American Scene

Mrs. VanHeest’s attorney contacted the news media in Florida after reports of the Applebee’s incident this week.

Olive Garden said it will start mixing sangria individually to order, instead of in batches as it had before.

ILLINOIS

CDC: Suicides rise, fall with economy

CHICAGO | Suicides in the U.S. ebb and flow with the economy, rising in bad times and falling in good, researchers at the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.

Their study, published online in the American Journal of Public Health, is the first to look at suicide trends by age and business cycles, and it found that working Americans ages 25 to 64 are significantly more prone to suicide in tough economic times.

Researchers looked at the impact of business cycles on U.S. suicide rates from 1928 through 2007. They found a general correlation among suicide rates and major shifts in the U.S. economy.

For example, suicides famously spiked during the Great Depression to a record high of 22 suicides per 100,000 people in 1932, up from 18 per 100,000 in 1928.

The suicide rate also increased during other slowdowns, including the end of the New Deal (1937-1938), the oil crisis (1973-1975), and the double-dip recession (1980-1982.)

Suicide rates tended to fall during other periods, such as during World War II and the decade-long expansion from 1991 to 2001, in which the economy flourished and unemployment rates were low.

KENTUCKY

FBI: KFC founder received death threat

LOUISVILLE | As it turns out, Colonel Harland Sanders wasn’t the only one keeping secrets.

Newly released documents from the 1970s show the FBI investigated a death threat against the iconic KFC founder and pitchman, creator of the secret recipe for the chain’s fried chicken.

The warning came from someone identified as “The General.” A handwritten note addressed to Sanders and his wife told the restaurant entrepreneur from Kentucky that he was in “grave danger of being murdered.”

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