Santa Monica, Calif., has a squirrel problem. It's more like a War on Squirrels, really: Officials have tried a variety of methods to snuff out an in the city's Palisades Park.

Straight from the AP: Since 1998, Santa Monica has been cited five times by Los Angeles County (editor's note: there's a law?) for squirrel overpopulation. But the suppression methods it has used, including euthanasia, have angered animal-loving activists.

Last summer, the plan was to . That didn't work out. This summer, the new strategy is to trap the estimated 1,000 squirrels in the park and inject them with an immuno-contraceptive vaccine to stunt their sexual development, the AP reports.

The story also quotes animal activist Catherine Rich, who says she supports the program but that health concerns triggered by the squirrel population are overblown.
There is not a pressing threat of squirrels attacking people, Rich said, so I don't know why the county is getting their panties in a bunch.
One problem with keeping a million rounds of ammo in your home -- not to mention a big cache of weapons and 75 pounds of black gunpowder -- is that a fire can present a bit of a problem.

A man in found that out today when a fire at his house caused some of his ammo to explode.
According to the AP, the man tried to run after firefighters arrived, and the cache of weapons included at least two illegal assault rifles. And there was a tunnel in the back yard.

from the AP and here's from the Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise.

Sorry, we didn't mean to invade!

How about a light-hearted story on day with too much sad news?
Switzerland briefly invaded neighboring Liechtenstein on Thursday, .
It seems that 170 Swiss infantry soldiers -- carrying assault weapons, but no ammunition -- got lost during a training exercise.

They ended up a mile or so on the wrong side of the border before realizing their mistake.
According to AP, officials in Liechtenstein (which has no army) are cool with the whole thing.
It's not like they stormed over here with attack helicopters or something, said Interior ministry spokesman Markus Amman.

We wonder whether somebody in that Swiss unit was ? Remember ?
This important story was broken, by the way, in the Swiss newspaper Blick.

, but we can say that some of On Deadline's readers may enjoy the photos on them (Blick seems to believe that pictures of scantily clad women will draw readers).
The hiccup girl is cured!
More than a month after she started to hiccup, 15-year-old Jennifer Mee says the involuntary contractions suddenly .

No one is certain why, says. This week [she] has been to an infectious disease specialist, a neurologist, a chiropractor, a hypnotist and an acupuncturist. She tried a patented device that is designed to stop hiccups.

She is taking a couple of new prescriptions along with the Valium that helps her sleep.
The paper says she hiccuped once this morning. That's quite an improvement.

She had been hiccuping up to 50 times a minute since Jan. 23.
We reported earlier about And now a Florida woman claims that she's been hiccuping for the last EIGHT MONTHS.

Jaime Molisee tells she's practically a shut-in as a result of her incessant hiccuping and how people react to her in public. 'I could hear people in next aisle laughing at me. When I went over, they continued to laugh.

It's like I wasn't human anymore,' she said. There's a certain wire story showing up on news websites around the country today. is the very clickable headline.

The story explains how an Illinois judge married a 23-year-old man and his girlfriend minutes after sentencing the man to five years in prison for the theft of a lawnmower.
But aside from the offbeat nature of the marriage, there's the whole matter of a five-year sentence for stealing a lawnmower. Is that sentence better or worse than ?

Local coverage in the Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat : The lawnmower theft was felony theft, indicating the lawnmower was no old-school pusher. Police say it took three men to pull off the job.

And the groom had other troubles with the law.
We're still waiting to hear whether a University of Southern California hockey goaltender will face serious criminal charges for his, um, over the skills of referees at a USC/Brigham Young University game Saturday.
The story's been making the rounds for a couple of days, but if you haven't heard: USC starting goalie Mickey Meyer pulled his hockey pants down and exposed his buttocks during the final period of an afternoon game against BYU, reports.

Salt Lake City television station KUTV has : Mickey Meyer rode his stick like a horse, dropped his bulky pants, mooned the crowd and slapped his buttocks during a game against Brigham Young University, police said.
All reports say Meyer had a little problem with the quality of the officiating.
More from the Herald Journal story: With five USC players already in the penalty box, Meyer joined commentators for an Internet radio interview with about a minute left in the game.

“To be honest with you, I really don’t know (why I did it),” he said. “I had my fill of these refs. .

.. I thought I’d take a little more control on our side.

”
The Herald Journal reports Meyer left the ice to a huge ovation. Police weren't so amused. Meyer was cited for lewdness and his case was referred to prosecutors.

He could face other, more serious, charges.
The Anna Nicole Smith saga continues this morning with a that shows the late model frolicking at a gay nightclub with the doctor who wrote her prescriptions, according to the gossip website TMZ.com.

Both Larry Birkhead and Howard K. Stern can be seen looking on as Anna gets groped and licked by [Dr. Sandeep] Kapoor, who is currently the subject of an inquiry by the California Medical Board over his possible misconduct in the prescribing of methadone to an alias used by Smith, the website reports.

You might remember that a senior official in the Bahamas after photos that showed him in bed with Smith appeared in a local newspaper.
If you need more about the case -- which gets weirder by the day -- we have from Wednesday's testimony in the Florida court that is hearing arguments in the fight over her dead body.
Also from : The endlessly entertaining judge in the Smith case has been trying to wrangle one of those daytime People's Court-type shows for himself.

There's no circus here, my friend, the former cabbie from the Bronx told lawyers yesterday.
A Court TV anchor describes his manner on the bench as long-winded, repetitive and preachy.
That may or may not be true, but there's no question this judge is quite colorful.

CNN says he once punished someone for contempt by making him write I will not talk in court over and over again.
Update at 3:15 p.m.

