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Jongens hebben maandagmiddag in Bunnik een fiets op de Parallelweg van de A12 gegooid. Zij deden dat vanaf een voetgangersbrug over de snelweg. Het bleek om leerlingen te gaan die zo een studie-opdracht over zwaartekracht uitvoerden. Niemand raakte gewond door de actie. Dat heeft een woordvoerster van de politie dinsdag gezegd.

Het gaat om drie jongens uit Bunnik, ��n van vijftien en twee van zestien jaar oud. Een man zag wat zij deden en waarschuwde de politie. De drie verklaarden bezig te zijn in het kader van het project ‘zwaartekracht’ van hun school.

Zij waren benieuwd naar het effect als een fiets van een bepaalde hoogte naar beneden viel en brachten dit in praktijk boven de berm van de Parallelweg. De agenten maakten hen duidelijk hoe gevaarlijk en onzinnig hun gedrag was. De drie begrepen wat ze fout hadden gedaan en gingen na de vermaning vrijuit.

Firemen work in front of the collapsed roof of terminal 2E at the Charles de Gaulle airport, outside Paris in 2004. An administrative enquiry into the fatal roof collapse at Charles de Gaulle airport last year will blame flaws in the design and construction of the newly-completed terminal, officials at the Paris airport authority ADP said.(AFP/File)

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President Bush says he has produced a “lean” $2.57 trillion spending plan that would promote his key goals of fighting terrorism and protecting the homeland while seeking to weed out ineffective government programs.

Interesting way to keep the budget “lean”:

While the administration has said that it will request $81 billion in new spending for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan within a few days and will have to come back to Congress for more money in 2006, new money for the two military operations in the two countries was omitted for 2006 and beyond.

Likewise, the administration’s top domestic priority, overhauling Social Security by creating private investment accounts, was kept out of the budget even though the administration has already estimated that transition costs for the first decade will total $754 billion.

And here’s another news report:

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No wonder Dick Cheney swears he will never run for president. Even a quick peek at the astonishingly dishonest federal budget the administration released yesterday shows that President Bush and his veep plan on leaving ticking time bombs behind when they get out of town four years hence. By general agreement, the government’s finances are lacking in elementary credibility. That’s now. What is less well understood is how much of Bush’s budgetary buffoonery is meant to become apparent after his successor is in office.

The first clue to the truth lies in a measure of the federal deficit this crowd adores obscuring but is forced by law to disclose. It’s found only in a large table buried in the budget documents and estimates the government’s operating red ink — the amount by which spending exceeds revenue from income taxes and other fees. Last year it was far above the deficit figure that that typically makes its way into headlines — $567 billion, compared with the “official” figure of $412 billion.

The difference is almost entirely accounted for by the large surplus in Social Security payroll taxes over benefit spending that the government “borrows” to make the books look less ridiculous. The higher number, however, is the amount of red ink that has to be financed by borrowing. And, as the budget documents also make clear, that operating deficit will be staying above a half-trillion dollars annually, swelling the national debt into the stratosphere. But that’s only the tip the iceberg. The real outrage is the deliberate avoidance of unavoidable costs that the country faces if steps Bush wants to take are taken. If these steps are taken into account, a bad enough national debt of slightly more than $3 trillion four years ago will easily clear $11 trillion in a decade.