Each year, police and medical centers across the country follow another ritual, X-raying candy to check for razors, needles, or other objects that might have been placed there to hurt or kill innocent children. Special events are held that offer kids "a safe Halloween," suggesting that there are real lurking dangers far worse than spooky costumes.

Yet year after year, few if any sinister foreign objects are found. This scary tale is essentially an urban legend.

Despite e-mail warnings, scary stories, and Ann Landers columns to the contrary, there have been only two confirmed cases of children being killed by poisoned Halloween candy, and in both cases the children were killed not in a random act by strangers but intentional murder by one of their parents. The best-known, "original" case was that of Texan Ronald Clark O'Bryan, who killed his son by lacing his Pixie Stix with cyanide in 1974.

...

There's no need to waste medical facility or police time making sure that a small free candy bar is safe to eat.

Children are in far more danger from being hit by a car on a dark street.

X-raying candy helps parents feel like they are protecting their children, but in fact parents are simply wasting resources and feeding children's fears unnecessarily.

"It's an American custom that's got nothing to do with our culture," Kohler wrote in letters sent out to households. By midweek, the mayors of eight neighboring villages had thrown their support behind the boycott. So had local police, annoyed with the annual Oct. 31 uptick in vandalism and mischief.

Although Halloween has become increasingly popular across Europe — complete with carved pumpkins, witches on broomsticks, makeshift houses of horror and costumed children rushing door to door for candy — it's begun to breed a backlash.

Critics see it as the epitome of crass, U.S.-style commercialism. Clerics and conservatives contend it clashes with the spirit of traditional Nov. 1 All Saints' Day remembrances.

...

Halloween "undermines our cultural identity," complained the Rev. Giordano Frosini, a Roman Catholic theologian who serves as vicar-general in the Diocese of Pistoia near Florence, Italy.

Frosini denounced the holiday as a "manifestation of neo-paganism" and an expression of American cultural supremacy. "Pumpkins show their emptiness," he said.

...

In Austria, where many families get a government child allowance, "parents who abuse it to buy Halloween plunder for their kids should be forced to pay back the aid," grumbled Othmar Berbig, an Austrian who backs the small but strident boycott movement.

In Sweden, even as Halloween's popularity has increased, so have views of the holiday as an "unnecessary, bad American custom," said Bodil Nildin-Wall, an expert at the Language and Folklore Institute in Uppsala.

Italy's Papaboys, a group of pope devotees who include some of the young Catholics who cheer wildly at Vatican events, have urged Christians not to take part in what they consider "a party in honor of Satan and hell," and plan to stage prayer vigils nationwide that night.

A Volkswagen Polo is loaded in the "Car Towers" of the VW Autostadt in Wolfsburg, northern Germany, pictured on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2005. The Autostadt, situated next to Volkswagen's headquarter, is Volkswagen's theme park, and distribution centre where daily 5500 visitors view Volkswagen brands like Bentley, Audi, Lamborghini. (AP Photo/Fabian Bimmer)

At Autostadt, collecting your new car is an event in itself. The best idea is to begin that special day with a relaxing trip to Autostadt followed by a tour until the big moment arrives: In a fully automated procedure, your new car is brought down to you from one of the 20-story Car Towers. Large signboards in the Customer Center show you when your turn has come. Then, you're handed the keys, your picture is taken, the glass doors open and your brand-new car appears. You're all set to go.

RALEIGH, N.C. - Scores of illegal immigrants working as cooks, laborers, janitors, even foreign-language instructors have been seized at military bases around the country in the past year, raising concerns in some quarters about security and troop safety.

The immigrants did not work directly for the military but for private contractors, as part of a large-scale effort by the Pentagon to outsource many routine rear-echelon jobs and free up the troops to concentrate on waging war.

...

This month, officials arrested three foreign language instructors at Fort Bragg. Over the summer, authorities apprehended 74 construction workers lacking documentation at Camp Lejeune, the Marines' major base on the Atlantic Ocean, and caught 49 illegal immigrants at North Carolina's Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. Illegals have also been caught at bases in Idaho and Florida.

Some of them were deported; others were escorted off base and released.

The total of about 150 does not include those working for military contractors off base. The off-base arrests have included hundreds of illegal immigrants hired to prepare field rations by a Texas company that admitted falsifying their employment records. Off-base arrests have also been made in North Carolina, Mississippi and California.

