This Week in the News... [14/12]

[Mr Biglesworth]

French police planted plastic explosives in a random
dark-blue suitcase at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris as
a security exercise, then failed to monitor the bag as a
conveyor belt rolled it to one of 90 planes with an
international destination. A police spokesman expressed the
hope that whoever finds the explosives will return them to
authorities.

Bernard Kerik withdrew from consideration to
replace Tom Ridge as head of homeland security after
discovering that a nanny he had employed may have been an
illegal immigrant for whom he may not have paid taxes;
questions also arose about his failure to report financial
gifts, including a $1,900 jeweled Tiffany badge he received
while New York City's police commissioner.

Scientists were warning men not to place laptop computers on their laps since overheating the scrotum can reduce fertility.

England's Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents urged people attending office Christmas parties to resist photocopying body parts
and dancing on desks, and to avoid flaming Christmas puddings at all costs.


The Vatican disapproved of a nativity
scene in Madame Tussaud's wax museum in London that depicted
David and Victoria Beckham, aka Posh Spice, as Joseph and
Mary, with George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and the Duke of
Edinburgh standing in for the three wise men. "There is a
tradition in which each generation tries to reenact the
nativity," explained a spokesman for the Archbishop of
Canterbury, "but oh deary me."

President Bush appointed attorney Gerald Reynolds to the
chairmanship of the Commission of Civil Rights. "I just
assume somewhere in my life some knucklehead has looked at
me and my brown self and said that they have given me less
or denied me an opportunity," he said, "but the bottom line
is . . . I am so insensitive that I probably didn't notice."

The FCC estimated that
99.8 percent of complaints about broadcast indecency were
filed by one conservative group, the Parents Television
Council, accounting for the exorbitant rise in the number of
complaints that chairman Michael Powell described to
Congress earlier this year, from 350 in 2001 to 240,000 in
2003.

A report
found that a federally funded program to promote abstinence
in schools has been teaching students that a 43-day-old
fetus is a "thinking person," abortion can lead to sterility
and suicide, touching a person's genitals can result in
pregnancy, and HIV can be spread by sweat and tears. One
book preaches the story of a knight who rejects a princess
when she becomes too opinionated about how best to slay a
dragon. The parable concludes: "Occasional suggestions and
assistance may be alright, but too much of it may lessen a
man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."
Scientists confirmed that men prefer subordinate women to
dominant ones.

Kenneth Starr was having second thoughts about delving into Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky.