Grandma's House

Police are under orders to destroy "illegal dwellings" and vendors' shacks as part of a campaign to clean up the city. About half the city's urban poor live in the shacks. About 10,000 street vendors have been arrested since the crackdown began eight days ago.

(Morgan) Tsvangirai (opposition leader) said Mugabe would use the operation as a pretext for calling a state of emergency, which would give the government unlimited powers of search, seizure and detention as the country goes into a food crisis with up to 4 million people needing aid.

Before the parliamentary elections, Mugabe refused assistance, saying the country had had a "bumper harvest." His ZANU-PF party was alleged to have controlled food deliveries to influence the vote.

After seven years of unprecedented economic decline, 80 percent of the work force is unemployed, and 4 million of Zimbabwe's 16 million people have emigrated.

Agriculture, once the mainstay, has been hard hit by Mugabe's seizure of 5,000 white-owned farms for redistribution to blacks.

Ravenscroft also did voices for the animated films "Cinderella," "The Jungle Book," "Mary Poppins," "Alice in Wonderland," "Lady and the Tramp" and many others.

After military service during World War II, he returned to Hollywood, where he sang with the Mellomen, a group that performed with Frank Sinatra, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Elvis Presley.

An obsessive collector of animals kept a menagerie of 246 dogs, 16 birds and seven cats in her four-bedroom house, a court heard yesterday.

Rosalind Gregson, 55, confined most of her pets to cages, often in pairs and often piled on top of each other in conditions so cramped they could not stand to their full height

Who Knew???

As I understand it, Cardinal Ratzinger was not the College of Cardinals' first choice. That was, interestingly, Cardinal Hans Grapje. Grapje was raised in a Catholic school in The Hague and, as a young man, aspired to become a priest, but was drafted into the Army during W.W.II and spent two years co-piloting bombers until his aircraft was shot down in 1943 and he lost his left arm. Captain Grapje spent the rest of the war as a chaplain, giving spiritual aid to soldiers, both Allied and enemy.

After the war, he became a priest, serving as a missionary in Africa, piloting his own plane (in spite of his handicap) to villages across the continent. In 1997, Archbishop Grapje was serving in Zimbabwe when an explosion in a silver mine caused a cave-in. Archbishop Grapje went down into the mine to administer last rights to those too severely injured to move. Another shaft collapsed, and he was buried for three days, suffering multiple injuries, including the loss of his right eye. The high silver content in the mine's air gave him purpura, a life-long condition characterized by purplish skin blotches.

Although Cardinal Grapje devoted his life to the service of God as a scholar, mentor, and holy man, church leaders felt that he should not ascend to the Papacy. They felt that the Church would never accept a one-eyed, one-armed, flying purple Papal leader.

An Irish fisherman hooked more than he bargained for when a suspiciously heavy catch turned out to be a large package of cannabis, part of a submerged haul worth 400,000 euros (513,000 dollars).

A newly-wed couple in Shanghai have filed a complaint against a local hotel after the groom broke his arm during bedroom fun and games. Yu Haitao and bride Fang Shuling were taking part in traditional tease-the-newly-weds celebrations when Yu tumbled off the bed breaking his left arm, state media said on Wednesday...

Wedding pranks are a long-standing tradition in China, with friends and family given the chance to tease and heckle the newly-weds.

Three children and an adult were treated for minor injuries after an empty, runaway railroad car crashed into the Heber Creeper, which was carrying pupils on a train safety field trip.

A newborn baby abandoned in a Kenyan forest was saved by a stray dog who apparently carried her across a busy road and through a barbed wire fence to a shed where the infant was discovered nestled with a litter of puppies, witnesses said Monday.

A guy was visiting his friend in the hospital who was "all torn up." "What happened?" he asked.

"Well, we were hunting the Mumba snake. It has yellow and black stripes, and likes to sun itself by lying across a pathway in the jungle. You catch it by grabbing the tip of its tail with one hand and quickly running your other hand up the length of its body so you can grab it behind the neck."

"Go on," the friend said.

"Well, I stealthily sneaked up to the tail lying across the jungle path, grabbed it by the end and rapidly moved my other hand upward ... just as the procedure described."

"So why are you so beaten up?" the friend asked.

"Did you ever goose a tiger?"

Louie Louie, me gotta go.
Louie Louie, me gotta go.

A fine little girl, she wait for me.
Me catch the ship across the sea.
I sailed the ship all alone.
I never think I'll make it home.
Louie Louie, me gotta go .

Three nights and days we sailed the sea.
Me think of girl constantly.
On the ship, I dream she there.
I smell the rose in her hair.
Louie Louie, me gotta go.

Me see Jamaican moon above.
It won't be long me see me love.
Me take her in my arms and then
I tell her I never leave again.
Louie Louie, me gotta go."
(By Richard Berry. Copyright 1957-1963 by Limax Music Inc.)

Dubbed the Beer Barrel Belly Buster, the burger comes with 10.5 pounds of ground beef, 25 slices of cheese, a head of lettuce, three tomatoes, two onions, a cup-and-a-half each of mayonnaise, relish, ketchup, mustard and banana peppers — and a bun.

Stowers, who did not immediately return calls Monday from The Associated Press, told the station: "I thought it was candy because they put candy in your ice cream ... to make it a treat. So I said, 'OK, well, I'll just put it in my mouth and get the ice cream off of it and see what it is.'"

Stowers said he spit the object out, but still couldn't identify it. So he went to his kitchen, rinsed it off with water — and "just started screaming."