^{^} ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Friday 7th August		-		Deposed Roman emperor Majorian was beheaded, 461. Hungarian aristocrat and serial killer later dubbed 'Countess Dracula' Elizabeth Báthory born, 1560. George Washington ordered the creation of the Badge of Military Merit, later renamed the Purple Heart, 1782. Newsreader and actor Kenneth Kendall born, 1924. Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki reached Raroia after a 4,300 mile (7,000km) trip to prove that pre-historic people could have reached Polynesia from South America, 1947. Novelist and campaigner Brigid Brophy died, 1995.
Saturday 8th August		-		Alchemist and astrologer Matteo Tafuri born, 1492. Artist Lucas van Leyden died, 1533. Joseph Whidbey led an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage near Juneau, Alaska, 1794. Cosmonaut and second woman in space Svetlana Savitskaya born, 1948. President Richard Nixon announced his resignation in a televised address, 1974. Actress Karen Black died, 2013. International Cat Day.
Sunday 9th August		-		Construction began on the campanile (bell tower) of the Cathedral of Pisa, better known today as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, 1173. Artist Hieronymus Bosch died, 1516. Writer and angler Izaak Walton born, 1593. Betty Boop debuted in Dizzy Dishes, 1930. Singer-songwriter and actress Whitney Houston born, 1963. Actress Sharon Tate was murdered, 1969. International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples (United Nations).
Monday 10th August		-		Madeleine of Valois, first wife of King James V of Scotland, born, 1520. Queen Elizabeth I of England and Dutch rebels signed the Treaty of Nonsuch, 1585. Aviator Otto Lilienthal died, 1896. Chemist Felix Hoffman discovered a new way of synthesizing acetysalicylic acid (aspirin), 1897. Engineer Keith Duckworth, founder of Cosworth, born, 1933. Chef and television presenter Jennifer Paterson died, 1999.
Tuesday 11th August		-		The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar began, 3114 BCE. Artist Lavinia Fontana died, 1614. Engraver James B. Longacre born, 1794. The Battle of Amiens in World War I ended, 1918. Actress Embeth Davidtz born, 1965. Actor and comedian Robin Williams committed suicide, 2014.
Wednesday 12th August		-		Cleopatra, Queen of the Ptolomaic Kingdom of Egypt, committed suicide, 30 BCE. The Battle of Ascalon, the last engagement of the First Crusade, 1099. King George IV of the United Kingdom born, 1762. Writer and spy Ian Fleming died, 1964. Actress Dominique Swain born, 1980. The IBM Personal Computer was released, 1981. The Perseid meteor shower peaks. The Glorious Twelfth in the United Kingdom. World Elephant Day.
Thursday 13th August		-		Spanish forces under Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, 1521. Linguist and scholar William Wotton born, 1666. Nurse Florence Nightingale died, 1910. Orpha May Johnson became the first woman to enlist in the United States Marine Corps, 1918. Performance artist Suzanne Muldowney born, 1952. Actor and musician Kenny Baker died, 2016. International Lefthanders Day.

^{^} THE WISDOM OF...

This week, President Barack Obama, on Robin Williams' death:

Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, a nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between. But he was one of a kind. He arrived in our lives as an alien - but he ended up touching every element of the human spirit. He made us laugh. He made us cry. He gave his immeasurable talent freely and generously to those who needed it most - from our troops stationed abroad to the marginalized on our own streets.

^{^} FILM QUIZ

A selection of quotations from films by the same director. Answers next issue or from the regular address.

• When it comes to marriage, one man is as good as the next. And even the least accomodating is less trouble than a mother.
• Is her instrument quite what it was? Perhaps not. But as Beethoven said, a few wrong notes may be forgiven, but singing without feeling cannot.
• Nowadays people want glamour and tears, the grand performance. I've never been good at that.
• Get your patchouli stink - outta my store! Move it, lard ass!
• - So, who are your influences?
  - Everyone asks that. I mean, what do you want me to say? Phil Collins? Animal from The Muppets?

