An Ohio drunken-driving suspect is blaming his arrest on Ozzy Osbourne. William Liston was arrested Christmas Eve in suburban Cleveland. WJW-TV says he told police officers, "Ozzy Osbourne and his music made me do it."
Gene Gulinson, who practices [law] in Phoenix, said his treatment at the Highland Justice Court in Gilbert damaged his reputation, The Arizona Republic reported. He is seeking $75,000 from the town.
The trouble began when Gulinson went to the courthouse for a pretrial conference with a client who had two traffic tickets. He said guards first told him he could not enter carrying a bag of pastries a client had given him.
After he got rid of the pastries, guards searched his briefcase and found the jawbreakers.
In other truck news, a death row inmate filed and lost a lawsuit seeking to keep a restored 1971 Chevy pickup that he stole from the couple he killed.
In Sanford, a dealer of used pickup trucks offered a free AK-47 assault rifle with every purchase. Apparently trucks and guns go well together. Fort Pierce police say a 25-year-old man drove his pickup truck across a lawn, over a mailbox and at several people after losing an arm-wrestling match, then pressed a rifle to the forehead of the man who beat him. Two men were charged in Glades County after authorities found 36 dead alligators and 19 live hatchlings in their pickup truck.
Chinese vendors looking to cash in on the frenzy over the April wedding of Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton are selling copies of her engagement ring for as little as three dollars.
Knock-offs of the 45,000-dollar sapphire-and-diamond ring that the prince gave to Middleton -- and once worn by his mother, Princess Diana -- are on offer at various shops on Taobao.com, China's largest online mall.
Most are selling for less than 100 yuan (15 dollars), with the cheapest -- allegedly made of zircon and unspecified alloys -- available for just 19.9 yuan, or about three dollars, according to Taobao pages searched by AFP.
Capt. Don DeLucia, spokesman for Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue, said Mario Go of Lake Worth was trying to smoke the bees out of a column supporting a second-story balcony Tuesday and accidentally set the house on fire, The Palm Beach Post reported Wednesday.
[DeLucia] said the fire also failed to drive away the bees.
Norwegian reindeer owners have a Christmas safety tip for Santa -- put reflectors on his fleet-footed animals so they won't get hit by cars.
About 2,000 reindeer have been fitted this month with reflective yellow collars or small antler tags to cut down on the car crashes that now kill 500 reindeer a year and pose a danger to motorists across Arctic Norway.
"It really works," Kristian Oevernes, the leader of the project at the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, told Reuters of the project in Finnmark, where the sun does not rise in mid-winter.
Police say a man dressed as Santa Claus has robbed a Rhode Island yacht club.
Authorities say a bartender was alone in the East Providence Yacht Club Sunday night when a large man wearing a red suit, red hat, white beard and carrying a sack walked into the bar and brandished a gun.
The bartender fled and ran to a nearby business where she called 911.
[...]
There were no immediate arrests.
I said it five times fast! What do I get? Oh, a restraining order. Great.A New York man said he has invented the perfect fashion accessory designed to keep low-riding pants sagging at just the right level.Seriously, it's a belt. It's been sold in almost every store in this country in which pants have also been sold for at least the last century.
A team of scientists say they have positively identified an embalmed head, presumed lost in the chaos of the French Revolution, as that of King Henri IV of France who was assassinated in 1610.
The head was apparently lost after revolutionaries desecrated the graves of French kings in the royal basilica of Saint-Denis near Paris in 1793.
Few remains of those bodies have ever been found and positively identified since.
But a team of experts using advanced scientific techniques say they have conclusively identified the head, passed down over the centuries by private collectors, as that of the monarch.
The Orange County Register reported Monday that Malcolm Alarmo King disliked the salami meals served at the jail, so he used his devotion to Festivus as a reason to get kosher meals reserved for inmates with religious needs.
Keeping kosher is not one of the tenets of Festivus, which was depicted on "Seinfeld" as celebrated with the airing of grievances and the display of an aluminum pole.
"Seventy-five percent of the people, when I'm poling, in my store who walk by are women who smile and clap, so it's not a male lust thing. It's empowering women thing as well," Jill-Anne said.
A motorist caught speeding in London two years ago moved to New Zealand only to be booked by the same police officer for again exceeding the limit, reports said Wednesday.The lesson here is that God doesn't want us to live on islands. The UK? A bunch of islands. New Zealand? Also islands. There are fewer miles of roads on islands, so the cops have more speed traps per capita, right?
Former London bobby Andy Flitton ticketed the man in Britain two years ago, shortly before migrating to New Zealand -- then caught him again in September on a highway in the South Island, the New Zealand Herald reported.
A Wisconsin woman bit off half her husband's tongue during a kiss and has been arrested, authorities said on Tuesday.
The bitten piece of the husband's tongue was recovered, and he was taken to a hospital following the incident late on Monday, Sheboygan, Wisconsin police said in a statement.
The woman, 57, told emergency workers she had "bit her husband's tongue off," police said in a statement. She had blood on her clothing, they said.
The 79-year-old victim said his wife bit his tongue while he was kissing her, police said.
The artist behind this year's Christmas tree at the Tate Britain gallery in London said he left the tree bare to show how it is "naturally beautiful."
Artist Giorgio Sadotti said he decided to leave the Norwegian spruce undecorated, save for mirrored silver cards promoting a Jan. 6 concert at its base, The Daily Telegraph reported Monday.
"I am showing what I believe to be a naturally beautiful object," Sadotti said. "When you see a tree in the forest you don't think 'that tree's naked, it needs a bit of tinsel.'"
An SUV crashed into an Anchorage barber shop, narrowly missing shop owner Heng Song and his two customers.
But Song wasn't about to let the horrifying moment get in the way of a good haircut.
He was momentarily stunned, yes, when the vehicle burst through a door and window Wednesday afternoon as he was clipping a customer's hair.
"Half a haircut and kaboom!" is how the 53-year-old native of South Korea described it Thursday, after the shop had been cleared of debris and the gaping hole was boarded with plywood.
[...]
Song laughed Thursday as the footage showed him soon return to the chair and continue the haircut, while in the background bystanders began to gather. There's no way he would let a loyal customer go home with a botched job, Song said.
Leaving a customer with half a haircut, he said, would be "something too ugly."
On top of that, Song gave both customers haircuts on the house. He said it's the least he could do after the ordeal.
A Los Angeles auction house said on Tuesday it would sell the simple pine coffin in which the suspected assassin of President John F. Kennedy was buried for almost 20 years.
Bidding will start at $1,000, but the item is expected to fetch strong interest from museums and collectors of presidential memorabilia when it goes on the block on December 16.
