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In November a travel agency in Kiev announced a new package: a daylong visit to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which has been closed to the public since 1986. The company said the government, in need of tax revenue, had given it permission for the tours, claiming the radiation count is “not dangerous.”
The journal Animal Reproduction Science reported in October that Purdue University researchers had grown an elephant egg inside a specially bred mouse. The primary use of the technique, the team said, would be to grow eggs of endangered species inside nonendangered animals.
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Indianapolis graduate student Lael Desmond, 27, filed a complaint against the Ameritrade discount brokerage in November, claiming that the company should indemnify him for $40,000 that he lost in self-service Internet trading just before the July stock market plunge. Desmond had borrowed money to buy stocks on margin, admittedly without reading Ameritrade’s instructions, and said he “never dreamt I had any possibility of losing all my money.”
Shawn Ervin, 36, filed a lawsuit during the summer in Waterbury, Connecticut, against Red Roof Inns over a fractured finger, part of which ultimately had to be removed. He injured it when a headboard, which he said was flimsily nailed to the wall, fell on his finger while he was having sex with his girlfriend.
