Jim Lesczynski. "We want to give that experience to New York's children before the spoilsports in City Hall take it away permanently." Once the Super Soaker is secured for the future, the Libertarians intend to turn their attention to the protection of toy firebombs. * Anna Tkacova of Michalovce, Slovakia, woke up in the middle of the night to find her husband Ondrej shaving her pubic hair with a razor blade, she told police. The man said his wife had refused to sleep with him for a year and it was his way of taking revenge. He was charged with aggravated fetish grooming. * Scenes from domestic life:
* A 15-year-old mentally retarded boy took an extra hot dog without permission, so his parents, Frank and Marylynnette Barney of Lombard, Illinois, beat him with a stick, striking him more than 30 times on the face and buttocks, according to police. The parents keep a wireless video camera in the boy's room to keep watch over him, and a neighbor had a home security system set at the same frequency and ended up taping over two hours of beatings, which were turned over to police. The parents' defense: hot dogs don't grow on trees. * Scenes from our secure republic:
* Clinton Boisvert, a freshman at the School of Visual Arts in New York, was arrested for reckless endangerment after doing a public-space art project that featured 37 black boxes placed in the subways with the word "FEAR" written on their sides. Presumably his jail time will be conceptual. * A mysterious disease that started in Hong Kong has killed 386 people in 14 countries since February 1 and is now classified by the World Health Organization as a global threat. Scientists at Hong Kong University are trying to isolate the suspected virus, working in maximum security labs where all rooms are steam-cleaned and all masks and gowns are burned after use, but they don't expect their research to be fully funded until the disease strikes in a place where people think of themselves as immortal. We speak, of course, of California. * Posters for "What a Girl Wants," starring Amanda Bynes, were airbrushed by Warner Brothers to eliminate the peace sign she was flashing. Studio officials said they didn't want any "political overtones" to be associated with the movie's April 4 release. The movie tells the story of a 19-year-old girl (Bynes is actually 16) travelling from New York to London for a reunion with her upper-class father, played by Colin Firth, and her efforts to fit into British society. One way she could probably fit into British society would be to tell them she thinks people who flash peace signs should be suppressed like the Zulus. * Johnny Paul Penry has been convicted three times since 1979 of raping and killing a woman in Livingston, Texas, but the first two convictions were thrown out after Penry's lawyer, John Wright, appealed them all the way to the Supreme Court. But now that it's time for the third appeal--based on Penry's mental retardation, as the other two were--Wright has been removed from the case by the presiding judge, Elizabeth E. Coker of Polk County District Court, even though Penry expressly wanted to be defended by him. Her explanation: what if Penry someday argues that his defense counsel was ineffective? That would create a conflict of interest for Wright. In case you didn't follow that, she's speculating as to all the various reasons that Penry might someday say he got an unfair trial, and one of them could possibly be that he wants to turn on the attorney who has kept him alive for 24 years. To make sure he doesn't do that, she'll protect him by removing the attorney of his choice and replacing him with Stephen C. Taylor, who assisted the prosecution during Penry's third trial. Since Taylor's already read the file, it has the added advantage of saving time. Coker is the same judge who ruled that Penry is not mentally retarded. To prove it, she asked him to spell "lethal injection." Close enough. * The President asked Congress for $74.7 billion to finance six months of war in Iraq, but warned that the figure doesn't include any other related contingencies that may arise, such as the Pentagon's planned invasion of southern France to destroy the regime of Jacques Chirac. * One day before 12 German high school students were scheduled to depart for Murfreesboro, Tennessee, as part of an exchange program with Oakland High School, principal Tim Tackett told them not to come--and he canceled his own students' trip to Hamburg this summer as well. After all, we don't need young people being indoctrinated into seditious ideas like . . . uh . . . foreign nations having opinions. * Penguin excrement is so thick around "Borchgrevink's Hut," the first building in Antarctica, that it will soon be buried in manure. About 100,000 Adelie penguins enjoy defecating on the structure erected by Norwegian explorer Carsten Borchgrevink in 1895, and conservationists say it's impossible to shovel fast enough. Potty-training has not yet been ruled out. * Riots broke out in Warri, Nigeria, with at least 20 killed, as Urhobos fought against Itsekiris in a dispute over "the location of government offices and amenities." Hey, punk, don't even think about moving that regional tax-assessment bureau from Urhobo to Itsekiri territory. * The Hardy Boys turned 76 this year, but they just had their 176th adventure, called "In Plane Sight" and released by Simon & Schuster. All 176 books have been authored by Franklin W. Dixon, who is fortunately not a real person, thereby making it possible for him to continue to create new Hardy Boys adventures for as many years as the market will support them. Since both Hardy Boys are teenagers, and since their first adventure was in 1927, they have to be at least 90 years old at this point, but they managed to avoid mid-life crises, not to mention Alzheimer's, by simply refusing to leave home. * Fusion Baptist Church, the first gay Baptist church, opened in Philadelphia. It's okay to be homosexual, just don't try to dance. * The American Bar Association proposed a law barring non- lawyers from giving legal advice, negotiating on behalf of others, or drafting legal documents. The proposal could affect tax preparers, real estate agents, investment bankers, business planners, accountants, hospitals, labor unions, tenants' associations, and claims adjusters, not to mention half the judges who have TV shows. * Police responded to 38 million burglar alarms in 1998, according to a Justice Department report, and 98 percent of them were false alarms. The nation is currently using 35,000 police officers to respond to false burglar alarms, at a cost of $1.5 billion annually, and at a time when the jails are already full of false burglars. * The famous Howard Johnson's restaurant in Times Square--one of the first four HoJo's in the country, and one of the last ten remaining in business--will close to make way for yet another megastore of some type. Morris Rubinstein, the original owner and personal friend of Howard Johnson himself, isn't alive to see the decline of orange and turquoise Naugahyde, thank God. * French police now have a way to ferret out fake truffles. They've broken the genetic code of the truffle fungus, and can tell the difference between Tuber melanosporum, the French variety from Perigord that sells for $140 a pound, and Tuber indicum, the Chinese variety that sells for a mere ten bucks a pound. Since 1994 some unscrupulous restaurateurs have been passing off Tuber indica as Tuber melanospora, much to the disgustibus of Pierre's palate. * Governor Eric Chiwaya of Blantyre, Malawi, was stoned by an angry mob convinced that he's entered into a pact with vampires to harvest human blood through international aid agencies. One man has been killed in various vigilante attacks directed at priests and aid officials known to be pale and toothy. * Forces of the Congolese Liberation Movement are killing and eating Pygmies, according to reports being investigated by the United Nations. Then they're hungry again an hour later. * Larry Pratt of Olathe, Kansas, was arrested and charged with urinating on packages of chicken in a supermarket cooler. No one ever lets him have the drumstick. * Two pots of marijuana were found growing on the roof of the Lakeview Baptist Church in Delray Beach, Florida, explaining why the speaking in tongues in recent weeks has been punctuated by inappropriate grinning. * Elmer Grandin, an actor who died in 1933 after a career on Broadway and in silent movies, appeared at a Thanksgiving weekend party in Patchogue, New York, wearing a Darth Vader mask and glasses, thanks to three Long Island teens who had cracked open his family crypt and dressed him up along with the skulls of two of his relatives. Police described the three teenagers as "Goths." We already figured that out. * Scenes from domestic life:
* Teenager Reginald Ted Antoine of Brooklyn was upset when money left to him by his mother was managed by his stepfather, Reynold Guerrier, so he flattened the tires on his stepdad's car and, while the father was picking up one of his four children to walk him to school, shot him dead, police say. Reginald will presumably be able to draw on his inheritance for use at the Sing Sing gift shop. * Scenes from our secure republic:
* Robert Mickens, a Greyhound bus driver who works a rural route in central New Jersey, used the word "Taliban" during a good-natured public address announcement, and soon thereafter was ordered off the bus by police and led away in handcuffs. For all we know he could have been planning to hurt himself with a box- cutter, wrestle control of the bus away from himself, and drive the bus into a building, killing the driver. *

Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite of Florida introduced a bill allowing families of fallen World War II soldiers to dig up their loved ones' graves in France and bring the bodies home. We'll just see how those Frogs like it when they have a few less tombstones to look at.

* The jury system was introduced in Russia, with staggering results. The rate of acquittals has risen from 0.4 percent to 0.8 percent. They should call that the one-strike system. * Producers of "Girls Gone Wild," the ultimate spring break party tape full of inventive ways to flash boobs, were forced to move production from Panama City Beach, Florida, this year after local officials threatened to arrest them. They headed for South Padre Island, Texas, where there are actually more boobs, some of them on women. * Deepak Chopra, the spiritual self-help author, described his New Age beliefs in an interview with Debra Pickett of the Chicago Sun-Times and said, "It's such a deep concept that I don't expect the Pope to get it." Among other things, he says the readers of his books can achieve world peace by acting like "a berserk mob in reverse." Upon hearing about the interview, the Pope slapped his forehead and said, "Why didn't I think of that?" * The number of couples living in sin surged 72 percent between the 1990 and 2000 censuses, bringing the total to 5.5 million. Of those 4.8 million include at least one conjugal partner who refuses to talk about the relationship. * Mattel announced the release of Barbie's Grandpa and Grandma dolls, which will retail for $47 and include grandpa in a wool sweater, grandma in a floral blouse, and Grandma's kitchen gift set (we assume it's a homespun old-fashioned kitchen). Rumors that the new dolls will be able to drool, cough and play Barbie slot machines are apparently not true, but the heads are still twistable, so advanced Alzheimer's should be easy enough to simulate. * Zippo Manufacturing Company, which has sold 375 million lighters since 1932, says it's losing 30 percent of its business to cheap knockoffs from China, so they've registered their brass- and-chrome rectangular shape with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. That shape looks like . . . uh . . . a lighter. * A rhesus macaque monkey escaped from the California National Primate Research Center in Davis, California, and was last seen in a line at the Greyhound bus station, where he easily blended into the crowd. * The Middle Eastern emirate of Bahrain, which is mostly arid desert, is building an indoor ski resort called Iceberg Tower that will enable Bahrainians to ski, snowboard, ski-jump, sled and participate in ice climbing. It will also feature an Arctic zoo, which will presumably house the most disoriented polar bears on the planet. * Robert Clawson decided he was being hunted by the DEA, the police and the government, so he used his truck to intentionally ram a car stopped at a light in South Salt Lake City, Utah, then fled. The rammee followed him several blocks, where Clawson intentionally caused a second accident. From there he drove to a gas station and held a victim at knife point, forcing the victim to fill up his car with gas. He then drove up to a couple who were strolling along the sidewalk and demanded a drink from their cup of coffee. When they approached his car, he pulled a knife on them. He then fled into Salt Lake, where a police officer cut him off, causing an accident and disabling his truck- -also proving that even a paranoid can sometimes be right. * Frederick's of Hollywood, inventor of the thong bikini, is revamping its inventory at all 200 stores and going for a more "polished" style of lingerie. The company is emerging from bankruptcy and suffering from an image problem caused by rival Victoria's Secret, which is perceived by the public as being classier. To put it another way, Victoria's Secret lingerie is made to be worn to bed. Frederick's of Hollywood lingerie is made to be worn to bed for the first 30 seconds only. * There's a grass-roots movement in the Russian Orthodox Church to grant sainthood to Rasputin and Ivan the Terrible. Church leaders have publicly condemned the idea, but it gathers momentum on Web sites and in alternative newspapers. Grigori Rasputin, the wild-haired Siberian monk with a sensual lifestyle who gained incredible influence over Empress Alexandra before being murdered in 1916, is now said to be the victim of a Jewish conspiracy. And Ivan the Terrible, the 16th-century tsar who killed hundreds of priests as well as his own son, is also said to be misunderstood: the revisionists say he was actually very pious and obedient to God. Next in line after these two is no doubt Josef Stalin, who demolished cathedrals and monasteries all over Russia but did it only because he was dyspeptic. * Six hundred thousand gypsies from Central and Eastern Europe are suing IBM in a Prague court for selling computers to the Nazis during the Holocaust. IBM is expected to argue that they didn't know what the computers were being used for, especially the one called The Terminator. * Miss Brazil, 21-year-old Joseane de Oliveira, was stripped of her crown after it was discovered that she got married in 1998. Oliveira had already appeared on a prime-time reality show and posed partially nude for a Web site, angering pageant officials, but actual matrimony was the final straw. For all we know, this unscrupulous girl could be padding her bikini butt. * Scenes from our secure republic:
* A man ran through a security checkpoint at Chicago's O'Hare Airport while two federal screeners stood chatting to each other with their backs turned to the eight-foot-wide aisle. Terminal 1 was shut down for two hours while police searched for the man. They never found him, so they, uh, reopened the airport. * Scenes from domestic life:
* Eighty-one-year-old Francine McMurry of Head of the Harbor, New York, was feeding her dog Riley, causing Misty and Sammy, the two dogs owned by Francine's daughter Frances, to become upset. The daughter told her mom she was taunting the dogs, causing an argument between the two women that resulted in the daughter plunging a 10-inch carving knife into her mother's chest and mouth, killing her and, more importantly, muting her bark.

