The! Biggest! News! of! the! Day! - Not the Employment Report, Electronic Arts, Las Vegas Sands, Merrill Lynch, or OpenSocial

Here are some of the contenders for today's biggest...news...of...the...day...

• A strong-than-expected employment report that showed payrolls rose by 166,000 while the unemployment rated was unchanged at 4.7 percent...S&P futures are trading nearly 10 points above fair value after this report...
• A report [subscription required] from The Wall Street Journal that says Merrill Lynch (MER) "has engaged in deals with hedge funds that may have been designed to delay the day of reckoning on losses"...
• An upbeat earnings report from Electronic Arts (ERTS)...
• An earnings miss from Las Vegas Sands (LVS)...
• A share buyback at Crocs (CROX)...
• Earnings from Chevron (CVX)...
• Call buying [subscription required] on Citigroup (C)...
• A look [subscription required] into the woes of the financial sector...
• The tiff between Google (GOOG) and Facebook over OpenSocial...

While those are all stories worth watching, I think it is obviously clear that the biggest news is this trio of stories -

• Crocodile 'arrested' in Australia - "An aggressive crocodile was 'arrested' and spent a night behind bars in a remote Australian police station after lunging at a group of fishermen"...
• 'Goat sucker' actually a hairless coyote - "the ugly, big-eared animal found during the summer in southern Texas is not the mythical, bloodsucking chupacabra. It's just a plain old coyote"...
• Hollywood writers poised to strike over royalties - "Hollywood writers are poised to strike after their negotiating team recommended a walkout in a dispute over royalties at a Thursday night meeting of the union membership"...

As you scan the list I think everyone would agree why the first two stories earned "biggest news" status. Anytime it is confirmed that an animal is not "a mythical, bloodsucking chupacabra" I think that is worth noting. (Of course, I have to wonder if it was a mythical, bloodsucking chupacabra if they would really tell us anyway.) And any time an animal gets "arrested" that has to be discussed.

As far as the writers strike goes, I think that is "big news worthy" because I thought they were already on strike after the whole "Cavemen" show...