As a public service, here are a few actual items from actual news events taking place around the word.

Israel continues to bomb the living crap out of Lebanon. Apparently, you don’t want to make these guys mad.

George Bush was caught in a candid moment with British PM Tony Blair, discussing the problem of Israel bombing the living crap out of Lebanon – and he happened to use the “s-word.” News reporters are in a turmoil as they try to sort out which is more serious – the fact that Israel is bombing the living crap out of Lebanon, or the fact that George Bush used the “s-word” in reference to it.

Oprah wants to make it clear that she’s not gay – just in case anyone actually cared. She was actually very adamant about her straight-ness, and then just to be PC about the whole thing, she insisted that if she was gay, there would be nothing wrong with it.

And finally – there’s news from the International Network of Women Against Tobacco. Now for some of us, it’s newsworthy enough just to know that such an organization exists. But there’s more – the INWAT tells us that the number of women smokers is on the rise, while the number of men smokers is decreasing. Of course, the men still are way ahead of the women in this area – worldwide, about 48 percent of men smoke, versus 12 percent of women. However, the number of male smokers is expected to decline by the year 2025 (possibly as a good many of those male smokers die of cancer), while the number of women smokers is expected to increase to 20 percent, also by the year 2025. Seems like the women are getting pretty competitive about this thing, but we’ll have to see how it works out. In the meantime I say – go men!

I promise to provide a followup story to this in the year 2025.

That’s the news for today.