Straphangers on Planes, The Brain Dead's Donation, a Celebrity Divorce Gets Ugly, and Victory for the Webby Employee

Lesson to be learned: reserve stick-poking to corpses.

1. Love riding on the subway? Well, now you can have the same experience but cooler on the airplane. Airbus, a European plane-maker, has been pitching to Asian carriers harnessed standing "seating" for passengers. So not only can you feel like cattle while traveling, you can also look mightily attractive. (IHT, NYT)

2. Li Guoxing, the first (Chinese) man to receive a face transplant, received tissue from a brain dead patient for his new nose, lip, and cheek, Xinhua News Agency reports. Doctors continue to track his progress, concerned that his body will reject the tissue. Li's face was mauled by a bear when he tried to drive it away from his sheep with a stick. So the old saying of standing in the way of a bear's appetite and poking it with a stick getting you fairy dust and pixie sticks was way off. (ABC)

3. Bird flu has been found in another province in Afghanistan and suspected in another two. Fear of virus mutating into a human-human contagion remains amongst scientists, who reassure the public by saying "millions of people could be infected in a human pandemic but with a much lower mortality rate [that currently exists]. " (Reuters)

4. Administrative Law Judge John Spooner ruled in favor of slacking employees all over, or uh, New York Citysamedifference, when he overturned the firing of Dept of Education's Toquir Choudhri for looking at travel and news sites during work hours. Spooner reasons that companies should show the same leniency to employee's Internet perusing as they do for personal calls. Tell that to Bloomberg, or don't, if you want to keep your job. (The Inquirer)

5. The most recent allegation unearthed in the beautiful mess that is the Richards-Sheen divorce is that Charlie Sheen might have lent a hand in the death of porn star Chloe Jones, who had sold a story to a tabloid on Sheen's paying her $15k for sex. Denise Richards stated that she had asked Sheen once if he had anything to do with Jones' death only to receive a response of "No comment." Richards has lately been spotted with the ex (Richie Sambora) of her ex-friend (Heather Locklear). Yeah, it was starting to feel very Melrose Place anyway. (Daily News)

6. A spokeswoman for Airbus denies the NYT report on the standing room planes. Or, I don't know, perhaps the idea didn't fly with a lot of airlines. *cue monkey on drums* (CNN)