Lead Stories
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According to a June report from the Associated Press, more and more chickens are being kept as pets in suburban homes. Among the anecdotes offered as evidence: A wife and mother in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, keeps nine chickens, which she says are “aesthetically pleasing,” even “cool.” A woman in Cedar Hill, Missouri, has raised 38 chickens as pets over the past decade, and says “the best part” has been “knowing them as individuals.” And another Bala Cynwyd woman says her eight chickens faithfully follow her around the yard and are “very sweet. They give back.”
New Frontiers in Political Correctness: In March in El Paso, Texas, 12-year-old Sal Santana II was suspended from his middle school for three days on a sexual harassment charge after he stuck his tongue out at a student who’d said she wouldn’t be his girlfriend. And in April the National Society for Epilepsy in Britain said it had received several inquiries from teacher trainees who claimed they’d been instructed to avoid the term “brainstorm” in their classes because it’s offensive to epileptics. Suggested substitute: “thought shower.” (The society, incidentally, deems “brainstorm” innocuous.)
In May in Grants Pass, Oregon, 22-year-old Albert Jackson Dowdy tried to break into a home by smashing a glass door with a paint can, but the can bounced off and broke open. Dowdy eventually got inside, according to police (total take: a can of tuna fish and a box of oatmeal), but on his way out stepped in the spilled paint. Officers followed the paint footprints to a nearby motel and arrested him.
