Giving sultry looks and sexy smiles to the camera, 12 Pittsburgh-area women recently posed at Monongahela historical sites, baring it all -- or almost all -- to create a charity-driven calendar. The catch?
The nearly nude ladies are all in their 70s and 80s, driven to adventure by a desire to raise money for a historical society in Monongahela, a small community 17 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
A Chinese court has jailed two officials after they let a blind contractor build a bridge which collapsed during construction and injured 12 people, the official Xinhua news agency said Monday.
Huang Wenge, township head of Bujia in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, and colleague Xia Jianzhong were sentenced to 18 months and one year in jail, respectively, for not stopping the project, Xinhua said.
"Huang Wenge and Xia Jianzhong, who were in charge of road management and supervision, did not ask the contractors to provide certificates guaranteeing their proficiency," it said, citing the court ruling.
Animal control officers wearing protective suits and air packs rescued 47 cats from a house filled with feces that in some areas was half a foot deep.
Two kittens were found dead in the one-story house in Martinsburg, said Melissa Susko, director of PIGS Animal Sanctuary in neighboring Jefferson County, which helped remove the cats from the house Thursday.
"They were just in a pile of feces," Susko said.
One pile of cat feces was about 3 feet wide. In other areas, the feces was 3 inches to 6 inches deep, said E.N. Webber of the Berkeley County Animal Control office.
"We were slipping and sliding in there. It was pretty bad," said Star Silva of the Promise Animal League, which also helped remove the cats.
Animal control officers went to the house in response to complaints from neighbors about odors.
Berkley County sheriff's Chief Deputy Kenny Lemaster said authorities were looking for the house's owner, who was not identified. No charges have been filed.
With our nation facing challenges from extremists and madmen around the globe, Americans are asking serious questions of the presidential field. Questions like, "does this candidate have the mature, thoughtful, and sober judgment to lead us through the threats that confront us?" And, "if necessary, is this candidate capable of doubling down on the crazy stakes to scare our enemies shitless?"
Ask anyone who knows, and they will tell you: when sober, Dave Burge has the mature, thoughtful judgement called for in 50 to 60% of foreign policy situations. These same people will also tell you that after eight or ten Jager shots, all bets are off. And let this be a notice to America's enemies: President Dave ain't gonna put no padlock on the Oval Office liquor cabinet.
Dutch students have developed powdered alcohol which they say can be sold legally to minors.
The latest innovation in inebriation, called Booz2Go, is available in 20-gramme packets that cost 1-1.5 euros ($1.35-$2).
Top it up with water and you have a bubbly, lime-colored and -flavored drink with just 3 percent alcohol content.
"We are aiming for the youth market. They are really more into it because you can compare it with Bacardi-mixed drinks," 20-year-old Harm van Elderen told Reuters.
[...]
"Because the alcohol is not in liquid form, we can sell it to people below 16," said project member Martyn van Nierop.
The legal age for drinking alcohol and smoking is 16 in the Netherlands.
A man has sued the maker of the health drink Boost Plus, claiming the vitamin-enriched beverage gave him an erection that would not subside and caused him to be hospitalized.
The lawsuit filed by Christopher Woods, of Manhattan, said he bought the nutrition beverage, which is made by the Novartis pharmaceutical company, at a drugstore on June 5, 2004, and drank it.
Woods' court papers say he woke up the next morning "with an erection that would not subside" and sought treatment of the condition, called severe priapism. They say Woods, 29, underwent surgery for implantation of a Winter shunt, which moves blood from one area to another.
The lawsuit, filed late Monday, says Woods later had problems that required a hospital visit and penile artery embolization, a way of closing blood vessels. Closing off some blood flow prevents engorgement of the penis with blood and lessens the likelihood of an erection.
Fancy a diamond-encrusted cellphone for $3.5 million, or a gold-plated, musical Swiss watch costing more than $2 million?
Those luxuries, and thousands like them, were on display at a weekend Millionaire Fair in Shanghai, a lavish exhibition targeting the ranks of newly rich created by China's economic boom and a stock market bull run.
Hundreds of wealthy Chinese -- many of them dressed casually in sportswear or slippers, and indistinguishable from pedestrians on the streets outside -- crowded the exhibition hall, looking for ways to spend their money.
"The rich people here are still learning about global brands. We're helping them to understand the lifestyle and how to live it," said David Zhong, one of the organizers of the exhibition.
Concerned by social tensions caused by the widening gap between rich and poor, Chinese leaders are promising more policies to reduce income inequalities. Higher import duties were imposed this year on luxury goods from cosmetics to golf clubs.
A U.S. scientist and a small band of believers are planning a journey to the Canadian Arctic for what they call "the greatest geological expedition in history."
Are they searching for Arctic oil reserves? Documenting evidence of climate change?
Not quite. They're looking for a fog-shrouded hole in the Arctic Ocean that leads -- they say -- to the centre of the Earth, where an unknown civilization is lurking inside the hollow core of the planet.
This time next year, Kentucky based physicist and futurist Brooks Agnew hopes to board the commercially owned Russian icebreaker Yamal in the port of Murmansk, and to sail into the polar sea just beyond Canada's Arctic islands.
