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Long ago, McDonald's chose to honor St. Patrick banishing the snakes from Ireland with its Shamrock Shake, made with real snake. It was known for its subtle flavor and powerful aphrodisiac qualities. While the recipe has changed slightly over the years, the powerful aphrodisiac qualities remain.

Peter: Sucking this up through the straw is pretty hard work just to get something that tastes like toothpaste.

Miles: Shamrocks are good luck, but I think the woman who rang us up took it too far when she said, "You're gonna need it."

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The Chinese government has blamed the deadly stabbing attack in southwest China on Muslim separatists from the country's northwest. But the government has yet to provide hard evidence for the claim.

Police said they have captured the final three suspects in a knife-attack that killed 29 people and left more than a 140 injured in the city of Kunming on Saturday, according to the state-run New China News Service.

Police say they shot and killed four suspects and captured an injured female suspect at the Kunming Rail Station, the scene of the massacre. China's Ministry of Public Security said the eight-member gang was led by a man named Abdurehim Kurban.

Xia Fanchao arrived at the Kunming Rail station in southwest China's Yunnan province around 9 p.m. on Saturday. He planned to catch a train toward the east coast, where he'd lined up a job installing elevators.

As the skinny 18-year-old stood outside the entrance, he noticed something strange.

"I saw a man carrying a bag, which he dropped on the floor of the Square," said Xia, who spoke from his bed at the Kunming No. 1 People's Hospital. "Quite a few people rushed to the bag and unzipped it. Each took out a knife and then split up among the crowd and started to slash people."

Xia says the assailants, all clad in black, moved about the square without speaking. They slashed at people as though "they were chopping firewood." Xia said some of the knives were 20 inches long.

A woman in a long black dress and a black veil ran towards Xia.

"She lifted the knife and was about to slash me," he said. "I dodged and it cut my neck. It felt like I was being electrocuted."

"The first witness at Oscar Pistorius' murder trial told the court on Monday she heard 'bloodcurdling screams' from a woman followed by shots," Reuters writes.

It was, the wire service adds, "a dramatic opening to a case that could see one of global sports' most admired role models jailed for life."

NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reminds our Newscast Desk that:

"Pistorius was a hero to many in and outside South Africa. He earned the 'Blade Runner' nickname, because of the hi-tech carbon fiber blades he used to power to victory as a paralympian.

"But that image crumpled when Pistorius was accused of premeditated murder in the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentine's day last year. He says it was a tragic accident and that he mistook the 31 year-old model and law graduate for an intruder."

On one black-comically terrible Christmas

It's painful, but it's not lacking in its humorous elements. Scott had just gotten out of a three-year stint in prison for various drug offenses, and my mother — though I had warned her repeatedly — took him into her house, and I went home for Christmas. And, well, I was about to say that everything that could have gone wrong did, but it was pretty predictable: He wrecked his car ... on the way back from the liquor store, so he had a pretty healthy cache of liquor. The police obligingly drove him back to us. He got drunk, he terrorized my mother, the next day I took my mother to the police station, and we arranged to have Scott removed as a trespasser.

But what people may not know if they don't have a, you know, psychotic drunken brother, is it's very hard to get a restraining order. So all we could do was have the police remove him. He could come back. So as soon as the police removed him — and that was an interesting scene — we went and bought a gun, and stopped to have a martini at a Chinese restaurant, and I coached my mother: Tell him to sit down, and if he doesn't sit down, you're going to have to shoot him.

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Revisiting John Cheever's Suburban Unrest