Yahoo News -- Weekend Edition

"Gen. Pinochet, 91, fighting for life"

-- Now, the person who wrote this headline is most likely under 35 years of age. Either that or they thought it would be hil-arious to write that in an AP story. Either way, it's another comment on the state of Old Media, which is populated with a lot of "I'm-too-old-to-care"s and "I'm-too-young-to-understand"s.

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"Pfizer under pressure after halting drug" -- Two things.....

1) Last paragraph of the AP story -- "According to Pfizer spokesman Paul Fitzhenry, 82 patients taking the combination of torcetrapib died, compared to 51 deaths in the arm of the study where patients were taking Lipitor alone. Each arm of the study had 7,500 patients. Pfizer said that the study didn't raise any questions about Lipitor's safety." -- Nope, no questions were raised. Fears, yes. Questions, no. Thanks, Big Pharma....Yup, we trust you.

2) Phizer, Inc. and its subsidiaries 2005 revenues were $51 billion with an after tax profit of $8 billion, an astounding rate of return of 15.8%. But this is America, and stock price trumps sales, profits, assets, or cash. So.......

"...Pfizer may lay off as many 10,000 people in near future. Pfizer employs roughly 100,000 people. (Barbara Ryan, an analyst at Deutsche Bank) added that she expects Pfizer to hike its annual dividend from 96 cents to $1.10 per share in the next few weeks in the hopes of putting a floor on the stock."

Increase the dividend while laying off 10% of the workforce? Sounds good to us. But then we don't work at Pfizer. And neither do you, right?

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"Holocaust papers could aid compensation" -- But we wouldn't count on it happening anytime soon.....

.....Because the International Tracing Service, a branch of the Red Cross, has been holding these millions of incriminating documents since the end of World War II. Why release them now? We're not entirely sure, but apparently 60 years is (shockingly) roughly the amount of time required for Mother Nature to do to a lot of people what the Nazis failed in trying to do.....

.....And who bankrolls the Red Cross? Why, the same country where most of the loot was stashed before, during, and after WWII: Switzerland. -- From Wikipedia:
"Funding and financial matters -- The 2005 budget of the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) amounts to about 970 million Swiss Francs. Most of that money comes from Switzerland in its capacity as the depositary state of the Geneva Conventions, from national Red Cross societies, the signatory states of the Geneva Conventions, and from international organizations like the European Union."