Raise the drawbridge--Beginning in 2003, motorists entering the heart of London will pay a $7.50 fee. They can, of course, park their cars somewhere and take the subway, famed for the quality of its service. Like one recent morning rush hour, four trains got stuck in a tunnel, trapping some 4,000 passengers for nearly two hours. Seventeen people were hospitalized from the 100-degree heat.

'Sorry about that'--In the Los Angeles County jail system, more than 2,000 inmates were held beyond their time between 1997 and 2000. This is attributed to faulty record-keeping and computer glitches. Those who file claims or lawsuits usually get a few hundred dollars. These add up to more than $500,000 a year.

Paddle-brained racists--In Mobile County, Alabama, 781 school children were paddled in a year. Black children are 49.5 percent of the pupils. They got 70 percent of the paddling. The county school board rejected a motion to end the practice.

Truly a capitalist solution--The chief brains at several national parks have come up with a brilliant solution to the problem of overflowing garbage cans in the parks. Provide more cans and waste facilities? No, something simpler and cheaper. Remove the garbage cans. Explained the superintendent at Cape Cod National Seashore: "If people don't see trash cans, they take their garbage with them."

Besides, they're only for fires--Tyco International will recall 35 million potentially defective sprinkler heads at an estimated cost of $200 million over a five-year period. A Tyco official shrugged off the $40-million-a-year cost as "negligible."

Yep--Since the collapse of the Soviet regime, a layer of well-heeled Russians have been staging grand balls in the palaces of St. Petersburg. At one shindig, a New York Times correspondent reported, the guests strolled across dimly lit grounds toward dessert and coffee at a summer pavilion, passing a group of groundskeepers and their families. "Even in the dark," the report said, "It was impossible to miss the sullen glares.... This is why we made a revolution, they seemed to say."

A candid title?--A web site apparently scooped up a publisher's remainder, with the book's price reduced from $25 to $7.50. The title: Investing Online for Dummies.

Chop and squeeze--Albertson, the second largest U.S. grocery chain, is shutting down 165 stores ending the jobs of an undisclosed number of workers. Top dog Lawrence Johnson, who recently switched from a top post at General Electric, said, "The environment I came from at GE is pretty notorious for ongoing productivity and continuous improvement. That's exactly what we're planning for at Albertson's." Or, in plainer English, more productivity with fewer workers.  
 
 
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