A Norfolk, Virginia, man changed his name to Kentucky Fried Cruelty.com.
U.S. financial giant Citigroup was attempting to purchase about 85 percent of the state-owned Guangdong Development Bank of China. Wives in China were suing their husbands’ mistresses to reclaim gifts the mistresses had received from the husbands.
The New Year was postponed by one second to accommodate for the slowing rotation of the earth.
Twenty Sudanese migrants, protesting their treatment in Egypt, were killed by Egyptian police.
A police officer in Fremont, California, was attacked by a pack of chihuahuas and was later treated for ankle bites.
An airplane flying from England to Spain made an unscheduled stop in Porto Santo, a 10-mile-long, three-mile-wide island, to eject a disruptive passenger.
A British woman married an Israeli dolphin after fifteen years of courtship. I am just waiting for everyone to leave, said the woman, so we can have a private moment.
In Utah a 13-year-old girl who became pregnant by her 12-year-old boyfriend was ruled a sex offender. The 12-year-old boy was also ruled a sex offender. It’s a paradox, said the girl’s attorney.
In Florida a 16-year-old named Farris Hassan decided to complete a school project on the Iraq war by going to Iraq; he made it to Baghdad, and was sent back to Florida by United States authorities. A U.S. National Guardsman who served in Iraq was sentenced to 25 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to shooting an Iraqi soldier with whom he had had consensual gay sex.
U.S. school buses were increasingly being plastered with advertisements, and the University of Michigan was boycotting Coca-Cola products because of Coca-Cola’s human rights policies.
A woman in New York City was under investigation for putting her dead husband in a suitcase and leaving him there until neighbors complained of the smell. She wanted to take him to Arizona to be buried, explained a detective.
Hunters in Spain were killing 50,000 hunting greyhounds each year by drowning, poisoning, and hanging them; those greyhounds that humiliate their owners by failing to win races or catch hares are often hanged in such a way that their paws barely touch the ground, and as they struggle against the noose, the dogs’ nails make a clacking noise. This is known as the typewriting death.
The Senate, with Dick Cheney casting the deciding vote, cut $40 billion in funding for foster care, child support, and student loans. It was also reported that the NSA had, with Presidential approval but without warrants, spied on much more Internet and phone traffic than was previously acknowledged.
Authorities in Vienna, Austria, determined that people dressed as devils can legally smack the rear ends of strangers on Christmas.
In South Africa a mugger running from security guards fled into a tiger enclosure, where he was mauled to death.
Prebiotic organic molecules–which are found in DNA–were discovered in constellation Ophiuchus, 375 light-years from earth. New rings were found around Uranus.
Scientists in Mauritius discovered the bones of 20 dodos.
The Pope was worried that “intellectual and technical achievements” were leading to “spiritual barrenness and emptiness of heart.”