Last issue's quotations were from films directed by Joel Schumacher:

• - You're being arrested for drunk driving.
  - Drunk definitely, I don't know if you could call it driving.
      -- St Elmo's Fire [1985]
• Riddle me this, riddle me that, who's afraid of the big, black bat?
      -- Batman Forever [1995]
• Second shelf is mine. That's where I keep my rootbeers and my double-thick Oreo cookies. Nobody touches the second shelf but me.
      -- The Lost Boys [1987]
• Of course time is just a counting system... numbers with meanings attached to them.
      -- The Number 23 [2007]
• Philosophy failed. Religion failed. Now it's up to the physical sciences.
      -- Flatliners [1990]

^{^} WEIRD WORLD NEWS

Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...

• It has sometimes been said in recent years that the Internet marks the death of libraries when it comes to research, but as John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas recently found out, blindly trusting Google's top search result is no real competition for a good reference librarian. While writing his newest book, A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom, he needed a list of ingredients for red dye. We do not know if he considered the listed items odd, but as many readers of the book have pointed out, keese wing, Octorok Eyeball, red lizalfos tail and four Hylian shrooms are not real-world items - they are the materials needed to dye clothes red in the video game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild according to the game guide that topped Google's results list. To his credit, Boyne owned up to his mistake tweeting for someone to "remind me to add Zelda to the acknowledgements page when the paperback of Traveller is published..."


• Japanese and American scientists have successfully revived microbes that were found in core samples up to 246' (75m) below the seafloor under nearly 3.7 miles (6km) of water in the South Pacific Gyre. Most of the bacteria were aerobic - requiring oxygen to live, but had entered a dormant phase. Based on their location in the core sample it is thought that they are up to 101.5 million years old, deposited in the time of the dinosaurs.


• UK coastguards are getting a new tool - single-rotor drone helicopters dubbed "baby sharks". The drones have a range of 124 miles (200km), can fly at up to 18,000' (5,500m) and remain in the air for around 10 hours, day and night and in adverse weather, beaming live footage back to their control room. They will initially be used for safety overwatch, according to Bristow Helicopters, which built and will run the drones on behalf of the coastguard, allowing manned helicopters to stay on the ground until needed, saving the service considerable expense.


• Three sailors from Micronesia, around 600 small islands scattered across the Western Pacific, were successfully found and rescued after their boat ran out of fuel and drifted 124 miles (200km) west of Pulawat atoll from where they had set off. After the alarm was raised when they failed to complete the planned 26 mile (42km) trip to Pulap atoll US military aircraft were launched from Guam and sighted a large "SOS" made out in branches, rocks and other matter on a beach. An Australian Defence Force helicopter from HMAS Canberra, diverted while en-route to Hawaii, then landed on the beach, on Pikelot Island, and found the men, giving them food and water before a Micronesian patrol vessel arrived to take them home.


• Privacy concerns are not the only problem with 'smart' speakers sold by the likes of Amazon, Apple and Google. Research by the Uswitch comparison website has found that they have problems understanding almost a quarter of British accents. The research focussed on 30 cities, and compared comprehension of a set of common questions as well as the frequency of online searches for "why doesn't Alexa/Google/[etc] understand me?" The city with the most problems was Cardiff, followed by Glasgow, Liverpool, Birmingham and Belfast. The least problems were found in London, suggesting that a generic English dialect was used to train them.


• Elon Musk might be the man behind SpaceX, Tesla and OpenAI, and one of the most powerful people on the planet according to Forbes, but we cannot forget that he also failed to impress planners with his 'hyperloop', accused a British diver involved in the rescue of a children's football team from the flooded Tham Luang cave system of being a paedophile after his proposed minisub was not accepted, named his child "X Æ A-Xii", compared COVID-19 to the common cold and, at least initially, supported Kanye West's bid for the US Presidency. We can add another one to the list. After he tweeted "Aliens built the pyramids obv[iously]" the government of Egypt invited him to "explore the writings about how the pyramids were built and also to check out the tombs of the pyramid builders." Archaeologist Zahi Hawass was more direct, replying on Twitter [in Arabic] that Musk's statement was a "complete hallucination". Musk later tweeted a link to a BBC History magazine site about the pyramid builders, calling it "a sensible summary for how it was done."


