Ahh, Paris....we have a problem.
Q. What do you get when you cross a diet of Big Macs with the French railway system?
A. Trains that are too fat to fit between the station platforms.
"Mind the gap", the traditional warning to be careful and not step into the gap between the door of the train and the concrete platform will apparently no longer apply at thousands of French train stations. It seems the railway operator SNCF just spent $20.5B buying 2,000 new trains, only to find they won't fit between some station platforms.
"We measured the gap at a number of stations and that's where we got our dimensions. We sorta forgot that a lot of the older stations were narrower" said VP Engineering, Inspector (Jacques) Clouseau, whose previous career highlights included designing ignition switches for Chevy Cobalts.
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To show their strong civic involvement, JP Morgan Chase Bank has announced that they will be committing $100M over five years to aid revitalization in Detroit. They said they would donate the profit they make on their credit card operations next Monday morning between 8am and 8:15 to help bankrupt Detroit get back on their feet.
They said they would like to do more, but that's all they could afford to piss away, what with the sky-high legal bills they're incurring trying to keep themselves out of the penitentiary.
Not to be outdone, Goldman Sachs announced they would chip in $20M, too.
And dats today's (slightly embellished) news. :)
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