Weird But True

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November 5, 2003 -- David Alan Waters is a blooming idiot - all he had to do to stay a free man was plant 10 chrysanthemums in the yard of Minnie Becton, the 99-year-old woman whose home he had vandalized. But he didn't, and now the Memphis, Tenn., man has to serve seven months of what had been a two-year suspended sentence. While Waters insists he did play gardener, Criminal Court Judge Carolyn Wade Blackett scolded: "There is no reason for a 99-year-old woman in a wheelchair to lie about who she saw on her property."

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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - How much would you pay for a beer
in Hong Kong? A New Zealand traveler paid 20,000 Hong Kong dollars
(US$2,595) for his.
The man later told his bank he thought he was paying only about
HK$19 (US$2.45) for the single beer, and that he believes bar
employees duped him by adding additional zeros to his tab and then
pocketing a big tip.
The case surfaced Wednesday in the annual report to Parliament
by Liz Brown, New Zealand's banking ombudsman.
The man, identified in the report only as Mr. B, asked his bank
to stop payment after he returned to New Zealand weeks later. But
the bank said "it could not intervene" because Mr. B had signed
the credit card receipt and told him his dispute was with the bar,
Brown said in her report.
Mr. B could offer no evidence that the sales voucher had been
forged, and it had not "obviously been altered," Brown noted.
Brown, who mediates complaints between customers and banks, told
the man to withdraw his complaint.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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LONDON (Reuters) - A man who spent six days barricaded atop
a construction crane in central London dressed as Spider-Man
climbed down Wednesday.
David Chick had dressed as his daughter's favorite comic
book character to lobby against what he said was a legal system
that kept him from seeing the girl.
The stunt, near central London's Tower Bridge, caused
traffic snarl-ups for days after police sealed the area for
safety reasons.
A police spokesman said Chick was arrested for creating a
public nuisance after he climbed down before the Wednesday
evening rush hour.
London's Chamber of Commerce said the traffic cordon, which
was lifted Tuesday evening, had cost businesses in the
capital tens of millions of pounds.
Chick, 36, was protesting to highlight the difficulties
some separated or divorced fathers have in gaining access to
their children. His friends say he has not seen his daughter
for eight months.

Reut15:27 11-05-03

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CLARENVILLE, Nfld. (CP) - RCMP are hoping they can turn up a
turnip thief who has stolen more than $500 worth of the crop from
an area farm in recent weeks.
Some time between Monday evening and Tuesday morning, the
vegetable villain drove into a turnip field near Lethbridge, Nfld.,
and pinched some of the plants.
It was one of many harvest heists to hit the farm in the past
six weeks and the fed-up farmer finally complained to police on
Tuesday.
In addition to the cost of the pilfered veggies, the remaining
turnip crop has been damaged during the heist, police said in a
statement.
The RCMP appealed for help from the public to solve the crime.


(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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November 6, 2003 -- Question: What do you call two lawyers caught naked in the laundry room of an apartment building where they don't live? Answer: busted.
David Burleson and Todd Buss, both 40, were fined $200 after pleading no contest to disorderly conduct in Madison, Wis., but they have an explanation. The legal eagles say they got soaked while celebrating a University of Wisconsin football victory and were given permission by a building resident to come in and use the basement clothes dryer.Oh, by the way, cops say they were "extremely intoxicated."

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Weenie Roast

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - There was a giant weenie roast on
Interstate 380, but there was no mustard for many a mile marker.
A truck carrying 43,500 pounds of Oscar Mayer turkey hot dogs
caught fire about 10 p.m. Tuesday, said Trooper Tom Estrada of the
Iowa State Patrol.
Instead of the aroma of roasting meat, troopers and firefighters
had to endure black smoke and the acrid smell of burning rubber.
"Some type of mechanical problem caused a wheel to overheat,"
Estrada said. "The driver pulled over and opened the hood of the
refrigerator power unit. That exposed hot oil to the air and helped
ignite the fire."
The truck driver, Wayne A. Mathison, 60, of Cherry, Ill., was
not injured.
The northbound lanes of the interstate near the small town of
Urbana, which is between Cedar Rapids and Waterloo, were closed for
about three hours.

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November 7, 2003 -- Jean Ridino turned into the Terminator when a man jumped into her Mercedes-Benz and tried to carjack it - she doused him with hot tea and bashed him with the mug."I said, 'Get out of my damn car now.' He never even bled. I thought he was a robot," said Ridino, 57, of Mashpee, Mass. Mark Corkery, 32, who allegedly had been trying to flee the scene of an accident, was arrested. "He had a bad day," Mashpee Police Chief Maurice Cooper said. "It was a comedy of errors on his part."



NJ, Iowa can now claim the world's biggest weenie roast...

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November 8, 2003 -- For more than eight months, Billie Jo Hawks shared a cell with female inmates at Kentucky's Meade County Detention Center. It was only after being transferred to the Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women - and facing a physical - that the convicted drug trafficker admitted he's a man. "Clearly procedures weren't followed" during the mandatory jail-admission strip search, said a state correction official.

