Lead Story
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In September the Industrial Christian Fellowship, a British think tank, complained that churchgoers’ prayers go disproportionately to teachers and nurses, and claimed that it had already used its Web site to distribute a set of prayers for the financial sector (under the heading “When did you last pray for your stockbroker?”). And in November the Saudi Arabian government established new restrictions on the export of sand, fearing that increased regional demand (from the reconstruction of Iraq and from Bahrain’s land-reclamation projects in the Persian Gulf) would create a shortage.
Crybabies
Weird Science
In Salem, New Hampshire, a student’s scheme to fake report cards for money ran aground after several “clients” insisted on boosting their Ds and Cs to As, provoking their parents to call the principal to see why their kids weren’t on the honor roll. In East Saint Louis, Illinois, a 43-year-old man pleaded guilty to felony shoplifting charges for the fourth time in two years; on each occasion he’d stolen pork products from a grocery store. And in Modesto, California, a bank robber who’d forgotten to cut eyeholes in his mask (and who kept lifting it to peek out) nonetheless escaped with his loot, but not before walking into a steel door frame on his way out.
