No more toying around
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on Friday said it imposed a $2.3 million civil penalty against Mattel Inc. for violating a ban on bringing dangerous products to the United States, Reuters reported.
The fine stems from Mattel's recall of 95 types of toys and up to 2 million units, from shelves in recent years, primarily for excessive lead content in paint. The toys were all made in China, the CPSC said.
The photo shows a Chinese boy holding a Mattel "Barbie and Tanner" still for sale in China despite being recalled in the U.S., at a department store in Shanghai last month. Mattel issued an extraordinary apology to China Friday, saying it was to blame for design flaws. (Mark Ralston / AFP - Getty Images file)
It figures I own Mattel shares...
U.S. Justice Dept. to probe Kansas abortion murderThe U.S. Justice Department said on Friday it's launching an investigation into the murder of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller, who had been reviled by anti-abortion groups, Reuters reported Friday.
The Justice Department said it would investigate whether Tiller's murder violated a 1994 U.S. law that establishes penalties for those who block access to abortion services, according to the report.
Kansas authorities have charged Scott Roeder with murder in the Sunday shooting death of Tiller in his church.
Tiller was one of only a few physicians in the U.S. willing to perform late-term abortions, those performed after the 20th week of gestation when a fetus potentially could survive outside the womb and legal under certain conditions.
Tiller's Wichita clinic had been the site of several mass protests by anti-abortion groups and was bombed in 1985. The doctor was shot in both arms by an abortion opponent in 1993.
After the shooting, Attorney General Eric Holder directed agents to protect other abortion facilities.
The killer sought to boost the anti-abortion movement, but what he achieved was set it back to barbaric times, if you ask me.
Susan Boyle has left the clinic she checked into last week after the pressure of participating in the TV show Britain's Got Talent, dealing with the paparazzi 24/7, and extremely high expectations about her winning the show got to be too much.
Sources at Britain's Got Talent told US magazine that Boyle, 48, checked out of the London Priory Hospital on Wednesday. Her brother Gerry also confirmed her release on Britain's GMTV Friday, US reported.
Boyle, who sought treatment for exhaustion hours after the show ended on May 30, has relocated to a flat in central London and has since been in hiding, the sources told US.
"She wanted to be with her friends again," an insider said.
This weekend, Boyle will continue to rest, although it's not clear whether she'll have time to go back to her home town in Blackburn, Scotland. Her home on Yule Terrace is currently empty, US reported.
Next week, Boyle begins meetings with 19 Management, Simon Cowell and Sony BMG to discuss her recording contract.
"Susan wants to get on with it now," a source told US. "She's not quitting--those rumors are rubbish."
I love her and hope these music business moguls treat her well.
A convicted arsonist was sentenced to death Friday for setting a Southern California wildfire that killed five federal firefighters struggling to defend a rural home from raging, wind-driven flames, AP reported Friday.
Holy crap! I hope other arsonists are paying attention.
Raymond Lee Oyler, 38, was found guilty in March of five counts of first-degree murder for setting the Oct. 26, 2006, blaze about 90 miles east of Los Angeles, according to the report.
"After evaluating the same evidence that the jury had heard and going through that, I find that the aggravating circumstances do outweigh the mitigating circumstances," Riverside County Superior Court Judge W. Charles Morgan said.
"In particular, Mr. Oyler set on a mission ... to wreak havoc in this county by setting fires by his own design for his own purposes and as proven by the evidence he became more and more proficient," Morgan said. "He knew that young men and women would put their lives on the line to protect other people and property and he continued anyway."
The fires Oyler set killed Jason McKay, 27; Jess McLean, 27; Daniel Hoover-Najera, 20; Mark Loutzenhiser, 43, and Pablo Cerda, 23.
Oyler, a former auto mechanic, was also convicted of 20 counts of arson and 17 counts of using an incendiary device for a rash of blazes in the area that year.One of his daughters, Heather, 22, said: "My dad is not a bad guy. He's not bad at all," she said.
Not bad? Then what do you call someone who sets fires to fry people all over town? Fiery? Yeah, he's a saint who meant to purify the victims' souls through a trial by fire. OK, seriously--what compels someone to do something like this?
The fatal blaze, known as the Esperanza Fire, destroyed 34 homes and 20 outbuildings and charred nearly 70 square miles of terrain.
Here's another one who could be burned at the stake rather than given a soothing lethal injection.Mitsubishi unveils $47,000 electric car
Mitsubishi's electric vehicle is twice as expensive as popular hybrid cars by rivals Toyota and Honda, but Japan's No. 4 automaker said Friday the i-MiEV will help it survive increasingly intense global competition, AP reported Friday.
The i-MiEV? Who the hell will remember that name? Doesn't Mitsubishi have a marketing department...or common sense? It doesn't take a marketing degree to know that name recollection is critical for any product to make it past its launching.
The i-MiEV is powered solely by electricity and can be recharged from a regular home socket, AP reported. The four-seater vehicle can run up to 100 miles after charging seven hours at 200 volts. A hybrid car switches between a gas engine and electric motor to boost mileage.
"It is a zero-emission vehicle. It does not rely on oil, which is different from hybrid cars," Mitsubishi Motors President Osamu Masuko said at a news conference.
(Photo: Mitsubishi Motors Corp. execs walk around the new electric car "i-MiEV" during its unveiling Friday in Tokyo, Japan.)
The i-MiEV costs $47,560--more than twice as much as Toyota's new Prius hybrid vehicle or Honda's Insight, the cheapest hybrid on the market. Masuko acknowledged the high price is a major hurdle to encouraging people to buy the i-MiEV.
Turns out MiEV stands for Mitsubishi innovative electric vehicle, with the initial "i" having not particular meaning. Brilliant.
But the company can only make a profit on the i-MiEV if it produces 30,000 units per year, Masuko said.
Angeline Jolie calls for more action to end Darfur crisisActress (who hasn't acted in I don't know how long) Angelina Jolie has written a new article for Time magazine calling for more action to end the crisis in Darfur, US magazine reported Friday.
I was going to make fun of this, but now that I think about it every interview of Jolie I've seen has left me with the impression that she's extremely intelligent. Plus, I haven't read the article. And, furthermore, the crisis in Darfur is a serious mess.
On Friday, members of the United Nations Security Council will learn the results of the International Criminal Court's Darfur investigation, US reported.
"The evidence the prosecutor has presented is clear and compelling," Jolie writes, pointing out that "millions of people have been displaced" and "hundreds of thousands have been killed."
Jolie recalls her first trip to Chad to visit refugees from Darfur in 2004, noting that "nothing changed" since then, US reported.
Despite the Bush administration labeling the Darfur situation as "genocide," Jolie says the words have not "compelled us to intervene."
"Darfur has almost disappeared from the news, and experts now call it a 'low intensity' conflict. But the intensity of the crisis has not lessened for those who are struggling to survive," the Oscar-winning actress (who turned 34 Thursday) says in the article.
"More than 250,000 people from Darfur have lived destitute lives in refugee camps in Chad for six years now," says the mother of six. "Camps with more than two million internally displaced persons inside Darfur are even worse. Thirty percent of those displaced are school-age children. Girls leaving the camps are raped; boys leaving the camps are killed. They want an education; they want to go back to their villages, to their land; they want peace. But they also want justice."
The world is a fucked up place, if you ask me.Sources: The Associated Press, Reuters, US magazine
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