VBVW for December 15, 2006:
It’s a cold world (but not cold enough)

• The Very Best

An Ethiopian court found exiled former president Mengistu Haile Mariam guilty in abstentia of genocide. It’s unusual for an African country to actually accuse and then convict a former warlord. Not that he’ll serve any time, but it’s nice to know that his crimes aren’t being swept under the rug of blindness that seems to be part and parcel of the continent’s approach to justice.

Rates of the most common form of breast cancer dropped a startling 15 percent from August 2002 to December 2003, researchers reported yesterday. Increased awareness, earlier self-exams, and more cautious prescribing of hormone treatments to menopausal women are among the likely contributors to the drop.

The Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce said U.S. schools are outdated and failing to prepare students to compete in a global economy. The group is proposing that high school should end at 10th grade for many students and teacher pension plans be scrapped for better pay or 401(k)s. This may not be a panacea, but at least someone is trying to find ways to make school kids smarter instead of fatter.

• The Very Worst

Leading climatologists warn that most of the Arctic ice will have melted by 2040 and the North Pole will be open water. The new study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research is bad news for all those who have been living on the “permafrost” surface of the Arctic for centuries, including polar bears, eskimos, and Santa Claus. Rudolph doesn’t need a red nose anymore, he needs a jet ski.

Recent outbreaks of ebola among people in Africa also killed as many as 5,500 gorillas and an uncounted number of chimpanzees, a research team from University of Barcelona reports. This strain of ebola has an 80 percent mortality rate and infects all primates, including humans. The disease begins with a headache and quickly leads to hemorrhagic fever, organ failure, and bleeding from every orifice.

Ten years after Princess Diana died in the most infamous car wreck since Tara Reid’s boob job, opportunistic journalists and filmmakers are still finding a way to turn a buck on her back - not by reminding us of her grace and charity, but by continuing the paparazzi-like feeding frenzy on her gruesome end. Self-styled media types obsessed with conspiracy theories seem disappointed that a report by the former commissioner of the Metropolitan Police determined Di’s death was an accident, not murder.