ET: The final testimony is wrapping up in the Florida hearing over who will get custody of Smith's body. Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin made some pointed comments earlier today about Smith's boyfriend/lawyer, Howard K. Stern.

We have Stern. Is he a bad guy or is he a fellow that has some form of a love for her? We don't know, Seidlin said.

Whatever relationship he had with her, he would be called maybe an enabler.
Seidlin has promised he will rule by some time Friday on the custody issue.
(Randy Robertson displays two Playboy magazines with Anna Nicole Smith on the cover, which he tried to sell for $1,000 each, in this photo taken Tuesday by J.

Pat Carter, AP.)
Two surgeons started fighting during a routine appendectomy in Belgrade, forcing an assistant to complete the surgery while the dueling docs stepped outside the operating room to duke it out.
doesn't say who won the fight, but the wire service does note the sluggers wound up with bruises, loose teeth a split lip and a fractured finger.

We can already hear the folks at writing the show's latest plot twist.

It's not the fall that hurts, it's the landing..

.

A month after surviving a 16-story fall through a hotel window, Joshua Hanson is feeling mighty good and mighty lucky.
“I'm walking without a crutch, I'm getting around pretty good.

I mean, I feel really good,” the barkeep from Blair, Wis., told the . Hanson, 29, says he is mostly healed and thankful he doesn't remember the fall from the after -- surprise -- a night of drinking with friends.

Hanson, who weighs about 275 pounds, fell onto an asphalt-covered overhang that helped cushion his fall. Still, he got two collapsed lungs, a torn trachea and, apparently, religion.
“I went to church the first Sunday I got home, no doubt about it,” he said.

“There ain't too many days go by that I don't thank God that I'm still here.”
The name of the game is Find the Illegal Immigrant. According to the , students who belong to the at will try to win a gift certificate by being the first to point out a club member wearing a nametag reading 'Illegal Immigrant.

'
Sarah Chambers, the club's president, tells the paper students must show their NYU identification to be deemed 'INS' agents and to search the person wearing the nametag.
She said the game is provocative, but not racist. Other students disagree.

Hundreds are expected to protest the game when it begins at 11 a.m. on Thursday.

What is said to be a copy of the posting for the event on includes the tagline: They're everywhere so it shouldn't be too hard...

Inmates at the El Paso County Jail Annex were given weevils with their noodles over the weekend.
A relative of one inmate tells : He called me and he told me that the food had some worms. He said he ate a little bit of it.

He was really grossed out.
The sheriff's office described the small beetles as an inferior food component.
All the food trays were picked up and taken back to the kitchen, and a new meal was prepared for the inmates, a deputy told local KFOX-TV.

( )
says six inmates were exposed to the critters, which were living inside a box of noodles. Officials said none of the inmates fell ill after the meal.
I know they are in there for something, I know they did something wrong, but that's all I know.

I don't think they deserve to be eating that kind of food, the unidentified inmate's unidentified relative told KFOX-TV.
(Photo of salvinia weevil by Scott Bauer, USGS)
Instead of thinking up a witty way to begin this posting, we figured we would start out with the subject's URL: . (Warning: The site is confusing.

)
Yes, you read that right. Crazy Coffins. That's how British undertaker Vic Fearns and Co.

describes its bespoke body boxes. says the company has been in business since 1886, and started creating fighter plane.
Some samples of their work:
•
•
•
•
•
•

I thought it was a bit strange, company director John Gill told .

But I dare say since then people have said, 'If someone can have a cockpit, then I can have a car or a barge or whatever. '
The latest creation is a coffin that looks like a Rolls-Royce. You can find more images
A Boston woman , too.

( ) For the frugal among you, here's some information about .
Donald Trump's hairstyle is a wondrous force of nature, a fascinating anti-gravitational exhibition that is to a mere combover as a Picasso is to a velvet Elvis.
But now, he's putting his 'do on the line in a .

Appointed wrestlers representing Trump and , the World Wrestling Entertainment chairman/sometimes- , will face off at at Detroit's Ford Field on April 1. The 'losing' rich guy must shave his head immediately after the match.
Of course, pro wrestling matches have been staged with pre-determined outcomes for decades (and the WWE has made some serious coin out of this staging), so somebody already knows that he's going to get clipped come April Fool's Day.

We've betting that Vince -- who's got a pretty good hair-helmet thing of his own going on -- will face the business end of the shears.
(Photo by Frederick M. Brown, Getty Images)
"Sword swallowing is a risky business," about research on 110 performers that reveals how risky, along with some trade secrets about the big gulp.

(Disclaimer: Don't try this at home unless you're already a licensed sword-swallower .,..

)
And so, without further , the scientific results:
The most common medical complaint: a sore throat, or “sword throat” as it's known in the business, which typically occurred while they were still learning, after frequent performances or from stunts involving multiple or odd-shaped swords. Some experienced lower chest pains, often lasting for days, which could be relieved by not swallowing any swords for a few days. Sixteen mentioned intestinal bleeding and one was told a sword had “brushed” his heart.

Three had to have surgeries to their necks: One swallower lacerated his pharynx while trying to swallow a curved saber; another slashed his esophagus, the muscular tube linking the mouth and stomach, after being distracted by a misbehaving macaw on his shoulder; and a belly dancing sword swallower suffered a major hemorrhage when a bystander shoved dollar bills into her belt, causing three blades in her esophagus to “scissor.” ..

.

If that urinal's talking, you may have had too much

Though it's tied to a serious issue, the bad jokes pretty much tell themselves about this story, which has been picked up all over the Internet in the past couple days:
Hey, big guy. Having a few drinks?

Think you had one too many? Then it's time to call a cab or call a sober friend for a ride home. .

