A recent article on the BBC says “The US soft drinks industry says it has dramatically cut the number of high-calorie soft drinks sold in US schools as part of a drive to tackle obesity.”

While the article trumpets that “the reduction in sugary soft drinks in schools [was] formed part of a deal between the major companies and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation”, I think it’s a rather strange coincidence that corporate concern for “obesity” is timed with the fact that sugar is now priced at an all time high, with sugar prices jumping “… 12% in the last 12 months and is now 33% higher than the level that prevailed for most of the 2000s.”

To make matters worse, now that sugar is rapidly going up in price, suppliers are hording it, thereby making sugar even more expensive than it needs to be. An article on the Daily Tribune says “Food exporters suspect hoarding of sugar as the main reason for the rocketing price of the commodity and called on government to immediately step in to help avert the collapse of the food export industry due to possible supply manipulation.”

Back in December, I posted an article on how General Mills is cutting sugar in children’s cereals, coincidentally as sugar prices reach 28 year highs. GM saw this problem coming way back then, and now the soda industry is moving on it.

I bet there’s going to be even more drastic sugar reduction in foodstuffs soon. Not because the food industry truly gives a flip about the “obesity epidemic”, but because one of their main ingredients just rocketed by a 28 year high mark in 2009.

I also bet this issue is going to snowball pretty quick in the mainstream. I’ve already noticed a huge price increase on sugar in the supermarket, and if GM and the major soda vendors are cutting sugar content, you can bet the smaller companies are going to start making changes as soon as they can.

Here are some news stories from this week that I think the mainstream media completely missed out on. All links are from legitimate news sources and not the fringe / wacko sites.

* Campbells is a bunch of scheming bastiches! “An ABC investigation shows Campbell’s “Healthy Request” and “Low Sodium” tomato soups contain the same nutrients and exact same amount of sodium as regular tomato soups, but [the healthy request] costs more.” So it’s the 100% same product, just more expensive if you want the “healthy” sticker on the can? RIP! OFF! [CONSUMERIST]

* Forget the cows. There’s methane coming out of the Arctic on an insane scale. “7 teragrams of methane are currently being released annually from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. That’s about equal to the amount of methane that is annually released from the rest of the world’s oceans combined, and much more than was previously believed to be released from that part of the Arctic…. the levels in the Arctic now average about 1.85 parts per million, the highest level in 400,000 years.”” OK, whether you believe in global warming or not, this methane release IS happening. So how about putting aside the bickering on whose clipboard is bigger and try to solve this 100% increase in methane before we all keel over? 400,000 years is not a statistic to be ignored. [NSF.GOV]

* Speaking of changes happening on the Earth, Venezuela has had no lightning at all this year. From a standard 20,000 bolts per 9 hour show every single night to absolutely none. The really trippy part? It might have been the result of the recent earthquake in Chile! “The last time the phenomenon vanished was in 1906 after a catastrophic 8.8-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Ecuador and Colombia unleashed a tsunami.” [GUARDIAN.UK]

* Another week, another mega financial crisis is getting underway. Just keep moving. Nothing to see here folks. [ABCNEWS]

* Drag racing Naval ships? Oh hell yes! Put that on SPIKE TV right before UFC! The headline says “A Navy captain was demoted because she berated and assaulted her crew, not because she led her guided missile cruiser on a drag-race with another U.S. warship in the Pacific” Wait, yelling at enlisted personnel of lower rank in the military is now a bad thing? [GOOGLE NEWS]

* Speaking of military news, the department of the Navy might be renamed to”Department of the Navy and Marine Corps.” Why you ask? “Families of Marines killed in action receive condolence letters from the secretary of the Navy, with no mention of the Marine Corps in the letterhead. Proponents of the bill want to change this.” Guys? You’re solving the wrong problem here. [THE HILL]

* One last military news bit. Dogs serving in the military that are coming back from the war are exhibiting PTSD just like some soldiers. Enough with these damn wars! Operation GTFO needs to start right now! [WSJ]

* Why aren’t people moving to where the jobs are? Apparently they’re trapped in a vicious cycle. “One in four homeowners is trapped in their house because they owe more than the house is worth, so they can’t move to take another job — until they sell or walk away.” Catch-22 anyone? [BUSINESS INSIDER]

