Boxing Day shoppers jam British stores
LONDON, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- Boxing Day sales brought out huge crowds of British shoppers Saturday, observers said.
Bargain hunters jammed shopping districts in across Britain in search of day-after-Christmas deals as shop owners said they were expecting to see one of their busiest days, The Guardian reported.
The newspaper said hundreds of shoppers lined up outside of Selfridges' department store in London waiting for it to open 9 a.m., with many of them running and elbowing their way inside when the doors were flung open.
Boxing Day wasn't so pleasant, however, at the Selfridges store in Manchester, where four shoppers were slightly injured by a falling ceiling panel that came down as the doors were opened.
Store officials said they immediately cordoned off the area and that paramedics had arrived within five minutes, adding, "Selfridges is currently assessing the cause of the incident."
Madoff suffers dizziness, hypertension
BUTNER, N.C., Dec. 26 (UPI) -- Disgraced U.S. financier Bernard Madoff was hospitalized in prison due to dizziness and hypertension, prison officials say.
A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons said Madoff, serving a 150-year sentence in a Butner, N.C., facility after pleading guilty to orchestrating a massive Ponzi scheme, was moved to the medium security jail's medical wing Friday after experiencing dizziness, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Madoff, 71, has recently been suffering from high blood pressure and heart palpitations, his attorney, Ira Sorkin, told the newspaper. Sorkin said he expected Madoff to soon be returned to the facility's general population.
The Journal said the Bureau of Prison scotched rumors that Madoff had been assaulted.
Lockheed Martin pledges aid to Pa. park
WASHINGTON CROSSING, Pa., Dec. 26 (UPI) -- Lockheed Martin Corp. has donated $400,000 to a Pennsylvania park commemorating President George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River.
The Washington Crossing Historical Park in Washington Crossing, Pa. -- visited by more than 100,000 tourists per year -- has been threatened by budget cuts. But Lockheed Martin said in a release Friday that its donation will fund the addition of a dedicated education wing at the park's visitor center, which is scheduled for renovation in the latter part of 2010.
The donation was announced by Marshall Byrd, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Newtown, Pa. Byrd also pledged, on behalf of the approximate 13,000 Lockheed Martin employees in the Delaware Valley area, a five-year commitment of volunteer in-kind support for the park's maintenance and operations.
The announcement was made at the park's annual Christmas Day reenactment of Washington's crossing of the Delaware River, an event historians say turned the tide in the efforts of Washington's Continental Army to defeat the British in the U.S. Revolutionary War.
Fla. avocado industry faces beetle threat
HOMESTEAD, Fla., Dec. 26 (UPI) -- Florida's avocado growers say they're worried about the spread of the Asian redbay ambrosia beetle.
Growers of Florida's second-largest tropical fruit crop are concerned because the invasive pest carries a fungus that has proven deadly to avocado trees and is marching southward to Miami-Dade County, where the bulk of the state's crop is grown, The Miami Herald reported Saturday.
"The avocado industry is very concentrated in one area," Craig Wheeling, president of Brooks Tropical in Homestead, Fla., told the newspaper. "It's kind of an all-or-nothing fight down here."
The crisis has come after avocado growers enjoyed a bumper, 920,000 bushel crop that came during a season of near record-high prices. But now, growers say, they're in a race against time against the beetle to save the $30 million industry.
The Herald said the Asian redbay ambrosia beetle has moved from the Carolinas through Georgia, and is now in Florida. It reported that growers have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to cut down and burn trees that seem weak or infected and are spraying extra pesticides.