..
.

.. will help cut down on drunk driving.

Cracking down on driving while intoxicated is something that New Mexico Gov. (and Democratic presidential contender) Bill Richardson has said he is
(Photo by Jake Schoellkopf of the AP.)

Family sets up its own speed trap, catches cop

Upset that people were speeding through their neighborhood, a Georgia couple set up a speed trap in front of their house.

But after spending $1,200 to install three video cameras and a radar gun, Lee and Teresa Sipple faced the possibility of criminal charges when they snared more than your average speeder.
The Sipples allegedly caught Kennesaw police officer Richard Perrone speeding up to 17 mph over the speed limit, the says. The officer then tried to have the couple charged with stalking.

“I was under the impression that I wasn’t supposed to be scared of the police, but this officer … he’s trying to poke at me, trying to intimidate me, trying to harass me,” Lee told . “I live here, I can’t retreat, I can’t go no further back. I mean, what am I to do?

” ( )
The police officer, who wanted the Sipples to stop sending e-mails, withdrew his complaint during a hearing yesterday, according to the .
Michelle Manhart, an Air Force drill sergeant who stripped off her uniform and posed nude for Playboy, has been discharged from active duty and demoted from staff sergeant to senior airman, .
Manhart is married and has two children.

She joined the Air Force in 1994 and served in the Iowa National Guard until she was callled up to train recruits at Lackland Air Force Base.
She has said she plans to pursue a modeling career.
(Photo by Eric Gay, AP)
The bird was there.

Then it was gone. Now a search is on for the two-bit crook who took it
OK, we'll stop with the Dashiell Hammett imitation. Besides, The San Francisco Chronicle .

It seems that over the weekend somebody swiped a copy of the famous Maltese Falcon statue -- a copy that was used in the 1941 Humphrey Bogart movie. The bird had been on display , a San Francisco restaurant that played a small role in the Hammett book and Bogart movie.
Restaurant owner John Konstin's pretty beat up about this.

So much so, he's offering 25 big ones -- $25,000 -- for the bird's return.
No questions asked, he tells the Chronicle, of course.
(Photo: The falcon, before it was lifted.

By Robert Gauthier of The Lost Angeles Times via AP.)
Remember the bouncing bear in Missoula? Video of the poor ursine's 2003 drug-induced fall from a tree -- and bounce off a trampoline -- became .

Well, Sunday in Maplewood, N.J., where he shouldn't be (in suburbia, that is.

)
Once again, a tranquilizer dart was used. And once again, a bear fell from his perch.
But this time, , the results were less spectacular.

The 400-pounder was gently caught in a taut net. No painful bounce.
Valentine's Day is just around the corner, which might be why someone stole nearly $4,000 worth of sex toys from the Nice N Naughty shop's delivery van in Liverpool.

, a Gannett newspaper, reports the thieves took 36 sex toys, 18 tubs of chocolate body paint and 12 blow-up dolls early Tuesday evening.
The race is now on to import dozens of sex toys and blow-up dolls from our suppliers in Amsterdam, Simon Prescott of Nice N Naughty told the newspaper.
Prescott said this a particularly busy time for his company.

I would like to appeal to the thieves who have taken these items to test their conscience and return them, Prescott told , also owned by Gannett.
This isn't the only sex-related theft in Britain since the beginning of the year. reported last month on a break-in at Private Lines in Colne Road and at a second unnamed store.

As well as 10 boxes of inflatable dolls, sex toys and 10 boxes of fetish lingerie, the burglars took a quantity of DVDs, a Vista solo hard drive, a multiplex system and a BT phone box, together worth more than $2,100.
Herb Linneweh, a shy retired janitor known for his radical thriftiness, left a big surprise when he died last spring: cash-filled envelopes hidden throughout the house he had lived in for nearly 50 years.
It was a little over $100,000, Joanie Schwarzbeck, a friend and neighbor, said.

I had no idea he had that kind of money in his house--none.
That's easy to believe. says he wore his janitor's uniform long after he retired, sewing it back together as it frayed.

He walked to a nearby bank every morning for a complimentary cup of coffee. And ..

. he declined to get a membership at Blockbuster: The library's movies, after all, were free. He never even bothered to get a doctor of his own.

All told, the 72-year-old bachelor was worth about $700,000. He left most of it to his church, a local food pantry, the , the , the and the .
We did not have any relationship with him, [but] we were thrilled when we received the bequest, the head of , one of the beneficiaries, told the Tribune.

The neighbor's children each received $500.
Update at 11:58 a.m.

ET: We've tracked down the 159-word death notice that Chicago's published upon Linneweh's passing. (Subscription required)
(Photo of Herb Linneweh provided to USA TODAY by Joanie Schwarzbeck.)
A robbery suspect bit a police dog Tuesday while trying to flee in New Zealand.

But the K9 officer, an Alsatian named Edge, bit back.
He bit the dog first, Detective Sergeant John McGregor told the . I think he knew he was going to get bitten - so he bit the dog first.

This didn't faze Edge. He bit back. The dog did win the fight, McGregor told the , which has a of the heroic pooch.

The man was arrested and now faces aggravated robbery charges.
This is not Edge's first confrontation with an armed suspect. He was stabbed last summer in what the Post calls a frenzied knife attack.

A New York cabbie to a forgetful jeweler who who left her case behind, along with a 30 cent tip.
When I find something left in my cab, and I can return it to the owner, I feel very happy. I feel proud, Osman Chowdhury told the .

Here's how the paper describes his discovery: Osman drove the jeweler from the Hilton New York to an E. 35th St. apartment building Monday night.