• Raz Marsden, 55, and Cat Dixon, 54, have been verified as having broken the world records for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe on a tandem bicycle both overall and by women. Setting out from Oxford last June they took 263 days, 8 hours and 7 minutes, travelling 18,263 miles (29,391km) through 25 countries. They took flights where land passage was impossible and faced the European heatwave last summer, Asian monsoons and the Australian bush fires. Returning to the UK in March they took one of the last sailings before transport was locked down due to the coronavirus pandemic. Beating the previous record of 281 days they raised more than £40,000 ($51,973) for charity.


• There is running for office and then there is Jill Karofsky, newly appointed Supreme Court Justice in Wisconsin. Karofsky is an ultramarathon runner. Last Saturday she was sworn in to office while taking part in a 100 mile (161km) race. Having started running at 6am Karofsky was sworn in by State Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Dallet at the 35 mile (56km) marker at about 1pm before going on to finish the race on Sunday afternoon, after 34 hours.


• The Pentagon has had a problem with leaks for years, recent examples being an email revealing internal conflicts over the response to the handling of a coronavirus outbreak on an aircraft carrier and reports that Russian intelligence was offering bounties to Afghan insurgents for killing American or allied soldiers. They have launched a new campaign across the Defense Department to caution personnel that, in the words of one poster, "free speech does not mean careless speech", and that all information can only be released after being cleared through a public affairs officer. We know all this because details of the campaign were, er, leaked...


• Around 175 recipients, mostly businesses, of tax refunds for corporate tax, sales tax and tax credits in Rhode Island were sent cheques signed by Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse after the state's Department of Taxation accidentally printed the signatures from test files onto the real cheques, which have now been voided pending issuing of correctly-signed replacements.

IN BRIEF: A cat detained at a Sri Lankan prison after being found with a bag containing heroin, SIM cards and a memory card around its neck escaped the next day. ● John Berrie, former mayor of St Helens, Merseyside, and a convicted paedophile serving a suspended sentence, has been sent to prison after trying to stand for election to Wigan council having changed his name on the electoral roll. ● After actor Ryan Reynolds heard about a woman who had had a teddy bear stolen - a bear that played a recording of her late mother's voice when its paw was squeezed - he offered a reward for its return "no questions asked". The bear was returned safe and well. ● Residents of the Suffolk village of Stanton have raised more than £850 ($1,104) in 10 days to buy a custom-made 'wheelchair' for a local dog that had lost the use of its back legs. ● A - or more probably the - bar in the Australian outback town of Yaraka (population 20) has banned two emus for "bad behaviour", deploying a rope barrier with warning signs to keep them out. They still loiter by the rope hoping that someone will accidentally let them in... ● The Voyager 1 space probe, the first man-made object to leave the Solar System is now more than 150 AUs [Astronomical Units; the average distance from the Earth to the Sun] from the Sun, and still working, 45 years after launch, but is due to finally fully cease working in 2036, by which time it will be too far away and weak to contact. ● A bus route through a village in Derbyshire has had to be cancelled after people flocking to a beauty spot repeatedly double parked, blocking the road.

CORONAVIRUS ROUND-UP: After a woman in an unidentified US city complained on the Nextdoor hyperlocal social media site that a pizza restaurant would not serve her because her family refused to have their temperatures checked the entire neighbourhood came out in support - of the restaurant. ● The Bank of Korea has warned customers not to put their currency in washing machines or microwaves to try and clean it of any traces of the coronavirus after two such incidents. ● Also in South Korea, Lee Man-hee, 88, head of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, whose members account for 36% of the country's COVID-19 cases, has been arrested for withholding information about the group's members from contact tracers; the church holds mass gatherings without social distancing or facemasks. Lee is also accused of embezzling. ● Dozens of people were photographed at a party in a Los Angeles bar to "honor first responders" according to the organiser; none were wearing facemasks or social-distancing. ● A Florida man has been arrested after fraudulently obtaining $3.9m (£3m) from the US government's Paycheck Protection Program and using some of the money to buy himself a Lamborghini sports car. ● Thousands of people gathered in Berlin to protest against restrictions brought in to lessen the effects of COVID-19, none wore facemasks or socially distanced. ● An Irish-themed pub in Corralejo, Spain, has reportedly banned Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline from its karaoke machine due to COVID-19; there will be no "touching hands, reaching out, touching me, touching you"...