In North Carolina, the military paid contractors $823 million this year and last to perform work at Fort Bragg, Camp Lejeune and Seymour Johnson. Such outsourcing is likely to increase, said defense analyst Loren Thompson of The Lexington Institute.

FESTAC, Nigeria — As patient as fishermen, the young men toil day and night, trawling for replies to the e-mails they shoot to strangers half a world away.

Most recipients hit delete, delete, delete, delete without ever opening the messages that urge them to claim the untold riches of a long-lost deceased second cousin, and the messages that offer millions of dollars to help smuggle loot stolen by a corrupt Nigerian official into a U.S. account.

But the few who actually reply make this a tempting and lucrative business for the boys of Festac, a neighborhood of Lagos at the center of the cyber-scam universe. The targets are called maghas -- scammer slang from a Yoruba word meaning fool, and refers to gullible white people.

...

Samuel is 19, handsome, bright, well-dressed and ambitious. He has a special flair for computers. Until he quit the game last year, he was one of Festac's best-known cyber-scam champions.

Like nearly everyone here, he is desperate to escape the run-down, teeming streets, the grimy buildings, the broken refrigerators stacked outside, the strings of wet washing. It's the kind of place where plainclothes police prowl the streets extorting bribes, where mobs burn thieves to death for stealing a cellphone, and where some people paint "This House Is Not For Sale" in big letters on their homes, in case someone posing as the owner tries to put it on the market.

...

The e-mail scammers here prefer hitting Americans, whom they see as rich and easy to fool. They rationalize the crime by telling themselves there are no real victims: Maghas are avaricious and complicit.

To them, the scams, called 419 after the Nigerian statute against fraud, are a game.

Their anthem, "I Go Chop Your Dollars," hugely popular in Lagos, hit the airwaves a few months ago as a CD penned by an artist called Osofia:

"419 is just a game, you are the losers, we are the winners.
White people are greedy, I can say they are greedy
White men, I will eat your dollars, will take your money and disappear.
419 is just a game, we are the masters, you are the losers."

Asishana Okauru, acting director of financial intelligence for the government's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said $700 million relating to 419 crime had been seized in the two years since the establishment of the EFCC. There have been 12 convictions in such cases brought during that time, he said.

Serenity, 2005
Script/Story: 7
Acting/Casting: 7
Action: 8
Combat Realism: 6
Humor: 6
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 5
Fun Factor: 7
Replayability: 7
Overall: 7.5

Fight Club, 1999
Script/Story: 8
Acting/Casting: 7
Action: 6
Combat Realism: 7
Humor: 5
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 4
Fun Factor: 5
Replayability: 7
Overall: 7

Wallace and Gromit in the Case of the Were-Rabbbit
Script/Story: 6
Acting/Casting: 7
Action: 6
Humor: 7
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 8
Fun Factor: 6
Replayability: 6
Overall: 7

Saw, 2004
Script/Story: 6
Acting/Casting: 3
Action: 7
Humor: 3
Horror: 8
Eye Candy: 3
Fun Factor: 7
Replayability: 6
Overall: 6

Team America, 2004
Script/Story: 6
Acting/Casting: 5
Action: 8
Humor: 7
Horror: NA
Eye Candy: 6
Fun Factor: 4
Replayability: 6
Overall: 6

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Wilma was the 21st storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, tying a record set in 1933. It was also the 12th hurricane and tied the record for most hurricanes in a season set in 1969.

The season still has six weeks to run but has already spawned three of the most intense hurricanes on record -- Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Hurricane experts say the Atlantic has swung back into a period of heightened storm activity that could last another 20 years. Climatologists also fear global warming could be making the storms more intense.

Polling by the Marguerite Casey Foundation also found that both rich and poor are optimistic about future prospects for their children.

Those at the poverty level or the near poor were almost twice as likely to say factors beyond their control are responsible for their impoverished state. Those who make higher incomes were evenly split on whether poverty is caused by external factors or by people not making enough effort.

Dean, a comptroller for his father-in-law's construction company, caught the balls with a worn-out glove that his high school coach used to call "a trash can lid."

"I never dreamed of anything like this," said Dean, 25. "It's beyond words."

TOKYO (Reuters) -- Japan is moving toward requiring owners of potentially dangerous animals, such as crocodiles and pythons, to have microchips implanted in their pets in case the animals get loose, officials said on Thursday.

The move follows a recent wave of incidents around the nation in which animals such as pythons, crocodiles and giant salamanders have been found wandering loose, frequently on the streets of densely populated cities.

