Technology that helps airlines keep track of luggage and sounds an alarm when a shoplifter tries to leave the store may be able to stop surgeons from losing a sponge inside a patient, a study said on Monday. An earlier study found that medical personnel left foreign objects, most often sponges, inside a patient’s body in one out of every 10 000 surgeries.
Elite cyclist Floyd Landis has Tour de France fans and even many physicians stumped. How can a guy whose hip is falling apart hop on a bike, let alone be a contender in this most grueling challenge? His degenerating condition has crumbled the ball of his hip joint so that it no longer fits neatly into the socket, his doctor says.
The man at the helm of Sears, Roebuck and Company when the retailer built the Chicago high-rise that bears its name has died. Arthur H Wood was 93. Wood’s signature is on the last beam used to build the Sears Tower. The country’s tallest building was completed in 1973.
Drinking coffee may shield the liver from the ravages of alcohol, according to a long-term study released on Monday. A study of more than 125 000 people found that the risk of developing alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver dropped with each cup of coffee they drank per day.
The T-shirt says it all: ”9% of Americans like cereal; 57% like sex.” A new restaurant chain is poised to capitalise on the most important meal of the day by offering consumers tantalising combinations of their favorite cereals in trendy shops that scream fun.
The death row execution of an Ohio man was delayed briefly for one hour on Tuesday after he cried out as he lay on the lethal injection table, according to local media reports. The death row inmate was eventually executed after technicians adjusted an intravenous line.
Restaurant chain TGI Friday’s has made a public apology after a customer found a piece of a finger in his food. The sliver of skin ended up being served with the hamburger and fries after a manager cut his finger while working in the kitchen of a Bloomington, Indiana restaurant last week.
Telling stories is still the lifeblood of the newspaper business, but industry executives are worried they’re not doing a good job explaining one of the biggest stories of the day: the turmoil roiling their own industry. ”The world changed a lot, and we changed a little,” says the outgoing chairperson of the Newspaper Association of America.
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/ 18 February 2006
A northern Illinois resident has reported finding a bird’s head in a can of pinto beans, prompting a Chicago-based food company to announce a voluntary recall. La Preferida said in a statement that it is recalling a limited number of its cans as a precaution. The company says the beans were canned by New Meridian in Eaton, Indiana.
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/ 14 February 2006
Not long after disclosing that its French fries contain more trans fat than thought, McDonald’s has admitted wheat and dairy ingredients are used to flavour the popular menu item in the United States — an acknowledgment it did not previously make. The substances can cause allergic or other medical reactions in some consumers.
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/ 30 January 2006
Nobody ever hangs on long enough to beat Tiger Woods. Some guys peel off early, some in the middle of a round, and a tough few, like Jose Maria Olazabal at the Buick Invitational, only when their fingernails are pulled all the way back. But they all let go of Tiger’s tail, eventually.
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/ 27 January 2006
After having posted multibillion-dollar losses and announced plans to lay off thousands of workers this week, General Motors and the Ford Motor Company have said they are on the road to recovery. Neither, however, would forecast how long it would take to return their struggling North American units to profitability.
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/ 23 January 2006
Ford Motor Company workers faced bleak prospects on Monday as the United States auto giant was to announce huge job cuts and plant closures in a bid to counter its loss of market share to Asian rivals. News reports said up to 29 000 job cuts and 10 plant closures could be announced.
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/ 10 January 2006
A mouse took fiery revenge on a man who threw it into a pile of burning leaves by burning his house down. The flaming mouse ran back into the wooden house of 81-year-old Luciano Mares, in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, setting it afire and virtually destroying the building.
Cheerleaders catapult in the air, climb human pyramids and catch their tumbling teammates as they fall to the ground. They also make lots of emergency room visits. A study published on Tuesday in the journal Pediatrics indicates cheerleading injuries more than doubled from 1990 until 2002.
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/ 10 December 2005
Investigators studied the crash scene on Friday after a passenger jet trying to land amid heavy snow plowed off a Midway International airport runway and into a Chicago street, killing a six-year-old boy in a car. Ten other people, most of them on the ground, were injured in the Thursday-evening accident.
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/ 8 December 2005
Scalding chickens alive is the wrong way to prepare meat for a McNugget, animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said on Wednesday. Peta and socially responsible investment firm Trillium Asset Management issued a shareholder’s resolution calling on the fast food giant McDonald’s to require its suppliers to switch to a humane system of slaughtering chickens.