"Everest has been climbed a hundred times," Mr. Agnew says. "The Titanic has been scanned from stem to stern. [But] this is the first and only expedition to the North Pole opening ever attempted."
While he insists the journey has a genuine scientific purpose, Mr. Agnew also says the expedition will include several experts in meditation, mythology and UFOs [my emphasis], as well as a team of documentary filmmakers.
Police found more than 8,000 pieces of women's clothing and lingerie in the home of a...man who stole the items so he could sleep buried in them.
Council meetings in Reus could take a turn for the bizarre after the northern Spanish town voted in a councillor who promised to turn up dressed as Elvis Presley and wants to turn the square into a nudist pool.
Ariel Santamaria, a former postman, stood for a small independent party dressed in full Elvis regalia complete with sideburns and won enough votes last weekend to take a council seat.
[...]
His platform included plans to paint the town hall pink, plant marijuana in the parks and give the town police global positioning systems to find people who might need a light while rolling a joint.
Researchers may have figured out what makes la vita so dolce in Rome. A report from Italy's National Research Council released Thursday found that there are traces of cocaine and cannabis in the air of the Eternal City.
The institute made the discovery during a study of toxic substances in the air of Rome, Taranto, in the heel of boot-shaped Italy, as well as in Algiers. The results found that in Rome, there were traces of cocaine and cannabis _ as well as nicotine, caffeine and benzopirene, which is commonly released in cigarette smoke and auto emissions.
"The highest concentrations of cocaine were found in the center of Rome and especially in the area of the University of La Sapienza," said Dr. Angelo Cecinato, who led the investigation.
Researchers can't say for sure why the high concentrations were registered in those locations, but Cecinato stressed that the findings didn't necessarily mean that cocaine and cannabis are more heavily used there.
An errant computer keystroke led the state to accidentally issue a $2.5 million check to a school counselor _ who spent thousands on cars, jewelry and electronics, prosecutors said.
Sabrina Walker, 37, was charged Tuesday with theft by swindle and concealing the proceeds of a crime. She remained in jail Wednesday in lieu of $200,000 bail.
The state's accounting system was handling money for the Department of Human Services that was intended for the Hennepin County Medical Center when the check was issued to Walker by mistake in March.
Walker was in the state's system because she was once paid $84 as a court witness. Investigators found that Walker's vendor number in the state system was only one number off the hospital's nine-digit number.
Walker, along with a man she lived with, allegedly bought a $500,000 certificate of deposit, funded two retirement accounts, bought a $500,000 Treasury bond, spent $5,500 on jewelry, $3,817 at Best Buy and $2,069 on limousine services, according to the criminal complaint.
Walker also allegedly bought two cars, called the state to report the check, then bought two more cars, prosecutors said.
Her criminal attorney, Mark Larsen, said there was more to the story than just the criminal complaint submitted by prosecutors. The complaint "fails to recite all the pertinent facts," he said.
"This is a far cry from an individual who is turning her back on what has happened here," he said.
A thief found out the hard way that robbing a woman isn't the best way to capture her heart. Two men robbed a U-Haul store around 3 p.m. Sunday, taking an unspecified amount of cash, according the store's owner. But instead of fleeing, one man lingered and tried to strike up a conversation with the woman he had just robbed.
"He stuck around and was trying to get the female employee's number," U-Haul general manager Patrick Sobocinski said. "She said he was just saying, 'Hey baby, you're pretty fine.'"
He said: "The Princess Diana concert is fair enough, but I feel more uneasy about the Al Gore thing.
"I've always been against the idea of rock stars lecturing people as if they know something the rest of us don't - it looks arrogant.
"It's not as if they have a private source of information. To state the obvious as if you are the only person that knows it is intellectually weak."
Police say the jingle of this ice cream truck meant pot-sickles. Police say elementary school students tipped them off to an ice cream truck driver who was apparently selling $5 and $10 bags of marijuana from the truck. Most customers were in the third, fourth, and fifth grades.
"It's a scary thought, but that's the info we received," Mission [Texas] police Chief Leo Longoria said.
Raymundo Flores, a 40-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, was arrested Thursday on charges of possession of marijuana. He was transported to Hidalgo County jail after a judge set bond at $30,000. His case will likely be turned over to federal immigration officials, Assistant Police Chief Robert Dominguez said.
It was just a little stun gun fun, but a police officer who demonstrated his Taser by zapping a willing subject in the genitals [my emphasis] has drawn a warning from his bosses.
Officer Randy Reynolds ran into trouble when video of the incident last spring was posted on YouTube.com. The unidentified man wasn't injured, and onlookers can be heard laughing in the background.
Interim Police Chief Larry Dickerson said Tuesday that Reynolds had been attending a social gathering, but was in uniform and on his way to work at the time. The man repeatedly asked Reynolds to use the weapon on him, and Reynolds eventually obliged _ twice.
"He said he just wanted to know what it felt like. Randy didn't want to do it at first, but the guy kept asking," said Dickerson, who interviewed the man.
A 60-year-old woman became a mother, twice over, when she delivered a pair of boys Tuesday.