^ TRUMPWATCH

As has widely been reported Trump wants to ban social media app TikTok in the US, citing unproven national security risks (because what China really wants is details of dancing teenagers...). As many have pointed out his real dislike of TikTok is nothing to do with national security. The fiasco in Tulsa was mostly organised by teenagers via TikTok, as was the campaign to flood Trump businesses and the campaign app with negative reviews, and there are a number of anti-Trump videos posted to it, perhaps most famously comedian Sarah Cooper's blisteringly funny lip sync videos to audio of Trump. There is some question over how a block on TikTok could be implemented. Removing it from app stores would stop new users installing it, but leave existing users able to run it, albeit with no updates. Apple and Google could be ordered to use their ability to wipe the app from users' phones, but that would almost certainly lead to the companies fighting such an order through the courts. The simplest method would be to order ISPs to block access to its servers, which users might be able to bypass with a virtual private network (VPN). Any ban would be controversial; the American Civil Liberties Union has called it a "danger to free expression" and "technologically impractical." Microsoft are reportedly still in talks to buy out TikTok's American operations from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, retaining all data from US users within America. Trump, of course, has had his say. He thinks the US government should get a "substantial proportion" of the purchase price "because we're making it possible." There is no mechanism through which the government could enforce taking a cut; Trump is, again, acting like a wannabe mob boss.

Trump wanted to bring peace to Portland by setting his Department of Homeland Security goons (no IDs, camouflage gear, unmarked vehicles) on the Black Lives Matter protesters, and, we have to admit, he did. Once the goons had been withdrawn following interventions by local leaders the streets were peaceful once again (as they had mostly been before), and the setting for three "living statues", actors painted gold depicting Trump taking a selfie with a federal goon shoving a protester into a truck behind him, another showing Trump and goons examining a mail box, in reference to his attacks on mail-in voting and a third of Trump kneeling in prayer behind a (real) photograph of himself with accused sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Trump has (finally) suggested that his followers wear face masks, although being Trump the endorsement was half-hearted at best, as he tweeted "Masks may be good, they may be just okay, or they may be great." As he was quickly reminded on Twitter, he was "about 5 months, 4.6 million cases & 155k deaths too late." (@Jumpman3233). ● At a press briefing last Thursday he told reporters that case numbers were falling in Florida, the day after Florida's Department of Health reported a new single-day record of 216 deaths due to COVID-19, beating the previous record set the day before... ● Another member of the White House's coronavirus task force, Dr Deborah Birx, has joined Dr Anthony Fauci in openly contradicting Trump's stated view of the pandemic, telling CNN that it is "extraordinarily widespread" across the entire country and more of a threat now than when it began. Trump, of course, attacked her. Fauci, meanwhile, has been contrasting how European countries typically shut down 90+% of their economies to limit the virus' spread while the US only shut down half of its economy with the surge of infections now seen. As of July 31^st America has 8.2% of COVID-19 tests returning positive; the second highest was Romania with 4.7%. America has 4% of the world's population but 23% of the global fatalities due to the Trump^* Virus. ● Vanity Fair has reported that there was a plan for a nationalised response to the virus but it was scrapped before being announced because delegating to states would allow Trump to attack Democratic governors in the run up to the presidential election. ● One business in Scotland is being attacked by the National Union of Railway, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) for using the pandemic to "jack-up profits" by firing up to 80 workers and making savage cuts to sick pay, working hours, staff benefits and working conditions for the remainder. Which business is attracting such ire from the RMT? The Trump Turnberry golf resort... ● When asked at a press briefing about his conflicting statements on face masks and retweeting of a video by wacko Sylvia Immanuel [viz last issue] Trump threw a hissy fit and stormed out of the room... [^*A far more appropriate name, as we have said before, for something that only causes pain and grief and nobody in their right mind would want.]

Fox News' host and rabid Trumpite Sean Hannity is being accused of crossing ethical lines (again) after Trump's election campaign offered signed copies of his book in exchange for $75 (£57.10) donations. Hannity was banned from appearing in promotional material for Trump's first election campaign after featuring in a 2016 political TV ad and attracted Fox News' criticism in 2018 for appearing on stage at a Trump rally in Missouri. ● New court filings by the Manhattan district attorney have expanded the scope for requesting Trump's personal and corporate tax returns, from just being about the alleged hush money payments to two women who said they had affairs with Trump to now include "protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization" which dated back more than 10 years and cited news reports that Trump routinely falsely inflated the worth of himself and his businesses to potential investors and a series of financial transactions that potentially show tax fraud, insurance fraud and bank fraud.

