Newsbreaks for Monday

Audio version is here.

Text:
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig are using MRIs to see if they can determine a person’s intentions by scanning their brain activity. On the other hand, we could just ask him. [photo of Al Gore]

Last week, two Atlanta teenagers were arrested after they tried to rob a bank. The local press immediately dubbed the blond girls “the Barbie Bandits.”…Boy, it’s times like this I wish I was Reese Witherspoon’s agent.

No doubt the papers would’ve come up with something equally cute and memorable if the girls had been black. Something like “Suspect.”

Today, the mother of one of the girls is saying her daughter just fell in with a bad crowd. She’s a “little girl who made a bad choice,” the woman said…Okay, make that Paris Hilton’s agent.

And finally, ATM machine maker Diebold is apparently looking to sell the voting machine unit of its company. “It’s simple,” said an analyst for Wall Street, when a customer sees the name Diebold on an ATM, they naturally think, ‘Maybe they’re going to steal my money, too.’”