* Praising kids all the time? Giving everyone who was in a contest ribbons and trophies and saying they’re all winners regardless of the outcome? Turns out it’s bad for them! More stupid baby boomer feel-good BS finally exposed for what it is! [NYMAG]

* Are you sitting down? Well don’t! Sitting down at your job is horribly bad for you! [NY TIMES]

* Want to pay for your waiter’s healthcare? That’s what the San Francisco restaurant industry hopes. They are tacking on a surcharge to each restaurant bill to help pay for their employee’s healthcare plans. What’s next? Rent surcharge? An electricity usage fee? [CHICAGO TRIBUNE]

* The managers at AIG are furious! Furious at the nerve that the American taxpayers want their money back! A manager summarized it all by saying… “To be honest with you, I really hope it blows up. I think the U.S. taxpayer deserves to lose a trillion dollars over this thing for the way they have behaved.” I like to think I’m a reasonable guy. But I think we need to get someone like good old “two fingers” Vinnie to go have a chat with AIG executives about the money they owe us. [WASHINGTON POST]

* OK, take a deep breath before you read this one. Ready? Here goes… “Extra small condoms for boys as young as 12” will be on sale soon in Britain because “not enough 12 to 14-year-old boys were having protected sex.” Wow. Where to begin with this? I’ve said it earlier in this post, but how about… Solving! The! Wrong! Problem! [DAILYMAIL.UK]

* ABC News is going to “Close all of its physical bureaus around the country except Washington and halve the number of its domestic correspondents.” Dude! So why bother calling it ABC News? Just pull an MTV and drop the extra title you don’t need anymore! News. Psssh. Who needs that crap? [LA TIMES]

* Got a bomb of a movie? Get a bad review? No worries! Variety will re-rate your movie for just $400,000! [GAWKER]

* USPS – no more Saturday mail? $10 BILLION in debt? Shorting their retirees to make ends meet? Maybe because nobody uses postal mail anymore? Can I possibly end this with one more question? [CNN]

* And finally, the Porsche 918 Spyder plug-in hybrid concept gets 78 mpg and hits 62 mph in 3.2 seconds. Vanity license plate BOO YAH not included. [AUTOBLOG]

That’s all for this week. Have a great weekend everyone!

Here are some news stories from this week that I think the mainstream media completely missed out on. All links are from legitimate news sources and not the fringe / wacko sites.

* Ginormous hedge bets are being placed against the Euro by George Soros and other mega-sized Wall Street hedge funds. In English, this means they’re betting the Euro will collapse (or tank in value) so $1 Euro = $1 US… or worse! And if they’re right, they will make tons of money off their bet! When multi-multi-billionaires put a large chunk of their money on something, they either know something we don’t know, or are about to cause something we don’t know about yet. Oh yeah. This is going to get ugly. With a capital U G L and Y. [DAILYMAIL.UK]

* Meanwhile, “China has confirmed the intention to purchase 191.3 tons of gold from the International Monetary Fund at an open auction.” That’s HALF of the IMF’s gold. Why do I have a feeling this is going to come back to bite us right in the kanickies? [PRAVDA]

* The winner of the solid gold WTF crown this week is the Unites States! Specifically, the part of the United States that is currently selling arms to India and Pakistan. And not just guns! Surveillance drones too! Because nothing says “good times” like arming two countries who hate each other and watching what happens! [DAILYTIMES.PK]

* A very, very close runner up to the WTF crown this week is this one… Texas has been turning over blood samples from all newborns to the federal government in order to build a DNA database. Sure they said they are going to destroy the blood already collected, but if the blood sample is in the master database already, then whats the damn point of destroying the samples they came from? Invasion of privacy much? [TEXAS TRIBUNE] and [DSHS.TX]

* If you throw a riot and no one knows about it, does it count? There was a real riot in UC Berkley last Friday night, but nobody cared enough to cover it! [HUFFINGTON POST]

* A Danish study has shown temporarily stopping blood flow in the arm prevents damage in people having a heart attack. That’s very valuable information! I should get these directions tattooed on my arms for later. [BBC]