The fare was $10.70. She gave him a $20 and asked for $9 back.

He took the three-dime tip in stride. You never know what's in people's minds or purses, he said, explaining his thinking. They might be distracted.

They might be broke. Besides, most passengers tip well, he said.
A little later, he found the case with 31 diamond rings in the trunk of his taxi and tracked down the passenger.

She gave him a $100 reward.
The jewler hasn't been identified. There's no word on how much her diamonds were worth.

has dubbed Chowdhury, who makes about $300 some weeks, a jewel of a citizen.
(Photo of a diamond cutter holding a brilliant round-cut diamond by Kathy Willens, AP.) A Canadian college student who found a loaf-of-bread-sized stack of $20 bills near an ATM machine in his school's student union is being lauded this morning for being so honest.

I went to use the bank machine and quickly noticed a whole bunch of twenty-dollar bills stacked up on top of one another, all wrapped in elastic bands, Jaime Hawkins said, according to a press release from .
I was just so overwhelmed with the amount of money, Hawkins, 29, told . It just felt like the right thing to do to hand it over.

I had this little voice inside of me that said, 'It's not yours. Hand it in.'
The money, about $8,457 in U.

S. dollars, was left under a newspaper stand when security guards refilled the bank machine. Their employer, , gave Hawkins a $500 reward.

“It’s nice to know there’s honest people in the world with integrity, whose mother raised them right,” a company spokeswoman told CP.
In Heteren, Netherlands, gym rats will soon be able to take it off and pump it up before and after church. Patrick de Man, owner of , is launching "Naked Sunday" — for people who, as the AP puts it, "like to huff and puff in the buff.

"
The membership-building idea came in part from two patron who are "avid nudists." (Can I see a show of hands from all the phlegmatic nudists out there?)
"I heard that some other gyms are offering courses on 'pole-dancing' as a sport, so I thought, 'Why not bring something new to the market?

' " de Man said.
The biggest concern among gym members? Cleanliness.

Thus, the bares will have to put towels on weight machines and disposable seat covers on stationary bikes. All machines will be cleaned and disinfected afterward, de Mann said. "We clean them every day anyway," he added.

(Whew! Feeling better about this now?)
Mark your calendars (and book your plane tickets): The first "Naked Sunday" happens March 4.

A Monday at a hospital in the Mexican resort city of Cancun. Super Tonio was 14.5 pounds and 22 inches long at birth, according to the Associated Press.

This is a big baby, but it's not the biggest. A Brazilian woman , the average size of a six-month-old. And in 1955, an Italian woman delivered a baby that weighed 22 pounds, 8 ounces.

While we're on baby news, you might be interested in reading about the allegations that nurses at a Russian hospital routinely . A doctor said her staff was overworked and underpaid and the practice of taping the babies' mouths shut saved a great deal of time by preventing pacifiers from being spit onto the floor, according to . of a muzzled baby at the hospital.

AP Television News just released a heart-breaking story about with the doctors and facilities they need to heal the wounds of war. (Note: This content is graphic.)
North Korea, plagued by years of food shortages and crippling economic sanctions, is putting its money on rabbits as big as dogs.

says the hermit kingdom recently bought 12 giant rabbits from a German breeder whose 22-pounder was named Germany's Biggest Rabbit last year.
The breeder told he believed that the monster bunny program ..

. was aimed at feeding the North Korean people rather than the 'Dear Leader,' Kim Jong Il, who is said to favor lobster.
Each rabbit provides 15 pounds of meat, including the internal organs, but the animals reproduce so fast it is conceivable that the North Koreans could be producing thousands of pounds of meat in no time.

If North Koreans breed the animals correctly, the 12 they already have could multiply to more than 1 million in just eight years, Nightline notes.
(Photo by Sean Gallup, Getty Images)
The heavies are off the Richter* off California, and that means the dudes and dudettes are stoked for the gnarlatious (or Maverick's) surfing competition south of San Francisco. Sometime between today and March 31, with 24-hours' notice, 24 of the world's best boarders will converge on Half Moon Bay to take on some truly big waves — often in the 40-foot range.

But there are big waves, and then there are BIG waves.
In anticipation of that call to nature, the San Francisco Chronicle offers one of the day's best reads anywhere (Dramamine/Xanax not included): "Two water safety patrollers on Jet Skis at Maverick's reef turned around to see crashing toward them. They had just seconds to figure out how to stay alive.

"
This wild ride recounts that notorious "100-foot Wednesday" in November 2001, which has been made into a documentary. The Chron article also includes a of surfers talking about their experiences that day, plus a .
Here's a little comparison: the initial surge of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 was calculated to be between and feet tall.

Admit it ...

You want a $10,000 bespoke suit with monogrammed pinstripes

If you have an extra $10,000, you might want to check out the snazzy suit that former Secretary of State George Schultz wore to a dinner party last week in Washington.
Unless you got very close, you might have missed what made the pinstripes so special: The words George Shultz are spelled out in discreet vertical stripes running down the suit, reports. No word on where Shultz picked up his, but similar custom suits -- monogrammed with a name, company moniker, sports team or any other phrase close to your heart -- run about $10,000 each.

The Post has photos of the pricey pinstripes. Our search for monogrammed bespoke suits didn't produce much, though we did find that promises to monogram anything its customers want in their pinstripes:
Instead of a name, it is also possible to weave text into the fabric, for example for a personal motto, a message of love, the name of a company or club, or even a poem. Or perhaps a wedding date or a date of birth, a case of never ever forgetting anniversaries or birthdays again.

Prices , with a 4.4 meter minimum order.
If that doesn't meet your needs, perhaps you'd prefer a suit made with or .

