NEWS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE: PARDON ME, BUT COULD YOU SPARE ME SOME TAINTED BEEF

England may have found a sure way to end poverty on the island nation for good.

That's right, the government has decided to unload 10 million cans of beef on the nation's homeless and poor.

Since the linkage of mad cow disease in humans to tainted beef, the bottom has fallen out of the British beef market. So in an act of "charity" the Ministry of Agriculture is unloading beef on the poor.

Gee, thanks for the mad cow disease. While you're at it could we have a shot of that experimental botulism vaccine?

To Belize we go...

A former beauty queen in Belize is taking a complaint to court that she was roughed up by male police officers who beat her and made jokes about her because she was a woman.

She said she would fair better in a court of law. The judge presiding over the case might have said, "the shorter her skirt, the better her chances."

In other Belize news, two women were promoted to high ranking officials in the police department.

Yolanda Murray and Maureen Leslie were given the promotions after taking the oath, "I (state your name) do solemnly swear to beat women in public and humiliate them like all of my other fellow officers..."

Back to England we fly...

And from the file, story leads that could mean something else: The Electronic Telegraph reported, "The wife of Jasper Carrott, the comedian, has donated a kidney to her daughter in a life-saving operation, it emerged yesterday."

Well, for God's sake put it back in! Look for the new summer blockbuster "The Kidney that Purified London."

To the pages of the Southeast Missourian we go...

There's nothing more fun than the discovery of a cover-up in the tobacco industry.

Tobacco industry papers were released after a judge ordered them released saying they proved a "conspiracy of silence and suppression of scientific research."

The tobacco industry's law firm, Satan, Beezelbub, Lucifer and Smith said they are working on other ways to enslave people.

Smith later related that when he said he would do anything to pass his Bar examination, he really was joking.

One of the revelations was that the tobacco industry wanted to use the pop group "The Monkees" as a youth heroes ad campaign.

And what an ad campaign it might have been.

"Hey, hey we're the Smokees and people say we smoke too much--we're too busy coughing to help anybody much. We're just trying to breathe here, but the tar's cut off our bronchials..."

And in other news, it seems tax increases proposed by Democrats are bad, while tax increases proposed by Republicans are good and vice versa depending on what party you belong to. Ahh, God bless partisanship this holiday season.

And on a rare serious note, wealth should be measured in friends and success is what you give. Have a wonderful 1998.