The Night Note: 8/14/09

News you need to know

The following stories are brought to you by the fine folks on the News4 assignment desk.

OBAMA'S NOMINEE ON 'THE KING'S' PAYROLL
President Barack Obama's nominee for surgeon general has worked part-time for one of the corporations keeping the youth of America fat -- and not from behind the counter. According to financial disclosures, Dr. Regina Benjamin has received $10,000 since last year to serve on a Burger King scientific advisory board, the Washington Times reported. (NBC Washington)

NOW SPOT CAN LIVE FOREVER
A South Korean biotechnology firm will early next year open a centre capable eventually of producing up to 1,000 cloned dogs annually, a company executive said Friday. "We need this new facility to turn dog cloning services into a full-fledged business," Cho Seong-Ryul, director of RNL Bio, told AFP.  The centre in Yongin city south of Seoul will cost some five million dollars and focus on cloning pets, working dogs and endangered species including wolves. (Breitbart.com)

SERIOUSLY PHELPS, GET IT TOGETHER
Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps was driving with an expired, out-of-state license and told police he drank a beer about an hour and 15 minutes before he was involved in an accident, Baltimore police said Friday.  The accident Thursday night was not Phelps' fault, police said, and officers did not administer field sobriety tests because he showed no signs of being impaired by alcohol. (WTOP)

I CAN HAZ DIPLOMAZ
Cats get a bad rap on the Internet, frequently stereotyped as LOL ignoramuses, forever shredding grammar like a half-dead mouse in what the World Wide Web would have us believe is their endless quest for "cheezburgers."  Despite the pigeon-holing, cats play piano on YouTube and have their own Facebook profiles, and kitties who tweet exhibit a working knowledge of sentence construction that challenges those of their human Twitter compatriots. So it was only a matter of time before a feline got around to earning an online high school equivalency diploma. (MSNBC)

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