Frieda Birnbaum gave birth to "Baby A" at 12:44 p.m. and "Baby B" a minute later by Caesarean section at Hackensack University Medical Center, hospital spokeswoman Nancy Radwin said. The twins each weighed 4 pounds, 11 ounces, she said.
"The mom is in recovery, and she and the babies are doing really well," Radwin said, declining a request to speak with the mother.
Hospital officials believe Birnbaum may be the oldest woman to give birth to twins in the United States, Radwin said.
Birnbaum, a psychologist from Saddle River, underwent in-vitro fertilization last year in Cape Town, South Africa, at a center that specializes in older women. She and her husband, Ken, a New York attorney, have been married for 38 years and have three other children sons ages 6 and 33 and a daughter, 29.
Birnbaum told Fox News she wanted her younger son to have siblings closer to his age and wanted to remove some of the stigma attached to older women giving birth.Well, that's nice, I guess, but it'll kind of suck for them when their mom can't make it to their high school graduations because she's, you know, dead.
Two teens are in hot water after police said they decided to return to a pool at the same hotel where they had robbed three people about 15 hours before.
The two women and a man were held up at gunpoint around 2 a.m. Saturday on the beach by Shorewood Villas on Hilton Head Island, Beaufort County Sheriff's Capt. Toby McSwain said.
The robbers took cell phones, purses, wallets and cash before one of them pistol whipped the man, McSwain said.
The victims then saw the same two men again at their hotel Saturday afternoon and called police. "They were basically just hanging out at the pool," McSwain said.
The gun deputies think was used in the robberies was found in a restroom trash can near the pool and other items taken were found on the beach, authorities said.
Brandon J. Brooks, 18, and Dillion Clark, 16, were charged with armed robbery. Brooks also was charged with carrying a firearm during a violent crime and misdemeanor marijuana possession.
Police say a man suspected of burglarizing several vehicles left a key piece of evidence at the scene of the alleged crimes _ his wallet, with identification and his parole card.
Christopher D. Hasty, 22, was arrested after he was pointed out by apartment complex residents who said they saw him flee a car in the parking lot. Several cars had been burglarized in the lot where officers found the wallet.
Residents said they saw the suspect's baggy pants fall down as he was running away.
Officers found him inside a nearby apartment. A trail of footprints led from the door to woods where some of the items stolen from the cars were stashed.
A group of 18 Catholic House Democrats publicly disputed Pope Benedict XVI's recent condemnation of politicians who support abortion rights, saying that "such notions offend the very nature of the American experiment."
On his flight to Brazil last Wednesday (May 9), Benedict said Catholic politicians in Mexico City who recently voted to legalize abortion could consider themselves excommunicated from the church [my emphasis]. The Vatican later said the pope was merely restating church policy, which calls for Catholics who participate in abortions to exclude themselves from taking Holy Communion.
On Monday (May 14), Catholic House Democrats said Benedict's comments "do a great disservice to the centuries of good work the church has done."
"The fact is that religious sanction in the political arena directly conflicts with our fundamental beliefs about the role and responsibility of democratic representatives in a pluralistic America — it also clashes with freedoms guaranteed in our Constitution," a statement from the 18 lawmakers said.
A nude car wash offering an X-rated sideshow and topless cleaning in Australia's tropical Queensland state has been given the all-clear after police and officials said they were powerless to scrub it.
The Bubbles 'n' Babes car wash in Brisbane prompted a flood of complaints with a topless car wash for A$55 ($45) and a nude car wash with X-rated lap-dance service for A$100. "If it was approved for a car wash then I can't imagine how we can stop them," Lord Mayor Campbell Newman told a council meeting with worried local lawmakers.
A 36-year-old German mother-of-five drove her son to a jewelry store he wanted to rob because she was afraid he may come to some harm, Bild newspaper reported Wednesday.
While her 17-year-old son and his two accomplices stabbed and robbed a jeweler in the eastern city of Dresden, the mother waited outside in the car.
"I knew he wanted to rob the shop and I was very worried about him," top-selling Bild quoted the mother as saying.
A man making his first visit to a home he bought in a foreclosure auction found the former owner's mummified body sitting on the living room couch, police said Tuesday.
Coroners estimate the woman's remains had been there since 2001, when she stopped making payments on the residence in the coastal town of Roses in Spain's northeast Catalonia region.
The body mummified instead of rotting partly because of the salty seaside air in Roses, a Catalan regional police official said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.
The woman, in her mid-50s, was estranged from her children in Madrid, and no one had reported her missing. She was not identified by officials.
Police said her death also went undetected because her ground-level apartment is in an area of vacation homes with a high turnover of travelers.
A teenager who put bullets in a vise and whacked them with a hammer to empty the brass shell casings was wounded in the abdomen by approximately the 100th bullet he hit, according to Warren County deputies.
Damion M. Mosher, 18, had been discharging .223-caliber rounds, placing them in a steel vise, putting a screwdriver on the primer, and striking the screwdriver with the hammer, deputies said.
Deputies were called to his home in Lake Luzerne shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday when one bullet went about a half-inch into his abdomen. He was treated at Glens Falls Hospital and was released. No charges were filed.
