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[snip] Under the ordinance, stores will be prohibited from offering customers plastic bags for carrying out purchases and will be required to charge a dime per paper bag. Beginning on Jan. 1, 2015, the price of paper bags will go up to 25 cent each. [snip] "Most of the comments I've gotten to date are not only supportive, but they are really enthused about it," said Moura, adding that the only complaint he's heard involves the paper bag charge. County officials are hoping as many of the bans will go into effect as possible by April 22, which is Earth...

St. Louis, MO (KPLR) A toy at a Kentucky hardware store invites customers to duke it out with president Barack Obama. It’s called the Obama Bop. Some customers are fighting mad because of the bruised face on the toy and taking their business elsewhere. The owners say if they had a Romney version of the toy they would sell that as well. The punching bag costs $20.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Oregon investigators have traced an outbreak of norovirus to a reusable grocery bag that members of a Beaverton girls' soccer team passed around when they shared cookies. The soccer team of 13- and 14-year-olds traveled to Seattle for a weekend tournament in October 2010.

We now have to pay a 5-cent tax for each paper or plastic shopping bag we get at stores in Montgomery County, Maryland. And I've already gotten suckered into it twice on opening day. (This new tax went into effect Jan. 1 -- kind of like my free Wendy's Frosties, only it doesn't require me to bring my own cups!) I remember when the bag trend hit Washington, D.C., a couple years back, where everyone was charged 5 cents every time they needed a bag for purchases of food and alcohol (including, as luck would have it for me, Subway)....

The City of Austin might enact one of the broadest bag bans in the nation and prohibit disposable paper and plastic bags at all checkout counters starting in January 2016. In the meantime, starting in 2013, retailers could continue to offer thin, so-called single-use bags, but customers would have to pay 25 cents apiece for them, according to a draft of the ban. That three-year period would give the public and retailers time to prepare for the ban, city officials say. More than two dozen U.S. cities have enacted bag bans since 2007. Most prohibit plastic only, or ban plastic...

Part of NY's JFK Airport evacuated after bag foundAP – 27 mins ago NEW YORK (AP) — Part of New York City's John F. Kennedy Airport has been evacuated due to a suspicious bag. Steve Coleman of the Port Authority, which runs the airport, says the bag was left in the business class lounge at the American Airlines Terminal 8 around 7:40 a.m. Monday. Terminal 8 was shut down as a precaution. The rest of the airport is still open.

Morning all, didn't see a thread for today so I created one.

An Arlington Heights man was fined $500 after he turned in $17,000 but lied about how and where he actually found the cash, police said today. Robert Adams, 54, was cited today for filing a false report with the Rolling Meadows Police Department. On the evening of June 6, Adams found a Chase Bank bag full of cash totaling about $17,000 near a Walgreens ATM in Midlothian, police said. Instead of turning the cash in at that location, Adams drove to Rolling Meadows and turned in the bag at a Chase Bank. He later told police he found the cash...

GOP claims bag of uncounted ballots found in Conn.By Susan Haigh, Associated Press – 2 hrs 39 mins ago HARTFORD, Conn. – The Republican candidate for governor in Connecticut says a bag of uncounted photocopied ballots has been found, further throwing into question the outcome of the race. Tom Foley says the bag was found during the counting of ballots in Bridgeport, where a shortage Tuesday night forced officials to photocopy ballots. Foley says it's unclear where the ballots originated and whether they are valid. He wants them impounded. Foley and Democrat Dan Malloy have claimed victory in Tuesday's election....

Cracking the whip on all those throwing plastic bags in drains, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has fined nearly 150 people and collected a fine of Rs 1.32 lakh in a fortnight. After having learnt lessons from July 26 deluge, when plastic bags had blocked drains and led to flooding in the metropolis, the civic body has formed two 'plastic ban' squads consisting of six people. "We have collected a fine of Rs 1.32 lakh from 146 people who were caught throwing plastic in drains in the last 12-13 days. These people are largely hawkers and shopkeepers," Deputy Municipal Commissioner...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- It could soon cost California shoppers at the checkout aisle if they forget to bring their own bags to the grocery store. Legislation passed Wednesday by the California Assembly would prohibit grocery stores, pharmacies, liquor stores and convenience stores from giving out plastic bags.