* The “you don’t deserve any privacy” Patriot Act was successfully renewed this week. To make it happen, the Republicans said they would filibuster everything if the Democrats didn’t go along and renew the Patriot Act as-is. It’s nice to see the two parties are working together at last! And by that I mean the Republicans pimp-slapping the consistently cowardly Democrats around like they always did before the election. [EFF]

* Scientists are closing in a giant cosmic secret… why do why do we gain weight as we age even though we eat less? You would think all that damn fiber would help grandpa stay slimmer! [NPR]

* Speaking of cosmic secrets, scientists this week have determined the general theory of relativity is wrong… because a spinning top told them so. Trippy. Maybe this week they will ask a Slinky for a second opinion. [SOFTPEDIA]

* A computer program from 1987 composes and performs better classical music than most humans do! So what was every composer’s response that saw this program in action? To ban the software engineer from the music industry and call for the computer to be destroyed! Why does this sound like an old Frankenstein movie? Use the woodwinds as torches! Hammer the trombones into pitchforks! Storm the castle of the monster! It must not be allowed to live! [MILLER-MCCUNE]

* The pentagon is finally going to allow women on submarines! Haven’t they heard the superstition that if a woman is on a boat it will sink? Waitaminute…. [CLTV]

* You will soon be able to power your home all year with a battery no bigger than a regular sized brick! Its not science fiction… it’s already done! And, of course, Google has one of their own. [TARANFX]

* This isn’t science fiction either, but I wish it was. The professor who went nucking futs at the University of Alabama may have created a “herpes bomb… in which a herpes-like virus spreads throughout the world, causing pregnant women to miscarry.” Yeah, it sounds silly at first, but the problem is, she’s smart enough to do it… and her colleagues think she actually made one, too. Completely psychotic and a brilliant bio-engineer. Oh yeah, this one needs to be put in solitary confinement fo-ever! [NYTIMES]

Off to enjoy my weekend (some more). Back Monday!

I woke up this morning and heard the U.S. Consulate just closed all their offices in Reynosa, Mexico due to the sudden upswing in violence.

Consulate Closing

“The U.S. Consulate has restricted travel of American officials to Reynosa and closed its office there until further notice…[The Consulate] advises U.S. citizens to take the above information into consideration when making any decisions concerning traveling to or within Reynosa.”

“According to local reports, gunmen in as many as 20 vehicles clashed with members of the Mexican military and municipal police in Ciudad Mier, just west of Reynosa, during a daytime gun battle Tuesday that reportedly resulted in the kidnapping of 10 municipal police officers. Video from the scene showed abandoned police sport utility vehicles with bullet holes and broken windows. Shattered glass covered the street in the backdrop of palm trees. A damaged red truck with the insignia C.D.G. — the Spanish acronym for the Gulf Cartel — was shown being towed from the shooting scene.”

It’s front page news here in the valley and on every TV station, but CNN has the story buried in the “other news” links. So far, based on what I’ve seen on the ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX news channels this morning, a killer whale at Sea World is more important than what is quickly coming to a boiling point down here.

Here’s the CNN link on the consulate closing.

There’s been a sudden increase in violence along the Mexico border these last few days. A great deal moreso than usual. A “running gun battle in Valle Hermoso” left 5 people dead yesterday. The running count is around 17 dead since this Sunday.

Things got real ugly when the Mexican military surrounded a grade school yesterday. A grade school! The surprise “Mexican navy raid Thursday in which about 500 sailors surrounded an area near two of Reynosa’s biggest schools….The naval commandos were reportedly pursuing Miguel “Zeta 40” Treviño Morales, second-in-command of the Zetas who oversaw the operations of the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas — collectively known as “The Company” — in Veracruz and Nuevo Laredo….The hysteria shut down much of Reynosa on Thursday, when schools dismissed early and businesses closed their doors across the city. On Saturday, banners were found hanging from pedestrian bridges across Reynosa stating in Spanish that the city is safe and assuring residents that “nothing is happening and nothing will happen.”

Yeah, those signs should be enough to calm everyone down. Thanks guys.

The reason for all this violence? “Los Zetas, once the armed enforcement wing of the Gulf Cartel, are rumored to be staging a coup for control of the Reynosa plaza, one of the busiest and most important transport routes for drugs bound for the United States, federal officials said.”

