etc...

THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT

Apparently, the wheels of justice turn too slowly for Harvey Taylor. No, he wasn't the victim of a crime. Rather, he's threatening to sue a Maine police detective for, of all things, failing to arrest him soon enough. "If [he'd] done his job ... I would have been in jail that very same day," he told a Bangor newspaper. Taylor, who is wanted in Florida for violating terms of his probation, fled into a woods to hide from the Penobscot County Sheriff's Department. Three freezing nights later, he required surgery for a weather-related foot injury. Said an unimpressed deputy: "[Taylor] made some decisions and he has to live with the consequences."

Caller-ID's are ever more popular. But what would you do if George Washington, Albert Einstein, or Edgar Allan Poe turned up in your message box? That happened to Nancy Crocker of Le Roy, N.Y. And with a quick ring to Frontier Telephone of Rochester Inc., she learned she isn't the first. A representative said the company uses phony names and numbers to test the system, and a power failure or other glitch may have sent those her way.

Americans consumed 10 billion cases of fizzy stuff last year, according to Beverage Digest/ Maxwell, which tracks the nonalcoholic drinks industry. At 192 ounces per case, that works out to about 53 gallons per person. Coke and Pepsi remained the perennial favorites. Beverage Digest's top 10 soft drink brands in 2001, by cases consumed (in millions unless otherwise noted):

1. Coke Classic 1.9 billion

2. Pepsi-Cola 1.3 billion

3. Diet Coke 878.8

4. Mountain Dew 687.7

5. Sprite 646.2

6. Dr. Pepper 617.0

7. Diet Pepsi 533.6

8. 7UP 189.2

9. Caffeine Free Diet Coke 171.7

10. Barq's Root Beer 114.2

- PRNewswire