Lead Stories
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On the same day in June that the Colombian government announced it would begin counting proceeds from cocaine production (estimated at $1 billion a year) in its official economic figures, Richard Grasso, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, traveled to the remote village of La Machaca to meet with a top commander of the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which the U.S. State Department has labeled a terrorist group. Grasso reportedly invited the commander, Raul Reyes, to New York to learn more about international markets.
In April police in Broomfield, Colorado, issued a trespassing summons to Kristopher C. Ward, 36, who with a female companion moved furniture and two dogs into a vacant house belonging to Michael Deetz. When Deetz brought a police officer around to evict the squatters, Ward said he had been trying to get ahold of Deetz and decided to move in and wait until he dropped by.
Casey, a golden retriever in Raytown, Missouri, made the news in April by recovering from three gunshot wounds to the head. Suzzy, a German shepherd in Granite City, Illinois, had surgery in March to remove $7.37 in coins she had swallowed. And in Laconia, New Hampshire, local residents have helped Whitey the stray husky to elude animal-control officers for more than a year now.
In February Russian brain surgeon Svyatoslav Medvedev told reporters in Saint Petersburg that he had achieved an 80 percent success rate curing alcoholism by removing the part of the brain that he says influences the disease. And in April a University of Toronto researcher concluded that people with brain damage to the right frontal lobe don’t get the punch lines of jokes, though they laugh at other kinds of humor, such as slapstick.
In the Last Month
