Lead Story
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The Koongarra uranium deposit, in Australia’s Northern Territory, contains estimated reserves of 15,000 tons, valued at more than $4.2 billion, and the French energy company Areva hopes to mine it. But in a first-ever public statement, 36-year-old Jeffrey Lee, who as the sole living member of the aboriginal Djok clan has custodial control over Koongarra, told the Sydney Morning Herald in July that he’s vowed never to sell. Citing his responsibility to the environment and to his people’s culture, as well as the potential destructive power of uranium, he said he aimed to protect the land permanently by having it made part of a surrounding national park. “I’m not interested in white people offering me this or that,” he said. “I’ve got a job; I can buy tucker [food]; I can go fishing and hunting. That’s all that matters to me.”
Brain Corner
Trucker Merv Bontrager accidentally flipped over an 18-wheeler full of sunflower seeds in Minot, North Dakota, in April; he said he was headed up an off-ramp when he decided to check the floor for some doughnuts he’d left there. Also in April, an inquest found that a fatal crash in Shepley, England, had been caused when a bee flew into a car and stung the driver in the crotch. And at a March trial for impaired driving in Vancouver, Kristopher Lind argued that he hadn’t been drunk when police spotted him weaving along the road; he was having trouble steering, he said, because he was trying to remove a sex toy from its packaging and put in the batteries.
