WTF News Roundup: August 11, 2010

COCA-COLA: “NO CONSUMER COULD REASONABLY BE MISLED INTO THINKING VITAMINWATER WAS A HEALTHY BEVERAGE”

Now here’s something you wouldn’t expect. Coca-Cola is being sued by a non-profit public interest group, on the grounds that the company’s vitaminwater products make unwarranted health claims. No surprise there. But how do you think the company is defending itself?

In a staggering feat of twisted logic, lawyers for Coca-Cola are defending the lawsuit by asserting that “no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage.”

Does this mean that you’d have to be an unreasonable person to think that a product named “vitaminwater,” a product that has been heavily and aggressively marketed as a healthy beverage, actually had health benefits?

Or does it mean that it’s okay for a corporation to lie about its products, as long as they can then turn around and claim that no one actually believes their lies?

In fact, the product is basically sugar-water, to which about a penny’s worth of synthetic vitamins have been added. And the amount of sugar is not trivial. A bottle of vitaminwater contains 33 grams of sugar, making it more akin to a soft drink than to a healthy beverage…

Read the full article via The Huffington Post (published August 5, 2010)

Our two cents: vitamin=good, water=good, vitaminwater=bad

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GROOM ACCIDENTALLY KILLS WEDDING GUESTS

Three family members at a wedding in Turkey have been accidentally shot dead by the groom firing an AK-47 rifle in celebration.

The groom, Tevfik Altin, lost control of his rifle, spraying the guests with bullets and killing his father and two aunts and injuring six others, according to CNN Turk.

It reported that Altin had been arrested after the incident in the village of Akcagoze in southeastern Turkey. Guns are often fired into the air in celebration in some parts of Turkey…

Read the full article via CNN (published August 9, 2010)

Our two cents: In name of good taste, no comment…

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OHIO WOMAN DENIED McNUGGETS GOES ON RAMPAGE

A security video from a McDonald’s in Ohio shows a woman punching two restaurant employees and smashing a drive-thru window because she couldn’t get Chicken McNuggets.

The tantrum caught on tape in Toledo earlier this year shows the customer reaching through the drive-thru window, slugging one worker and then another. She then grabs a bottle out of her car and tosses it through the glass window before speeding off.

It happened early on New Year’s Day. Police say Melodi Dushane was angry that McNuggets weren’t being served, because it was breakfast time. Dushane says she was drunk. She was sentenced to 60 days in jail last month and ordered to pay for the broken window. via AP News on Google (published August 10, 2010)

Our two cents: Baby wants her bottle…

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MAN DIES IN FINAL OF SAUNA CHAMPIONSHIP

A Russian man died in the finals of the world sauna championships in Finland after spending some six minutes sweltering in temperatures of 110 degrees Celsius (230.00F), organizers said Sunday.

“After this incident we decided that this game is over and done,” Saija Jappinen, cultural secretary at Heinola city told Reuters, announcing the end of the event.

The world sauna championships, where competitors try to outlast others in the heat and steam, have been held 12 times in Heinola, some 138 km (86 miles) northeast of Finland’s capital Helsinki.

Dozens of competitors were whittled down to just two, but six minutes into the final judges noticed something was wrong with Russian champion Vladimir Lazyzhenskiy and dragged him and Finnish finalist Timo Kaukonen from the sauna…

Read the full article via Reuters (published August 9, 2010)

Our two cents: If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen sauna.

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JENNY “WHITEBOARD” AKA HPOA GIRL IS A HOAX

Read more about the hoax via Boing Boing

Our two cents: We posted Jenny’s photos so they obviously fooled us. Stupid internet…

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MERCENARIES  TO FILL VOID LEFT BY U.S. ARMY IN IRAQ

As the U.S. military continues to draw down its forces in Iraq later this month and complete a full exit by the end of next year, analysts say the withdrawal will be a boon for the private security industry, whose employees will likely undertake more quasi-military functions such as defusing explosives and providing armed response teams. “They [private security contractors] are going to have to do everything that we expect soldiers to do without going out on patrols to engage the enemy,” says one former industry insider. “There are some pretty smart number crunchers in all the major contractors who are figuring out how much of this increasing pie we’re going to be able to get…”

These tasks—which include clearing travel routes and driving armored combat vehicles—do not involve attacking, and thus are not military functions, Kennedy argues. But they do potentially increase the chances that “people acting in the name of the U.S.…can get the U.S. involved in perceptions of misconduct,” says a spokesman for the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Read the full article via Newsweek (published August 10, 2010)

Our two cents: To me, adding 7,000 armed contractors with little oversight sounds more like a “troop substitution” than a “troop withdrawal”.  I like what Jeremy Scahill of The Nation recently wrote on his blog, “Under the terms of the Status of Forces agreement, all US forces are supposed to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011. Using private forces is a backdoor way of continuing a substantial US presence under the cover of ‘diplomatic security.’”