The Supreme Court ruled that an adult video and sexual paraphernalia shop called Victor's Secret--later renamed Victor's Little Secret--could keep doing business without worrying about infringing the trademark of Victoria's Secret. Victoria's Secret had gotten a summary judgment against the small Kentucky shop, claiming that Victor was ruining Victoria's reputation. Victor replied that Victoria was already a slut.

* Production on "The Sopranos" was shut down as James Gandolfini and HBO duked it out in court. The plus-size actor wants more than his current $400,000 per episode--reports are that he wants as much as a million--despite HBO having him under contract. With 300 people who work on the series temporarily out of work, we're left to ponder the concept of how to spend $400,000 per week. While fully realizing that the economy is struggling and that $400,000 is not what it used to be, and fully realizing that Gandolfini lives in one of the highest-rent cities in the world, we still find a few bucks left over for ordering Domino's from time to time without affecting the 401-K. * A Justice Department whistle-blower leaked a draft copy of John Ashcroft's proposed "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003," which would, among other things, give the government authority to revoke someone's American citizenship even if they don't renounce it, allow for the sampling and cataloguing of genetic DNA without consent and without court order, restrict access to information about factories that use dangerous chemicals, give immunity to businesses who phone in fake terrorism tips (so that they'll be encouraged to phone in more often), and protect all federal agents from prosecution for anything they're doing while following orders. All this comes after months of denying that the Justice Department was planning to amend the Patriot Act, and it pretty much announces to the world that Ashcroft believes 9/11 happened because there were too damn many (excuse us, he would never say damn) too darn many civil liberties out there. What the whistle-blower didn't find was Patriot Act III, scheduled for 2004, in which Ashcroft proposes bringing back many of the practices of Ivan the Terrible, including the execution of the entire family and all the household servants of anyone accused of treason. * Five of the middle-aged chimpanzees at the Berlin Zoo have become sluggish and no longer do any entertaining antics, so zoo officials are deporting them to a zoo in China. The Chinese have WAYS of making chimps caper. * Under pressure from PETA, Kentucky Fried Chicken issued a statement supporting "the well being and humane treatment of chickens." A bankruptcy filing is expected any day now. * Mountain biking may cause scrotum damage, cysts, calcifications, varicose veins, reduced sperm count and impotence, according to a study released by Dr. Ferdinand Frauscher of Austria. Not to mention wedgies. * Campbell Soup Company changed the recipes for ten of its vegetable soups in an effort to head off falling sales. Among other changes, alphabet soup now has 40 percent more letters, making it more likely for bored first-graders to be able to spell "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." * The German town of Triberg--immortalized in the Ernest Hemingway story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro"--cancelled its annual Hemingway Week after an activist accused the American author of killing Germans during World War II. Hemingway was a reporter during the war, but did carry a gun, and if he were to have killed someone, it probably wouldn't have been a Brit, a Frenchman or an American. * Roy Dominguez, newly elected sheriff of Lake County, Indiana, wants to destroy a Tommy gun stolen by John Dillinger during a 1934 jailbreak, because he says the continued existence of it glorifies a cop-killer. Dominquez has suggested melting it down in one of the county's steel mills. If so it could end up as part of a structural steel beam in a brand new bank. Now THAT would amuse Dillinger. * Over the past 50 years Playboy centerfolds have gradually lost bust size and hip size, even though their weight has stayed around the same, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal. The British doctors, most of whom have been exposed to hundreds of hours of "The Benny Hill Show," decried the trend and recommended more kippers and oatmeal for breakfast. * Citizens for Community Values, a group of moralists in Cincinnati, are trying to eliminate pay-for-view porno movies from hotel rooms and to that end are listing "clean hotels" on their Web site. "For years, our friends have been asking for an easy way to find hotels and motels where their families can stay without fear of exposure to graphic, addictive pornographic movies," said Phil Burress, president of the organization. Now just how did they know they were addictive? * At the capital murder trial of Lawrence Jacobs Jr., in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, one prosecutor wore a tie with a dangling noose on it and his fellow prosecutor wore a tie adorned with the Grim Reaper. When the defendant's father protested, they said the ties were on sale at Target. * Tourism at the Statue of Liberty dropped by 50 percent in 2002, from 5 million to 2.5 million visitors, causing the elderly green goddess to experiment with anti-depressants. * The town of Bridgeville, California, population 20, was auctioned on ebay and sold for $1.8 million. That includes the toaster oven. * Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is cracking down on lavish royal weddings--average cost $5 million--by building a banquet hall near the king's palace in northwest Riyadh. From now on all princes and princesses will be required to say their vows in the official banquet hall, so that the poor and unemployed aren't offended by royal excess. The only thing rich relatives are allowed to add to the ceremony is one Elvis impersonator and two discreet gypsies. * Loren Cordain of Colorado State University studied tribes in Papua New Guinea and Paraguay whose diets contain no bread, cake, sugar, soft drinks, potato chips or pizza--and didn't find a single case of acne. But let those people get their hands on one stray Cheeto . . . * A report by the National Environmental Trust says that Vermont, the least polluting American state, emits more greenhouse gases than 33 Third World countries combined. Fortunately they weren't countries anybody in Vermont had ever heard of. * Scenes from our secure republic:
* Maher Arar, a man holding joint Canadian-Syrian citizen- ship, was detained while changing planes at New York's JFK Airport and deported to Syria. Canada protested the deportation, wondering why the U.S. would spend money on a ticket to Damascus when they could have just bused him to Montreal. Shortly thereafter, Canada issued an official advisory warning its citizens against travelling to the United States, especially if they are of Syrian, Iranian, Iraqi, Libyan, Sudanese, Pakistani, Saudi Arabian or Yemeni ancestry. All citizens of those nations are currently being photographed, fingerprinted and monitored, even if they have tickets for "Phantom" and a DisneyWorld getaway package. * Scenes from domestic life:
* Four grandchildren--aged 24, 16, 13 and 10--tried to force their grandpa, James Buckner of Paulsboro, New Jersey, to give them his bank card PIN. When he refused, according to police, they wrapped a plastic bag over his head, tried to suffocate him, beat him with a hammer, dragged him to his car, drove him to an apartment complex, continued to beat him with a hammer every time he started to regain consciousness, drove him to a cemetery in Deptford, continued to try to beat the information out of him, tried to bury him alive but found the ground was too hard, took him to a pond, stripped him to his underwear, and left him there. The granddaughter, 24-year-old Robin Fletcher, and three grand- sons where charged with attempted murder, kidnapping, conspiracy, robbery, aggravated assault and weapons offenses. The grandpa, 58-year-old James Buckner, was suffering from a recent stroke, but was rescued by a fisherman who heard him moaning. At least he has a big family to comfort him in his old age. * America Online announced that it had blocked a record one billion spam messages in a single day, saying it's winning the war against junk email. (An estimated 30 percent of all U.S. email is spam.) Since AOL has a search engine that retrieves all mentions of the words "America Online," and since this column is distributed on the Internet, we'd just like to say to AOL:

EARN HUNDREDS A WEEK AT HOME
INCREASE PENIS SIZE NOW
FINANCE RATES DON'T GET THIS LOW
BUSINESS PROPOSITION FROM TASUME NKOTO, SON OF FORMER NIGERIAN PRESIDENT
and, most ironic of all, TIRED OF SPAM? STOP UNWANTED MESSAGES NOW!

* Madonna's new song "American Life" is selling like hot falafels in Baghdad now that the Baath Party has lifted its ten- year ban on her music caused by a ruling that "Like a Virgin" was blasphemous and obscene. Saddam Hussein's puppet newspaper, Al- thawra, praised "American Life" and its "opposition to an attack on Iraq." But never mind that. We're more fascinated with the logic behind the ban on "Like a Virgin." It goes like this. If the singer feels like she's "touched for the very first time," then that means it wasn't really the first time, so being "like a virgin" means you're a slut. What she should have sung was "You make me feel like a pubescent teenage girl having an official pelvic examination to verify my virginity--and, baby, I'm passing the test." * For the first time in eight years, the Today Sponge will be back on shelves and back in purses, thanks to Allendale Pharmaceuticals of New Jersey, which bought rights from the drug company that stopped making it in 1995. The sponge is 91 percent effective in preventing pregnancy--compared to the pill, which is 99 percent effective--but the sponge doesn't require so much advance planning, if you know what we mean and we think you do. * After a full year of testimony, the prosecution has still not finished presenting its case against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic before the International War Crimes Tribunal. Chief Judge Richard May has imposed a deadline of May for the prosecutors to finish, but that means Milosevic will get equal time--at least 15 months--to present his own case. So the earliest the case could be decided is September 2004, at which point all the lawyers involved will start writing their memoirs, which means the year 2006 will be the year somebody has to actually read them, which means the Ken Burns PBS documentary can't be expected until 2009. * The Federal Trade Commission released a study finding that 40 percent of weight-loss product advertising makes at least one claim that "almost certainly is false." The other 60 percent, however, proves that those rubber clamps on your stomach really do work. * Larry Sheffield, the chairman of Crime Stoppers of Greater Trenton, New Jersey, was arrested for cleaning out the Crime Stoppers bank account and absconding. Hey, the crime stopped, didn't it? * Thirteen dancers walked off the job at the Lido de Paris, reducing the high-kick quotient from 124 legs to a mere 98 but saving the equivalent of one Euro in costuming cost. * Hawaiian wildlife officials will capture the last three po'oulis--rarest birds in the world--and force them to watch Internet porn. * A beautiful brunette identified only as Kristina won the Miss Captivity beauty pageant, televised from the women's prison in Panevezys, Lithuania, and earning an audience share of two- thirds of the entire population of Lithuania. In the event that she's unable to fulfill her term, the first runner-up will break her arms. * Suif Jackson, a cousin of the late rapper Biggie Smalls and a bodyguard for Lil' Kim and her group Junior M.A.F.I.A., was sentenced to five years in prison for shooting an unarmed Brooklyn man for talking too loudly on a cell phone. At the time, Jackson was hanging out with Antoine "Banger" Spain and James "Lil' Cease" Lloyd, who agreed that the man was definitely talking too loud. * Columbia University may bail out of Biosphere 2, the expensive self-contained environmental habitat north of Tucson that duplicates living in outer space. Apparently the rents in outer space aren't any better than the ones in Manhattan. * A full 75 percent of American live-in girlfriends expect the guy to eventually marry them, according to a study in the Journal of Family Issues. The less startling statistic was that 80 percent of live-in girlfriends nag about it. * Barbara Asher, a dominatrix in Quincy, Massachusetts, better known as Mistress Lauren M, told police she panicked when a customer died of a heart attack after she put a hood on his head and strapped him to a rack. She pled not guilty, however, to charges that she then chopped up the man's body and dumped it. Besides, he might have enjoyed that. * Michael Packer, operations director at WLS Radio in Chicago, wrote a memo to staffers telling them to screen out "any old sounding callers," regardless of what they had to contribute to the program. "We do not want to air any callers who sound over 54," he wrote in the memo. "We never air anything (content or callers) that sounds older than our very broad target, which is 25 to 54. On occasion, when it makes sense, we will air content or callers aimed at younger demos, but not older demos." This would, of course, rule out the President and virtually every member of his cabinet, but that's okay--the guy on "The Bachelor" is available as a backup commentator. * Biologists say they're ready to grow human cells in a mouse, creating a part-human, part-rodent mutant creature that will allow them to see how well stem cells do at treating cancer, heart disease and Parkinson's disease. Although the research is being developed by Americans and Canadians, it will probably be conducted in Guantanamo Bay, so that the mice will have no way to claim citizenship or civil rights. * Ted Poe, a district judge in Houston, agreed to allow cameras in the jury room in the capital murder case of 17-year- old Cedric R. Harrison, accused of shooting a man to death in a carjacking. Jurors will be selected for ethnic diversity, lack of bias, and "Q" ratings. * Scientists unveiled new research showing that all dogs originated about 15,000 years ago when they were domesticated from wolves in East Asia. Every dog today comes from that original Chinese stock, explaining why they'll eat absolutely anything. * Scenes from our secure republic:

* On September 5, 2001, Marriott International Faxed a signed contract to the Midwest Federation of American Syrian- Lebanese Clubs, agreeing to host their annual meeting at the Marriott in Des Moines. On September 11, 2001, they canceled that offer and refused to reconsider, even after the organization complained that it was being discriminated against because its members are Arab-Americans. The Justice Department waded in, and eventually Marriott agreed to pay the excluded group $115,000 and issue a formal apology. We'll be interested to hear the wording, and wonder whether the phrase "Aw, hell, I guess you're not terrorists after all" will be used.

* Scenes from domestic life:

* When Jit Singh and Jaswant Kaur of Queens told their 15- year-old daughter to "Go to your room," they really meant it. The girl, Prabhjit Kaur, was locked in her room almost constantly for nine months, she said, until she escaped and called police from a neighbor's home. The reason for the confinement, said the parents, was that the girl was "wild"--and their assertion was proven by the brazen escape.

* Kazem al-Sahir, the "Julio Iglesias of Iraq," opened in Vegas at the Palms Casino, performing his hit song "Beauty and His Love," which is a ballad about a man who loves Baghdad more than he loves his girlfriend. He followed that up with an American tour which he hopes will prevent the equivalent of a box-cutter slash across his beloved's face. * Reverend Freddie Quinn, a minister and electrician in Ferriday, Louisiana, announced for the presidency after killing a snake in his neighbor's yard and deciding the dead snake was a sign from God to seek the office that had been prophesied for him six years ago. "God told me to run and trained me for the position," he said shortly before setting out on a national campaign tour with 10 of his 18 children, including his newborn son IAM Jesuschrist theSonoftheLivingod Jr. At each campaign stop Quinn will be distributing copies of his book, "Jesus Told the U.S.A. Bald-Faced Lie, I Got Proof Satan Has a Brother," and his first platform position is opposition to the war in Iraq. "I'm going to stop the war," he said. "It's two brothers fighting against each other." After an appearance at a religious meeting in Galveston, Texas, Quinn is headed for New York, where he has no idea just how welcome he'll be in the subways. * Construction is almost complete on a $30 million luxury tourist resort at Hitler's famous Eagle's Nest retreat in the Alps where he partied with Eva Braun, planned the invasion of Poland and wrote parts of "Mein Kampf." What makes us think they won't be booking Jackie Mason in the lounge? * Ulrike Meinhof, the good-looking one in the Baader-Meinhof gang, committed suicide in 1976, but her brain was secretly preserved for research at two German universities. (Those wacky Germans.) The family sued to get it back, and finally prosecutors said they could have it. So it was placed in a jar at Magdeburg University in eastern Germany and shipped to Stuttgart, where it was released into the wild. * Latest in the French government's continuing moral crusade is a 93 percent tax increase on profits from porno films. "Our aim is to make this sector financially unattractive," right-wing parliament deputy Charles de Courson told the newspaper Le Figaro. The special porn tax, combined with France's 33 percent tax on all corporate profits, will leave French pornographers with only a 7 percent after-tax profit. Could this really be the same country that created both "The Story of O" and "Emmanuelle"? Le roi est mort; vive le panique! * Brent Blake is building a 60-foot-tall lava lamp in downtown Soap Lake, Washington, in an effort to attract stoned tourists. * More than 2,700 former jail inmates in Floyd County, Indiana, will be paid $1000 to settle a lawsuit claiming that they were strip-searched for no reason. Now that's kinky. * A 75-year-old woman turned up at a clinic in Morocco complaining of abdominal pain. At first doctors thought she had a tumor, but when she underwent surgery to have it removed, they discovered it was the remains of a 46-year-old fetus. The pains were caused by an internal mid-life crisis. * More than 100 people have died this year on El Camino de la Muerte, or the highway of death, a single-lane dirt road in Bolivia that runs from the Andes to the jungle, featuring sheer cliffs, rock overhangs, waterfalls that spill across the road, and one place where it's only ten feet wide next to a 1,000-foot precipice. The government was supposed to have a new more modern road built by now, but construction is two years behind schedule, and besides, backpackers think it's cool. * Louisiana is paying four bucks for every nutria you can kill in an effort to exterminate 400,000 of the giant rodents and hopefully save the coast line. The state is losing 35 square miles of soil per year as the nutrias eat dune plants that hold the beaches in place. Do you realize what kind of combination we have here, though? Four dollars per dead animal, in a state where every family has guns, and where every kid gets a .22 rifle for his 12th birthday. We wouldn't recommend any crawfish hunts in the near future. * Truong Nam Cam, better known as "Nam Cam," is going on trial in Ho Chi Minh City for murder, gambling, extortion and fraud, but since he's considered the most powerful gangster in Vietnam, no lawyer will agree to represent him, even though his family has offered millions for counsel. If no one steps forward soon, the Ho Chi Minh City Lawyer Society will appoint him a lawyer, presumably by drawing black beans. Vietnam is, of course, the home of the rare toothless shark. * Mayor Jay Lee of Virgin, Utah, charges citizens $25 every time they get up to speak at a zoning and planning meeting, but if he decides the city is too busy, he simply cancels public comment sessions entirely. Remarkably, the city hasn't been sued yet, presumably because everyone is broke from trying to speak. * Michael Carroll, 19-year-old convicted felon recently released from prison and wearing a monitoring device to ensure he observed curfew, won $15 million in Britain's national lottery. He plans to buy a new lockpicking device and a set of brass knuckles. * Jacquelyn Clarkson, a member of the New Orleans City Council, is spearheading a crackdown on street performers in the French Quarter. Police are chasing away the famous tap-dancing children, busting unlicensed fortune tellers, and enforcing an 8 p.m. curfew for musicians. If they start arresting drunks on Bourbon Street, all is lost. * A German zookeeper barbecued five Tibetan mountain chickens and two Cameroonian sheep at the petting zoo in Cologne, but when he was caught and fired, he sued for not receiving his severance pay or being given six months' notice. A German court agreed to give him six months' severance, since he was interrupted before his planned spider-monkey dessert. * For $500 the town of Gurdon, Arkansas, will tear down your house and burn the wreckage. So far 20 people have taken up Mayor Clayton Franklin on his offer, because it beats counting cars on a Friday night. * The suburbs of San Jose, California, have been overrun with marauding wild pigs that devour lawns and chase children. Since Californians don't believe in hunting the pigs or even trapping them for use by dog food companies, it looks like the fabled Arkansas razorback has found nirvana. Most of the pigs are cross- bred from farm swine brought to the state by mining prospectors in the 1850s and Russian wild boars that were introduced for hunting by William Randolph Hearst in the 1920s and 1930s. Now if we could just slip in a few javelinas from South Texas, we could do some serious suburban-yuppie herd management. * Sisir Das, of the Midnapore district in Bengal, was instructed by the goddess Kali to drink the blood of sacrificial animals, so he sucked 207 goats dry. "I feel the goddess taking possesion of my body," he said, although he seemed confused by his wife's reluctance to kiss him. * Scenes from our secure republic: * Vasiliy V. Ryjov of Lewisboro, New York, lost his wife Tatiana in the World Trade Center attack, and on the anniversary of 9/11 he was informed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service that he is being deported back to his native Georgia. The reason: there's a fake marriage claim on the immigration papers filed for him by a shyster lawyer in 1993, when he didn't speak English and gave the man $4,000 to take care of his permanent residency. Although trained as an engineer, Ryjov has worked construction jobs in the United States to take care of his two sons. Four months before the death of his wife, she had won her own green card in a lottery. You can't be too careful about those grieving househusband terrorist cells. * Scenes from domestic life: * Benny Zavala of Oxnard, California, cut open his six-year- old daughter's guinea pig because he believed it was a robot with a government spy camera in the back of its head. Bruce Dern for the movie version?

* The annual post-Valentine's-Day "Love Is Tough" roundup of the world's romantic news:

George Skiadopoulos, a sailor from Komotini, Greece, killed and beheaded his girlfriend, a model named Julie Scully of Mansfield, New Jersey, and was sentenced to life in prison by a Greek court. The sentence was later reduced to 23 years, with parole possible in five, because he told the judge, "It was a moment of intense passion." He just lost his head.
Robert Irizarry of New York City broke up with his girl- friend, Rosa Dela Cruz, but forgot to get the key to his apart- ment back. A month later, Dela Cruz went to his apartment, let herself in, and found his new girlfriend, Rena Cuadrado, cleaning up. An argument ensued and the old girlfriend butchered the new girlfriend by plunging a kitchen knife into her several times. Robert must be, like, really hot.
Allan E. Cheese of York, Pennsylvania defecated on ex- girlfriend Gale Lee Baum's mattress, replaced the sheets, and hid fecal matter all over her house, then left a note reading "Eat it and die." Everyone's hoping they get beyond this and get back together.
Arthur Pratt of Modesto, California, told his wife Kelli he was too tired to have sex, so she bit him to death, police say. Enraged by his refusal, she jumped him and took two huge chunks out of his chest, then continued to munch on him while he dialed 911 and told the operator what was happening. By the time cops arrived, it was too late--she was already on the dessert course.
Lesbian lovers Vanessa Santiago and Patrice Culcleasure were taking a bubble bath together in Patrice's Brooklyn apart- ment when they started arguing over a man Vanessa was having a relationship with. According to police, Vanessa accused Patrice of trying to seduce the man away from her, and became so enraged that she slashed Patrice with a boxcutter, then used an electri- cal cord to strangle her to death. She then placed the body in a shopping cart, wheeled it to her Chrysler Sebring, asked a friend to help stuff it into the trunk, then drove to her father's home in Philadelphia, presumably leaving a trail of soap bubbles fluttering behind her.
Ramarine Ramdeholl sneaked into his estranged wife's Queens apartment, hid in the bathroom, and waited for her to come home from a date with her new boyfriend. When Geetanjali (Seema) Lall, the wife, entered the house with the boyfriend, Ramdeholl pounced on her and stabbed her several times in the back and chest with two knives, while laughing, as the boyfriend ran into a bedroom. Her father, Siwnarine Lall, heard her screams from his upstairs apartment, ran down, tackled Ramdeholl, but it was too late--not only had he killed his wife, who was undergoing cancer treatments, studying for a GED, and planning to start a new job at Home Depot, but he plunged a knife into his own chest. Lall's two children, aged 5 and 6, slept through the whole thing, but if I were the boyfriend, I wouldn't get too close to them 10 to 15 years from now.
John Brunson picked up his three-year-old daughter Mary Elizabeth for his weekly custodial visit, drove her in his Dodge pickup to his Lemont, Illinois, home, and, with the truck parked in the garage and the motor still running, shot her through the head, then killed himself. It was apparently a way to make good on the promise he'd made to his ex-wife Kathy, having told her eight months earier that she'd "better get a black dress." Now maybe in the future Kathy will shop when she's told to.
One-legged Marcellus Graham of Brooklyn tried to drown his wife, Bashanie Dawes, in a bathtub by choking her with a telephone cord and slapping her face. Ten days later she reported the crime, and Graham was jailed. He managed to raise $500 bail by selling his car, then went to his wife's apartment the same day and attacked her again, chasing her down the stairs, dragging her back to the apartment by her feet, and losing his prosthetic leg in the process. Neighbors called police, who broke down the door to the apartment to find the wife with multiple stab wounds in her chest, stomach and arm and Graham holding knives to her back and chest. "I'll pull the knife from her back, but then I'll stab her in the heart," Graham told the cops--right before taking a life-ending gunshot to the chin. Handicapped rights only go so far.
Frank Salinas of New York City started harrassing his ex- girlfriend in 1985 and spent a year in jail for sending threaten- ing letters and mailing lewd pictures to her bosses at Saks Fifth Avenue. The girlfriend, Mary Ann King, agreed to start seeing him again after he got out, knowing that he was seeing a psychiatrist. In 2000 he was committed to an asylum after a psychotic breakdown, but King hired a lawyer to get him out. A month later he stabbed her 16 times in what his lawyer called "a mad frenzy," then called 911 and reported her death. Does he get all that therapy money back?
After Grady Brinkley of Toledo, Ohio, was nabbed by cops for an armed holdup at Rick's City Diner, he formulated a fool- proof plan in jail. He would get his girlfriend Shantae Smith to post his bond, then he would kill her and take her ATM card, which would give him enough money to get out of town and avoid prosecution. The first part of the plan worked--she posted bond, then he beat her, strangled her, and slashed her throat. He bought a Greyhound ticket to visit his mother in Chicago. Then he tried to withdraw money from his girlfriend's ATM 13 times without success. He took the bus to Chicago anyway, only to find some FBI agents knocking on his mother's door as well. Where did he go wrong? Oh yeah--he told his cell mate what he intended to do. Other than that, good plan.
Kristin Rossum, a toxicologist for the San Diego County medical examiner, was afraid her husband Greg de Villers was going to tell her superiors that she was addicted to methamphetamine and having an affair with a supervisor, so she fed him the painkiller fentanyl and then claimed he committed suicide. Unfortunately, the whole love affair thing didn't work out for her.
When Zabdiel Yara of Brooklyn found out that he wasn't really the father of his childhood sweetheart's infant daughter, he didn't take it well. Two weeks later the sweetheart, Erica Alvarez, as well as the infant daughter, Yafresy, as well as Alvarez' 2-year-old son Damaurys were all found bound, slashed and burned in their apartment. Unfortunately, Zabdiel's blood line is not likely to be extended now.
When Yelitza Morales of the Bronx got a call from her estranged common-law husband, Rasheem Anderson, asking her to come to his home in Yonkers, New York, to accompany him to the doctor, she agreed--and was never seen again. The reason she was never seen again, Anderson eventually told cops, is that the couple started arguing over their 3-year-old son, he punched her, and she fell and hit her head. Police were a little skeptical about the total veracity of that story, though, when he told them what he did next: dragged the body into his living room, butchered it with a meat cleaver and a razor, and stuffed the pieces in plastic bags. He then recruited a friend to help him stash the body parts in trash bins and garbage cans all over town. Unfortunately, you can't even trust your best buddies not to eventually talk about those late-night body-part-removal runs.
Bernard Harrigan, a print shop owner in Brooklyn, got tired of the divorce fight with wife Carol, mother of his two children, so he offered $75,000 to a 16-year-old boy who did odd jobs in his shop to kill the wife either by shooting her or pushing her down the stairs. He took the kid on a shopping trip for the hitman's clothes, boots and gloves, but the kid already had all the accessories he needed in the form of a police wire. Daddy won't be home for Christmas.
Elizabeth Ramirez of New York's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood was shot in the head in 1979, leaving her blind, paralyzed, and demented for the next 23 years. Her four-year-old daughter Angela had seen a man come into the apartment, take a gun from a briefcase and open fire, but could never identify him for police. When the shooting victim finally died in October, the city medical examiner ruled it a homicide--and Ramirez' common- law husband Carlos Lozano stepped forward to say that he is the one who shot her. The gun went off accidentally, he said, as he was trying to fix it for a friend. All together now: oooooookey dokey.
After numerous arguments with his girlfriend, Alonzo Miles of Brooklyn carved her up with two steak knives, police said, while her 6-year-old son slept in the next room. Miles' rap sheet included grand larceny and beating a man to death with a lead pipe, but Katrish Session--his current girlfriend, now dead-- apparently went through a period of thinking he was cute.
Eric Rose of Hauppauge, New York, told police that his wife Wendy committed suicide with a .38-caliber revolver--by shooting herself three times, including once in the back. She was probably depressed from finding out two days earlier that she did not have a suspected brain tumor and was in perfect health. Also, the cat ate his homework.
Rabbi Fred Neulander of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, hired two men to bludgeon his wife to death so he could romance a Philadelphia radio personality. At his congregation, M'kor Shalom, they don't really have a service for this.

* Charles Laverne Singleton, who sits on Death Row in Arkansas, will be given an anti-psychotic drug until he's sane enough to execute, thanks to a ruling by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Since the Supreme Court has already ruled against the execution of stark raving mad lunatics, Singleton will be gradually brought through stages, from raving to clinically deranged to psychotically depressed to mad simple to mildly crazy to severely confused to merely disoriented. At that point he can be safely disposed of as a man who should have known better. * Several thousand anti-war protesters turned out in Munich as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told France, Germany and Belgium that they were being WIMPS on Iraq and threatening the long-term viability of NATO. Of course, all three countries are well known for never being involved in any wars. * The lower house of the Russian Parliament passed a law banning obscene language. Yes, we said Russian. * Feminists gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to protest against genital mutilation, arguing that it hurts. * Melissa Trinidad spanked her 7-year-old son in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, after he threw a temper tantrum over a toy he wasn't allowed to have. Busybodies reported the woman, resulting in charges of domestic assault and battery and the temporary loss of custody of her child. The next time he does something like that, Trinidad told the court, she promises to read him his Miranda rights and summon a lawyer to represent him before a toy-purchase arbitration panel. * Scientists in Boston successfully grew live teeth in the laboratory, raising the possibility that in the future dentures will be replaced by implants. As news of the discovery spread, legal experts quickly filed lawsuits to exhume the bodies of Morton Downey Jr. and Liberace. * Leonard DiCaprio and a "posse" of six friends surrounded singer/actor Roger Wilson, attacked him, and broke his larynx, according to a $45 million lawsuit. The incident began when Wilson and his girlfriend, actress Elizabeth Berkley, attended the premiere party for "The Man in the Iron Mask" in March 1998. DiCaprio and friend Jay Ferguson sent a publicist to invite Berkley to party with them while Wilson was in another part of the room. Later Wilson called Asia de Cuba, the restaurant where DiCaprio and friends had gone, at which point Ferguson launched "an expletive-filled tirade which concluded 'You don't know who you're dealing with . . . if you don't f---in' like it, why don't you come down here and tell us to our face,'" according to the suit. Wilson did exactly that. When he arrived, Ferguson challenged him to a fight. Wilson tried to leave peacefully, he claims, but DiCaprio "turned to his posse and shouted, 'We'll go kick his ass!'" The posse did indeed follow him outside, where someone "struck Wilson with a blindside blow to his throat," the papers said. Singing career over. Don't mess with the king of the world. * Two scientists estimated that human activities will soon wipe out anywhere from 22 percent to 47 percent of all known plant species in the world. Nigel C.A. Pitman of Duke University and Peter M. Jorgensen of the Missouri Botanical Garden reported in Science magazine that most of the soon-to-be-dead species will be in the tropics, where global warming and the destruction of the rainforest for farming aggravate the loss. In Ecuador, fully 83 percent of all species are threatened. The figures are a little misleading because they include plant species that we could do without, including crabgrass, poison ivy and arugula. * Aubrey and Kathleen McClendon donated $5.5 million for a new dormitory at Duke University, but were not amused at the Gothic- style building's dedication when they discovered two gargoyles in their likenesses staring down at them. They demanded that the gargoyles be removed, and Duke quickly complied. The university will now presumably shelve its plans for a tower featuring a hunchback bell-ringer named after the McClendons. * Four producers of the video "Bumfights: A Cause for Concern" were indicted in San Diego for various felonies including "conspiracy to solicit an assault with deadly force." "Bumfights" is the video popularized by Howard Stern in which homeless men fight each other and perform dangerous stunts like smashing their heads through windows or riding down stairs in shopping carts. In one famous scene, a man rips his front tooth out with pliers. More than 300,000 copies of the video have been sold, but business went south when detectives in La Mesa, California, recognized two local homeless men from the video, including one who suffered a broken ankle during a fight. The upcoming trial will center around the issue of whether the bums wanted to fight or not--because bum raps are a cause for concern. * Edward J.K. Johnston, a lieutenant in the Confederate Navy, was dug up and moved from Ayer, Massachusetts, to Fernandina, Florida, 139 years after he died in captivity at Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. Johnston had been taken captive on June 17, 1863, after his ironclad blockade runner, the CSS Atlanta, was captured off Savannah, Georgia, by the USS Weehawken and USS Nahant. He'll be reburied next to his wife Virginia and two of their five children, after which there will be no more Confederate soldiers or sailors known to be buried in New England. Massachusetts residents are grateful to the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who made the reburial possible, because those Salem witch ghosts are bad enough, but those rebels were hell. * Kudzu, the creeping plant that has devoured much of the South, has turned up on a Chicago Transit Authority parking lot in Evanston, Illinois--farthest north it's ever been found. The vine-bearing plant, which kills other plants and trees by blocking sunlight, will be attacked by the Chicago Botanic Garden with exterminating chemicals in an effort to drub the shrub and keep the north safe for gardenias. * Picasso's "Monkey and Her Child," a sculpture of a bronze baboon holding her baby, was auctioned in New York for $6.7 million, a record even for Picasso. The buyer wished to remain anonymous, because simian-loving millionaires can't be too careful. * Amnesty International reported that two-thirds of all minors in the world executed by the death penalty are from the United States. Only two countries have refused to sign the United Nations convention on the rights of children--the U.S. and Somalia--which bans executing children under the age of 18. In the past decade, the only other countries to execute children are the Congo, Nigeria, Yemen, Pakistan and Iran. Pakistan and Iran have since abolished the execution of minors. President Bush said the report made him grouchy, and called for the execution of its author. * The use of Ecstasy could lead to neuron damage that brings on Parkinson's Disease, announced a researcher at Johns Hopkins University. Squirrel monkeys and baboons were injected with shots of Ecstasy in a pattern that resembles drug use at all-night raves, and it caused damage to dopamine-producing neurons. Then again, any Parkinson's sufferer at a rave would get a big hug. * Scenes from our secure republic:
