Deception

"The center of cougar genetic diversity is in Brazil, but the Western Hemisphere has six robust subspecies in all. The Florida panther was listed as endangered in 1995, when eight Texas female cougars were released in South Florida in a last effort to save them from extinction. It worked. The Florida panther, it turned out, [was not a separate species, but] is a North American cougar whose kinked tails, heart defects, small litters and short lives were consequences of prolonged inbreeding. From fewer than 30 in 1995, the panther population in southwestern Florida has grown to more than 150."—Guy Gugliotta (link)

"The tests were conducted six times over a three-month period, and the results were not encouraging. Only 65 percent of the designated drivers showed no blood alcohol content, 17 percent registered 0.02 percent to 0.049 percent, and 18 percent measured 0.05 percent or higher. “When you look at evaluations of designated driver campaigns, they’re really ineffective,” said the study’s lead author, Adam E. Barry, an assistant professor of health education at the University of Florida. “Often people choose designated drivers because they’re the ones who’ve drunk the least. The most practical recommendation is that if you drive, you shouldn’t drink at all.”—Nicholas Bakalar (link)

"In all, Zions [Bank of Salt Lake City, Utah,] let roughly $39 million be withdrawn from hundreds of thousands of accounts from 2007 to 2009. Much of that money was ultimately transferred to bank accounts in Canada, India and the Caribbean, according to a Times review of court records. Many of the Internet merchants’ customers were older people and others on shaky financial footing. But that, too, worked in banks’ favor: the withdrawals set off a cascade of insufficient fund fees — more than $20 million in all, court records show."—Jessica Silver-Greenberg (link)