In one notorious case, a man lost track of his pet python after he took the animal "for a walk" in a park and the snake fled when the man fell asleep on a bench. He was quoted by one TV station as saying he was surprised the snake disappeared because it wasn't that kind of snake.

The Environment Ministry is drawing up a law that would require tiny cylindrical microchips -- 1 centimeter (0.4 inch) long and 2 millimeters (0.08 inch) in diameter -- implanted under the skin of some 650 animal species, a ministry official said. Each microchip would carry information making it possible to trace the owner if the animal goes missing.

Among the animals included in the proposed law, which is likely to come into effect from next January, are various snakes, snapping turtles and bears. "There was a sense that it is good to have better management of these kinds of animals," the official said. Exotic animals such as reptiles have become increasingly popular pets in Japan over the last few years, largely because they are clean and quiet and usually reside in terrariums -- a big plus in the nation's cramped apartments, which often forbid ownership of more common four-footed friends.

With escapes becoming more frequent, however, calls have risen for tighter regulation of such pets. In the past week alone, police in Kanagawa prefecture, just west of Tokyo, were called out to capture a green iguana and a 66-centimetre giant salamander, while a woman in downtown Tokyo found a 1-metre-long python curled up on some quilts in a closet.

Martha Ein often shops with her teenage daughters, who are permitted to spend no more than $200 per pair, though "sometimes they twist my arm."

"I don't have that many," says her 16-year-old, Lili, considering her denim collection. "Probably like 15."

A young woman comes in with her grandfather. In one fell swoop, he buys her five pairs of jeans and assorted other items for $2,451.86.

Mauro is extremely fond of "raw" jeans, made from virgin denim that has never been washed or treated. Four to five days a week, he wears a particular pair of raw jeans. He has been wearing them like this for more than three months and won't even dream of washing them till it's been half a year.

Raw denim is really dark blue and stiff when you first put it on, and in the beginning it tends to bleed onto white sneakers and light-colored couches. But after six months of near-constant wear, Mauro says, the jeans will fit him perfectly and will have faded in all the right places. There will be "whiskering" around his crotch and "honeycombing" behind the knees.

"This jean will be unique to me," Mauro says.

"They kind of show your soul, you know?" says a woman who represents a raw jeans brand.

...

Victor Fonseca, a friend of Mauro's, says he's been trying to break in his raw pair on weekends, since he can't wear them to work. Two months ago Victor bought a different pair of jeans for $330, but hasn't permitted himself to wear them yet. Every time he wears jeans, he must wear the raws. His butt is reserved.

"I have absolutely no plans and no expectations of ever being a candidate again," Gore told reporters after giving a speech at an economic forum in Sweden.

When asked how the United States would have been different if he had become president, though, he had harsh criticism for Bush's policies.

"We would not have invaded a country that didn't attack us," he said, referring to Iraq. "We would not have taken money from the working families and given it to the most wealthy families."

"We would not be trying to control and intimidate the news media. We would not be routinely torturing people," Gore said. "We would be a different country."

Tracey Schmitt, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, called Gore's comments "fictitious rants that border on dangerous."

"To accuse Americans of participating in 'routine torture' is absurd and reveals that while Al Gore may no longer be a leader in his party, he still embodies the maniacal anger that guides Democrat leaders in Washington today," Schmitt wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Convicted murderers and rapists sleep up to 40 at a time in a sweaty cell measuring 30 square yards, many of them on bare floors. Violence is endemic.

A gang feud has killed 50 people since August, including several who were beheaded. Eighteen of the victims died in an attack with grenades, guns and knives at The Hole, a 100-year-old former army fort brought into service because prisons are overflowing.

In 2003, forensic scientists found the remains of two people believed to have been eaten in a cell at the Pavoncito prison over Christmas holidays during a gang riot there.

Under cover of night, Marrant's troops target Jeep Cherokees, Porsche Cayennes and other four-wheel-drive vehicles parked on the tree-lined avenues and cobblestoned lanes of wealthy neighborhoods. The eco-guerrillas deflate tires without damaging them, smear doors with mud and paste handbills on windshields proclaiming that the vehicles are dangerous, polluting behemoths that do not belong in the city.

"We use the mud to say that if the owners will not take the four-wheel-drives to the countryside, we will bring the countryside to the four-wheel-drives," said Marrant, 28, who uses an alias because angry drivers deluge his website, http://degonfle.blogg.org with e-mails threatening mayhem and questioning his manhood.