The fallout from Trump's suggestion that the election be delayed rumbles on. Steve Calabresi, co-founder of the staunchly conservative Federalist Society wrote in a New York Times op-ed that "Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats' assertion that President Trump is a fascist. But this latest tweet [suggesting the delay] is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president's immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate." As many have pointed out, Trump's suggesting the delay was quite probably a desperate attempt to distract from his utter failure to deal with the pandemic and economic collapse; former Representative David Jolly (R-Fla) told MSNBC that "There's a saying in politics that fish always flop around before they die. You see candidates engage in erratic behaviour when they know they're going to lose." Not everyone in the White House backed delaying an election. Kayleigh "I will never lie to [the press]. You have my word on that" McEnany told reporters that "This action undermines the democratic processes and freedoms [..] and this is only the most recent in a growing list of broken promises..." Of course, she was talking about Hong Kong, but everyone noted the hypocricy. ● Trump continues to attack mail-in voting (except when he does it, of course), and has threatened to sue Nevada for passing a bill to mail out ballots to all voters ahead of November's election. California and Vermont have already passed legislation to do so in light of the pandemic, while Colorado, Utah, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington already conduct mail-in only voting. Other states, including Florida where Trump votes (by mail) use both mail-in and in-person voting. ● The Republican Party has moved to distance itself from reports that the media would be barred from the party's reduced convention at the end of this month where Trump will be formally re-nominated as their candidate. Both the Associated Press and CNN had quoted insiders confirming the ban, while the New York Times' White House correspondent later tweeted that reporters might be kept out of the first part of the convention but not the re-nomination. ● After Trump tweeted that if Joe Biden wins the election "jobs will disappear!" he was promptly reminded that more than 30 million Americans were getting unemployment payments in early July, on his watch. ● Trump also tweeted that "We beat Obama 4 years ago, he worked harder than Crooked Hillary, and we'll do it again!" - Obama was not standing for election in 2016. ● On the way to a "Cops For Trump" event in Pennsylvania last week Mike Pence's campaign bus - with Pence aboard - crashed into a dump truck causing no injuries but damage to the bus, and much amusement at the irony. Pence decided to go on to the event in a limo, only for two of the escorting police cars to crash. Pence did not, of course, wear a face mask or socially distance at the event. ● Joe Biden tweetest possibly one of the strongest arguments for electing him instead of Trump, saying simply that "You won't have to worry about my tweets when I'm president."

Eric Trump's bid to be the dumbest spawn of Donald continues. After he boasted on Twitter that the NASDAQ stock market index had seen a daily record rise and "America is roaring back to life" he was reminded that "1000 people a day are dying", "there are more than 150,000 Americans and their loved ones who'd beg to differ", "the #COVID body count is higher than the NASDAQ by 14x. Still #winning?" and "the stock market is not the economy."

On Monday night Trump's 37-minute interview with Jonathan Swan aired on the Axios website and HBO. To call it a car crash would be a disservice to automobile accidents. Trump tried to portray the coronavirus pandemic in a positive light, downplaying the death toll and fatalities surge with "we're last, meaning we're first" and clutched a handful of printed graphs that he claimed proved his point about the deaths rate. When Swan looked at them and replied that "Oh, you're doing death as a proportion of cases. I'm talking about death as a proportion of population. That's where the US is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc" the informed, intelligent response was "You can't do that." Trump also repeated his view of testing, saying "You know there are those that say, you can test too much. You do know that" but when asked who says that he could only reply "Oh, just read the manuals. Read the books" but failed to say which manuals or books [Because they do not exist outside of his head, and Trump is noted for not being a reader anyway...] Trump repeated his well-wishes to accused sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, and when asked about the legacy of noted civil rights activist Representative John Lewis (D-Ga), who died last month (Trump did not pay his respects as Lewis lay in state in the Capitol rotunda and held a photo-op at the same time as Lewis' funeral service; Lewis was perfectly eulogised by Barack Obama) Trump complained that Lewis has not attended his inauguration and played down Lewis' achievements, saying "Nobody has done more for Black Americans than I have. He should've come." Perhaps the stand-out moment in the interview was Trump's comment about the more-than-150 thousand deaths from COVID-19. "They are dying, that's true. It is what it is." Swan, a respected experienced journalist and the son of Dr Norman Swan, one of America's most trusted sources of information on the pandemic, later told MSNBC that Trump "is not confronting reality when it comes to the virus. And he is reaching for data points that are good for publicity or sound good, but are not actually the best metrics for revealing what's going on in this country."