Students weren't the only ones who were shocked when a classmate covered his body with oil and ran naked through the cafeteria of their Ohio high school. A police officer assigned to monitor the lunch room was so shocked he shot the naked student with his Taser -- twice.
The officer, Doug Staysniak, said he saw a naked man with a full beard and shoulder-length hair, yelling, screaming and flailing his arms as if out of control, enter the high school's commons area where lunch is served, .

Staysniak told police that the man, whom he did not recognize, appeared very pale and looked to be sweating profusely.
It took , a gifted student who now faces a number of criminal charges. , which describes Killian as a streaker with an attitude, has a video report.

It just seemed like a good idea at the time, Killian told police, according to the .
The death Sunday night of , who for just four days was recognized as the world's oldest person, appears to pass that title on to a 113-year-old Japanese woman.
According to records kept by the International Committee on Supercentenarians -- -- Yone Minagawa was born Jan.

4, 1893. She's nearly four months older than the No. 2 -- Edna Parker of Indiana, according to the committee.

To qualify as a supercentenarian, you have to be at least 110.
Of note: There are 85 supercentenarians on the list (which hasn't yet been updated to reflect Tillman's death). Just six are men.

The oldest male: Tomoji Tanabe of Japan. He's 111.

Psychologist accused of whipping patient, making her wear dog collar

An Australian psychologist is defending himself against charges that he repeatedly whipped and sexually assaulted a 22-year-old female patient who had sought treatment for an eating disorder.

reports Bruce Beaton, 64, forced his bulimic client to wear a dog collar, sexually assaulted her and whipped her with a wire coathanger and cat o'nine tails, saying it was part of a new treatment for bulimia.
When she refused to remove her underwear, the woman testified Beaton beat her with a wire coat hanger. She complained to police after the doctor made her lie naked on his couch during a sexual act.

She agreed to carry a hidden camera during her next therapy session, prosecutors said.
describes the video that was played in open court:

While little can be seen, Beaton is heard asking the woman to be his submissive. She then reads an oath he gave her in which she says she will give him her body.

Beaton then says he has made a new whip for her and beating sounds can be heard, before police burst into the room and say they want to talk to him about his conduct with the woman.

'Swallowed' by shark, diver lives to tell the tale

The shark swallowed his head, Australian diver Dennis Luobikis says of his friend Eric Nerhus.
Nerhus was diving today with his son and some friends off Australia's Cape Howe, when a white pointer shark snapped its jaws around the man's head with such force it crushed his face mask and broke his nose.

The shark pulled Nerhus in far enough to bite his sides. It was then that it decided to spit out the 41-year-old professional diver.
Grant Willis of the Sydney Aquarium tells the newspaper that the shark probably didn't like what it tasted.

They go for rich, fatty meat, like seals, and with his black diving outfit moving around in the reef (Nerhus) would have looked like a seal, Willis says. Humans are not a part of their diet. When it bit into this scrawny human being it would probably have thought 'yuck' and let him go.

Nerhus is in stable condition at a local hospital, according to the Morning Herald.
he is suffering from blood loss and shock, but also that his family has already sold his story to Australia's version of (no report there yet, though).
Update at noon ET, Jan.

24: A Current Affair has now posted the video of its with Nerhus. The AP reports that he tells the show .
Dutch pet shop owner Terrie Berenden thought her Weimaraners would enjoy a non-alcoholic brew after a day of hunting.

So Berenden created -- and is now marketing -- Kwispelbier (Kwispel is Dutch for wagging a tail, the Associated Press says).
Bier für den Hund, .
Cerveja pá cachorro!

says .
Kwispelbier for your little drinking buddies! .

(Photo by Albert Seghers of the AP.)
And on a personal note, this On Deadline blogger dedicates this post to the dearly departed, occasional beer-lapping Kiska the Siberian.

'Free for all' on U.

K. beach: Hundreds haul away washed-up cargo

BMW motorcycles, car parts and cases of beauty cream are among the loot that hundreds of people in southwest England after a container ship was run aground there Saturday.
Guardian Unlimited says there is at Branscombe Beach, with authorities so far doing little to stop the scavenging.

(Photo by Barry Batchelor of the AP.)
The BBC quotes Branscombe police officer Steve Speariett as saying Sunday night and that the looting continues today.
Also washing up on the beach, according to the BBC: Boxes of nappies (diapers).

that there is great concern about potential environmental damage from the grounding of the MSC Napoli, which ran into trouble in a storm Thursday and was beached to prevent further damage. Some of its estimated 200 containers hold batteries and other toxic items. There is also fuel oil leaking from the ship.

Not only do looters risk exposure to toxins, they also can be prosecuted for taking any of the goods, . It says that police officers on the scene have been handing out forms to would-be salvors and warning them to report items they take.
Dan Tilli of Bethlehem, Pa.

, has written more than 200 letters-to-the-editor.
His most recent one earned the 81-year-old a visit from two U.S.

Secret Service officers who wanted to know more about what he meant when he wrote that they hanged the wrong man in Iraq.
, has the full story. It all began with from Tilli.

He begins by saying that G.W. Bush's address on
The Palm Beach, Fla.

, town council has so far hit real estate mogul/TV star/celebrity feudist Donald Trump for flying an American flag that's too large over his club in their town.
As , that's $250 a day for the five violations of which he's accused.
That's not much, though, compared to the $25 million that Trump is seeking from the town in a suit he filed last month over this flag flap.

Might Rosie help him pay the fine? .
A roaming pack of Shih Tzus are driving a condominium community nuts in Georgia, .