Although his nom de guerre was inspired by Subcommander Marcos, the masked Mexican guerrilla revered by leftists, Marrant insists he is not violent or even particularly serious. "Deflated" is a self-deprecating name that also means "coward" in French. The group wants to send a mischievous message while avoiding damage to the vehicles, injury and prosecution, the thin, mop-haired activist said during an interview in a corner cafe on the Seine's left bank, longtime turf of radicals and revolutionaries.

"We emphasize the comic, the burlesque side," Marrant said with the earnest, wide-eyed look of a prankster trying to keep a straight face. "It would be hard to take us to court. We don't slash tires, we deflate them. Air doesn't cost anything. As for getting cars dirty, that's nothing. I would plead guilty to that. Our rules are to never run from the police. And always run from the owners."

...

Like other historic European capitals, Paris struggles with overwhelming traffic that challenges even the smallest cars and steeliest drivers. Double-parked delivery trucks block narrow streets. Swarms of motorcyclists zoom the wrong way on congested boulevards. Parking garages, impossibly small, seem designed by sadists.

Spurred by the take-back-the-streets attitude of the Greens, City Hall is trying to discourage cars in favor of mass transit, biking and walking. In addition, the national government has imposed a new tax on high-polluting vehicles that works out to about $300 per owner, but varies depending on emission levels.

And the Deflated are stepping up their stealthy fight. Marrant is writing a children's song as an anthem for the cause. He also hopes to record a dance-mix version before Saturday, when activists plan an international wave of anti-SUV operations -- by daylight, this time -- in France, Britain, Canada and Australia.

Ditch the rice cereal and mashed peas, and make way for enchiladas, curry and even -- gasp! -- hot peppers. It's time to discard everything you think you know about feeding babies. It turns out most advice parents get about weaning infants onto solid foods -- even from pediatricians -- is more myth than science.

That's right, rice cereal may not be the best first food. Peanut butter doesn't have to wait until after the first birthday. Offering fruits before vegetables won't breed a sweet tooth. And strong spices? Bring 'em on.

"There's a bunch of mythology out there about this," says Dr. David Bergman, a Stanford University pediatrics professor. "There's not much evidence to support any particular way of doing things."

...

experts say children over 6 months can handle most anything, with a few caveats: Be cautious if you have a family history of allergies; introduce one food at a time and watch for any problems; and make sure the food isn't a choking hazard.

Parents elsewhere in the world certainly take a more freewheeling approach, often starting babies on heartier, more flavorful fare -- from meats in African countries to fish and radishes in Japan and artichokes and tomatoes in France.

The difference is cultural, not scientific, says Dr. Jatinder Bhatia, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' nutrition committee who says the American approach suffers from a Western bias that fails to reflect the nation's ethnic diversity.

...

How to introduce healthy children to solid food has rarely been studied. Even the federal government has given it little attention; dietary guidelines apply only to children 2 and older.

In a review of the research, Nancy Butte, a pediatrics professor at Baylor College of Medicine, found that many strongly held assumptions -- such as the need to offer foods in a particular order or to delay allergenic foods -- have little scientific basis.

Take rice cereal, for example. Under conventional American wisdom, it's the best first food. But Butte says iron-rich meat -- often one of the last foods American parents introduce — would be a better choice.

Dr. David Ludwig of Children's Hospital Boston, a specialist in pediatric nutrition, says some studies suggest rice and other highly processed grain cereals actually could be among the worst foods for infants.

"These foods are in a certain sense no different from adding sugar to formula. They digest very rapidly in the body into sugar, raising blood sugar and insulin levels" and could contribute to later health problems, including obesity, he says.

1-2pm: Stargate SG-1 : Lockdown (SciFi) TVPG CC Stereo
2-3pm: The Outer Limits : Joy Ride TVPG CC Stereo
3-3:30pm: Paid Programming
3:30-4pm: Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace (Talk / Tabloid) CC Stereo

The subject matter strains under the weight of a full-length film, even one that runs only 84 minutes. Much of the running time feels padded out."
-- Phil Villarreal, ARIZONA DAILY STAR

"There is a flaccid, overextended feel to the antics, as if the characters had been stretched like Silly Putty 'til they cried uncle."
-- Jan Stuart, NEWSDAY

"There seems to be a fairly rabid cult following for the quirky claymation characters of Wallace and Gromit, but count me out. This is a chaotic mess of a film."
-- Dustin Putman, THEMOVIEBOY.COM