* Antiwar demonstrators were denied a parade permit to march past the United Nations. Federal Judge Barbara S. Jones ruled that the protesters weren't really being discriminated against because the city provided them with a place to hold a demonstration, five blocks north of the U.N., and besides, we don't really pay attention to all that stuff about public streets and sidewalks anymore. J. Edgar Hoover longed for these kinds of judges. * Scenes from domestic life:
* When five-year-old Rosario Ladino had an accident and messed her pants, her mother Eva Campos of Queens was so enraged that she beat her with a shoe, then took her into the shower and forced her head under the water until she choked. She then dragged the little girl by her hair into the living room and left her beside a couch, because, says Rosario's young brother, "my mother thought she was sleeping." In fact she was dead. The girl obviously needed to learn self-control. * The United Nations Security Council agreed that Saddam Hussein is not a nice man. * The space shuttle Columbia crashed at 9 a.m. Saturday. Three hours later, CNN's chief news anchor Aaron Brown teed off in the Bob Hope Celebrity Golf Tournament in Palm Springs. Four hours after that, he started "monitoring" CNN coverage from his hotel room. Thirty hours after that, he was behind his anchor desk in Atlanta, ready to roll. Brown is being groomed to cover chess tournaments. * The Minnesota State Band, 105 years old and the only state band in the country, was devastated by Governor Tim Pawlenty's decision to cut its annual budget as he struggled to reduce a $4.56 billion deficit. The band, which opens every concert with a rousing rendition of "Hail! Minnesota," normally receives $7,000 per year, but for 2003 will receive only $6,700. That third tuba has to go. * A total of 265 passengers started throwing up on a Princess cruise ship in the Hawaiian islands, causing the last five days of the cruise to be canceled. Since the last attacks of gastrointestinal viruses occurred six time zones away, in Florida, investigators are now considering the possibility that cruise ship food is just that bad. * Attorney General John Ashcroft overruled prosecutors in dozens of cases and told them to seek the death penalty in spite of the prosecutors believing the government should seek life in prison only, as part of his new "no muss, no fuss" policy. * A New York jury awarded Charles Bell $11.175 million in his civil suit claiming Leona Helmsley fired him because he's gay. We would give you the complete blow-by-blow of the trial, as reported in The New York Post, but the sleaze is already dripping onto our shoes. * Ed Rosenthal, who grows marijuana in an Oakland warehouse for use by the seriously ill, was convicted on federal drug charges even though he was not violating the laws of either Oakland or the state of California, which permit medicinal marijuana use. Now he faces a minimum of five years in prison, thanks to the Justice Department, which believes the weed should be eradicated entirely and refuses to give in to the voters of California, who approved Proposition 215 in 1996, allowing for marijuana as a medicinal pain-killer. This indicates that John Ashcroft may be a man who watches "Reefer Madness" for the message. * Imagine. Phil Spector, creator of the Wall of Sound, lost that lovin' feelin' and was picked up for murder at his castle- like compound in Alhambra, California. The gunshot victim, B movie queen Lana Clarkson, apparently wouldn't let it be. * Most of the doctors in New Jersey went on strike to protest the cost of malpractice insurance, holding signs with slogans like "When your water breaks, call your lawyer." The doctors blamed lawyers for the problem, saying they bring too many frivolous suits. New Jersey lawyers blamed insurance companies for the problem, saying the insurers lost too much money speculating in the financial markets. New Jersey insurance companies blamed patients for the problem, saying they get sick too much. * Thirty-five thousand fans showed up at dawn on Gobbler's Knob for the 117th annual Groundhog Day celebration in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Official groundhog Punxsutawney Phil did see his shadow, thereby prognosticating six more weeks of winter. Phil then added that he thought the Bill Murray movie sucked. * A study by the Palo Alto Medical Foundation revealed that cheerleaders are being injured in record numbers, most often when they're thrown up in the air by a partner who fails to catch them. Last year there were 25,000 emergency-room visits by cheerleaders, a fivefold increase since 1980, with the most common injuries to the ankle, followed by the knee, hand and back. Head injuries are considered redundant. * A 63-year-old British woman suffered a blood clot and torn leg muscles after being squeezed by an obese woman in the seat next to her on a London-to-Los-Angeles flight. Virgin Atlantic has agreed to compensate the squash victim, as well as to install emergency liposuction devices in the arm rests of all trans- oceanic flights in the future. * Dominican drug dealers hid 21,000 Ecstasy tablets in a framed print of Rembrandt's "Night Watch" to get the tablets from Amsterdam to New York, according to the DEA, announcing the arrest of 20 people for trafficking. The undercover agents who broke the case shared a group hug. * Turpal Yakhyayev, chief viticulturalist for the Chechnya wine industry, says Chechens will harvest 10,000 acres of vines this year, including the popular Chateau de Grozny, which is explosive on the tongue, with an intriguing aftertaste of pulverized marble. * Pool halls were banned in Uzbekistan after Tashkent city spokesman Dilshod Nazirov said they were a public nuisance. "When you go to a billiard club," he said, "there is thick cigarette smoke, the smell of alcohol--is this a sport?" It was not immediately clear which Uzbek agency was responsible for the ban, but suspicions were aroused when it happened just two weeks before the arrival of the road company of "The Music Man." * The owners of Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey announced a scientific project intended to identify the thousands of individual chemical compounds contained in each bottle. Officials at Brown-Forman Corporation are quick to point out that they don't intend to change the recipe, but they do intend to find out whether ten-year-olds are throwing nickels into the vats. * Michael A. Wilkins, an Indianapolis lawyer, had his law license suspended for 30 days by the Indiana Supreme Court because he criticized a lower court opinion in an appeals brief. "The opinion," Wilkins had written in a footnote, "is so factually and legally inaccurate that one is left to wonder whether the Court of Appeals was determined to find for [the defendant] and then said whatever was necessary to reach that conclusion." It was not the first time Wilkins had been caught expressing opinions. * England applied to reopen the market for endangered green turtles so that tourist souvenirs can be made from their shells in the Cayman Islands, where the wild population has been wiped out by illegal hunting. Not to worry, the Brits told the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, because the only shells sold would be from turtles nurtured in captivity at the Cayman Turtle Farm. After all, should every ashtray collector suffer because of the irresponsible actions of a few? * Spain canceled a state dinner for President Khatami of Iran after Khatami refused to sit down at a table where wine was served. Since Spanish state protocol calls for Spanish wine at every state occasion, as a sign of respect for history and tradition, the result was a protocol standoff between the two governments. Khatami's spokesman cited "religious reasons" for his refusal to tolerate the wine. Excuse us, but didn't the Persians invent wine? * Scenes from our secure republic:
* A nosy passenger on a British Airways flight from Baltimore to London overheard two men talking about something they'd been "planning for six months," so he alerted the cabin crew and the plane was escorted by two Royal Air Force Tornados to Heathrow Airport. The men, a father and son, were detained but released after police determined that they were planning a family reunion. * Scenes from domestic life:
* Theodore Moody of Sweeney, Texas, shocked his 8-year-old stepson with a 100,000-volt stun gun after the boy missed the school bus. The theory that this causes a child to run fast enough to catch up to the bus proved invalid. * A New York federal judge threw out a lawsuit against McDonald's charging that the hamburger chain was responsible for making two teenage girls fat. The girls had been eating all their meals at McDonald's and were under the impression that this diet would lead to Olympic athletic careers. * A new language law in Romania forbids all American slang in public discourse, so that, for example, the word "hot dog" may not be used. Street vendor signs will have to advertise the sale of "a kind of sausage in a kind of roll." Most Romanians think the law is a kind of excrement emerging from a kind of male farm animal. * Rudolph Giuliani and his consulting firm were paid $4.3 million to bring law and order to Mexico City with his famous "zero tolerance" enforcement plan that targets "quality of life" crimes. First new policy: get the Chiclets sellers off the streets. * Astronomers decided that Pluto is not a planet after all, and the Hayden Planetarium removed it from its list of planets. Apparently it's just an iceball with delusions of grandeur. In related news, geologists decided that Lake Erie is not such a "great" lake, either. * Thousands of acres of grape fields in California's San Joaquin Valley were plowed under and burned after an oversupply of Thompson seedless grapes decimated the raisin industry. Do your part. Just three more raisins per day on your morning muffin could mean the difference between bankruptcy and mere despair. * The Italian government is sending inspectors to restaurants all over Europe to verify that so-called Italian restaurants are really Italian. If they determine that the menus are genuine, that the ingredients are from Italy, and that the cooking methods and service are all Italian, they'll award the restaurant a "Certificate of Authenticity." If not, they'll send Guido. * A grizzly bear mauled an animal-rights activist near West Yellowstone, Montana, after he surprised it and then made the mistake of running away. At the victim's request, the bear will not be shot, but will be sentenced to anger-management training. * Elite Models, which represents Cindy Crawford, Christie Turlington and Heidi Klum, sued two New York escort agencies using versions of the same business name, claiming it could cause confusion among the public. A Japanese businessman was reportedly furious after ordering all three. * The French government launched a crackdown on explicit sex on television and in novels while arresting the customers of prostitutes in an effort to return to family values. The latest call for moral uplift was made by the 12 mistresses of French cabinet members. * The Board of Commissioners in Zebulon, North Carolina, passed an ordinance banning public urination--but it's not a crime if no one sees you do it. This could get nasty in phone booths. * Yoni Cordon, working at the Kargher chocolate factory in Hatfield Township, Pennsylvania, fell from a platform into a seven-foot-deep vat of chocolate and drowned. Willy Wonka has no song for this. * In other fatal vat news, Jose Padilla of Lathrop, California, was found dead at the bottom of a 29,000-gallon fermentation tank at the Canandaigua Winery in Escalon. Padilla was one of several temporary workers hired to help out during the crush-harvest season. He was crushed but, fortunately for his family, not fermented. * In Japan, you can buy a toilet seat equipped with electrodes that shock your butt and measure your body fat, a toilet seat that glows in the dark, a toilet seat that raises automatically when an infrared sensor detects the presence of a human, a toilet seat that plays harp music or nature sounds, a toilet seat that blasts the air with heat and air conditioning, a toilet seat that measures urine sugar levels with a retractable spoon on a mechanical arm, and a toilet seat with a buttock-massaging water jet. We would list all the other automated Japanese toilets, but that would be anal. * Cheetos, Doritos and Tostitos will all have less trans fat beginning this year, and Frito-Lay will also introduce new Reduced Fat Cheetos. Now that's a SERIOUSLY conflicted consumer. * Animal-rights activists scored a major victory when they shut down the annual greased-pig contest at Farm City Day in Hendersonville, North Carolina. After 47 consecutive years of children chasing two greased pigs, Carolina Animal Action filed a lawsuit, and Henderson County Parks and Recreation Director