Europe, in a nutshell

If a historian in 2234 started flipping back through today's news to see what Europe was like in 2006, this is what he or she'd find:

An Italian restaurant was fined 688 euros ($855) for displaying live lobsters on ice to attract patrons, in an innovative application of an anti-cruelty law usually affecting to household pets.

It's hard to take the continent seriously as an ally sometimes when they are fining restaurants for displaying on ice lobsters which will be boiled alive.