JS: If you’ve ever lived next to a nuclear power plant, you know how unsightly those drums of toxic waste on the front porch can be. That viscous yellow ooze is uglier than a GTO on blocks and a broken dishwasher combined. But thanks to a bill approved by the Senate just today, the Waste Fairy will soon be whisking away those radioactive eyesores to a magical land! Yucca Mountain, Nevada! Reporting live from the base of the mountain, our chief environmental correspondent Rob Corddry. Rob?

RC: Hi Jon.

JS: Rob, I understand that residents of Yucca Mountain aren’t happy with this plan.

RC: It’s true, and personally, I don’t see what the big deal is, Jon. The waste is going to be inside the mountain. Not on top of the mountain, like hot fudge on a sundae. They’re gonna carve out a big hole, load the stuff in there, and seal it up with a door. Probably a nice door. Something custom ordered from Home Depot, maybe. Trust me, the 77,000 tons of nuclear waste will be completely out of sight.

JS: That much?

RC: You bet, Jon. According to highly trained nuke janitors, power plant hallways are just stuffed with atomic waste. Do you know what it’s like trying to steer a floor buffer around around a leaky drum? Or to have to climb over a bunch of them to get to the paper towels at the back of the supply closet? And with more waste popping up all the time, you’re stubbing toes and banging elbows every day. Talk about a job hazard.

JS: Ok then, say they get the chance to pass this stuff off to Yucca Mountain...how do they get it there?

RC: That great American tradition, Jon...a cross country road trip! You have to remember Jon, most of this waste has led a very sheltered life and never even been out of its own state. Imagine the fun! The wacky ‘Cannonball Run’ style races ... trying to be the first one to get to the mountain. Plus, Yucca’s only 90 miles north of Vegas, and you know what that means: gambling and hookers, Jon. Gambling and hookers.

JS: That rings a bell, alright. So, what kind of a timetable are we looking at before all this storage can begin?

RC: It’s not like an Amish barn raising, Jon. You don’t just slap up a huge hazardous waste facility in a few hours, drink some lemonade, and go home to watch Kelly McGillis take a sponge bath. In the interim, a Native American tribe in Utah has offered to rent part of their reservation for toxic storage. Which I think is great. I love anything that benefits native American communities. But after that, the waste is buried, and we’re good to go forever.

JS: And we can forget about it.

RC: Yucca Mountain is part of a volcanic range, but everything should stay put unless there’s an eruption or something.

JS: Wait, let me get this straight, Yucca Mountain is a volcano?

RC: (laughing) Yeah, well, I think that’s the part that the locals aren’t too jazzed about. An eruption or some other type of disaster could send these barrels of radioactive waste jettisoning into the community, where they could really dent the heck out of cars and people’s roofs. They’d be like “Ahhh! Heads up!” and everything. But, other than that, there really is no danger in burying radioactive material in a volcano ninety miles from a major metropolitan area.

JS: Thanks for that report, Rob.

JS: Moving on from the waste to the wasted, British lawmakers this week re- classified marijuana. Private use and possession of small amounts will no longer be arrestable offenses. The policy won’t officially go into effect until next July, however British bakeheads say they are feeling “less paranoid already.”

JS: The thinking in Parliament is that tolerance of “soft drugs” will earn all drug policies credibility among young people. They also discussed that maybe 86-ing the powdered wigs might be a step in a hipper direction.

JS: Blunkett maintains that where possession is relevant to public safety, police may still retain the power of arrest... though he did admit that the likeliest public danger was a rise in the already high levels of crisp and crumpet consumption.

JS: Unhappy with the new legislation is Keith Hallawell, the British government’s official drug advisor who resigned in protest over what he considers a softening of drug laws. Equally upset is Scotland Yard, the British police force who have now lost their main source of free weed.

JS: British Labor party member Kate Hoey said the government would live to regret the marijuana decision. Her comment was countered by Blunkett’s suggestion that the two “smoke-um peace pipe and call it a day.”

JS: Homeland security chief Tom Ridge says there have been no specific threats received for July 4th, but that the nation has been placed on yellow terrorism alert. That’s French’s mustard yellow terrorism alert. Should the weekend go off without a hitch we’ll be downgraded to a golden Dijon terrorist alert, and eventually settle into something in the sweet pickle relish family.

JS: Rest assured that among the heightened security measures already in place are heavy air patrol over Washington DC, restricted access to Boston waterways, and complete bubble wrapping of Seattle’s Space Needle. If your city wasn’t mentioned, please cower under the nearest heavy oak desk until Monday.

JS: A report in USA Today this week uncovered the startlingly low-tech state of the CIA, INS, and FBI computer systems. “It’s a 30 year-old, archaic system. You can’t find anything in there,” admitted one intelligence official. With envy in his voice he added “The Commondore VIC- 20 it’s not.”

JS: Though the CIA and INS are actively developing systems to expand the government’s search capability, the FBI remains farthest behind, and blames their sub-par technology for delays in locating terrorism suspects. FBI director Robert Mueller:

JS: To prove Mueller’s point, bureau investigators did just that and discovered that Mueller was wanted in twelve states for the sale and manufacture of crystal meth.

JS: But they got lucky. Most searches in the sea of common Arabic names end unsuccessfully. Even as around the globe, eleven year-olds type Eminem into eBay and pull up everything from the rapper’s 2000 Mustang charity auction to collectible bags of chocolate covered peanuts.

JS: Look, it’s summer. There are lots of recent DeVry graduates out there looking for work. Let’s get the DeVry class of 2009 into the pentagon and see if they can’t whip that IT system into something at least on par with the computer at my drycleaners.

JS: Harvard paleontologist Dr. Daniel E. Lieberman remarked of the skull, “This one’s face is the face, essentially, of a Homo Habilis at two million years ago... and yet this face is seven million years old.” Dr.Lieberman added that this was the first example he’d seen, besides Joan Rivers, of someone who had cheated their looks by 5 million years.

JS: The scientific community has already suggested that the finding pushes back the date of the earliest known humans by a million years, and marks a critical turning point in our understanding of human evolution.

JS: “This is really an extraordinary find,” says Dr.Ian Tattersall, an expert on fossil hominids and lightweight plaid summer suits at the American Museum of Natural History. He translated the specimen’s formal name “Sahelanthropus tchadensis,” as meaning “Darwin was right, Bible- thumping ninnies.”

JS: That’s it for the Headlines. We’ll be back with Carrot Top right after this.