Rick Harris said, "Oh, the hell with it." The pigs will now be taken to a safe haven and properly fed and cared for until they can be butchered for a barbecue. * You don't need eight glasses of water a day, concluded Dr. Heinz Valtin of the Dartmouth Medical School, and the most likely result of drinking that much water is "you're just going to need to go to the bathroom more," says Paula Trumbo of the Institute of Medicine's Food and Nutrition Board. In fact, you can chug so much water that it can be fatal, and furthermore, the water in coffee is just as good for you as the water from an Evian bottle. Can we go back to third-grade health class and sneer contemptuously now? * Whitney Houston was sued for $100 million by her father's company, which brokered her deal with Arista Records but claims to have never been paid. Whitney says money is not that important in family matters, because "I ee-yi ee-yi will always love yew!" * Thomas Sypniewski was suspended for three days from Warren Hills Regional High School in rural New Jersey for wearing a T- shirt to school with Jeff Foxworthy's "Top 10 Reasons You Might Be a Redneck Sports Fan" written on it. The school claimed the shirt constituted racial harassment, but the Third Circuit Court of Appeals eventually supported Sypniewski's right to make redneck jokes, especially when they're directed against yourself (Sypniewski is white). Court decisions are pending on the right of third graders to yell "Liar, liar, pants on fire" in a crowded theater. * Daytona Beach, Florida, passed an ordinance requiring women to cover at least one-fourth of their breasts, and both sexes to wear clothing on at least one-third of their buttocks. This already sounds like some very precise computations are going to have to be made by city police officers, but the chief will issue protactors and tape measures to any cop on beach duty. Flat- chested women have already threatened to protest the law, saying it's unfair because it's not always clear just exactly where the breast begins. * Gowhar Kheirandish, a prominent Iranian actress, was arrested for kissing a director on the forehead while giving him an award at a film festival. Iranian authorities suspect that she may have used a little tongue. * Next September Seattle will vote on a 10-cent tax on espresso, leading to hopes that those people will calm down. Yes, we know how much you hate newcomers. * Scenes from domestic life:
* First Catalina Cabassa, a researcher at Memorial Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center, was found dead in her Queens apartment from three stab wounds to the chest and neck. Since she had filed three domestic incident reports against her husband, Robert Cabassa, police naturally went looking for him--and found him 23 days later, calling a TV reporter from a pay phone in East Harlem. The husband's explanation: his wife "walked into his knife." Three times. Apparently that deep gash in the neck came from her limbo-ing into the knife. * Scenes from our secure republic:
* An American Airlines flight took off from San Francisco, bound for Chicago, but was diverted to Salt Lake City after Maxim Segalov attempted to recharge a double-A battery with a cigarette lighter. Segalov, a native of Belarus studying at San Jose State University, was arrested for . . . uh . . . alchemy? * The prime ministers of France and Germany, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder, normally don't agree on anything, but they gave a big "no thank ya" vote to the Bush administration, saying they vote for a peaceful solution to the Iraq problem. Asked if he would proceed without the support of Europe, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "France and Germany aren't Europe. That's Old Europe." He then announced that military preparations are moving forward, with New Europe forces taking their positions-- paratroopers from Lichtenstein, tank commanders from Andorra, and Bohemian shock troops equipped with slingshots. * Baboons and monkeys were given overdoses of Ecstasy by Dr. George A. Ricaurte of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who reported that recreational use may lead to permanent brain damage and eventual Parkinson's disease. Critics blasted the findings, saying the monkeys died, not from the drug, but from the attempt to have sex and dance at the same time. * A 16-year-old boy in Roselle, Illinois, was hospitalized after soaking his shorts in gasoline and setting them on fire. He and two friends were taking turns lighting one another's shorts, then dropping to the ground and rolling around until the shorts were out. The game was so much fun that they did it several times, and the boy's shorts got permeated with so much gasoline it was impossible to put them out. "To the best of our understanding," said Elgin police officer Mike Sullivan, "it was some kind of challenge." The boy suffered second degree burns from the waist down, and learned a great life lesson--about polyester. * Old Forester, the famous southern bourbon launched in 1870, shipped only 135,000 cases last year, accounting for just 1 percent of the domestic bourbon market, as the prejudice against "brown spirits" continued in favor of vodkas and gins. As a result, the great-grandson of the inventor, George Garvin Brown IV of Louisville, is launching a huge ad campaign to make Old Forester hip again. Correct us if we're wrong, but doesn't Terry the Toad attempt to buy a bottle of Old Forester in "American Graffiti"? And then puke his guts out later? The new ad slogan could be "Are you tougher than Terry the Toad?" * Long Island cops arrested an 81-year-old man for soliciting prostitution. Dominick Salerno offered a woman in Coram, New York, $20 for oral sex, but she turned out to be an undercover cop who rounded up 40 johns that night. Dominick was the only one who wanted to talk to the press, however, saying that his wife died two months ago and he's never used Viagra and he needed a quickie and so what was so wrong with that? The county district attorney will prosecute him for the crime, and he'll probably have to pay a $165 fine--hell, that's eight quickies!--but we say: Free the Dominick One! * There's a shortage of women in the town of El Hoyo de Pinares, Spain, so local farmer Mariana Navas bused in 400 ladies from Madrid, offering them the potential of marriage to any of the 150 lonely bucks of the rural area. Since Spanish parties go on for a long time, we won't know the results until summer. * Four African lions were shot after terrorizing the town of Quitman, Arkansas. Damned immigrants. * The assembled justices of the Washington Supreme Court, bless their hearts, ruled that it's perfectly legal to take pictures of what's under a woman's skirt, as long as the woman is in a public place. Originally Sean Tyler Glas and Richard Lynn Sorrells had been convicted of voyeurism for taking photographs at a mall and videos at a food festival. But the Supremes overturned those convictions, reasoning that girls with no panties have viewable fannies. * Mayor Giancarlo Gentilini of Treviso, Italy, is trying to kick out all immigrants, and to show how serious he is, he bulldozed the shanty towns of migrant workers, used the police to drive immigrant squatter families into the streets, ordered all park benches removed to stop African immigrants from using them for picnics or sleeping, and now says he wants to ship foreigners home in "lead-covered railway wagons." He also suggested that local rabbit hunters occasionally take out a black or a non- European so he won't have to deal with them anymore. If they were filming "Roman Holiday" today, Audrey Hepburn would have to wear a bullet-proof vest. * Two Scottish researchers--Barry Jones of the University of Glasgow and Ben Jones of St. Andrews University--proved that only one or two drinks makes the opposite sex 25 percent more attractive. One hundred twenty students from St. Andrews were asked to rank attractiveness of photos on a seven-point scale, then asked to rank them again after drinking. Their conclusion: alcohol stimulates the nucleus accumbens, the part of the brain used to measure facial attractiveness. Their secondary conclusion: the words "last call" stimulate the part of the brain that doesn't care who goes home with you. * The New York state legislature passed something called the Obesity Prevention Act. Presumably public signs will be placed on restaurants featuring a beer gut with a diagonal slash across it. * Stray dogs in Penza, Russia, are spray-painted with advertising slogans for local shops. But since spray-painting is such an imprecise art, most of the dogs appear to be advertising graffiti and Viagra. * Police in Huntington, New York, busted a piano store in a strip mall that turned out to be a massage parlor where more was tickled than ivories. * Police arrested 300 people at a James Coney Island in Houston for trespassing--while they were eating hot dogs and drinking INSIDE the restaurant. The next night 425 were arrested at a Sonic in the same neighborhood while eating hamburgers. In both cases, the proprietors had sworn out complaints so that the police could clear Westheimer Boulevard, where they are trying to crack down on illegal sport bike racing. Does Vin Diesel know? * In "Die Another Day," the latest James Bond movie, Agent 007 does not drink Smirnoff vodka. From the first time he ordered a medium-dry vodka martini, shaken not stirred, in "Dr. No" (1962), Bond had always preferred Smirnoff, but this time the product- placement deal went to Finlandia, which has relatively small sales in the U.S. but is big in Europe. Someone should ask Halle Berry which one smells better on Pierce Brosnan's breath. * Mormons replicated like rabbits over the last ten years, growing at a rate of 19.3 percent and edging out the Church of Christ, at 18.6 percent, and the Assemblies of God, at 18.5, for fastest-growing denominations in America. Fortunately, all three denominations believe the other two are going to hell. * Pastry shop owner Chen Zhengping of Tangshan, China, placed rat poison in the fried dough sticks, sesame cakes and sticky rice balls of a rival shop, causing 38 schoolchildren and soldiers to drop dead after eating breakfast there. Because Communism has no real way for individuals to sue, plaintiffs attorneys all over the western world wept and gnashed their teeth. * Scenes from our secure republic:
* When Steven Feuer started behaving erratically on a Delta flight from Atlanta to Philadelphia, two U.S. air marshals got up from their seats in first class, confronted the disoriented man, then--when he refused to remain in his seat--handcuffed him, moved him to first class, and restrained him in a seat next to Dr. Bob Rajcoomar, a retired Army colonel from Lake Worth, Florida. One of the marshals then pulled a gun, brandished it, and demanded that everyone remain in their seats, stay still, don't stand for any reason, keep arms and legs out of the aisle, don't visit the restroom, etc., obviously implying that gunplay could ensue. When the plane landed, Feuer was taken into custody- -and so was Dr. Rajcoomar! He was held for three hours and released, apparently because he had watched the incident "too closely." Once again, Dr. Rajcoomar is of Indian descent. Why is it always Indian guys? They're our allies! Important safety tip: if a terrorist ever sits next to you, avert your gaze. * Scenes from domestic life:
* Susan Mooney, a Wall Street computer executive who lives in suburban Crompond, New York, got tired of her seven-month-old son's crying, so she put her hand over his mouth and nose until he turned blue. It was postpartum depression, she told the authorities who locked her up for murder. So she postparted. * Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted 167 death sentences in one day, causing several members of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to require emergency medication. * Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees is now Staying Dead. * Steve Case resigned as chairman of AOL Time Warner, giving in to the angry shareholders who gathered outside corporate headquarters clad only in barrels. * Danny Pintauro, erstwhile star of "Who's the Boss?," is now known as "Fire," a drag queen at Cape's Crown and Anchor Nightclub in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He's definitely the boss, honey. * The new lap-dancing ordinance in Las Vegas allows strippers to slide down a customer's leg as long as she doesn't touch his groin or his feet. That sounds like a fairly subtle and dexterous maneuver to us, requiring the dancer to maintain perfect balance while wearing six-inch heels, leading to the question--what standing does the excuse "Whoops! I slipped!" have in court? * Theoretical physicist Paul Davies of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, published research suggesting that Einstein's theory of relativity may not be correct, and that the speed of light may not be constant. It may, in fact, be slowing down. The breakthrough experiment in Davies' research came when he opened his refrigerator door and saw a millisecond of darkness prior to the light coming on. * Warren Anderson, the former head of Union Carbide wanted in India for the deaths of 20,000 people, is living in a million- dollar home in Bridgehampton, New York, 18 years after jumping bail. Anderson is charged with eliminating safety standards at a Bhopal pesticide plant in order to save $47 a day, then evading arrest after a disastrous leak caused thousands of deaths and 120,000 permanent deformities from the poison methyl isocyanate. Anderson originally signed a statement in India agreeing to appear before an Indian court, but says he hasn't gotten around to it yet. * Sydney Omarr failed to predict his own demise in a Santa Monica hospital, but his column has continued to appear in newspapers, complete with predictions about a future that somehow now seems beside the point. * Landlord Eric Grossnickle of Frederick, Maryland, kept telling one of his tenants, April Ritch, to get rid of her two cats. When she failed to comply, he took the cats from her apartment and blasted them with a 12-gauge shotgun. Charged with animal cruelty, he was found not guilty. The cats were apparently armed. * Umbro, the huge British sportswear company, introduced a new running shoe called the "Zyklon B," which is the name of the nerve gas used in Nazi concentration camps. When Jews complained- -duh--Umbro dropped the name but had no explanation. It probably sounded cooler than their original choice, "Black Plague #7." * Those anti-SUV commercials sponsored by the Environmental Media Association are supported by EMA members Gwyneth Paltrow, Chevy Chase, Barbra Streisand and James Brolin, all of whom . . . drive SUVs. * Construction workers excavating earth for roads and apartments north of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, found 2,000 soldiers in Napoleon's army, most of them in the fetal position, killed by frostbite or starvation. These are the guys who said, "Russia in the winter? No sweat!" * The volunteer firemen of Oceanside, New York, decided to raise money with "Catfight Babes" night at the firehouse, com- plete with oil wrestling, chocolate-syrup wrestling, and halter- ripping. The fundraiser sold out at $25 a ticket, but grumpy spoilsport commissioners for the Oceanside Fire District were pressured by women's organizations to douse it. What's the harm? You can always just hose everybody down. * Scientists at Harvard Medical School announced they have successfully grown rabbit penises in the laboratory, and that the test-tube peni "were able to copulate . . . and produce sperm," according to team leader Anthony Atala. The research is still in the testing stages, but could eventually be used to make hard- core pornography even more disgusting. * Kenneth Levine faces 32 years in jail on charges that he rented a room and a post office box in the Vermont town of Castleton so that his two daughters could attend Castleton Village School instead of Otter Valley High, where his son had been harassed and then expelled for bringing knives to school to defend himself. (His son's tormentors had threatened to "get" the sisters when they arrived.) The four felony counts are based around the idea that it cost Castleton $16,100 to educate Levine's daughters, who had no business being in a safe place without credentials. * A gay couple, Mel White and Gary Nixon, moved into a house across the street from the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. But here's the twist: White is a former minister from Los Angeles who ghost-wrote Falwell's autobiography. And you wondered about the lavender dust jacket. * Mary Griffin, a teacher at Hilliard Elementary School in Houston, taped shut the mouths of her 22 pupils so they would remain quiet in class. Griffin was permanently silenced, however, revealing just how terrifying a pre-teen can be. * Tamale-eating protesters marched on the town plaza in Oaxaca, Mexico, to protest the advent of the region's first McDonald's. The favorite local snack is fried crickets, and McDonald's has apparently made no effort to accommodate local culture with a McCricket, or even a McJiminy. * Stephanie Bell, a teacher at Williams Elementary School in Wilmington, North Carolina, was disciplined by principal Susan Hahn for using the word "niggardly" in class. A parent-- apparently an illiterate parent--called the school and accused the teacher of using a racial slur. The principal's motive? She's notorious for not tipping. * Half the mothers of sexually active teenagers believe their children are still virgins, according to a study at the University of Minnesota, which apparently receives public money to prove things known to every eighth grader. * Nicole Bass, the 6-foot-2, 250-pound wrestler who starred for Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Entertainment for four months, unsuccessfully sued the WWE for sexual harassment. It's not clear whether the incidents in her formal complaint involved male-to-female, female-to-male, male-to-male, or female-to female harassment, because this lady apparently checks all the boxes. * Starbucks opened its 3,453rd store, the first one in the whole state of Iowa. Early customers at the Des Moines location were heard to say, "You want how much for coffee?" * Scenes from our secure republic:
* Hady Omar, an Egyptian national, was picked up on immigration charges in Fort Smith, Arkansas, on September 12, 2001, thrown into a federal prison in Louisiana, denied access to a lawyer, forbidden from practicing his Muslim faith, and given frequent body-cavity searches, one of which was videotaped and witnessed by a crowd of laughing government officials, including females--all according to Omar's lawsuit against the warden and other officials of the prison. He was released on November 23, because those immigration charges were, well, uh, hell, they probably released him because he was such a nice guy. * Scenes from domestic life:
* Richard and Jennete Killpack of Provo, Utah, forced their four-year-old daughter to drink huge amounts of water as part of a "family bonding" therapy that would teach her to go to her parents for relief and comfort. When the overload of water lowered the sodium in her blood, causing brain swelling and death, it became obvious that she was a good girl who always did what Mommy and Daddy said. * President Bush defended his call for the elimination of taxes on stock dividends, saying it would benefit rich and poor alike. For example, a minimum-wage janitor working 36 hours a week at Wal-Mart would save about $100 a year provided he was holding at least 4,000 shares of Microsoft. * The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Yasser Esam Hamdi, the American citizen held in jail for 15 months with no access to a lawyer and no charges filed, can be held even longer and shouldn't be given an attorney because he looks funny. * The National Football League announced that officials made a mistake on the final play of the New York-San Francisco playoff game and that the Giants should have been allowed one more play. Instead they lost 39-38, even though they were within field goal range. The Giants players were philsophical, remembering the immortal lines of Grantland Rice: "When that Last Great Scorer "Comes to mark against your name, "He'll not record you won or lost, "But how you played the . . ." You're not buying this, are you? * Franz-Stefan Strambach stole a two-seater Super Dimona plane at gunpoint and flew over the skyscrapers of downtown Frankfurt, threatening to crash into the European Central Bank, because "I want to make my big idol, Judith Resnik, famous." Resnik was, of course, the American astronaut who died in the Challenger space shuttle explosion of 1986, and apparently her poster is quite an item in the schizophrenia wards of Germany. * Elders at Brentwood Baptist Church in Houston opened a McDonald's in the church community center. "A lot of us have children," explained Derrick Cyprian, chairman of the deacon board. "When we have different meetings and functions at the church, a lot of time you don't get to stop and get something to eat. This will make it more convenient." A McDonald's spokesman confirmed that this was the first time the company had opened a franchise in a church, but cited scriptural precedent from the book of McDeuteronomy. * Shanghai officials are cracking down on the tradition of wearing pajamas on the streets and have launched an anti- sleepwear crusade in the newspapers, warning the city that it needs to reform if it expects to be awarded the 2010 World Exposition trade fair. Older residents are so far unimpressed by the campaign, citing a divine right to wear jammies after sundown, and inviting comparisons with fat people in Minnesota malls. * More than a dozen people have been killed in riots and lynchings as Indian villagers make war against a Face-Clawing Monster that has been variously described as a space creature or a mutant bug that glows at both ends. Victims say the creature strikes only at night, scratching their faces while flashing blue, red and green lights. Terrified villagers sometimes kill people suspected of being the monster, and recently in Uttar Pradesh a mob tried to storm a police post near Lucknow, and the officers fired into the crowd, killing one. The victim didn't glow after being shot, but that might just be a trick. * The Detroit Project, brainchild of columnist Arianna Huffington, started running a series of TV commercials asking "What Is Your SUV Doing To Our National Security?" A man is depicted pumping gas while a voiceover says, "This is George. This is the gas that George bought for his S.U.V." Then, over a map of the Middle East: "These are the countries where the executives bought the oil that made the gas that George bought for his S.U.V." Then a picture of armed terrorists in the desert: "And these are the terrorists who get money from those countries every time George fills up his S.U.V." Of course, the commercials could have gone one step further and shown a specific terrorist named Hakim: "And this is Hakim, one of the armed terrorists who gets money from his country and wastes it by firing his AK-47 into the air every time George fills up his S.U.V." * German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who went to court last year to stop newspapers from speculating about whether he dyes his hair, was at it again, seeking an injunction against a newspaper that suggested he was not sleeping with fourth wife Doris Schroeder-Koepf and that in fact they were keeping separate apartments. His wife, by the way, is a former tabloid journalist, which means he may be simply refusing to sleep with the enemy. * After 50 years of studying the fin whale, scientists reported that the strange calling song of the male is an invitation to mate, and is always sung near large concentrations of food, like krill. (This is why ocean noise from commercial vessels, and especially sonar, can interfere with mating.) Essentially, the whale is saying, "If I spring for dinner, I'm expecting you to put out later." * A family pet called the Madagascar Giant Hissing Cockroach has been banned in Thailand after the government decided there are too many of them being imported and that, if they ever escape, they could spread disease. Cockroach-lovers protested the ban, suggesting that the problem could be solved by simple cockroach obedience training. * It is illegal in Germany to deny that the Holocaust occurred--as a former Nuremberg high school teacher found out when he was sentenced to three months in prison for writing a letter to a historian saying that the Nazis did not persecute Jews and that the Holocaust was "postwar horror propaganda." Thank God the Nazis didn't win, or else Germans might have lost their free speech rights. * Bronx Surrogate Bertram Gelfand was removed from the bench in 1987 after the New York State Court of Appeals disciplined him for carrying on a seven-year extramarital love affair with his court legal assistant, Irene Gertel. (Both were married at the time.) Last month the state senate named as a new county court judge in Westchester County . . . the legal assistant, now named Irene Ratner. Bless her heart, she managed to rehabiliate herself from those seven years of hot sex. * The Fish and Wildlife Service announced plans to put the beluga sturgeon on the endangered species list, which would make it illegal to import beluga caviar into the United States, where 80 per cent of the world's supply is sold. The beluga sturgeon is found in only one place in the world--the Caspian Sea--where it is harvested and exported for the amusement of people resembling beluga whales, also found in only one place in the world-- American restaurants. * Chicago is always festive at Christmastime:
* Six-year-old Alma Manjarrez of Chicago woke up on Christmas Day and found herself trying to stop a fight between her mother and her mom's live-in boyfriend David Hernandez. Hernandez didn't like the intervention, and both mom and daughter ended up being beaten, with the young girl locked outside in the freezing cold. The girl died shortly thereafter of blunt trauma to the stomach and hypothermia. It's a good thing Santa had already left.
* Shellie Pakula of Chicago spent Christmas morning asphyxiating her newborn baby, placing her in a plastic bag and putting her body in a garbage bin in alley behind her home, according to police. The next day sanitation workers balked at disposing of a frozen infant, and Shellie was cited for more than a recycling violation.
* Sungnam Lisowski of Aurora, Illinois, chose Christmas morning as the moment to register her disapproval of her husband John's desire for a divorce. She used a handgun to kill him, police said, then started shooting at her two daughters, 14-year- old Vickie and 12-year-old Christine. While Mom was pumping five shots into Vickie and reloading, Christine dialed 911 and summoned cops, sustaining her own wounds in the process. Mom used two bullets on herself as well, but both daughters and the mother survived, hopefully to celebrate a less eventful holiday in 2003. * Scenes from our secure republic:
* Sheik Mohamed Abdirahman Kariye, an American citizen, was arrested at Portland International Airport while attempting to fly to Dubai with his four children and brother. Security screeners tested his bags and founded nothing, then tested them a second time and found nothing, then tested them a third time and found "trace elements" of TNT. He was held in jail without bail on two felony charges: Social Security fraud. Yes, that's what we said. * As a result of the Philadelphia School District's new "zero tolerance" policy, 33 kindergarten students were suspended during the first three months of school, compared to only one the year before. Many of the hardened 5-year-olds showed no remorse. * MGM signed Sylvester Stallone for "Rocky VI," in which Rocky Balboa, suffering from Alzheimer's and confined to an assisted- care living facility, rips the IV out of his arm and wheels himself to Philadelphia for a shuffleboard match with Mr. T. * Kenneth Kaunda, who ruled Zambia for 27 years, was named the first recipient of the Lloyd G. Balfour African Presidents in Residence Program at Boston University, which includes money and a home overlooking the Charles River. The university hopes to entice other African presidents, including Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who is still in office but is rumored to be bored with the constant demands of evicting white farmers, and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, who is also in office but has expressed a craving for Lobster Newburg. * The European Court of Justice was shocked to find out that 25 percent of the so-called "Parmesan cheese" for sale didn't come from Parma at all, so they banned all products using the Parmesan name unless it can be proved that all the cheese comes from the well known Italian region. Attention Domino's: You're lying. * The New York legislature passed a law banning drawstrings on hooded sweatshirts that protrude more than three inches from the collar. The sponsors of the legislation say too many children are being killed and injured when their drawstrings get caught in playground equipment, cribs, cars and buses. Our question: how many people have ever actually put the hood of a sweatshirt over their head and tied it underneath their chin with the drawstring? Aren't we talking about a vestigial organ here? Little Red Riding Hood, in fashion terms, is dead already. * Animal-rights fanatics are upset that a Beijing safari park is sending two lions, two bears, a wolf and 12 other wild animals to Afghanistan as a goodwill gesture. "To send these animals to Kabul now flies in the face of everything the Chinese government has done for conservation," said John Walsh, international project director for the World Society for the Protection of Animals, in a Los Angeles Times interview. "It's not fair to the animals. It will subject them to a lifetime of cruelty and suffering." Confused Chinese zookeepers noted that Marjan, the lion blinded by a grenade, had become a symbol of the Afghan nation by the time he died in January, and that lions mean a lot to the Afghan people. It's a goodwill gesture, they say, and should hardly be controversial. We would sum it up this way. If you had to choose the countries that have the most experience taking care of wild animals--going back thousands of years--the first one would probably be China, and the second one might very well be Afghanistan. * That wacky Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco is at it again. The eminent jurists ruled that the Second Amendment doesn't guarantee the right to bear arms after all. In upholding California's ban on assault weapons, the court said that the Second Amendment is intended only to "maintain effective state militias" and that individuals don't have any right to guns. Of course, since a state militia at the time of the Constitution was a bunch of people who showed up in the town square with their personal guns, this would make all future militias in California a bunch of people who show up in the town square with their surfboards. * Jim Bob Hargrove will go on trial in Alpine, Texas, for castrating Clay Henry III, the mayor of Lajitas, Texas. Even though Clay Henry III is a beer-drinking goat, locals weren't amused when Hargrove became enraged that Steve Smith "borrowed" a beer from him and then wasted it on a goat. Hargrove spent the rest of the day boasting that he was going to go back and castrate Clay Henry III, and the next morning housekeepers found a goat testicle in the room of the condo where Hargrove was staying. Clay Henry III, who has been in office since 2000, recovered and is letting the authorities sort things out, although he's still drinking heavily. * Thomas Condon, a Cincinnati photographer, was sentenced to two and a half years in jail for taking pictures of dead bodies for a project on the cycle of life and death. The charge: eight counts of "abuse of a corpse." In pronouncing sentence, Judge Norbert Nadel of the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas said of the photos, "They're not art. They're sick. They're disgusting. They're disrespectful and really the worst invasion of privacy." His decision was presumably issued before the 29 Emmy nominations for "Six Feet Under." * Michael Meehan and Thomas Dysarz, a gay couple in Lexington, Kentucky, became the fathers of quadruplets when one of their hair salon clients, a 23-year-old woman, agreed to . . . oh hell, who really knows how they do it? * James R. Allen boarded a Boston-bound commuter train in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, and had a heart attack a few minutes later as the train pulled into a station in Newton. Rather than stop and call an ambulance, the conductor decided to keep running his route, even stopping to pick up customers at two more stations, before pulling into Back Bay Station in Boston where paramedics were waiting. The bad news is that Allen died an hour later, but the good news is that he would have been on time for work. * The San Jose Symphony declared bankruptcy, citing debts of $3 million and assets worth only $300,000, including the orchestra's sheet music, acoustic shell, office equipment, and an ugly oboe with a broken reed. * Angelina Jolie gave Billy Bob Thornton five vials of her blood when they got married, and now she wants it back, according to reports in the London Sun. She's afraid Thornton's psychic mom might use it to voodoo her hoodoo now that the marriage is doo- doo. * Environmentalists led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sued the nation's largest pig farmer for producing too much manure, but U.S. District Judge Elizabeth A. Kovachevich in Tampa threw the case out and made the plaintiffs reimburse Smithfield Foods, Inc., for its legal expenses, calling the case "frivolous" and "a waste of taxpayers money." The legal term for that is "hogwash." * When security guard Michael S. Elliston found a possum on a wall behind the Tustin Drug Emporium in Tustin, California, he beat it to death with a flashlight. A month later, Kirk Broomall of Santa Fe Springs, California, saw a possum in his backyard and shot it three times with a crossbow. The animal lived, with three arrows sticking out of its body, and when a neighbor saw it the next day, the neighbor told Broomall, who finished it off with a shovel and a pipe. Both men were charged with animal cruelty, with Elliston pleading guilty and Broomall being declared innocent by a jury. The result is a raging debate in Southern California over Possum Rights which, if it spreads, could cause political chaos in Arkansas, home of the famous seven-course dinner: possum and a six-pack. * The sprinkler system in Philadelphia's Verizon Hall burst into action while the Philadelphia Orchestra was rehearsing Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring," ruining a $75,000 Steinway grand piano and sending musicians scrambling for cover with their instruments tucked under any available covering. Conductor Christoph Eschenbach emerged remarkably dry, leading to suspicions that the prank was staged either by him or by a disgruntled third-chair bassoonist. * Scenes from domestic life:
* Marchello Sams of Chicago got tired of hearing the crying of his girlfriend's baby, 13-month-old Levante George, so he sat him on his lap and pushed his fist into the baby's abdomen. He then prepared a cocktail and watched TV while the boy vomited and became listless. The girlfriend returned to the apartment and took her child to the hospital, where he died of a stomach infection caused by a tear in his bowels. She's reconsidering the relationship. * Scenes from our secure republic:
* New York's Pennsylvania Station, busiest train station in the country, was evacuated because of a suspicious package. The package contained garbage. It was really scary-looking garbage, though, the kind you end up with after a Dunkin' Donuts binge. * At Christmastime, it's all about family:

Robert Wilson of the Bronx hired a hitman for $3,000 to kill the new boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend, but the hitman talked about the plot to his friend, who talked to his girlfriend, who was arrested on marijuana charges and told police what she knew. You just can't trust a hitman's friend's girlfriend anymore.
When Francisca Comparan of Bakersfield, California, told her 12-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son that they couldn't attend a party, the children beat their mom over the head with a frying pan and strangled her with an electrical cord, then stuffed her body in a storage closet, police say. Then, after all that trouble, they missed the party anyway.
When H. Beatty Chadwick, a lawyer in suburban Philadelphia, was divorced in 1995, the judge ordered him to pay $2.5 million to his ex-wife. He refused to pay--and has been in jail ever since. A federal judge ruled in January that he could finally be released after seven years, but that order was overruled by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which said that, as long as he has the money, "there is no federal constitutional bar to Mr. Chadwick's indefinite confinement for civil contempt." So he's back in the pokey, where his fingers have become permanently clenched around his ATM card.
Michael Passaro of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, was angry about a dispute over custody of his 2-year-old daughter Maggie, so he drove the family mini-van to his estranged wife's condominium, strapped his daughter into the carseat, doused the vehicle with gasoline, and set it on fire. He left a suicide note, saying he wanted his wife Karen "to live in pain for the rest of her life," but when the van exploded, Passaro jumped out and survived while his daughter burned to death. He pled guilty to murder, saying he'd rather be executed than spend his life in a cell, and a judge gave him his wish. His last words were reportedly "Nyah nyah nyah."
When Connie Wagner broke up with him, Joseph Stock of Elk Grove Village, Illinois, stabbed her 186 times to prove his love.
Raymond Boothe of Leavenworth, Kansas, decided his autistic 11-year-old son "had the devil in him," so he told his three other children to wait in his car while he dragged the boy into a roadside ditch and stabbed him in the chest and back with needle-nosed pliers, leaving him to die. The boy, who walked on crutches, was hit by a car moments later, ending his life, but apparently leaving the devil unharmed.
Jessie Rodriguez of New York says he became "grouchy" after his common-law wife Mary Vargas told him to get a job, so he choked her until she was brain-dead, then attacked her mother with an aluminum baseball bat, then started choking his 7-year- old daughter because she was crying and screaming too much about the assaults on her mother and grandmother. When the grandmother started to move, he gave up the choking and went back to work with the aluminum bat, but when the daughter said "Daddy, stop, why are you doing this?" he stopped. It's a good thing he was only grouchy; grumpy could have been nasty.
Katherine Garrido, a single mom from Richmond Hill, New York, fell in love with Paul DiLeonardo while they worked the 2000 census together. After two years together Garrido caught her boyfriend cheating and left a message on his answering machine, telling him she was dumping him despite his previous threats to kill her if she left him. For four days he begged her to take him back, then, while they were sitting in his Nissan Sentra, he pulled out a kitchen knife and stabbed her 20 times, making good on all his promises.
Alzheimer's patient Leatha Bledsoe of Peekskill, New York, was found dead outside her home after her son, Grant McClellan, called 911. Investigators found that her bedroom was kept bolted from the outside and was filled with human feces, and that she had not received proper care for pneumonia and lung infections. McClellan, who lived with her, was arrested and charged with second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and several other charges, but couldn't be tried in Westchester County--because he was a Westchester County prosecutor. Who was obviously a very busy man.
Quincy Martinez of Brooklyn got tired of her janitor husband, Jose Fernandez, so she asked her drug dealer boyfriend Gilberto Caraballo to get rid of him, police say. Caraballo and two friends picked up Fernandez in a van, telling him they were going to a cemetery to steal tombstones to use as countertops in Caraballo's home. Instead, Fernandez was shot several times in the head, wrapped in a plastic sheet, left in the van overnight, then dumped into a cemetery drain pipe. The van was torched, and then nine days later Caraballo gave his widowed girlfriend a $23,000 Volkswagen Jetta in her favorite color--green--and a necklace spelling her name in diamonds. No, she's not that good looking.
Louise Bancheri of Farmingdale, New York, called police after receiving an $800 ransom demand for the return of her missing husband James. Police found James and liberated him from the motel room he was sharing with two women. Apparently he was paying less than $800.
Rosario Musca of Lindenhurst, New York, became enraged when he was forbidden by a court settlement from visiting his grandchildren, so he went to their home in Massapequa Park wearing a hunting vest, carrying a rifle and a flare, with five cans of gasoline in his car. His son Dennis tried to keep him out of the house, but Musca fired two or three shots to break the glass door in the rear, then fired several more times at a door behind which the son was barricaded. Dennis Musca managed to help his two daughters, aged 10 and 16, escape from the house just as it caught on fire, but when police arrived, the grandfather refused to come out. The standoff continued several hours, with firemen not able to fight the blaze, until the house was completely destroyed and the grandfather dead. He had, however, firmly established his right to be in that house.
Rie Fujii, a Japanese citizen living illegally in Calgary, got tired of taking care of her two children, so she went on a road trip with her boyfriend and left them in the house--for ten days. Doctors say the 15-month-old boy and his three-month-old sister probably lapsed into comas caused by dehydration before dying. The mother got an eight-year prison term--about 800 fewer years than she would have received in the United States--and will be able to resume her swinging-singles lifestyle at age 32.
Samiya Haqiqi, a beautiful 24-year-old Afghan honors student at Quinnipiac University Law School in Hamden, Connecticut, went home to visit her parents in Queens, New York, and agreed to meet with her boyfriend, Fahid (John) Popal, in a shopping plaza, but only to tell him she had decided not to marry him. She was never seen again. Popal and his brother, Farhad Popal, moved to Fremont, California, after Haqiqi's disappearance, leaving behind a fistful of her hair in the transmission repair shop where Farhad Popal worked. Even though no body was recovered, a grand jury indicted both men for her murder, reasoning that locks of hair are not always keepsakes.
Louis Poveromo, one of those ex-boyfriends who won't give up, went to Jane Marie Russo's condo in Brooklyn, only to be told that she was involved with an old boyfriend and was not interested. At that point, claim prosecutors, Poveromo stripped her naked and stabbed her in the neck and chest until dead, then took everything he might have touched out of the apartment, including a tin of baked ziti. He ended up with a bite mark on his arm that match Russo's teeth. Nevertheless, a jury found him not guilty, buying his explanation that he had taken her on a date that night and left her just minutes before the crime occurred--even though he's been known to wince whenever someone orders ziti.
When teenagers stole a plastic Halloween decoration from his front porch, Peter Solomona of Buena Park, California, confronted the pranksters in the street, then shot and killed 17- year-old Brandon Ketsdever of La Palma with a .357 Magnum. Prosecutors claimed he did it in a rage. Defense attorneys said it went off accidentally when he banged the gun on Solomona's car. After three trials, a jury finally convicted him of involuntary manslaughter, and he received a six-year prison sentence. It wasn't clear whether the Halloween decoration would go back to Solomona's home, or whether he forfeited his right to the jack-o-lantern he worked so hard to protect.
John Harrison, a former FBI agent who worked for the fraud investigation unit of Blue Cross Blue Shield, asked his co-worker mistress and her co-worker new boyfriend to come into his office near Times Square, then opened fire with a Smith & Wesson semi- automatic and a Glock semi-automatic, killing them both. Apparently distraught over his future job prospects, he then turned the Glock on himself to complete the triangle.
Le Kenna and Shanicola Green of Missouri City, Texas, are teenage sisters suing their lesbian mother Kimla Green for emancipation, saying that she invites her lesbian lovers to their birthday parties and practices a "loose sexual lifestyle" that violates their religious beliefs. Le Kenna and Shanicola are Baptists, but Kimla is a confirmed Lesbyterian.