This nasty rescue is no fish tale.
Rescuers cut through a filtration tank of dense fish feces to reach four workers who fell into the sludgy dung Friday while cleaning the 18-foot tank at a western Massachusetts farm.
The workers became trapped for 45 minutes after a bracket holding a plastic filtration pad collapsed as workers stood on it to clean the fiberglass tank at the Australis Aquaculture fish farm, said Turners Falls Fire Capt. David Dion and the fish farm's manager, Josh Goldman.
One of the farmhands was submerged in what Dion described as a sand-and-feces mix, while the other three had their heads above the sludge, he said.
[...]
"It was very slimy and it was heavy," he said. "Never seen anything like it in my life."
The decomposed corpse of a German man was found alone in his bed after nearly seven years, police in the western city of Essen said Thursday.
The police said in a statement the man was 59 and unemployed at the time of his death. He most likely died of natural causes on November 30, 2000, the date he received a letter from the Welfare Office found in the apartment, police said.
[...]
"No one missed him. No missing person report was ever filed," the police said.
Riot police have been sent to a remote mountainous village in Papua New Guinea after a gun battle between police and members of a cult involved in human sacrifices, local media reported Wednesday.
The National newspaper said several people were killed and many injured in the fighting last week in the Finschhafen area of Morobe province, 350 km (220 miles) north of the capital, Port Moresby.
[...]
Police who flew to the area Sunday said they believed they were dealing with a cult movement involved in murders and human sacrifices to their gods, the newspaper said.
Morobe's chief police inspector, Augustine Wampe, said suspicions of cult activity started in April when a child was kidnapped and police were attacked trying to rescue the child.
"It takes a whole day to walk from (the town of) Sialum to the village in the mountains, where the child was held. The four (police) were ambushed and attacked by the villagers," he said.
"Gunfire was exchanged and one of the policemen was injured in the leg with an arrow. Another policeman fell over a cliff."
Police reinforcements were attacked and forced to retreat. The villagers then went on a rampage killing one man and chopping up his body and burning houses, Wampe said.
On second thought, maybe it was not a good idea to give an award for drinking to local government officials.
The South Korean county of Koesan has decided it will discontinue giving out its "Drinking Culture Prize" after being flooded with complaints that the award promotes drunkenness among municipal employees and encouraged binge drinking.
A county official said Wednesday the public misunderstood the intention of the award, which was meant to recognize government workers who go out to local restaurants and bars to meet citizens and hear what they have to say.
"I guess it was our mistake that the purpose was misinterpreted," said the official, who asked not to be named.
The prize, which included round-trip tickets to the resort island of Cheju, was given out for the first time earlier this month to three municipal workers.
Local media reported one winner had his driver's license revoked in 2005 for drunk driving.
A service station that offered discounted gas to senior citizens and people supporting youth sports has been ordered by the state to raise its prices. Center City BP owner Raj Bhandari has been offering senior citizens a 2 cent per gallon price break and discount cards that let sports boosters pay 3 cents less per gallon.
But the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection says those deals are too good: They violate Wisconsin's Unfair Sales Act, which requires stations to sell gas for about 9.2 percent more than the wholesale price.
Bhandari said he received a letter from the state auditor in late April saying the state would sue him if he did not raise his prices. The state could penalize him for each discounted gallon he sold, with the fine determined by a judge.
A passenger on an Australian-bound plane vomited a nylon bag of white powder suspected to be heroin, causing the plane to return to Vietnam in the latest drug mule case between that country and Australia, officials said.
The Vietnam Airlines plane had been flying for an hour after leaving Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday when an Australian man of Vietnamese descent took ill, airline officials told the state-run Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.
The aircraft turned around and made an emergency landing at Tan Son Nhat Airport, where the man coughed up two more bags of white powder. He was detained by police and taken to hospital.
Another newspaper, Lao Dong (Labor), reported doctors found 30 red nylon bags in the man's stomach. It identified him as 35-year-old Nguyen Kant.
Ms. Conlin, acknowledging that she sees her husband as No Impact Man and herself as simply inside his experiment, said she saw “An Inconvenient Truth” in an air-conditioned movie theater last summer. “It was like, ‘J’accuse!’ ” she said. “I just felt like everything I did in my life was contributing to a system that was really problematic.” Borrowing a phrase from her husband, she continued, “If I was a student, I would march against myself.”If she was a student, she would march against herself, but she just had to have those boots. Two pairs, even.
While Ms. Conlin is clearly more than just a good sport — giving up toilet paper seems a fairly profound gesture of commitment — she did describe, in loving detail, a serious shopping binge that predated No Impact and made the whole thing doable, she said. “It was my last hurrah,” she explained.
It included two pairs of calf-high Chloe boots (one of which was paid for, she said, with her mother’s bingo winnings) and added up to two weeks’ salary, after taxes and her 401(k) contribution.
York Heiden is one unlucky crime victim _ his car was stolen twice in one day. Even he can't believe it. "Everyone says, 'You shouldn't have left it,'" Heiden said, laughing. "But I know, I know ... So many what-ifs: I shouldn't have done this, I should have taken the tire off."