I’ve taken a keen interest in these kinds of power struggles as I currently live about 10 minutes from the border in any direction (well, except North.) If something goes down, I would be at ground zero.

You can read about it in detail at the Valley’s newspaper THE MONITOR with a followup story here.

The FoxRio news article about the recent violence is here.

The KRGV news article about the recent violence is here.

And here’s the CNN article on the renewed travel alert to Mexico.

You can also check out the more informative but all-Spanish news clip at Telemundo40 titled “Alerta Màxima en Mèxico”. (I would embed it here, but the whole sidebar is flash based.)

Here are some news stories from this week that I think the mainstream media completely missed out on. All links are from legitimate news sources and not the fringe / wacko sites.

* The jobs outlook still twitchier than a monkey in a washing machine full of bananas. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst everyone! [ECONOMIST]

* A Philadelphia school apparently has been using the laptops they provided to the kids to also spy on them while they were home! All this came out when a kid was popped for “”improper behavior in his home” and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence.”! OK, this won the official solid gold WTF! crown for the week! The district was OK with this? The Vice Principal on down authorized this big honkin’ invasion of privacy? Of putting a camera on a child’s private moments at home? Wow! To quote Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off “Les jeux sont faits. Translation: the game is up. Your ass is mine.” But I don’t think the hammer is going to fall on the kids!  [BOING BOING] UPDATE: Ooooh yes. Here comes the FBI! Gonna’ need some popcorn for this one! [CNN]

* Google has received federal approval to buy and sell energy. They are going to be their own electric company! Dude. Picture this next video, but with the Google logo and Sergey Brin and Larry Page jammin’ with some of their friends… [IT WORLD]

* Dolphins can switch on and off diabetes as needed! Dammit Flipper, why didn’t you tell us about this earlier? [GUARDIAN.UK]

* How would you like working straight until 70 before social security clicks in? Or seeing some big tax increases and increasing co-pays and deductibles for Medicare? These are some of the tentative plans under Obama’s new deficit commission! Why isn’t the mainstream media talking about how horrible things are going to get if things don’t change soon? And since when do most people live past 70? Since a lot of people kick the bucket before then, so all that money won’t…. ooooooh. I see. [YAHOO]

* And speaking of how bad things are getting, something called “Peak Oil” is coming soon, with severe price increases by 2015. This doesn’t mean oil running out…. it means cheap and plentiful energy will be done with a big fork in it. About 1/2 of the world’s easily accessible oil will be tapped, and the remainder will be insanely more difficult to get out. If Oil was a restaurant, it’s going from a $ rating to a $$$$$ rating. This is going to be, very possibly, the end of cheap oil in our lifetime. You can argue everything in this last century was accomplished because we all had tons of cheap energy to burn (pun intended), so something new has got to be put in place soon. Any wonder there’s a sudden rush to develop and construct more nuclear power plants? [CSMONITOR]

* Dallas police are planning on going door to door in some neighborhoods, knocking on the door, and just having a chat with the resident right there! It sounds quite British of them! While they’re passing the time on your doorstep with their door open, if they happen to see anything behind the door or in the room in plain sight that happens to look or smell illegal, or if they hear anything illegal in the background, WHAMMO!! In come the SWAT teams! Seriously! That’s their plan! Man, where to begin? Profiling. Warrantless Searches. Authoritarian Intimidation. Disregarding on the 4th and 5th amendment. I guess the old investigation to lead to probable cause to lead to a judicial search warrant is just too hard! [DALLAS MORNING NEWS]

* Operation Iraqi Freedom is now Operation New Dawn. Great. So when does Operation GTFO start? That’s the one I’ve been waiting on this whole time! [ABC NEWS]

* What does your handshake say about you? I’d like to think mine says something like “Généralement, les gens qui savant peu parlent becoup, et les gens qui savant beaucoup parlent peu.” Oui oui je sais. Just a touch! [SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN]

* Colorado Springs, Colorado is turning off their street lights, not picking up trash in the city parks, mowing only monthly, and closing public restrooms. All this in an effort to save money. So they’re collecting all these property taxes and they have nothing left over after paying…. what exactly? I betcha’ there’s a few fat cats still porking out in the budget kitchen that can be flushed out. [NPR]

