:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 5.23.2004 ::
:: So Weird ::
From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird
In May, in the latest blooming of the lawyers' class-action money tree, California law firms asked a court to approve $258 million in fees for their handling of a lawsuit against Microsoft Corp., amounting to $3,000 an hour for the lead attorney (who billed for 6,000 hours of his own time, even though three dozen lawyers from more than 30 firms had a piece of the case) and $1,000 an hour for administrative work, all for the following consumer bonanza: Each victim will get a coupon worth $5 to $29 toward the purchase of another Microsoft product (coupons that are often routinely ignored by consumers in these settlements, as not worth the bother). [San Francisco Chronicle-AP, 5-12-04]
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Government in Action
Although 50 countries (including Japan) have now banned American beef because of inadequate mad-cow controls, the U.S. Department of Agriculture not only has declined to order widespread testing but has even prohibited one farm, Creekstone (Campbellsburg, Ky.), from voluntarily testing. USDA said such conscientious testing would imply that America's entire 35 million yearly slaughters should be tested (which the industry says is too expensive, even though Japan requires universal testing for its beef). USDA said it aims to test only 40,000 cows, up from 20,000 for the last two years (although it has been unable for nine months now to document those tests in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by United Press International). [New York Times, 4-10-04; United Press International, 12-24-03]
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Can't Possibly Be True
Sweden's Parliamentary Ombudsmen's office in Stockholm, looking through some old environmental records recently, discovered that in 1986 a regional environmental court in Jaemtland province had denied a resort-development permit to a builder on the ground that the Loch Ness-resembling "Storsjoe monster" (serpentlike body, catlike head, first rumored in 1635) often "sighted" there had been declared endangered. Declared the ruling, "(I)t is prohibited to kill, hurt or catch animals of the Storsjoe monster species" or to "take away or hurt the monster's eggs, roe or den." [Washington Post-AP, 5-3-04]
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net
posted by me
:: 8:37:00 PM [+] ::
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