the buzz log

Bail or no bail? Debate or no debate? In a suspenseful news week, the Buzz took some time to seek out true beauty, true courage, and true happy endings ... at least for a cat. Here are some stories you may have missed this past week. 

Makeup Stunts Your Growth?
From the same people who stirred up a tizzy over sunscreens comes a study about how cosmetics and puberty don't mix. The Environmental Working Group poked needles and took urine samples from 20 teenage girls and found what blog Ecoplay called "13 different hormone-altering chemicals in their bodies." To help girls avoid paying the price for beauty, EWG offers a shopper's guide to safe cosmetics. For ladies past puberty, Glam blogs about products that have earned Beauty with a Conscience awards.

A CEO Who Says No?
Bailout or not, many CEOs who helmed financially troubled companies have already collected their millions in severance packages. Several news outlets, including Philly.com, have singled out Robert Willumstad not for his three months as primo honcho for the failed AIG, but for rejecting a $22 million payout. His predecessor, who left in June, got $15 million plus a $4 million bonus.

A Hemingway Tale with a Happy Ending?
Ernest Hemingway wasn't what you'd call the cheeriest novelist, so who knows what kind of ending he would've planned for a colony of six-toed cats in his Florida home. However, a five-year legal catfight between the USDA and the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum ended peaceably this week. The USDA had demanded that the Home obtain an animal exhibition license for the descendants of the writer's pet Snowball, but the agency allowed the felines to remain after a fence was installed. The literary darlings can be seen here.

Also buzzing this week ...
• As "fall foliage" Web interest intensifies (+688%), scientists will be among the leaf peepers to study whether global warming puts a damper on pigment changes. For people who think less kindly of the mess autumn leaves can make, RedPlum blog scopes out power tools that sweep up after Mother Nature.
• If this week's economic news prompts comfort-food cravings, see Forbes Traveler's daring declaration of where the nation's best chocolate chip cookies are.
• Don't share chocolates with airport security dogs. NaturalNews has taken up the legal cause of chocolatiers accused of drug smuggling, after Toronto pups mistook two pounds of cacao as hashish. The blog reveals how cacao registers false positives for NIK field kit drug tests. And you thought poppy seed muffins were bad.