* “Scientists say that a meteorite that crashed into Earth 40 years ago contains millions of different carbon-containing, or organic, molecules.” Oooo! Get Michael Bay on the line! I got an idea! Coming soon… don’t trust anyone under 40! They’ve all got sleeper DNA cells that make them not human! Dun dun duuuuunnnnn! Wait… that would be me too!! Oh no!! [BBC.UK]

* Researchers discover how antidepressants actually work! What? You mean they had no idea all this time? To stael a bit from Eddie Izzard, did they just try a little bit of everything to find out what worked? Try this piece of zinc? No? How about uranium? Ooo definitely not that one. How about a frying pan upside the head? CLANG!! No? How about this prozac, then? Ah-hah!! [PHYSORG]

And to close out, that original bit from Eddie Izzard I just completely butchered in the article above. I must warn you, the man is an executive transvestite. Watch at your own peril!

Until next week… ciao!

Here are some news stories from this week that I think the mainstream media completely missed out on. All links are from legitimate news sources and not the fringe / wacko sites.

Jumbo Sized Edition Today!

* Kids are getting shorter attention spans thanks to the internet.
TL;DR: The internets gave us ADD. [DAILYMAIL.UK]

* A giant bit of space debris from a Russian Space Station hit 100 miles northeast of Mexico City, crating a 30 meter wide crater, and nobody noticed! Are giant KAWHOOOOOOMMMM kind of explosions really nothing to worry about in that area? Now that’s a rough neighborhood! [DISCOVER MAGAZINE]

* There’s a new mosquito killing system that actively tracks and shoots down mosquitoes with frickin’ laser beams! This was shown at the TED 2010 conference and actually works! Awesome video of mosquitoes getting zapped while still flying in mid-air in the link. [GIZMODO]

* Dude… we apparently live in a giant cosmic hologram. “The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image… Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.” So by this theory, it’s entirely possible we’re all really data being loaded from a ginormous DVD and are nothing but a cosmic version of THE SIMS. Red pill anyone? [NEW SCIENTIST]

* And while we’re out there tripping in the galaxy, it seems “the cosmos we live in was actually created by the cyclical trillion-year collision of two universes that were attracted toward each other by the leaking of gravity out of one of the universes… the Big Bang was not the beginning of time but the bridge to a past filled with endlessly repeating cycles of evolution, each accompanied by the creation of new matter and the formation of new galaxies, stars, and planets.” My… brain… hurts…. now. I’m actually surprised we don’t see scientist’s heads exploding on TV more often. [DAILY GALAXY]

* China is backing away from all US investments that are not “US Treasuries or agency mortgage debt such as Freddie Mac that enjoys Washington’s implicit backing.” I say when the gambler with chips to spare pulls back from the table, you really need to re-evaluate the deal. [TELEGRAPH.UK]

* Hardcore medicaid cuts are beginning. In Nevada, they’re going to… “ration adult diapers, eliminate denture and hearing-aid programs, and force personal care assistants to buy their own disposable gloves.” But that’s not the worst part. “With proposed cuts so far totaling only half the state deficit, deeper cuts may be necessary.” Oh come on! You can’t ration memaw and peepaws friggin’ diapers! Heartless bastiches! [MSNBC]

* The pentagon / DARPA is spending $6 million to create “immortal synthetic organisms”. These organisms will live forever, but have a molecular “kill switch” in case something goes wrong. So lemme ask you something… if you knew you could be immortal by hacking a simple line of code in your DNA, would you? And what would you think of someone putting that strand in your genetic code just for the sake of controlling you? Ohhhh yeah. Highly pissed off Immortal Robot Skeleton Armies. This is going to end well. [WIRED]

* Speaking of military tech, according to this video from the Air Force Research Laboratory, they’re designing robotic birds and bugs with spy and attack capabilities and a rudimentary “blending in” ability. Seriously, I think hacking is going to be an insanely valuable (and probably highly illegal) skill in just a few years. [YOUTUBE VIDEO]

* The world’s tallest building in Dubai has indefinitely shut down just one month after opening. Apparently there’s some small electrical problems in the sucker. Like elevators getting stuck 150 stories up after a explosion or two rocks the building. John McClane, please pickup the nearest courtesy phone. [CHRON]



