World News

Humourous news items, if they weren't true, that relate in someways to firearms and freedoms.

Register your printer, Backpack Banning, Cheese Chasers.


THE COLOR OF MONEY

Singapore has banned Hewlett-Packard's OfficeJet Pro 1150C printer because it doesn't conform to new regulations designed to thwart counterfeiters- as of next month all color photocopiers sold in Singapore must be fitted with a counterfeit-prevention system, which HP has determined is too expensive, considering the OfficeJet Pro's modest price tag. HP says the next version of OfficeJet Pro probably will incorporate the system. Owners of color photocopiers in Singapore must have a permit to do so, which requires submitting a list of all users, keeping the machine locked up, notifying authorities within a week if it's moved, and keeping a log detailing what is copied, when it was copied, who copied it, etc. (Wall Street Journal 11 Apr 97)


NORTH RIDGEVILLE, Ohio, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- Last week's fatal shooting of three students at a Kentucky high school has prompted officials at a Cleveland area school to ban backpacks.

North Ridgeville Middle School students will be prohibited from carrying the backpacks from class to class starting Jan. 5.

Officials said they had considered such a prohibition after teachers complained that students' backpacks protruded from aisles during classes and produced crowded hallways.

But after a 14-year-old boy brought five guns and ammunition into the West Paducah, Ky., school in his backpack and then allegedly fatally shot three girls, the Ohio school officials imposed the restriction.

Principal Philip Binkley told the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer that all 760 sixth-through-eighth graders at the school will be required to leave their bags in their lockers.

He said students will be allowed to go to their lockers between classes to retrieve books or other supplies.


Cheese

In England, a furtive band of cheese-chasers has upheld a millennium-old tradition in the face of a wimpy Gloucester county council, who consider cheese-chasing dangerous and tried to ban the traditional event. Now, chasing cheese down a hill might seem like a waste of time, and a foolish one at that, since traditionally about a third of participants are injured (it may be a sharp cheese, or a particularly steep hill). But when something has been going on for 1,000 years, odds are it has some purpose. Our grandchildren, raised in steel boxes underground for safety, will marvel at the courage of ancestors who dared play hockey without a helmet and even chased cheese. They will also wonder at our descent into timorousness.

The Ottawa Citizen, May 28, 1998, A15