Sidelights.(Brief Article)

A Minneapolis library has banned chess playing due to the rowdy behavior of those who come to watch the games. * A Pennsylvania high-schooler was disqualified from running for junior class president after joking during a speech that he would give everyone in his grade a cookie were he elected. School officials said the cookie pledge was a form of bribery. * Doctors in many Melbourne, Australia hospitals now refuse to perform potentially life-saving procedures such as lung and heart transplants, artery bypasses, and coronary artery grafts on smokers. * The Virginia House of Delegates declined to apologize for the state's former policy of forced sterilization. As part of Virginia's eugenics program, thousands were sterilized between 1924 and 1979. Victims have been unable to sue the state for damages because the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Virginia's eugenics law in 1927. * Only 21 percent of workers believe a business-lunch cocktail is acceptable, according to a recent survey. Dinner cocktails are acceptable 68 percent of the time. * Women now account for 46 percent of the U.S. workforce, according to the Employment Policy Foundation, and may outnumber men by 2025. * One out of every seven California voters declines to name a party preference when registering to vote, an increase of 50 percent over the last decade. ... 95 percent of Californians vote for either a Democrat or Republican in gubernatorial or Presidential races. * Vandals in San Gabriel Valley, California used BB and pellet guns to shoot out the windows of over 300 vehicles, mostly SUVs. * Students at Ferndale High, Washington elected a lesbian student as prom king.... A memorial to gay veterans is planned for Desert Memorial Park in Palm Springs, California. * John H. Rogers, a Massachusetts politician, proposed a bill that would count jails and prisons as low-income housing. * The Information Office of China's State Council issued a report entitled "U.S. Human Rights Record 2000" condemning America," the only country where carrying a private weapon is a constitutional right," as a "society ridden with violence."

Taxpayers may be overpaying as much as $311 million to the IRS due to their own errors, according to the General Accounting Office.... Over half of ...