Some days, life hands you the perfect straight line. In this case, it was a business news report that McDonald’s was going to start selling “non-food items.”

Denmark pulls in the welcome mat, enacting an extraordinarily tight immigration law. This is in part thanks to the presence of a racist party in the new coalition government, but I wouldn’t absolve the rest of the government. For example, did anyone in the cabinet rebuke the leader of the Danish People’s Party for saying that Muslims have a taste for mass rape?

Britain is similarly moving to an instant-deportation system for those rejected for political asylum. On the other hand, they do now have the first ever black cabinet minister.

The Bush administration decided that the way to deal with failing Indian reservation schools run by the BIA was to privatize them, but stepped back after the obvious protests.

Colin Powell was on McNeil-Lehrer yesterday threatening India or Pakistan with worldwide condemnation if they start a nuclear war. Right, they’re not afraid of having Delhi or Islamabad hiroshimaed, but they’re terrified of “worldwide condemnation.”

Ever wonder where your old computers go when you throw them out? The answer was China, where these and other highly dangerous electronic components (“e-waste”) are stripped by little children without protective gear, and the drinking water polluted. Actually, China just banned the import of such products. The US is the only industrial country which didn’t sign up to a 1989 convention against exporting hazardous waste.

Speaking of which, Zimbabwe, though on the brink of starvation thanks to being run by an idiot, has refused an offer from the US of $9 million worth of maize, because the US would not certify that it wasn’t genetically modified.