The Tom Ridge color of the day is black: the horror, the horror.

An Australian lifesaving competition was disrupted by the arrival of 50 sharks. The competitors all ran away.

The US, not re-elected to the UN human rights commission last year, and deeply committed to human rights, has ensured that the next election is as open and fair as Zimbabwe’s, forcing all competitors to drop out. And fired the head of the commission, former Irish president Mary “Here’s to you” Robinson, for actually criticizing the US on civil rights.

Lloyd’s List will no longer refer to ships as “she” but as “it.”

The US is to provide $98 million to Colombia to protect Occidental Petroleum’s pipelines there. I forget, why was it a good idea not to raise the CAFE standards?

Peace Now says that 34 new settlements have been erected in the West Bank since Sharon took over.

On Thursday a man is to be executed in Texas without his final request being granted. 8 months ago his left leg was amputated and he says they’ve been delaying fitting him with a prosthetic all this time to save on the cost. The Cowboy Gulag strikes again.

The Pentagon says that Operation Anaconda was a complete success, although it refuses to issue any numbers supporting that claim. At first it gave numbers, but soon had claimed to have killed more people than it had said were there in the first place: Robert MacNamara’s 5 O’Clock Follies by way of Arthur Anderson by way of Katherine Harris. And it claims to have killed all of them, with only 10 of the estimated 1,000 having gotten away. Except they can only find 20 bodies. Well, they say, Muslims like to bury their dead, so those 10 guys who later escaped, must have first buried 970 bodies, yeah, that’s the ticket.