BY HARRY RING
One smart dog - Reiko, a veteran police dog, was kicked
off the Great Falls, Montana, force. "He's never bitten a
citizen, and he's never bitten a crook," complained the
chief. "It's always been an officer." Chimed in a captain,
"He's taking the action he thinks is appropriate.
Unfortunately, that's biting us."
Rolls Royce justice - In Scottsdale, Arizona, Edward Palenkas, a retired industrialist who drives a Rolls Royce was quickly apprehended and pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the hit-and-run killing of Christopher Turner, 11. Palenkas got five years probation. Plus a $20,000 donation to anti-drunk driving groups.
McFuture - Reporting on corporate gains in classroom promotion and advertising, Business Week told of a Florida elementary school where McDonald's sponsors a seven-week course to give kids a fix on the work world. Students learn how to design a McDonald's restaurant, and how a McDonald's works. Plus how to go about a McDonald job interview.
Serving the public - Unionists at Britain's state-owned BBC got pay increases averaging 2.8 percent. Meanwhile executive wages jumped as much as 39 percent. The director general will now receive 354,000 (US$531,000) plus benefits, including two cars and a chauffeur.
Another executive perk - A study of British civil service employees found that their risk of heart disease was 50 percent greater than that of their bosses. The researchers attributed this to a feeling of little or no control at work.
That will do it - "Someone who has used other people's money has an obligation to give it back .. because one cannot leave this world with a weight on his conscience." - Fernando Sáenz Lacalle, Archbishop of San Salvador, whose church was among those taken in a major bank swindle.
They canceled the debt! - The World Bank changed the name of its annual World Debt Tables to Global Development Finance.
A deadly system - Data gathered by university researchers showed that in 1992 some 68,800 people in the United States died and about 14 million others were hurt by or ill from work-related causes.
`Wanted' - A San Francisco Chronicle article said that when the World Food Summit met in Rome last winter, the chief U.S. delegate declared Washington could not support a declaration recognizing the right to food. Such a stand, she explained, would mean that the new U.S. welfare `reform' statute would then be in violation of international law.
Thought for the week - "Peter Middleton earns at least 1 million a year as European chief of U.S. bank Salomons. A former monk, he believes it is `immoral and unjust' to deny people the fruits of their labor." - The Guardian, London.