What I learned in the New York Times during the month of July....
7/1: Google is going to start compensating gay and lesbian employees whose partners receive health insurance benefits for the tax break that married couples get. 7/2: Naomi Campbell has been called to testify in the war-crimes trial of Charles G. Taylor, the deposed president of Liberia; prosecutors want to know if he gave her a handful of diamonds. 7/3: President Obama overrode Army regulations and allowed General Stanley A. McChrystal to retire with all four stars. 7/4: Andie MacDowell is still making movies. 7/5: A majority of Manhattan's population is non-Hispanic white for the first time since the 1970s. Plus: Tomorrow, Queen Elizabeth II will make her third visit to New York City. 7/6: Nearly half of the 241,000 concealed-firearm permits granted by Utah are now held by nonresidents. 7/7: The post office wants to raise the price of a first-class stamp by two cents in January. 7/8: The U.S. and Russia may swap spy suspects. 7/9: The rich have stopped paying their mortgages at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the nation. Plus: Nine stores in New York City were fined $200 for keeping doors propped open during the recent heat wave. 7/10: In order to appear in its wedding announcements, The New York Times insists that couples submit photos in which their eyebrows are at the same level. 7/11: Agent Ed Limato used to begin his workday by shouting to his three assistants, "Let's talk to the stars!" 7/12: Meg Whitman invested $1 million in a company owned by a top political strategist in an effort to stop him from joining an opponent's campaign. 7/13: Fans can be deployed to repel mosquitoes. Plus: Heroin users in Africa are injecting the blood of other users. 7/14: In Argentina, heterosexual couples under 30 who want to adopt a child must prove they can't procreate. 7/15: Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston announced their marriage before telling her mother about it. 7/16: On three August Saturdays, New York City will open three Dumpster pools on Park Avenue between 40th and 41st Streets. Plus: Argentina approved gay marriage. 7/17: Christo wants to drape fabric panels along 42.4 miles of the Arkansas River in southern Colorado. 7/18: John McCain's presidential campaign did not give Sarah Palin its list of donors. 7/19: Zsa Zsa Gabor has been pretty much bedridden and wheelchair-bound for the past eight years. 7/20: The pump that Dick Cheney had implanted in his heart leaves most recipients without a pulse. 7/21: Massachusetts became the first state to ban the "devocalization" of dogs and cats. 7/22: A man recently robbed a Madison Avenue boutique while carrying an oxygen tank. 7/23: A House of Representatives panel will try Representative Charles Rangel for ethics abuses. 7/24: Only three Republican senators have publicly endorsed Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court. 7/25: There is no agreement on what level of prescription drugs impairs driving. 7/26: The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and The Guardian were given access to a massive dump of Wikileaks material about the war in Afghanistan weeks before everyone else. 7/27: With an average daily temperature of 81.6 degrees, this July is on track to be the hottest month on record in New York City. 7/28: When entering Israeli airspace, all commercial pilots must electronically enter an Israel-supplied PIN. 7/29: The New Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey will offer fans smartphone apps for video replays and statistics that only work in the stadium. 7/30: An outbreak of salmonella in the U.S. and U.K. has been blamed on mice sold as food for exotic pets. 7/31: Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, defended his group's decision to oppose an Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero thusly: People who lost relatives in the 9/11 attacks—like survivors of the Holocaust—are entitled to "positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted."
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