—- WARNING : HIGHLY UPSET VOTER RANT SECTION BEGINS HERE ————–

* “President Barack Obama said he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.” So, by taxing those households making under $200k, he is rapidly closing in on taxing the middle class, if not expressly planning on doing so. And didn’t he expressly promise not to raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 or households earning less than $250,000 a year in his presidential campaign? So much for that. So what is the acceptable household income threshold of “you make enough money to be taxed much higher” now? $200k? $100k? $98k? Did I mention in a debate with Hilary Clinton during the presidential campaign, Obama said “Understand that only 6 percent of Americans make more than $97,000 a year. So, 6 percent is not the middle class; it’s the upper class.” To quote the ever quotable Samuel Jackson, “…hold on to your butts.” [BLOOMBERG]

* The Obama administration is also about to make a big push to ban Pepsi, french fries and snickers from the nation’s schools because they’re baaaaad for kids! Um… my generation had the sodas and candy bar thing going on at lunch, and with your typical teenager’s metabolism and just a little bit of exercise, it wasn’t a friggin’ problem! Why is there a need to mess with the few sources of happiness for kids still in High School? [NY TIMES]

* And speaking of big issues the administration is tackling, the Obama administration just shut down the LORAN navigation system. GPS has long overtaken LORAN in popularity, but LORAN was a fantastic plan B. Kind of like keeping a landline phone around even though cell phones are the norm. Here’s the real twist – shutting down LORAN is MORE EXPENSIVE than upgrading it! According to the Wikipedia article on LORAN, “The Independent Assessment Team (IAT)… concluded that the cost to decommission the LORAN system would exceed the cost of deploying eLORAN, thus negating any stated savings as offered by the Obama administration and revealing the vulnerability of the U.S. to GPS disruption…. it would cost just as much to shut down as to upgrade to eLORAN.” Don’t worry. I’m sure more brilliant decisions are already in progress. [CNN]

* And while I’m still on the topic of stupid government activity, the Administrator of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs suggested the feds should “cognitively infiltrate” political groups that believe in conspiracy theories. Wonderful! Brilliant! Like the old saying goes, you’re only paranoid if they’re actually not out to get you! [HUFFINGTON POST]

Seriously, this is nuts. If I wanted a Republican in office to implement all this BS, I would’ve voted for one.

—- END OF HIGHLY UPSET VOTER RANT SECTION ————–

* John Edwards proposed to his mistress, Rielle Hunter and bought her a $3.5 million beach house. Meanwhile, his wife, who he is still married to, is completely alone dying of cancer. Imagine if this chucklehead actually got to be president and what kind of political turmoil this arrogant fool would have caused right now! His prize of choice is flying high right there with him! Rielle Hunter “would get extremely upset and threaten to go public whenever he discussed his love for his wife Elizabeth in the media” and even made fun of Edward’s dying wife! Oh yeah, they deserve to be in the same playpen together. And I give them 3 years tops before they’re done. [NY DAILY NEWS]

* So how bad is the jobless thing mushrooming into? Fugly Bad. FUBAR bad. Three bagger bad. As in “nation changing” bad. [THE ATLANTIC]

* MTV officially dropped the “music television” from their name, so MTV is Music Television no more. It’s not really a surprise this happened. Video may have killed the radio star, but reality shows killed the video star. [LA TIMES]

* Finally some good news! Beer is good for you! It fights osteoporosis, slows bone thinning, and boosts the formation of new bones! Booyah! And that’s just “pale ales”! I bet something like Guinness would cure cancer and help you see better! Or is that help you look better? It’s something like that. I forget. Anyway, have a cold one for your health! [TELEGRAPH.UK]

* A family cat starts a fire which proceeds to burn the home to the ground. The family dog, however, smelled the smoke, woke up the family, and saved everyone from the fire. I think that sums up dogs and cats pretty well, don’t you? [WPTV.COM]

* And now its time for the “awwwwww” movie of the week… “A New Zealand teenager faced legal action for stealing his own injured puppy from a clinic to save it from euthanasia when the family couldn’t afford expensive surgery after it was hit by a car.” The story has a happy ending though! The local community rallied to the plight of the boy and his 5-month-old puppy by raising money to pay the vet’s bill and save the dog! More happy endings, please! [MSNBC]