1 black champagne
2 preston spears
3 rock band names
4 blackchampagne
5 cartman aristocrats
6 cartman's dirtiest joke ever
7 london preston spears
8 middle earth mod
9 alphabetical list of rock bands
10 diablo 2 middle earth mod
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12 drop mod
13 alphabetical band names
14 chocolate liquor bottles
15 http://www.blackchampagne.com/2005/09/prodigy-or-hack.html
16 mega m
17 middle earth mods
18 tae kwan-do photographs
19 www.blackchampagne.com
20 all five members full names in the band called wilburys

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"They were probably evenly matched in size," Professor Mazzotti said of the latest battle. "If the python got a good grip on the alligator before the alligator got a good grip on him, he could win."

While the gator may have been injured before the battle began, wounds were found on it that apparently were not caused by python bites. Professor Mazzotti believes it was alive when the battle began. And it may have clawed at the python's stomach as the snake tried to digest it, leading to the blow-up. The python was found with the gator's hindquarters protruding from its midsection. Its stomach still surrounded the alligator's head, shoulders, and forelimbs.

"As a gaming fan, I'm excited to bring Halo's premise, action and settings to the screen with all the specificity and reality today's technology can provide," said Jackson. "Fran and I are intrigued by the unique challenges this project offers, and we're delighted to be working again with our friends at Universal, and with our new ones at Fox and Microsoft. I'm a huge fan of the game and look forward to helping it come alive on the cinema screen."

This marks the first time Jackson and Walsh's have provided such services in a film Jackson isn't physically directing. Throughout production, the duo will provide creative counsel on the film via WingNut Films, and Weta Digital and Weta Workshop (the companies who worked on Lord of the Rings) will develop Halo's creatures, miniatures and visual effects. Seeing as how Jackson's set up shop in the heart of New Zealand, it comes as little surprise Halo itself will actually be shot entirely in Wellington, NZ.

Chavs, whether rich or poor, tend to favor gaudy jewelry and expensive-but-tacky clothes with big logos and to behave in a way that others find coarse or obnoxious.

Male chavs wear tracksuits and baseball caps; female chavs pull their hair tightly back in buns or ponytails, a style known as a "council house facelift," from the term for public housing.

...

The derivation of the word chav, which began to be widely used about a year ago as the problem of binge drinking in Britain's towns and cities became a huge national issue, is murky. Some say it comes from an 18th century Romany word meaning "child"; others believe it may come from the town of Chatham in Kent, known, apparently, for its large chav population (the theory that it is an acronym for "Council Housed and Violent" is most likely untrue).

Chav behavior - outrageous spending sprees, drunken brawls, inappropriate public displays of affection, screaming matches with loved ones in bars, destruction of property, late-night stumbling and/or vomiting - provide celebrity magazines here with much of their material.

Known across Britain by his tabloid nickname, the Lotto Lout, Mr. Carroll won £9.7 million (about $15 million at the time) in the national lottery three years ago and showed up to collect his prize while wearing a police-issued electronic ankle bracelet.

...

If nothing else, Mr. Carroll, who did not respond to messages left at his house, has proved since winning that he is not the sort of person to let money turn his head: he has kept having run-ins with the authorities, the only difference being that he now drives nicer cars to court.

"Before he won the lottery, he was a nuisance," Charles Joyce, a local official, said. "He decided to carry on being a nuisance."

Among other things, he has appeared in court more than 30 times in the last three years. He has spent three months in jail on drugs charges, paid thousands of dollars in fines for vandalism and been evicted from several hotels after, for instance, ripping a chandelier from the ceiling while trying to swing from it.

He was recently ordered to perform 240 hours of community service - later increased to 300 - after shooting ball bearings through 32 car and shop windows with a catapult as he drove around in the middle of the night.

He has been issued with two antisocial behavior orders in two local jurisdictions forbidding him to threaten, harass or intimidate anyone in a 400-mile radius. He has been told by local government authorities to stop throwing raucous late-night parties and to stop holding demolition derbies on his land.

And he has been told to clean up the yard of his house, strewn as it is with tires, beer cans, food wrappers, wrecked furniture and the hulks of half-smashed-up old cars.

"Our hosting company has donated all hosting and bandwidth for the site, purchased our domain name and moved us to our own server space -- in addition to their annual monetary donation," she says. "When our site receives publicity, they graciously baby-sit the server to keep us online."