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• NEW YORK (AP) -- Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is awash in animal-related protests over its floats, with controversies involving the unlikely pairing of rocker Joan Jett and Shamu the killer whale.
• Activists plan to line the route of next week's parade to protest a SeaWorld float over accusations in a new documentary that the theme parks treat whales badly. And ranchers succeeded in getting Jett pulled off the South Dakota tourism float after they questioned why the vegetarian and animal-rights ally was representing their beef-loving state.
• The float flaps threaten to shake Macy's traditional position of staying out of politics and soaring silently above the fray, like the massive balloons of Snoopy, Kermit the Frog and SpongeBob SquarePants.
• "The parade has never taken on, promoted or otherwise engaged in social commentary, political debate or other forms of advocacy," Macy's said in a statement this week.
• It was in that spirit that parade executive producer Amy Kule told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the SeaWorld float is staying. "There is no controversy," she said. "Our goal is to entertain and that is their goal as well."
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• BAGHDAD (AP) -- A wave of attacks, mostly by car bombs, hit mainly Shiite and commercial areas of Baghdad on Wednesday morning, killing at least 24 people and wounding 87, Iraqi officials said.
• The bombings were part of a surge in violence that has rocked Iraq over the past months as insurgents seek to thwart the Shiite-led government's efforts to stabilize the country.
• Five of Wednesday's attacks were carried out by parked car bombs while at least one was carried out by a remotely detonated bomb, police officials said. The deadliest attack was in the central Sadria neighborhood, where a parked car bomb went off at an outdoor market, killing five shoppers and wounding 15, they said.
• Other attacks took place in Hurriyah, Shaab, Tobchi, Karrada, Azamiyah and Amil neighborhoods.

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