Lead Story
In May, over the opposition of state senator Joe Neal, the Nevada senate passed a bill prohibiting people from carrying guns while drunk. Neal argued that the bill would hurt activities of gun clubs, some of which permit drinking during target-shooting socials.
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In May researchers at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory proposed that certain bantam chickens could be raised in radiation-contaminated areas in Aiken, South Carolina, where there’s a nuclear weapons plant, without harming people who eat the birds, because the chickens supposedly rid themselves of any radioactive contaminants they ingest in about ten days. Said one researcher, “If . . . you call it radioactively cleaned meat and you put it on the [grocery] shelf for half price, I bet people in this country would eat it.”
In July Reuters news service reported that a dentist named Garrett in Leeds, England, had been fined about $300,000 in damages for unnecessary and painful dental work designed to boost his income. Over the course of several years one patient underwent at least 25 sessions that treated 13 teeth with 18 pins, ten crowns, and two root canals.
Vicente Vinarao, director of the bureau of corrections in the Philippines, complained in July that lack of funds was preventing him from carrying out his duties. The country has 54 people sentenced to die in a gas chamber, but no gas chamber. An emergency bill passed last year authorizes executions to be carried out by electrocution until a gas chamber can be built, but the electric chair was destroyed several years ago by lightning.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Shawn Belshwender.
