The! Biggest! News! of! th! Day! - Not Baidu.com, First Solar, Crocs, EchoStar, Citigroup, Swiss Re, Xerox, or Lowe's

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

• A caution against story stocks with Baidu.com (BIDU), New Oriental Education & Technology Group (EDU), First Solar (FSLR), Crocs (CROX), and Under Armour (UA) mentioned...
• Renewed [subscription required] takeover chatter on EchoStar (DISH) after it is said that last week's decline in DISH shares "has reinvigorated AT&T's (T) interest in buying the satellite television provider, an industry source says."...
• Concerns on Citigroup (C)...
• A subprime-related loss at Swiss Re...
• OPEC and the weak dollar...
• A dividend from Xerox (XRX)...
• A lackluster earnings report from Lowe's (LOW)...
• A survey that says "The number of economists forecasting the U.S. will slip into recession almost doubled over the last two months"...
• Word that financial woes aren't preventing Wall Street from paying record bonuses of $38 billion despite the fact that "Shareholders in the securities industry are having their worst year since 2002, losing $74 billion of their equity"...

While those are all stories worth watching, I think it is obviously clear that the biggest story is this - Thieving monkeys 'out of control' in northeast India...according to the article, "Troupes of monkeys are out of control in India's northeast, stealing mobile phones and breaking into homes to steal soft drinks from refrigerators"...

Truth be told, I don't know whether to consider this a "new" story or simply a continuation of what we discussed last week. Either way, though, it simply highlights the continued warning signs of the looming animal uprising.

I know that some may be tempted to think this "monkey" issue is confined to the other side of the world but consider the story below...

Rogue cell phone has 911 on redial - the "Black Hawk County Consolidated Communications Center said that they received about 400 calls from the same cell phone last week and that no one seems to be on the other line"

Think about this and the thieving monkey story. You have a group of monkey's all hopped up on sugar and caffeine while playing with a cell phone. Could the monkeys now be in Iowa? Could the prank 911 calls simply be their way of testing our defenses? I think everyone needs to be on the lookout for monkeys carrying cans of Coke and cell phones...