According to Heiden, here's what happened:
His pearl-colored 1990 Audi Quattro was stolen from a grocery store parking lot April 27 while his wife was running errands. The keys were left in it.
Heiden, who owns River West Motorwerks, an automotive repair shop, quickly called some friends and the car was found about a block from the grocery store. The keys were gone.
After removing a bag of pet food, some pieces of mail and other personal items from the car, Heiden told a friend to disable the car's ignition. The mechanic removed a coil wire, evidently forgetting the car had a two-coil system.
Police were told the stolen car had been found and Heiden, 36, left to pick up a spare key.
With only four of the car's eight cylinders disabled, the car still was mobile enough to be stolen a second time, apparently by the same thief, Heiden said.
A gang stripped a South African man before supergluing him to an exercise bicycle while they ransacked his house, according to a report Thursday.
SAPA news agency said the attackers, dressed in suits, hijacked a man in his 50s and forced him at gunpoint to take them to his home in Johannesburg.
"The victim was then forced to strip, after which he was superglued to the seat of an exercise bicycle, his hands were superglued, as were his feet and then his mouth was superglued shut," SAPA quoted Mark Stokoe, a spokesman for emergency services Netcare 911, as saying.
The man was rescued about three hours later when his partner arrived home, SAPA said.
An upstate New York couple didn't think a few bats in the attic were much of a problem when they were buying a house last summer.
Months later, they found out how wrong they were when they discovered more than a ton and a half of bat droppings up there.
Nick LaBoda and Jenna Caputo say a home inspector informed them about the bats. They called an exterminator, who told them to wait a while before removing the bats because the babies were too young to fly.
Then they forgot about the bats until they smelled a foul odor in January. When they checked the attic, they found dead bats and piles of guano.
Children here [in Middletown, NJ] got more than they bargained for when they tuned in to "Handy Manny" on the Disney Channel this week _ hard-core pornography.
Cable giant Comcast is investigating how the porn was broadcast during the popular cartoon, which is about a bilingual handyman, Manny Garcia, and his talking tools.
Customer Paul Dunleavy was stunned Tuesday morning to find his 5-year-old son watching the broadcast.
"It was two people doing their thing; it was full-on and it was disgusting," the father of three told The New York Daily News.
Villagers at a wedding in eastern India decided the groom had arrived too drunk to get married, and so the bride married the groom's more sober brother instead, police said Monday.
"The groom was drunk and had reportedly misbehaved with guests when the bride's family and local villagers chased him away," Madho Singh, a senior police officer told Reuters after Sunday's marriage in a village in Bihar state's Arwal district.
The younger brother readily agreed to take the groom's place beside the teenage bride at her family's invitation, witnesses said.
There were a few surprises for the University of Washington's Class of 1957 when they opened a time capsule sealed 50 years ago.
Among audiotapes and copies of the yearbook and school newspaper were 1980s-era porn, a condom and some dirty underwear.
[...]
"The good news is that all the things that were in there are still there," said Jerry Baldasty, chairman of the Department of Communication. "The interesting news is that some other things were added."
A man wearing nothing but women's high heels was the cause of a building lockdown by police in downtown McMinnville. The unidentified man was spotted sitting on a bench on the basement floor of a nearly vacant medical building Wednesday afternoon.
After a call to 911 dispatchers, two McMinnville police units responded and were assisted by deputies from the Yamhill County Sheriffs Office and the Oregon State Police. The building was locked down and surrounded, but alas, no naked man.
A man was held Wednesday on charges that he performed dental work on customers without a license in his "filthy" garage, authorities said. Roger Bean, 60, was arrested Tuesday and held on $6,000 bond.
Bean performed denture fittings and made false teeth in his garage, charging just $200 for a full set of dentures, a procedure that typically costs more than $2,000, authorities said. But he was not licensed to practice in Florida.
Palm Beach County Sheriff's detective Don Zumpano said there were "health risks with operating this type of facility outside of your house," adding that Bean's workspace was "filthy."
Neighbors and clients, however, praised Bean for saving them thousands of dollars.
Ron St. Mary, 73, head of the neighborhood crime watch, said Bean is no criminal.
"He's helping the old people who don't have a few dollars," he said. "I think the world of him."
An early-morning German bank customer had a bit of a shock when he found a horse already in line at the automatic teller machine in front of him. It seems the horse's owner, identified only as Wolfgang H., had a bit too much to drink the night before and decided to sleep it off inside the bank's heated foyer, police said Tuesday.
The 40-year-old machinist told Bild newspaper he had had "a few beers" with a friend in Wiesenburg, southwest of Berlin, and decided to hit the hay in the bank on his way home.
"It was late, it was already dark and cold," he was quoted as saying.
When a customer came across the horse and sleeping rider in the bank at 4:15 a.m. Monday, he called police, who then came and woke the owner up and sent him on his way.
No charges were filed, but there might be some cleanup needed: Apparently Sammy made his own after-hours deposit on the carpet.
A north Idaho man accused of ramming his truck into his estranged wife's home Monday after unsuccessfully demanding that she bring him a cigarette has been arrested, police said. No one was injured.
Eric D. Marienau, 48, of Sandpoint, was jailed for investigation of aggravated assault and driving while intoxicated after Coeur d'Alene police officers were called to his wife's residence in this lakeside resort community.
Caroline Marienau, who said she's in the process of getting a divorce, said Eric Marienau parked his full-size Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck next to her house about 7 a.m., police said.
He went to the home's fence and began shouting for her to bring him a cigarette, Caroline Marienau told police. She said he began pounding on her front door, telling her if she didn't come outside with a cigarette that he would return with his truck and ram her house.
"Eric returned a minute later and rammed the front of the house near the garage area at a high rate of speed. He then backed up and rammed the front of the house at least two more times," Police Sgt. Christie Wood said. "The impact forced a 1993 Ford Ranger that was parked inside the garage to be propelled approximately four feet through a wall into the interior of the bedroom."
A Canadian man has been arrested after he was found walking around naked with a swastika taped to his body to mark Adolf Hitler's birthday, police said on Friday.
Police in Nanaimo, British Columbia, on Canada's Pacific coast, said they were called to the scene by concerned residents, and the man told them he was "honoring Hitler's birthday." He was detained and will undergo a psychiatric assessment.
A Malaysian judge scolded government prosecutors for filing a corruption charge against a policeman who died two years ago, a news report said Thursday.
Sessions Court Judge Noradidah Ahmad, who was presiding over a bribery case, was surprised Wednesday when she noticed court documents stating that one of two policemen accused in the case had died after a stroke in 2005, the New Straits Times newspaper reported.
"We do not have to include a dead man in the charge. Dead people cannot testify," Noradidah was quoted as saying by the newspaper. "It's 2007 now, surely the prosecution had time to amend the charge. It is not as if he died yesterday."
Officials familiar with the case in the Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court and the Anti-Corruption Agency, which filed the charge, could not immediately be contacted for comment.
Sankara Nair, a prominent Malaysian lawyer, said he agreed "you cannot charge a dead man."
"When a person dies, the charge dies with him," Nair told the AP.
Prosecutors said they would consider amending the charge to exclude Che Amil from the case, the New Straits Times added.
A Woodinville woman arrested following two car crashes last week registered a .47 blood-alcohol content on a breath test _ nearly six times the legal intoxication threshold and possibly a state record.
Deana F. Jarrett, 54, was taken to Evergreen Hospital as a precaution following her arrest April 11, the Washington State Patrol said Wednesday. No one was injured in the accidents.
Jarrett blew the .47 on a portable breath tester after she collided with two other vehicles in quick succession, the patrol said. A check of all 356,000 breath tests administered since 1998 in Washington turned up only 35 above .40 _ and none of those was higher than .45.
A trooper driving down Interstate 40 near Forrest City on Monday spotted a truck with much of its windshield blocked by a large, stuffed monkey, authorities said. When the trooper pulled over the driver, he could smell what he suspected to be marijuana and he searched the vehicle, police said.
Police said the trooper found more than 2,100 hydrocodone pills, 70 Xanax pills and 85 Soma pills.
The driver, Tonya Rachelle Garner, 35, and passenger, Dennis Ray Garner, 34, both of Willis, Texas, were each charged with several counts of possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver. Tonya Garner also faces a charge of driving with an obstructed view.
Muslim cab drivers at Minnesota's biggest airport will face new penalties including a two-year revocation of their taxi permits if they refuse to give rides to travelers carrying liquor or accompanied by dogs, the board overseeing operations ruled Monday.
The Metropolitan Airports Commission, responding to complaints about the liquor issue, voted unanimously to impose the new penalties beginning in May.
A large number of taxi drivers in the area of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport are Muslim Somali immigrants. Many say they feel the faith's ban on alcohol consumption includes transporting anyone carrying it.
Some also have refused to transport dogs, both pets and guide dogs, saying they are unclean.
The new rules cover any driver who refuses a ride for unwarranted reasons, including those who refuse to take short-haul passengers in favor of more lucrative longer trips. They can still refuse fares for certain reasons, including threats to their safety.
Under the new regulations a first offense would result in a 30-day cab license suspension and a second in a two-year taxi license revocation.
A Seattle man has been charged with a slew of crimes that involved an alleged shoplifting, assaults and a pet duck named Mr. Peepers. Snohomish County Deputy Prosecutor Paul Stern on Thursday charged Kenneth Blaine Quinlan, 35, with two counts of third-degree assault and one count each of vehicular assault and hit-and-run.
Authorities say that on March 23, Quinlan and his 39-year-old girlfriend drove to a Lynnwood shopping center, where he entered a Linens 'n Things outlet and she went into a Petco store, taking the duck with her.
Stern wrote in court papers that a security guard thought he saw Quinlan shoplift an iPod speaker system, and a scuffle ensued.
Police say the guard chased Quinlan to the Petco store, where Quinlan got the car keys from his girlfriend and tried to escape.
The man jumped into the driver's seat of the car as the woman walked out of the store with her duck. Not knowing what was going on, she tried to stop him from driving away and was knocked down by the open car door as it backed up. She dropped the duck.
