PINK TACO
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) - The name of a new restaurant in Scottsdale is stirring up some trouble. The Las Vegas-based Pink Taco Mexican Restaurant is scheduled to open its second location in downtown Scottsdale in June.
Nearly half a dozen people in the upscale city recently expressed their objection to the name, claiming it's a derogatory slang term for a portion of the female anatomy.
In late April, the city received four e-mails, three of which bore no names, objecting to the restaurant's name.
One of those e-mails stated: "The City of Scottsdale has a very fine reputation around the world. Let's keep the standards high. Let's let what plays in Vegas stay in Vegas."
Scottsdale Mayor Mary Manross has said she is offended by the name and went so far as to ask the owner to change it, although he refused.
Restaurant spokeswoman Lisa Perez said the company's name comes from one of its menu items.
Perez said the company has not received any complaints or objections about its name.
The original Pink Taco is inside the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
The Scottsdale City Council is scheduled to decide Monday whether to recommend the restaurant get a liquor license. If granted, the restaurant's application would then be sent to the state liquor board for review.
BEARS EAT MONKEY
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - Bears killed and ate a monkey in a Dutch zoo in front of horrified visitors, witnesses and the zoo said Monday. In the incident Sunday at the Beekse Bergen Safari Park, several Sloth bears chased the Barbary macaque into an electric fence, where it was stunned.
It recovered and fled onto a wooden structure, where one bear pursued and mauled it to death.
The park confirmed the killing in a statement, saying: "In an area where Sloth bears, great apes and Barbary macaques have coexisted peacefully for a long time, the harmony was temporarily disturbed during opening hours on Sunday."
"Of course the habitats here in the safari park are arranged in such a way that one animal almost never kills another, but they are and remain wild animals," it said.
Witness Marco Berelds posted a detailed report on the incident, including photos, on a Dutch Web site. He said one Sloth bear tried unsuccessfully to shake the monkey loose after it took refuge on the structure, built of crossing horizontal and vertical poles.
Ignoring attempts by keepers to distract it, the bear climbed onto a horizontal pole, and, standing stretched on two legs, "used its sharp canines to pull the macaque, which was shrieking and resisting, from its perch."
The bear then brought the animal to a concrete den, where three bears ate it.
The zoo said it "usually wasn't possible" for keepers to intervene when an animal killed another.
The park plans now to move the Barbary macaques - which are large monkeys but often inaccurately called "Barbary Apes" - to another part of the park, it said