In case you forget what a Shih Tzu looks like, the story has pictures but also explains: Four shaggy little dogs, bearing an uncanny resemblance to agitated rag mops with teeth, first appeared shortly before Thanksgiving.
Condo residents are split on whether to give the dogs a home or get rid of them. And while some residents have tried unsuccessfully to catch the wily beasts, others are staying away.

People act as if they are 400-pound tigers, one woman says.
For more Shih Tzu pictures -- we're no fools, we see Yahoo News' everyday -- a Google Image search has .

Snakes alive!

Australians brace for slithery invasion

Australia's long drought is forcing snakes out of hiding and into urban areas this summer, with experts warning snakebites are more likely, .
It adds that Victorian Health Minister Bronwyn Pike has these words of wisdom: If you see a snake, don't go near it, and if you do unfortunately happen to be bitten by a snake, make sure you get urgent medical attention as soon as possible.
Thanks, mate.

on the news this way: Australia's largest wildlife rescue organization is appealing for calm amid warnings that tens of thousands of deadly snakes are moving into suburban gardens in a desperate search for water.
And the Times has this advice from George Braitberg, co-director of the toxicology service at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne: If you get bit, don't run around because that pumps the venom through the leg and muscles much faster.
So, get help.

But don't run for it!
Fire officials in Vallejo, Calif., now say a cellphone in a man's pants pocket did not cause the fire that left him with serious burns over half his body, both the and report.

, Vallejo fire department spokesman Bill Tweedy had been saying that 59-year-old Luis Picaso most likely had been burned because a cellphone in his pocket had somehow short-circuited. Flames then consumed both the nylon/polyester clothes he was wearing and the plastic lawn chair in which he was seated.
But now, the newspapers report, electrical engineers from Nokia (which answers the question about what brand of phone was involved) have convinced investigators that the phone wasn't the source of the flames.

According to the Times-Herald, the phone still works -- indicating it did not short-circuit. That has led Tweedy to issue a statement saying that the point of origin is still the right front pocket of the victim's pants, but the ignition source is of an unknown flame source.
The latest theory: The problem may have been improper discarding of smoking materials, matches or a lighter, the Times-Herald says.

She went into the jungle as a child, came out as a woman

When 8-year-old Ro Cham H'pnhieng disappeared in 1989, her family assumed she had been killed and eaten by wild animals while tending cows near the Vietnam-Cambodian border.
But now, 18 years later, says she's back home after loggers found her living on her own in the Cambodian jungle.
Ksor Lu 'recognized his daughter from the first sighting' even though her body was blackened and she had long hair down to her legs and could not speak, Reuters says, quoting an account in the Vietnam Rural Today newspaper.

Mao San, police chief of Oyadao district, described the woman as half-human and half-animal.
When I saw her, she was naked and walking in a bending-forward position like a monkey ..

. She was bare-bones skinny, her father told the Associated Press. She was shaking and picking up grains of rice from the ground to eat.

Her eyes were red like tigers' eyes.

Cellphone in pocket blamed for fire that badly burns Calif. man

A California man is in critical condition with second- and third-degree burns over 50% of his body because a cellphone in his pocket may have touched off a fire.

Luis Picaso, 59, of Vallejo was wearing a shirt and pants made of nylon and polyester, and sitting in a plastic lawn chair when the phone ignited, authorities believe.
Bill Tweedy, spokesman for the local fire department, that the phone's power button may have been depressed for a long time while in his pocket, possibly causing a short circuit. Then Picaso's clothes and the chair fueled the flames.

The only thing he had on that was cotton was his underwear, Tweedy told the San Francisco Chronicle. Everywhere the nylon was, that's where he got burns.
Update at 7:25 p.

m. ET: Tip o' the blog cap to commenter/blogger/journalist Paul McNamara for following up on the story. He called the fire investigator to ask a few nagging questions about how it happened.

His answer: intoxication, not the phone, was to blame for the fire. Read his over at .
Update at 8:52 p.

m. ET: Many readers want to know the cellphone brand and model. As the articles state, the fire department so far has balked at making that information public.

Spokesman Tweedy said he did not think the fire was connected to a specific company's products.
Update at 10 a.m.

ET, Jan. 18:
If you hammer your way through two walls and crawl through a narrow hole to break into a store, what are you trying to steal? Money?

A safe? Valuable merchandise?
In Orlando, according to our sister site Florida Today, the answer is: .

This effort, as you might suspect, did not end well.
When the law arrived at the store, the suspect tried (and failed) to out-run a police dog, predictably leading to his painful hospitalization. Also worth noting in this story is this quote from a beer-protecting police officer: It kind of restores the faith that we are here to help the people.

It took an Iowa conservation officer just one shot to free a bald eagle that was stuck on a tree branch and hanging upside down about 60 feet above a lake.
With binoculars, they could see that the bird appeared to have caught a single talon in a knothole in the branch when it landed. Apparently, the bird tried to take off and lost its balance.

It hung by the talon, upside down.

Because the bird was hanging over a cliff and high in the air, ropes and ladders seemed out of the question as rescue tools, Sandholdt said. Many in the group thought a mercy killing was the best option.

Sandholdt thought he could free the bird.

It's safe to say no one had any confidence that I could do that, Sandholdt said of his proposed sharpshooting. My buddies were waiting for a poof of feathers.

Sandholdt bent a tree sapling over to use as a brace. He used the gun's scope to take aim with the .50-caliber muzzleloader.

The bullet traveled 60 to 70 feet, cleanly through the edge of the knothole.
Now free, the eagle soared into the sky and flew away.
As we told you last month,
Now the Chesterfield County School Board has decided to fire Stepher Murmer on the grounds that his extra-curricular career was disruptive.

