Headline yesterday from The Times (London):

"Kim Jong II ate my rabbits for his birthday"

The story was a sad, tragic follow-up to a hopeful report we made note of in January. Back then, a 68-year-old German had sold 12 giant rabbits to North Korea for what he understood would be the start of a massive breeding program to help feed starving North Koreans. But the breeder, Karl Szmolinsky, now says he won't be sending any more rabbits. The reason: He suspects that diminutive dictator Kim Jong Il and his pals wolfed down the hopping behemoths at his 65th birthday banquet Feb. 16.

Among the possibly eaten is Robert, a 22-pound rabbit, who, like Szmolinsky's other rabbits, could have impersonated a dog if he had had an ear job. Mr. Szmolinsky had been due to travel to North Korea after Easter to provide advice on setting up a rabbit farm. But when North Korea canceled the trip, the rabbit man got suspicious. "It's an assumption, not an assertion," Mr Szmolinsky said. "But I don't think the animals are alive anymore, I think they've been eaten."

The North Korean Embassy in Berlin denied that the rabbits were dead. Assuming he is dead, Robert lives on in his son, Robert II, safe in his hutch in Eberswalde, near Berlin.

Another Easter atrocity

Bill Toland, a prominent member of The Morning File staff, has another harrowing tale of Easter duplicity. The other day, he bought a Cadbury creme egg (made in the U.S. by our pals at Hershey) and said to his wife Kim, and this is verbatim:

"Does this egg look smaller to you?"

"No," she replied, "you're getting bigger."

But our man was still suspicious, and, sure enough on the Cadbury Web site (cadburyschweppes.com) under FAQs, it says something eerily similar:

Why has the size of the egg changed?

It hasn't -- you've just grown up!

This raises the troubling question: Is Kim a secret agent, perhaps a stealth marketer, for Cadbury? Even more troubling was the feeling that our man had of being deceived by a key representative of the Easter Bunny. Drawing on his deep experience in journalism, Bill did some digging. It turns out that this year, while the eggs in the UK remain 1.4 oz., the Hershey-made eggs have been reduced to 1.2 oz. "I'm getting ripped out of 14 percent of the egg. The good news is, I'm not crazy. The bad news: Easter is ruined, forever."

More on plastic bags

Turning to lighter fare, The Morning File's First Lady, my wife Sylvia, was inspired to take action after last week's column on the dire environmental impact of plastic grocery bags (eat lots of oil, don't degrade in landfills.) A veteran of sewing wars, she set out to make reusable grocery bags from old jeans she's been saving for 15 years. Unfortunately, the machine decided to sew her finger as well as the denim during some high-speed final stitching. ... OK, we've turned enough stomachs, but after some skillful finger surgery, she's fine now and, in the hope that others will benefit from her painful episode, we've decided to attach this message to each Morning File:

Warning: The Morning File can be hazardous to your health. Do not operate light machinery after reading it.

Better to buy the bags

"Recently, I bought one of those reusable grocery bags at Giant Eagle for 99 cents. I can jam about ten cans into one and don't have to worry about the bag breaking as plastic bags often do. I make about three trips to Giant Eagle a week and each time I save three to four plastic bags for a savings of more than 350 bags a year. Nancy Day, the conservation expert at Giant Eagle, said they have collected 300,000 pounds of plastic bags at those recycling bins at the stores. That's 150 tons of plastic bags recycled.

"A company converts the bags into plastic lumber, decking, door and window frames, which saves not only plastic but wood as well. The bins keep a lot of plastic from going into landfills, washing into storm sewers and streams and snagging in trees and bushes. But you are right that about 99 percent of the bags are not recycled. And it takes 15 million barrels of oil a year to make the bags. What a waste. Thanks for focusing attention on this problem."

Bob Podurgiel

Whoops

"You said plastic grocery (and newspaper) bags are made with polyurethane. This is incorrect. They are made with polyethylene. I appreciate the article about changes in regulations and expectations that impact the environment, and particularly those that affect plastics."

Andy Campbell, senior staff engineer, Sunoco Polypropylene