Leading economic indicators

Faced with falling prices for domestic wine, a group of French vintners has made terroristic threats against the government and retailers who carry imports. The guerrilla gang, wearing black ski masks, released a video in May (so far ignored by the Sarkozy government), reminding officials about recent incidents in which small explosives were detonated in supermarkets that carry imported wines and in which a tractor-trailer carrying imported wine had been shot at. Said one hooded protester, “Blood will flow” if prices don’t soon rise.

The continuing crisis

In June, for the fourth year, professor Paul Worsey of the University of Missouri-Rolla conducted his Summer Explosives Camp, with 20 high-school-age kids learning the techniques of blowing things up (e.g., a tree stump, a watermelon, a dead chicken). Said one camper, “Some people like baseball (but) I just like to set off bombs.” Worsey’s main goal is to recruit mine-engineering majors to his school, but another benefit, he told National Public Radio, is that the school “attract(s) the kids that might otherwise get into a little bit of trouble (and) give(s) them … an opportunity for a career.”

People different from us

Pablo Castro, 26, was sent to the hospital twice in Decatur, Ala., on June 24, once after being stabbed in an argument and, after his release later that day, being stabbed again while arguing with a different person.

l And Tony Hicks was hospitalized in Knoxville, Tenn., for separate wounds on July 1, 2 and 3; he was hit by a car one night, then released from the hospital the next day, but was back in after an intruder attacked him in his home, and after his release the next day, he was back after police shot him in connection with a robbery.