This is a bad day for the First Amendment, Murmer's attorney said.

notes that Murmer was put on paid administrative leave last month after a video surfaced online that showed Murmer -- wearing Groucho Marx-style glasses and mustache disguise -- painting with his buttocks. He operates a Web site, under the name Stan Murmur, that showcases paintings he makes with his rear end and genitals.

The art, which he sells fetches as much as $900 a piece.

Lost Found: WWII wallet, 47-years in late fees, letter arrives 53 years later

We noticed an odd trend this week. For some reason, really old things are suddenly turning up, in some cases decades after they disappeared.

Here are three recent entries in USA TODAY's .
• :When the billfold that Ray Heilwagen lost in France during World War II was returned to him 62 years later it still included his cash and mementos. I could hardly believe it, told the Hannibal Courier-Post.

• : Robert Nuranen lost track of the book he withdrew from the local library in 1960 for a ninth-grade assignment. When it finally turned up, 47 years had passed and a hefty late fee had accumulated. I figured I'd better get it in before we waited another 10 years, he said after turning it in Friday with the $171.

32 check. Fifty-seven years would be embarrassing. By the way, he never finished the book.

• A letter with a 3-cent stamp and postmarked Oct. 26, 1954, just arrived in a Pennsylvania man's mailbox. Brian McAteer said that the letter appears to be sealed and has not been damaged, and that he will not open it, AP reports.

However, he hasn't had any luck finding the intended recipient.
Sometimes pieces of mail do get lost behind equipment or transporting equipment. .

.. It is infrequent, but every once in a blue moon, it does happen, a postal spokesman said.

No matter how old it is, we will deliver it.
these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
Update at 10:46 a.

m. ET: Since we're talking about lost-and-found items, How could someone lose a human jaw? a wooden leg?

mom's cremated remains? (Photo of WWII-era wallet by Amanda Stratford, The Courier-Post via AP)
Tired of being ruled? Long to be your own potentate?

The world's smallest country — — is . National flag, stamps, currency and passports included.
How small?

It's , seven miles off the east coast of Britain in international waters. The derelict platform was taken over 40 years ago by a retired British army major and his family.
Oh.

One small detail: In June the principality "suffered a devastating fire which has crippled its infrastructure significantly." Have a at the royal remains.
From the annals of true crime, as only the state of Florida can produce: police say a Miami man crashed his car into the entrance that deputies use when they bring prisoners into the local jail.

Darren Lavon Brown, 28, may have been intoxicated when he intentionally drove his Chevrolet Caprice into the Broward Main Jail's west sally-port gate, a spokesman for the county sheriff told .
• Here's a and a of the suspect.
Brown, who has had multiple drug-related arrests, was not injured in the 7:16 p.

m. crash, the paper said. Deputies took Brown into custody pending a psychological exam and formal charges.

In the meantime, he has a cell inside the jail.
If you can't get enough of these stories, check out these recent postings:
•
•
•
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•
(Photo by Phil Coale, AP)

..

.With some pommes frites and a nice beaujolais?

Squick alert: A prosecutor in France says a prisoner has confessed to killing his cellmate and eating.

..well, you can read the .

Noteworthy quote: The absence of these two anatomical elements, which were not found at the crime scene, make the presumed killer's confession of cannibalism very likely true, prosecutor Joseph Schmit said.
The candy desk in the U.S.

Senate is changing hands, from Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., to Sen.

Craig Thomas, R-Wy., , and many a senator's guilty pleasure faces trouble.
Ethics rules forbid members accepting gifts worth $100 or more a year from a single source.

One exception covers items produced in a senator's home state -- so long as they're used primarily by people other than the senator or his staff. The provision was crafted to allow senators to offer visitors home-grown snacks, such as Florida orange juice or Georgia peanuts.
In Wyoming, some small outfits sell esoteric sweets, such as chocolates designed to look like moose droppings.

But the state doesn't have any big, brand-name candy makers who could step into the breach. As a result, the candy-industry lobbying group, which coordinates stocking the desk, is cutting off the sweets, citing Wyoming's candy deficit and ethics rules.
The story has more on why the desk position matters, the drama around who would get the seat, and how Santorum-friendly Hershey ( ) is reacting.

Related: A quick Web search for information about the senators' dental coverage doesn't turn up much.
A baseball-sized UFO -- an unidentified falling object, as one report describes it -- .
At just 3 1/2 inches long and more than three-quarters of a pound, it was oddly heavy.

And oddly smooth, despite its somewhat craggy appearance. It was hard, too, reports.
It's extremely dense, an investigator said.

The object went through the roof, bounced off a tile floor and lodged itself in a wall.
layers of the roof, a police spokesman told the . No evidence of burn marks or Federal officials said the object did not appear to have fallen off a plane.

Tests were underway to identify it. If it turns out to be a meteorite, the family could reap a windfall. These intergalactic rocks are so rare they can command thousands of dollars from collectors and scientists.

While the grayish-brown lump lacks the black crust typical of meteorites -- the result of pushing through the planet's sizzling atmosphere -- it does have a touch of the metallic glint common to otherworldly bodies baked by the fiery entry, an expert told the Star-Ledger. Also working in favor of the meteorite theory, he said, are hints of so-called 'thumbprints,' small ridges that suggest the rock's surface went molten as it ran the atmospheric gantlet, rippling like water in a gale.

Inmate smears himself with oil, slips out of prison

A Lithuanian prisoner gave his Norwegian guards the slip -- literally.

The man, a 25-year-old being held on theft charges in an Arctic jail, stripped naked, smeared himself with vegetable oil and slid through the bars of his cell, .
The plan seems to have worked perfectly, with only possible downside that it left him stark naked in an arctic tundra climate at the dead of winter, Britain's reports.
His accomplice tried the same trick, but he was too big to fit through the bars and remains in custody.

