Friday's Odds and Ends

As much as $1 billion in U.S. aid has been diverted from programs meant to stabilize Afghanistan and has wound up in the hands of the Taliban and other insurgency groups, war analysts and government auditors say. They say that graft has gotten so bad that the U.S. government estimates that only about 10 percent of the aid budget actually reaches the people in Afghanistan who need it.

And we keep sending money, why?

A mother in Texas shook her baby to death because he was interrupting her computer game.

I'd like to interrupt her.

Tests performed before the deadly blowout of BP's oil well in the Gulf of Mexico should have raised doubts about the cement used to seal the well, but the company and its cementing contractor used it anyway.

Thank you, Halliburton.

An obese mother in the US is trying to put on weight in order to become the world's fattest woman.

Isn't there another record she would like to break that wouldn't affect her health?

At least two southwest Montana horse owners are reporting thieves trotted off with tail hair from their horses. The hair can be used for making a number of items including hand crafted jewlry.

I couldn't imagine that stealing horse hair would be a lucrative endeavor until I did a  Google search for "horsehair items" and saw 195,000 results.  People are making baskets, bridles, hatbands, hair clips, gun slings, and much much more out of horsehair. They've got to get it from somewhere. 

Keith Richard's memoir, Life, reached best seller status before it was even released on Tuesday. 


I guess it pays to be famous before you write a memoir.

What wacky news have your heard this week?