What Caught My Eye Today

Fred's Note: I want to thank all the folks in Hudson for a great visit. Ambrose, you try that stunt again and we're talking about taking the gloves off, my friend.

Bosnia - The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal has Radovan Karadzic in custody, 13 years after indicting the Bosnian Serb leader on genocide charges. Karadzic is charged with 11 counts, including genocide and crimes against humanity, for allegedly orchestrating the Srebrenica murders, the deadly 44-month siege of Sarajevo and brutal ethnic cleansing campaigns. The late Serb despot, Slobodan Milosevic, may have helped prosecutors by blaming Karadzic for Bosnian atrocities. Milosevic had argued that as leader of Serbia, he was not in control of Karadzic and his Bosnian Serb forces who killed tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats in the 1992-95 Bosnian war. Well golly, let's take back all those mean things we said about Milosevic. Obviously, he was an unwitting pawn in Karadzic's evil schemes. As for Karadzic, I'm somewhat curious as to which war crimes he isn't suspected of having committed.

Zimbabwe - All I can surmise from this next story is that Zimbabwe has really got its heart set on displacing Venezuela as having the most entertaining government policy decisions. Zimbabwe announced that it is knocking 10 zeros off its hyper-inflated currency — a move that turns 10 billion dollars into one. The move comes a week after the issue of a 100 billion-dollar note — still not enough to buy a loaf of bread. Inflation, the highest in the world, is officially running at 2.2 million percent in Zimbabwe but independent economists say it is closer to 12.5 million percent. I don't want to trivialize the seriousness of this situation, but with numbers like this, how can you not scoff at the absurdity of the numbers we're talking about here? Plus, I'm kind of interested in how this deal turns out. Think about it, if you could just arbitrarily wipe out a bunch of zeros on the debt that you have, wouldn't you break out the old eraser?

Air Travel - Maybe it's just me, but this next story is a bit disturbing. Flight attendants on a Delta Airlines flight discovered the body of a 61-year-old woman in the restroom of a plane shortly before the flight landed. It was unclear how she died, and how long she was in the restroom. See what I mean? And it gets worse. Airlines are not required to track or report the medical incidents they handle, so an exact tally of in-flight deaths is hard to determine. I'm sorry, but why not? Death in the friendly skies seems like one of those things we might want to keep track of. MedAire, an Arizona-based company that staffs doctors on the ground to advise flight crews in a medical emergency, counted 89 deaths for the flights they handled in 2006, which represents about one-third of the world's commercial flights. If the death rate is similar for the rest of the flights, annual deaths on airplanes could exceed 260. But seriously, the flight attendants didn't know how long this corpse had been rotten in the lavatory? I know their a bit overworked--and certainly underpaid--but you'd think that during all those security checks at the beginning of a flight that someone would have noticed the dead body collecting dust on the toilet.

Cycling - Yeah, yeah, I know...the Tour de France is over, but how many of you actually know who won? Spaniard Carlos Sastre of the CSC team won the 95th Tour de France. Among the other jersey winners were: Green (points jersey - best sprinter), Oscar Freire, Spain; White (best young rider jersey), Andy Schleck, Luxembourg; Polka dot (best climber jersey), Bernhard Kohl, Austria. The best American finisher was Christian Van de Velde from team Garmin-Chipotle who came in fifth, 3 minutes five seconds behind Sastre. Of course the bigger story was the doping that continued to overshadow the Tour...again. A fourth rider was revealed on the last day of the Tour as having failed a doping test after the 18th stage. One dude openly admitted taking drugs to enhance his performance. Italian cyclist Riccardo Ricco admitted that he made a “mistake,” taking responsibility after testing positive for the blood-booster EPO during the Tour de France. The 24-year-old Ricco won two Tour stages this month with the Saunier-Duval team. Ricco was among four cyclists involved in doping cases at the Tour.Actually, I think he made two mistakes--the first was cheating in the first place, and the second was getting caught. Dude, if you are going to sell your soul and cheat, you really ought to spend a bit more time on your plan for getting away with it.