Good evening.
Our top story tonight: seven people died tragically when their bus crashed into a telephone pole, exploding on impact. There were no survivors. Investigators said it was too early to tell what caused the tragic crash, but they felt certain that there was no way any of the victims could have been saved. President George Junior took time out from making plans to kill thousands of people to avow solidarity with the mourning families of the seven heroes and declare that this sad event will in no way affect American reliance on buses as a mode of transportation.
Our coverage of today's tragic events will begin at 10 am EST with profiles of the seven courageous heroes, followed at 11 by a look at whether or not America's bus fleet is up to the task of transporting people from one place to another with a satisfactory degree of safety. At noon, we will have live coverage of a statement by a representative of the bus company adding his condolences. At 1 pm, public reaction to the tragedy, including the response of Israelis, who lost one of their own in the tragic circumstances, and who now revere him as the hero he was. Then, at 2 pm, a hard-hitting report: were government cutbacks to traffic safety in any way responsible for the tragedy? These programmes will be interspersed with constantly repeated footage of the fire slowly burning itself out while experts pontificate about the meaning of the tragedy with very little evidence. Then, the whole package will be repeated throughout the day.
God, I live for this stuff!
In other news: American Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations to make the case for a war against Iraq. Among other evidence, he presented aerial photos which, he claimed, clearly showed mobile biological weapons factories. One such piece of evidence looked like this:
Hmm...looks like somebody left the lens cap on the satellite camera. Still, Powell argued that a digital enhancement of the photo was more persuasive. That photograph looked like this:
Despite this damning evidence, the French remained unconvinced that war was necessary. Ah, the French...
Powell's presentation to the UN did clearly show that Hussein has been playing hide and seek with weapons inspectors. However, unless Powell is seriously suggesting that Hussein intends to throw a bunker at the United States, the George Junior administration hasn't made the case that Iraq is an international threat that requires a military response. In - what? Yes, as a matter of fact, I do have some French ancestors. Why -
Oh. Very funny.
At the same time as Powell was addressing the UN, the British government released a dossier of information that British Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed contained damning evidence against Iraq. If the dossier sometimes read like a Mad Magazine parody, that's because some of it was, indeed, taken from a Mad article called "You know you're trying to drag the world into a war it doesn't want when..." A spokesperson for the British government insisted that the information was accurate, and that the government had never claimed that its information had come from real, live, martini-drinking, Aston-Martin driving spies.
William M. Gaines was unavailable for comment.
The United States has moved from a yellow terrorist alert readiness to the higher orange alert. In so doing, it bypassed the puce alert, which would have required increased bureaucratic meetings and paperwork, ivory with burnt umber speckles, an alert that mandated increasingly bombastic rhetoric on national television, and lime green with puce and cream polka dots, an alert that the Commander in Chief's fly is unzipped.
In business news: Dan Marinangeli, Chief Financial Officer of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, said parliamentary hearings on bank mergers were "irrelevant," Canada's senators were "a bunch of old party hacks" and Canada itself was a "screwy country" because the Prime Minister decides on whether or not banks can merge. Good to see Marinangeli has studied his How to Make Enemies and Alienate People very closely. You have to wonder, though: given this sort of judgment, would you want one Canadian bank to be responsible for half the RRSPs in the country?
American drug maker GlaxoWelcomeKline intends to stop supplying Canadian on-line druggists with its products, claiming that they sell the drugs back to Americans, mostly senior citizens, at a substantial discount. "They're old. They're gonna die soon," a GlaxoWelcomeKline representative stated. "Would you rather their money went to shiftless relatives who'll only spend it on food and shelter, or a transnational conglomerate that'll use it to offset financial obligations to our shareholders so that we can spend more on developing new cures for baldness?" Well, life is full of tough choices, isn't it?
On the entertainment scene: Sir Paul McCartney is joining the ranks of Mao and Nixon in the reputation rehabilitation sweepstakes. He started by changing the credits on songs from "Lennon/McCartney" to "McCartney/Lennon." He followed this with plans to rerelease a version of Let It Be without the string arrangements, which, McCartney claims, Lennon asked Phil Spector to add over McCartney's objections. If this seems a trifle Stalinesque, well, at least it'll give Sir Paul a reputation he really will have to rehabilitate 20 years from now.
Moses Znaimer has left the CITY building. Indications that his departure is permanent include the removal of signs reading "Interns - for your own safety, we ask that you do not feed the ego of the visionary!" from all areas of the building.
And, now, a Deadline News editorial: a few months after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, a Princess in the Saudi royal family gave a hefty donation to a front for the Al Qaeda terrorist organization, now believed to have been behind the attack. When the donation was revealed, the Saudis claimed she thought she was playing Bingo. Do you believe it? The United States government apparently did.
This is your brain.
This is your brain on oil dependency.
Well, that's my opinion, anyway.
And, finally: in the Where Are They Now? file, legendary music producer Phil Spector appears to have traded his "wall of sound" for a "hail of bullets." Spector was recently arrested for - what? I've just been handed a bulletin - seven people died tragically when the building they lived in burned to the ground. There were no survivors. Investigators said it was too early to tell what caused the tragic fire, but they felt that there was no way that any of the victims could have been saved. President George Junior is expected to go on national television to avow solidarity with the families of the heroes and declare that this will not stop people from living in houses or apartment buildings.
We will be issuing a new programme lineup that reflects this latest tragedy just as soon as we have put one together.
Good night.