California, with its long coastline littered with white bags, needs a better approach, one that encourages people to make informed choices between disposable and reusable bags. Here are the options: • A piecemeal, voluntary approach by stores. • A hard-line approach, such as a ban. • A simple, market-based solution: a consumption tax. Ireland has taken this route. Since 2002, consumers who forget to bring a bag are charged a 15-cent tax at checkout. Before the tax, Ireland's 3.9 million people used 1.2 billion bags per year. Now it's 230 million. About $9.6 million was raised from the tax in...

Michael Tonello didn't grow up wearing Hermès, the venerable French label founded in 1837 by Thierry Hermès as a saddlery. He never coveted Hermès ties or scarves, hallmarks of the upper crust. And the American hairstylist certainly never gave a rat's arse about the world-famous Birkin bag, the clunky, rectangular satchel so elusive that billionaires can't always get their hands on them. For the longest time, Tonello didn't even know what a Birkin was. He just wanted enough dough to live in dreamy Barcelona. But after falling into the resale business, he haphazardly discovered the formula for procuring Birkins. And...

Sydney residents 'must carry survival bags' By Mark Chipperfield in Sydney Last Updated: 2:12am BST 18/07/2007 The easy-going residents of Australia's biggest city are being urged to carry personal "survival bags" to help them cope with a future terrorist attack or natural disaster. The Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, says citizens should pack a "Go Bag" containing such essentials as toilet paper, running shoes, spare keys, a torch, disposable gloves, adhesive tape, a transistor radio and sun cream before they leave home each day. Miss Moore, who has yet to pack her own Go Bag, says it is her...

Tailor's bag that put West on the trail of Iran's nuclear secrets By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor (Filed: 22/03/2006) Nuclear inspectors have established a link between Iranian nuclear documents and the blueprint for a warhead bought by Libya on the black market. The discovery increases suspicions that Teheran is trying to build atomic weapons under the cloak of its "civil" nuclear programme. As Iran faces the threat of United Nations sanctions, questions are growing about whether it has made the jump from enriching uranium to designing an actual weapon. The new evidence on "weaponisation" has built up from several...

HELENA, Mont. (AP) -- Erosion by wind and water is a big part of the story at Makoshika State Park, a place of badlands and dinosaur fossils, bobcats and bluebirds. Now some people who enjoy firing guns at a range there fear erosion of what they have come to view as an entitlement. The state parks agency plans to eliminate a decades-old rifle range at Makoshika, a rolling expanse of peculiar sandstone formations in eastern Montana. The 11,500-acre park gets about 54,000 visits a year, and is especially popular among gun enthusiasts in Glendive, about a quarter-mile from the rifle...

I recently renewed my NRA membership. I was sent, as a gift, a replica .458 WinMAg bullet. It is very nice and bears Wayne LaPierre;s signature. What saddened me, though was the sticker on the little pouch it came in. MADE IN CHINA I've already emailed them and told them what I thought. Doug

Preserving the Earth, One Joke at a Time By MICHAEL JANOFSKY Published: November 19, 2005 Jeffrey Tambor performing at the comedy show "Earth to America." Isaac Brekken for The New York TimesLAS VEGAS, Nov. 18 - Ice caps are melting. Oceans are rising. Villages are disappearing. Wild animals are not quite sure what is going on. Pretty funny stuff, eh? Well, on Thursday night it was, as a parade of comedians and a few serious actors joined forces here at Caesars Palace for two and a half hours of environmental consciousness-raising in a live show called "Earth to America," focused...

WANTED SAMUEL "MACHINE GUN SAMMY" ALITO is WANTED for: -Voting to strike down the 1986 federal machine gun ban. In the 1996 case U.S. v. Rybar, Judge Alito was the lone dissenter in the decision upholding the conviction of a gun dealer who sold illegal machine guns at a Pennsylvania gun show. Possession of an unusual and extremely restrictive view of Congressional regulatory power. Alito (also called "Scalito" by his associates because of his similarity to conservative Judge Antonin Scalia) is known to possess views that could imperil virtually every federal law that regulates firearms, ammunitions, and explosives. Known consortion...

HATTIESBURG, Miss. -- Police in Hattiesburg, Miss., said a man fatally shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice.