—Darwin's delight: There's delicious irony (delicious, at least, for the consumers involved) in the deaths of poachers at an African wildlife refuge who came face-to-face with a pride of lions. At least two suspected rhino poachers entered a South African game reserve, apparently hoping to kill rhinos and sell their parts on the lucrative black market.
There's a bizarre belief in China and Vietnam, among other countries, that rhino horn contains mysterious medicinal properties. Rhino horns consist of the same material as human fingernails.
A family of lions, known as a pride, decided to poach on the poachers instead. By the time the lions were done, South African officials were hard-pressed to determine who the poachers were or how many or of them had succumbed. "We're not sure how many there were — there's not much left of them," game reserve owner Nick Fox told Agence France-Presse.
—Starbucks without the straws: Starbucks ranks among the world's worst offenders when it comes to filling waste bins with plastics, whose particulates are increasingly making their way into waterways and oceans. The company is estimated to hand out more than 1 billion plastic straws a year.
But by 2020, Starbucks says it will abandon the use of plastic straws while introducing new, recyclable "strawless lids" and straws made of biodegradable materials. The company plans to spend around $10 million on the transition, which is a welcome way to halt corporate practices that are rapidly depleting ecosystems in the world's waterways and contributing to fish die-offs.
—Un-caging kids' brains: Cage fighting is a vicious and violent activity that barely qualifies as a sport. At a time when professional and college athletes are becoming attuned to the extreme dangers posed by repeated blows to the head, more and more parents are opting to keep their children out of participating in risky contact sports like football and boxing.
Missouri lawmakers this year passed a bill, signed into law by Gov. Mike Parson on June 29, banning kids under age 18 from competing in mixed martial arts competitions. Even veteran fighters say it was the right move to ensure kids' safety. Unlike boxing, where blows are somewhat softened by big, thickly padded gloves, mixed martial arts fighters use small gloves that have the effect of maximizing physical damage with each blow.
Who needs it? Kids certainly don't. Score one for a smart bill to keep young brains young.
—Nuts to that idea: The free peanuts are half the reason people fly Southwest Airlines. OK, maybe not half, but rarely has a nonfood commercial service had its identity so thoroughly wrapped up inside those tiny packets of roasted nuts distributed to passengers, with gusto and good humor, on Southwest Airlines flights.
We know there are serious nut allergy sufferers out there, and Southwest cited those passengers' health concerns as the primary reason for ending the distribution of packaged peanuts on future flights.
But it's a sad day for Southwest devotees who all too often rush to board flights without grabbing something to eat and count on those peanuts to keep them from starving till arrival at the next destination. Somewhere, there's an advertising account executive wracking his or her brain figuring out how to replace the airline's peanut-oriented pitch for low-cost fares.
—Red, white and clueless: A Puerto Rican woman, Mia Irizarry, wore a shirt bearing her island territory's flag while setting up a picnic table at a Chicago park. For reasons that can only be attributed to ignorance and Trumpian xenophobia, a man began berating her, saying, "You should not be wearing that in the United States of America."
Sadly, like lots of people, he didn't realize that Puerto Rico is part of the United States and that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. The confrontation was recorded on video, including Irizarry's appeals to a nearby police office to help stop the man from harassing her.
The officer didn't. In fact, he seemed to deliberately look the other way. (He wound up resigning after a video of the confrontation went viral online.) Other officers later intervened and cited the harasser with assault and disorderly conduct. He's lucky that abject ignorance isn't also a crime.
—No more penalizing pregnancy: New moms in workplaces everywhere understand the professional penalty that all too often accompanies pregnancy — a loss of stature and seniority, or sometimes a demotion or layoff accompanying a return from parental leave. The penalty is painfully evident in women's sports, particularly tennis, where pregnancy tends to get the same treatment as an absence due to injury. But pregnancy isn't an injury.
Top players, including champion Serena Williams, find themselves bumped way down in rankings, while their bottom seeding in major tournaments forces them to be matched up with the high-caliber players they normally wouldn't face until the finals. Williams had to fight her way to Saturday's Wimbledon finals after her return from pregnancy landed her in the 25th seed.
The United States Tennis Association announced that it will halt the practice of low-seeding women returning to play after childbirth. "Pregnancy will not be penalized," USTA spokesman Chris Widmaier said. "If Serena Williams enters the 2018 U.S. Open, the USTA will recognize her accomplishments, recognize her return to the workplace and will seed her, regardless of what her ranking is."
That's a major step in the long road toward equalizing the treatment of women and men in major professional sports competitions.
REPRINTED FROM THE ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH
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