Cross This One Off Your List

The United Nations would like to make something clear: Iraq may have all the pencils it wants. Rumors that the U.N. is restricting the nation from obtaining pencils — a rumor spread by the Iraqi Embassy in Jordan — are false, the U.N. says. The story goes that the U.N., as part of sanctions against Iraq for invading Kuwait, has banned pencil imports because the graphite in them could be converted to military use. A U.N. spokesman says military conversion of pencil graphite was an “extremely unlikely” scenario, and noted that it had recently allowed a shipment of 3.5 million pencils into Iraq. (AP) ...But not erasers, since the U.N. wants them to reflect on their mistakes.