Surging Gasoline Prices Means Your Next Speeding Ticket Could Cost A Lot More

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Fast Cash

The surging price of gasoline means that your next speeding ticket could cost a lot more. Adding insult to injury, starting July 1 drivers caught speeding in the North Atlanta suburb of Holly Springs will soon have to pay an extra $12 on each ticket to cover the $4-a-gallon gas costs for the police officers who stop them.

Chief Ken Ball says the tax could generate as much as $26,000 a year.

He told USA Today, "I was hearing that Delta Airlines, pizza deliverers, florists were adding fuel charges to their services — and I thought — why not police departments?"

Baby Bond

A Massachusetts high school has a problem. Seventeen of its students are pregnant — none older than 16. But it is apparently no accident.

TIME magazine reports some girls at Gloucester High School made a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. School officials began looking into the matter after several students returned multiple times to the school's clinic for pregnancy tests.

Principal Joseph Sullivan says, "Some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were."

And, when they were pregnant, some reacted by exchanging high-fives. Sullivan says all it took was a few questions before the students confessed to making the pact, and said one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless man.

Gloucester's school board will vote later this summer on whether to begin providing contraceptives in school.

Uniformed Response

Two homosexual advocacy groups are criticizing the decision to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to retired Joint Chiefs Chairman General Peter Pace because he had taken a dim view of homosexual behavior for those in uniform.

One of the groups — The Service Members Legal Defense Network — said giving him the medal is "insensitive and disrespectful."

In May 2007, Pace told The Chicago Tribune that he believed homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral.

But Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth, a group that opposes gay activism, says, "Pace also said adultery is wrong, and yet I don't see two pro-adultery organizations out condemning him."

Gastric Games

Chinese officials are making it easier, and more appetizing, for foreigners visiting the country for this summer's Olympic Games to order food.

Local newspapers are reporting that Chinese restaurants will be given an official English translation of local dishes whose exotic names might have prompted some tourists to go hungry.

For instance, what the Chinese call "husband and wife's lung slice" will now be known as "beef and ox tripe in chili sauce." Another dish will be called "steamed pullet" instead of "chicken without sexual life." And, a dish called "bean curd made by a pock-marked woman" can now be ordered by asking for "mapo tofu."

Phoenix Rising

And finally, FOX News has confirmed that Republican presidential candidate John McCain's secret service code name is "Phoenix." His wife, Cindy McCain, is known in the security ranks as "parasol."

The question is whether the secret service decided on the name Phoenix because McCain is from Arizona or because some say his primary campaign rose from the ashes after struggling to survive early in the primary process.

— FOX News Channel's Zachary Kenworthy contributed to this report.