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November 9, 2003 --Five cops in Austin, Texas, were busted for fishing at a nearby lake when they were supposed to be guarding a power plant from possible terrorism. A lieutenant, a sergeant and three other officers were disciplined for fishing on duty. The cops had been assigned to security patrol at Decker Creek Power Plant, but instead were fishing in Lake Walter Long on the plant's property.


A California high school has picked a girl to be homecoming king. Angela Anthony, 17, was crowned king at Hayward HS in Oakland. Anthony went for king because her best friend, Iesha Miller, wanted to be queen and the two didn't want to compete against each other."Some things change. Why not change this?" said Miller

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PARIS (Reuters) - A French hunter was shot by his dog after he left a loaded shotgun in the trunk of his car with two dogs and one of the animals accidentally stepped on the trigger, police said Wednesday.

The man, from the village of Espelette in the Basque region, was admitted to a hospital in the nearby town of Bayonne Monday with leadshot injuries to the hip.

"As he was driving along, one of his dogs accidentally set off the gun," said a police official.

My God, they can't even beat their dogs.

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HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - Police in the Vietnamese capital have a
new gun in their holsters and it's got a colorful bang. They've
armed themselves with paintball guns to brand and track robbers and
illegal motorbike racers.
The guns, introduced Monday, will be used to pelt thieves and
racers with red, yellow and green dyes, said Tran Quoc Hung,
administrative head of Hanoi's police.
The guns have a range of 10 meters (33 feet) and will help
police to track fast-moving suspects on motorcycles who could
otherwise dart unnoticed into a sea of other bikes.
Robbery is not a major problem in Hanoi, but street racing on
motorbikes is becoming more common.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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Calif. woman sues over condom in her clam chowder
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Waiter, there is something
worse than a fly in my soup.
A California woman who found a condom in her bowl of clam
chowder has sued the upscale restaurant that served it to her
-- saying she has suffered depression and anxiety from the
shocking discovery.
But an attorney for McCormick & Schmicks Seafood Restaurant
in Irvine, California, says the eatery has no idea how the
condom got into Laila Sultan's food.
Sultan, 48, and her three companions are suing the
restaurant for negligence and intentional infliction of
emotional distress in a case that is expected to go to trial
early next year.
"I thought it was calamari or shrimp or something so I
chewed one more," Sultan told local KCAL-TV Monday. "It felt
rubbery. I told my friends, 'My God, there's something in my
mouth."'
Sultan said she spit the offending object into a napkin and
at first thought it was a latex glove. Then her friend realized
what it was.
"I said, 'Oh, my God' and ran into the bathroom with
another friend of mine and I started throwing up," she said. "I
threw up everything I ate there, every single thing, I threw up
in the bathroom."
But Patrick Stark, an attorney for McCormick & Schmicks,
told the Los Angeles Times that its staff had no idea how the
condom got into the chowder, adding: "It's as big a mystery to
us as it is to anybody else."
"We are going to argue at trial there is absolutely no
evidence to suggest the restaurant was the source of the
condom," he told the paper. "Either it came from (the four
women) or it was thrown in as a practical joke by another
patron at the restaurant."

Reut21:26 11-10-03

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NY children play with missile launcher from Iraq
NEW YORK, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Schoolchildren found a U.S.
Army issued missile launcher from Iraq in a garbage can in
Brooklyn on Monday, but it was inoperable and no one was
injured handling it, police said.
Police said the missile launcher was brought back to New
York from the war in Iraq by an unidentified member of the U.S.
armed forces who apparently gave it to a friend, who
subsequently dumped it in the trash.
A man brought it into a police station in the Bensonhurst
section of Brooklyn on Monday morning after seeing
schoolchildren playing with it, police said.
Police described the launcher as a one-shot light anti-tank
weapon, but gave no further details. It had already been fired
and could not be used again.

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Nabbed a thief, got no handcuffs? Use your teeth
BERLIN, Nov 10 (Reuters) - A German with no handcuffs to
hand captured a burglar by clamping his teeth onto the man's
thumb and dragging him off to a neighbour's house.
"He couldn't use the phone himself...so the neighbour called
the police," read Monday's statement from police in Duesseldorf.
The thief received treatment for his injured thumb.

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BERLIN, Nov 10 (Reuters) - German smokers fed up with the
eye-catching health warnings now required on cigarette packets
sold in the European Union have begun covering them with their
own messages rich in gallows humour.
"Begging cigarettes from others can lead to sudden death,"
reads one black and white warning, imitating one of the 14
EU-mandated health messages required since last month.
"Move out of the way! I'm headed for the graveyard" and "I
smoke because you stink" are two other warnings that German
smokers are sticking on their packs.
EU rules dictate that warnings such as "Smoking Kills" must
now cover at least 30 percent of the front of each packet and 40
percent of the back. Smoking-linked diseases kill more than
500,000 EU citizens each year.
Other messages mock EU warnings that smoking can lead to
impotence: "The cigarettes contained in this package can lead to
a renewed erection," reads one. "Hey, do you want to jump in the
sack with me?" is another popular choice.