Mayor Greg Nickels launched the first phase of his “Street Sweep ‘08” pogrom to end the problem of homelessness in Seattle. “We’ve ruled out genocide in the past because of ethical scruples. Now is the time to re-examine this age-old solution to urban crowding. The homeless are unsightly and bad for business. They have no place in our international metropolis,” said Nickels. This week volunteers will distribute free arsenic-laden box lunches to needy folks all over the greater metropolitan area. (Shhh!) The city has purchased several industrial-size bulldozers to remove encampments in four key locations as part of “Phase 2.” Phase 3 will begin sometime next year: “We’re offering tax incentives to local shop-owners who shoot the homeless dead,” explains the Mayor. “It’s a win-win partnership.” The bodies will be loaded into semi-trucks at local transfer stations and shipped to Oregon with the rest of the city’s solid waste material. Local housing advocates have been relocated to Gitmo. --Rebecca Snow Landa

The Polar Bear Conservancy (http://www.polarbearconservancy.org) will begin relocation of the first Arctic polar bears to Antarctica on Earth Day, April 22. The relocation will be the initial step in a planned five-year program to migrate 3,000 polar bears from the Northern Arctic to the southern continent of Antarctica. Scientists say polar bears face near-certain extinction by 2020 as global climate change accelerates melting of their habitat in the Northern Arctic. Antarctica, in contrast, can be a viable home for the bears. Republican presidential candidate John McCain voiced support yesterday for the program. Meanwhile, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has indicated that relocating polar bears would be much less expensive than listing them under the Endangered Species Act. (Reprinted from http://www.newscloud.com)