On:

An alarming number of cases of cancer are turning up among former students of Beverly Hills High School in California, in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country. Many of its graduates became movie stars. People blame the cancer on pollution from oil rigs that are set up next to the school’s athletic fields. Famous environmentalist Erin Brockovich, who had a movie made about her, is part of the legal team that’s filing a suit to have the rigs removed. They say the cancer rate among ex-students is 20 to 30 times higher than the national average.

Mike Edwards of Venoco, the company that owns the rigs, says, “I think what the tests show is that the air quality is safe for the workers, safe for the neighborhood, safe for the school.”
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Pierre Thomas writes in abcnews.com that Benjamin Padilla, who piloted the Boeing 727 that vanished after taking off in Africa, has disappeared as well. “I am concerned that he might have been hijacked,” says Padilla’s brother, Joseph. The plane took off from Luanda Airport in Angola without permission and without filing a flight plan, so no one knows where it was headed. It had been refitted to haul diesel fuel tanks, meaning it could be used as a flying bomb in a 911-style scenario.”We don’t have any reliable assessments about what this portends, what it could be, who may be behind it,” says White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
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The U.S. has captured 32 of the 55 Iraqis in our “deck of cards.” Now Jason Burke writes in the U.K. Observer newspaper that we may have caught the Ace of Spades?Saddam himself. Scientists are carrying out DNA tests on human remains that may be those of Saddam Hussein and his son Uday. The remains are from a convoy of luxury SUVs that were struck last week by soldiers, after intelligence agents intercepted a phone call that revealed that Saddam and Uday were travelling in the Western Desert near Syria.
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Michelle Delio writes in wired.com about something new on the internet: Mob Projects, where a group of people agree by e-mail to suddenly turn up together to play a practical joke. Recently, 200 people went to Macy’s department store in Manhattan to buy a “Love Rug” for their “commune,” and gangs of drunken Santas have been seen in San Francisco around Christmas time.

Mob Projects are as exclusive as a fashionable club?you can’t just join, you have to be invited. “Everyone loves a mindless mob!” said Merilyn Synder. “I was so stoked when I got my invitation?no action, no protest, no needing to review my political stance on a particular issue. Just be there or be square.”
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