A Petco employee saw what was happening and "ran to save Peepers from the front of the car" just as Quinlan drove forward, Stern wrote. The car ran over the woman, inflicting serious injuries including broken bones in her foot and ankle, he said.
Quinlan was being held in the Snohomish County Jail in lieu of $25,000 bail. A convicted felon and former heroin addict, he told officers that he'd just received a dose of methadone at a Lynnwood clinic and had used cocaine a few days earlier, according to court papers.
A Dutch police station trying to help Muslim detainees face Mecca for their prayers painted arrows in cells pointing in the wrong direction.
The Segbroek police station in The Hague borrowed the idea of putting compass marks on ceilings from an Amsterdam hotel, the Dutch daily De Telegraaf reported on Friday.
Muslims pray five times a day, facing east in the direction of Mecca. But the arrows in Segbroek pointed west.
"This is a really gigantic, stupid blunder," a police spokesman told the De Telegraaf.
Maybe Terry Moran should get someone to plagiarize his blog items, the way Katie Couric did. They'd be a whole lot better.
A jail guard has been suspended after allegedly thumping an inmate with a Bible.
James Lee Sheppard, 56, has been charged with two gross misdemeanors for allegedly swatting a Blue Earth County Jail inmate with the book, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him against steel bars on Feb. 8, according to the criminal complaint.
A video shows a guard entering the cell of inmate Jeremy Hansen, 26. The guard then takes Hansen's Bible and strikes him in the side of the face with the book. The two exchange words as the guard walks away, said Mankato Police Officer Allen Schmidt who watched the video.
"CBS Evening News" anchor Katie Couric may vividly recall her first library card, but the network says she was unaware that her online video essay about the virtues of libraries was largely a work of plagiarism.
CBS News said this week the April 4 installment of "Katie Couric's Notebook" consisted mostly of passages lifted verbatim from a Wall Street Journal column by Jeffrey Zaslow that was published in March.
The producer responsible for Couric's piece was fired on Monday night, hours after the Journal contacted CBS News to complain, network spokeswoman Sandy Genelius said on Tuesday.
The essay was immediately removed from the CBS News Web site, and a correction was posted in its place. The network did not identify the producer who was fired.
Although the text for the minute-long video was written in first person -- introduced by Couric with the line, "I still remember when I got my first library card" -- Couric did not compose the piece herself and was unaware that much of it was plagiarized, Genelius said.
"She was stunned, and very upset," Genelius said on Wednesday. "It's the same reaction we all had."
Genelius said Couric met with a group of producers weekly to discuss upcoming topics for her "Notebook" video essays, and "she does write some of them herself."
Two fans have asked Florida to pardon rock bad-boy Jim Morrison, the late lead singer for The Doors, who was convicted of exposing himself during a Miami concert nearly 40 years ago.
The two men, Kerry Humpherys of Utah and David Diamond of Ohio, sent a letter to Florida Gov. Charlie Crist last month asking him to issue a full pardon to Morrison on two misdemeanor charges of indecent exposure and using profanity.
"I'm a big Doors fan. There are thousands of Doors fans out there who look up to Jim Morrison. It was all trumped up and he shouldn't have this hanging over him," said Humpherys, who runs a Doors fan magazine. [my emphasis]
A Saudi man lost a bit of his nose in a joint assault by his two wives after he jokingly threatened to marry a third woman.
Judaie Ibn Salem had thought his threat would help resolve an argument over dividing up his house.
"I swore that I would do it because ... they were impolite and that's when I came under an even bigger attack," Ibn Salem told Shams newspaper after having seven stitches inserted.
"I never realized they would get so worked up. But the only way to restore my dignity is really to take a third wife."
"I don't know what I'm going to lose next if I do that."
An eccentric 78-year-old inventor who was thwarted in his fourth attempt to become governor of Tokyo was undaunted, saying he plans to run 16 more times and will win by outliving his opponents, local media said Monday. "I'm going to live to 144, so I'm still only middle-aged. I can run for Tokyo governor 16 more times," the Sports Hochi newspaper quoted Yoshiro Nakamatsu as saying.
"In that time, all the others will die off, so I will be elected," added Nakamatsu, the self-proclaimed inventor of the floppy disk and the oldest candidate in the race. Nakamatsu came fifth in Sunday's election, which gave 74-year-old Shintaro Ishihara his third term as Tokyo governor.
Ishihara won 2.8 million votes, according to national broadcaster NHK's Web site, while Nakamatsu got 85,946, or 1.6 percent of the total.
Nakamatsu had promised to lower taxes and safeguard Tokyo's 12.6 million residents from missile attacks with an invention that would make North Korean missiles do a U-turn.
A British dentist was found guilty Thursday of urinating in his surgery sink and using dental tools meant for patients to clean his fingernails and ears.
A medical tribunal said it was satisfied the evidence showed 51-year-old Alan Hutchinson, who routinely did not wear gloves or wash his hands, had risked the health of "himself, staff and patients" for more than 28 years.
A dental nurse who worked for Hutchinson for 16 years said she had caught him urinating in the sink more than once.
"He was tucking something into his trousers before zipping them up hastily. I walked over and I was behind him. He moved to the left and I could smell urine," the nurse told the tribunal.