On Tuesday Trump praised America's national landmarks, but had a problem pronouncing the name of possibly its most famous - Yosemite. While the rest of America and the world call it 'Yo-sem-it-tee' Trump said "when [young Americans] gaze upon Yo-semite's... Yo-semite's towering sequoias, their love of the country grows stronger..." The official White House transcript added yet another variant, giving the name as 'Yoseminite'. ● Trump's plan to withdraw 12,000 military personnel from Germany is being criticised by both Democrats and Republicans. Susan Rice, national security advisor to President Obama, former Ambassador to the United Nations and shortlisted to run for Vice President with Joe Biden, called it a "special gift" to Vladimir Putin, while Senator Ben Sasse (R-Ne) criticised Trump's "lack of strategic understanding of this issue" and summed up the plan as "weak". ● Trump hates the media and Hollywood, but still made more than $1.6m (£1.22m) in 2019, mostly from Trump Productions LLC, the company that produced the The Apprentice franchise, probably from streaming and syndication rights, and also took pension payments from the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (he joined the plans after cameoing in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and Ghosts Can't Do It, winning a Razzie Award for the latter) as well as residuals for a one-line cameo in The Little Rascals and smaller amounts for undisclosed roles. ● At a press briefing on Tuesday Trump commented on the devastating explosion in Beirut, saying that US military officials "seem to think it was an attack. It was a bomb of some kind". The US Defense Department later told CNN that they did not know what Trump was talking about and initial information did not suggest an attack. Brett McGurk, a former aide to Trump who served under both George W Bush and Barack Obama described it as "wildly irresonsible for a president to stand at the [White House] podium and spitball about an international incident like this as hundreds of casualties are still missing or being treated." ● Musician Neil Young is suing the Trump re-election campaign for continuing to use his music at rallies and events including in Tulsa and at Mount Rushmore this year, having "wilfully" ignored requests not to do so since 2015. According to Young's lawyers "Plaintiff in good conscience cannot allow his music to be used as a 'theme song' for a divisive un-American campaign of ignorance and hate." Young is seeking damages of up to $150,000 (£114,400) for each use of his music.

^{^} OBITUARIES

Broadcast journalist and news anchor Tony Morris (Northwest Tonight, BBC News, Granada Reports, 57), film director Sir Alan Parker (Bugsy Malone, Fame, Pink Floyd - The Wall, 76), politician John Hume (founding member of Northern Ireland's Social Democrat and Labour Party, party leader [1979-2001], Nobel Peace Price laureate, 83), actor Wilford Brimley (Coccoon, The Thing, Our House, 85), engineer Bill English (built the first computer mouse based on colleague Doug Engelbart's concept, 91), pianist Leon Fleischer (battled focal dystonia which disabled his right hand, Two Hands, 92), television director Sydney Lotterby (Porridge, Butterflies, Open All Hours, 93), actor Leslie Randall (Goal!, Billy Liar, Emmerdale, 95).

^{^} DUMBLEDORE BEAR'S LOTTERY PREDICTOR!

Dumbledore Bear, our in-house psychic predicts that the following numbers will be lucky:

9, 15, 31, 34, 42, 58

[UK National Lottery, number range 1-59]
You can get your very own prediction at http://www.simonlamont.co.uk/tfir/dumbledore.htm.

^{^} AND FINALLY...

    Little Jennifer was watching her mother putting on face cream. "What's that for, Mummy?" she asked.
    "It's to make me look young and beautiful, Little Jennifer," her mother said.
    Little Jennifer watched thoughtfully as her mother wiped off the excess cream, then smiled as only she could. "Can you get your money back?"

---

^{^} ...end of line