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/ 7 December 2005
Ford Motor Company came under fire this week after it was reported to have pulled ads from gay publications in a "secret deal" with a conservative Christian group. The automaker denied that any deal had been made and insisted that the decision to cease advertising its Jaguar and Land Rover brands in gay publications was part of a broad restructuring of the advertising budgets.
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/ 29 November 2005
The jukebox at the bar in Chicago that Brian Toro manages isn’t gathering dust just yet — but it may only be a matter of time. The popular nightspot is among a growing number of places across the United States where people can bring their iPods and other portable music players and, for as long as the bartender allows, share their personal favourites with the crowd.
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/ 23 November 2005
The redesigned Honda Civic was named Motor Trend magazine’s 2006 car of the year on Tuesday, one of the most prestigious awards in the United States auto industry. ”Honda deserves a standing ovation for not playing it safe again,” Motor Trend editor-in-chief Angus MacKenzie said in a statement.
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/ 22 November 2005
Closing nine plants and laying off thousands of workers will only exacerbate General Motors’ (GM) woes, the auto maker’s main union said Monday. The plant closures in Michigan, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Canada announced by the auto maker on Monday will result in the loss of 30 000 jobs.
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/ 28 October 2005
The road from New Orleans to Chicago has been a long one for bartenders Webb Rhodes and Fritz Voght. Two months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged their city and destroyed their way of life, the longtime friends are still scrambling to find work and a place to live. It hasn’t been easy.
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/ 24 October 2005
Scott Podsednik belted a walk-off home run to seal a 7-6 White Sox victory over Houston on Sunday, insuring Chicago teammate Paul Konerko’s grand slam didn’t go to waste in game two of the World Series. The White Sox seized a two-games-to-none lead in the best-of-seven Major League Baseball championship series, which heads to Houston on Tuesday for game three.
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/ 26 September 2005
Albert ”Caesar” Tocco, a reputed Mob boss who was sentenced to 200 years after his wife took the unusual step of testifying against him, has died in an Indiana prison. He was 77. Tocco allegedly oversaw organised-crime operations in many of Chicago’s southern suburbs.
Lance Armstrong went on the offensive on Wednesday, saying it was ”preposterous” for the director of the Tour de France to suggest the seven-time champion ”fooled” race officials and the sporting world by doping. He also took to task the French newspaper that accused him.
The architect’s concept is breathtaking: a spiralling, 115-storey tower that would pierce the sky along Chicago’s lakefront and grab the title of the tallest building in the United States. Off the drawing board, though, history shows that such plans often fail to live up to their record-breaking aspirations.
A new study sheds new light on euthanasia in The Netherlands, the first country to legalise it for terminally ill people, finding that nearly one in eight adult patients who requested mercy killings decided not to go through with it. Nearly half of the euthanasia requests were carried out.
British tycoon Richard Branson has formed a new aerospace company to build a fleet of commercial spaceships. The Spaceship Company will be jointly owned by Branson’s Virgin Group and Burt Rutan, whose SpaceShipOne won the -million ”X Prize” for sending a privately-designed craft into space twice in two weeks.
A corpse caused a traffic jam on a Dallas, Texas, highway after it fell off a pick-up truck late on Tuesday, local media reported. The body was being transported to a Shreveport, Louisiana, funeral home when it fell off the truck and landed in the fast lane, <i>The Dallas Morning News</i> reported on Wednesday.
An Ohio man with the breasts of a woman has been charged with indecent exposure after he was spotted shirtless. "He’s a guy. He’s real tall, and he’s got a full set of breasts," assistant Cincinnati solicitor Kevin Donovan told the <i>Cincinnati Post</i>.
Tiger Woods believes he has what it takes to become the first player in PGA Tour history to reach -million in career earnings. The world’s top ranked player Woods needs just  974 in earnings and he will get a legitimate shot at reaching the lofty mark when the Western Open begins on Thursday.
United States soccer coach Bruce Arena has a timetable for when the global game will join the elite American sports scene and allow the US squad to schedule World Cup qualifying matches anywhere. ”In about 100 years,” he said. It seems like that long since soccer has been called the US sport of the future.