The tribunal determined that the dentist's poor hygiene habits made him unfit to practice and struck him off the dental register, banning him from work.
Joe Selle didn't exactly get voted out office this week, but he wasn't re-elected, either.
Selle, who was running unopposed for [Missouri City, MO] City Council, didn't get any votes at all. Not even one from himself.
Selle, 42, said he simply forgot that Tuesday was election day, and apparently so did Ward 3's other 34 registered voters.
The result was zero votes cast in Selle's race, but the city charter lets him keep the seat unless someone else is "successfully elected and qualified," the city attorney said.
Selle, a professional musician, was recently appointed to fill a council vacancy and had been seeking a full term.
He said he saw other residents at the school where the voting was held, "but it never occurred to me that's what they were there for."
The "boyfriend" of a 14-year-old girl who lived with her and her family for more than a year was actually a 30-year-old woman, police said.
Lorelei Corpuz posed as a 17-year-old orphan to gain the family's trust, then beat and molested the teen, police allege.
Corpuz was charged with two counts of third-degree child rape and one count of third-degree child molestation and was being held in lieu of $150,000 bail. Everett Police Sgt. Robert Goetz said he didn't know whether Corpuz had a lawyer.
Police said Corpuz was found out Sunday after an officer checked the suspect's vehicle, parked at an Everett gas station, to see whether it was stolen. The officer arrested Corpuz after the check pulled up an outstanding traffic warrant under an alias, Mark Villanueva.
The 14-year-old also was in the vehicle, and the officer, who recognized Corpuz from an earlier arrest, asked the girl how she knew the suspect.
"She indicated it was her boyfriend," Everett police Sgt. Robert Goetz said. "That obviously piqued the concern of the officer."
Officer Don de Nevens wrote in a probable cause statement that although Corpuz had sexual contact with the girl, "the suspect never let victim see her/his private parts and victim always thought that suspect was male until officer informed her otherwise."
The two met at a mall in September 2005, police said, and the suspect told the girl that his mother had died of cancer and that his father committed suicide. They talked on the phone and went on a date, and soon her family let him move in.
"They were all surprised that this individual was not who she said she was, both in name and sex," Goetz said Wednesday.
An Air Force veteran has filed a federal claim after an operation at a Veterans Administration hospital in which a healthy testicle was removed instead of a potentially cancerous one.
Benjamin Houghton, 47, was to have had his left testicle removed June 14 at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center because there was a chance it could harbor cancer cells. It also was atrophied and painful.
But doctors mistakenly removed the right testicle, according to medical records and the claim, which seeks $200,000 for future care and unspecified damages. He still hasn't had the other testicle removed.
Thai inmate Samson Sor Siriporn boosted her chances of freedom by beating Japan's Ayaka Miyano to win the vacant women's WBC light-flyweight title at the notorious "Bangkok Hilton" prison Tuesday.
Under the gaze of dozens of prison guards, Siriporn, a convicted drugs dealer, battled through the unforgiving Thai heat to score a unanimous points victory and kick-start parole proceedings for her early release.
"I've been in jail for a long time now, I hope this will see me released early," said Siriporn, flanked by mean-looking guards and surrounded by photographers.
"When I'm free I'll carry on fighting. I want to fight all over the world."
Fighting in a makeshift ring in the grounds of the infamous Klong Prem prison with the Thai crowd chanting "fight, fight," Siriporn was on the attack from the start and repeatedly forced Miyano on to the ropes with a barrage of punches.
The intense afternoon heat took its toll on Miyano, who twice fell to the canvas as a result of Siriporn's relentless attacks, which drew rapturous applause from the few thousand prison staff, factory workers and taxi drivers who flocked to see her fight for freedom.
Siriporn's sparring partners also watched the fight, while glamorous transvestites in high heels and skimpy outfits were allowed out of their cells to parade around the ring with placards at the beginning of each round.
A man who arrived at court drunk for a drunken-driving hearing was again charged with driving under the influence, police said.
Paul H. Zeigler, 45, of Glen Rock, appeared at a preliminary hearing at the Shrewsbury district court on March 26 for a DUI charge from December.
Police said Zeigler appeared to be intoxicated at the hearing, according to police records.
After his court appearance, Zeigler failed a portable breath test for alcohol and was taken into custody for a blood test, police said.
One evening as the sun went down and the jungle fire was burning
Down the track came a hobo hiking and he said boys I'm not turning
I'm headin for a land that's far away beside the crystal fountains
So come with me we'll go and see the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains there's a land that's fair and bright
Where the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night
Where the boxcars are all empty and the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees
Where the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains all the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft boiled eggs
The farmer's trees are full of fruit and the barns are full of hay
Oh, I'm bound to go where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall and the wind don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains you never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol come a-trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats and the railroad bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew and of whiskey too
You can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains the jails are made of tin
And you can walk right out again as soon as you are in
There ain't no short handled shovels, no axes saws or picks
I'm a goin to stay where you sleep all day
Where they hung the jerk that invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
I'll see you all this coming fall in the Big Rock Candy Mountains
