Here’s Some Quick Headlines!

Prayer! Not Just for Talking to God Anymore! - Scholastic Surveys, a company that studies the trends and habits of school-aged children (and delivers hickory-smoked BBQ ribs), found that especially junior high- and high-school aged children are now tossing aside the cellular telephone and the Sidekick text-messaging devices in favor of prayer. Realizing that this standard method for speaking to God can also be used to communicate with their friends at zero cost, America’s students are increasingly falling to their knees, sometimes in the middle of class, to ask their buddy in another classroom if he’s going to the game that night or to tell a girlfriend the newest juicy gossip.

“We have to stop this,” said Kendra Bryson or Branson, a teacher at Mirror Creek Jr. High in Claremont, CA. “Just today, one of the children in my home room class got down on his knees while I was taking attendance, clasped his hands together, clenched his eyes shut, and said, ‘Oh, dear Geoff, did you study for the Earth Science quiz yet?’ We have to ban school prayer. Kids are getting carried away with it.”

Widow Wins More Than Enough in Tobacco Lawsuit – Margarie Dukanen, widow of Terrence Dukanen, who died of cigarette-induced lung cancer, won a lawsuit today against R. J. Reynolds at the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, CO. The cigarette manufacturer, whose marketing schemes and addictive products Mrs. Dukanen blames for her husband’s death, must pay her $438 million in personal damages for the loss of her husband who died in the fall of 1998. “A lot of people are saying to me, ‘Yeah, you got all that money, but that can never make up for the loss of Terry.’,” said Mrs. Dukanen to reporters outside of the courthouse. “And I did love him so much. But this is $438 million dollars. I’m sorry, that not only makes up for my loss, but also, according to my accountant’s calculations, there’s a couple hundred thou left over after that, making me, in the end, happy my beloved husband died. And that’s what this lawsuit was all about.”