It was a good effort, Svein-Erik Jacobsen, of the Oest-Finnmark Police, said. But all he did was get his head and part of his shoulder through the bars.
Last summer, we told you about another .

A fast-food feud ended in New York with the owner of a fried-chicken restaurant burning down the doughnut shop next door because it undercut his poultry prices, officials said yesterday.
“The chicken guy was mad at the doughnut guy because the doughnut guy started selling fried chicken, and the doughnut guy was undercutting the chicken guy’s prices by 50 cents a plate,” fire marshal Robert Pinto told . “The chicken guy was losing a lot of business and he had gotten some violations from the Health Department.

So he was going to plan on shutting his business down and renovating to correct the health code violations. At the same time he was feuding with the doughnut guy, telling the doughnut guy not to sell the chicken.”
Cops say chicken guy, aka Kennedy Fried Chicken owner Kabeer Ahmad, punched a hole in the wall, sprayed gasoline into the doughnut shop and torched it before closing his own shop for the night.

Ahmad was charged with arson. The Twin Donut store was destroyed.
Click read more for the wire story.

Remember, folks, we're not making this stuff up, just sharing it:
• An unemployed German man took his step-daughter's beagle for walk — to the bar, where he
to slake his thirst.
• How about (or two) with that brew?
•  with that?

Wis. teen is the world's biggest liar this year

At 15, James Wilberg already knows how to fib his way to the top. He just beat out 300 peoples from 14 states and three countries to be by the
His winning whopper?

"There are three kinds of people in the world; those who are good at math, and those who are not."
Well, not the most original line (and we can only guess at the also-rans), but liars apparently can't be choosers.
"We're a liars club, what do we care?

" said John Soeth, club president (and half the membership). "The only ones who come up with the original lies are the politicians. We were lucky there were 300 left to send in after the elections.

"
For his confabulatory feats Wilberg will receive an all-expenses-paid weekend in a hotel room with Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Miss USA. Right: that's a lie. He gets a parchment certificate.

A quick break from the heavy news for the latest in the never-ending series of stories about the surprising things that some alleged criminals do.
Accused carjacker Claude King turned himself in to the cops in Palm Springs, Fla., because he didn't know where he was.

Um, I committed a crime. I stole a vehicle, after crashing the SUV he's accused of stealing.
The newspaper adds that while King allegedly threw the car's driver into the street and started swatting at the four passengers, he may not have packed much of a punch.

According to the driver, 19-year-old Caroline Funkey, he punched me in my face, but he's soft. He didn't hurt me at all.
Brazilian travelers responded to chronic delays at one of Sao Paulo's airports yesterday by storming the runway and blocking a plane from taking off.

The protest happened after a group of about 30 travelers with tickets to the northeastern city of Recife waited more than 40 minutes aboard a bus outside a Tam Linhas Aereas SA jet at one of Sao Paulo's two airports, . When the crew closed the jet's door because the plane was full, some of the passengers got off the bus in an attempt to stop the plane from leaving.
Police dragged an unknown number of protesters off the tarmac.

The flight was delayed two hours.
AP says this was just the latest in a series of runway protests by frustrated travelers in Brazil.
Thousands of people are reportedly heading to a jungle in southern Nepal in hopes of seeing Ram Bahadur Bomjan, a teenage boy who is believed by some Nepalese to be an incarnation of Lord Buddha.

As we noted earlier, the story of Little Buddha's emergence after more than nine months of meditating and wandering in Nepal's jungles is one of the most-read stories this morning .
the boy's followers say he has been meditating without food or water all this time, and is immune to fire and snake bites.
As the BBC also notes, these claims have not been independently verified.

Scientists were unable to examine the boy as his followers said it would disturb his meditation.
that Little Buddha himself, though, said he had been living on wild herbs.
How old is Little Buddha?

There doesn't appear to be a consensus: Various media put his age at 15, 16 and 17.
(Photo of Little Buddha by AFP/Getty Images.)

S.

Korea will pay men not to hire hookers over the holidays

If you're in South Korea and want to make some easy money, just go online and promise that you won't have sex with a hooker over the holidays.
The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family announced plans to give cash rewards to men who pledge they won't break the law by hiring prostitutes after workplace parties.
Korea’s corporate culture that accompanies heavy drinking is also what makes buying sex acceptable as a way for male-bonding, which is proving to be a hard-to-break ritual,’’ a ministry official said, according to .

The idea is to give cash to those looking for a different culture at year-end parties and other gatherings.
reports that the anti-prostitution prizes left many Koreans bewildered. Do they really think men buy sex every time they have a dinner party?

one Korean wrote on a comment page of the nation's largest newspaper,according to the wire service.
The Times, which published an criticizing the policy, says critics derided the campaign as a 'clumsy' stunt hatched by the ministry to gain attention.
If that's their goal, it's working.

A Japanese woman whose loud rock music inflicted injury on a neighbor for more than two years will spend the next 20 months in prison.
Miyoko Kawahara, 59, was accused of causing insomnia and headaches to her next-door neighbor by playing loud dance music almost 24 hours a day on a portable stereo she had pointed at her neighbor's house, 20 feet away, the .
The newspaper says Kawahara was convicted of attempting to worsen a 65-year-old neighbor's high blood pressure.

Noting that Kawahara ignored local authorities who ordered her to turn down the music, the judge said Kawahara still maintains a hostile attitude toward the victim and it is highly likely she will commit the crime again, according to Kyodo news.
She could have been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Air traffic controllers at Dulles International Airport are upset that some of the bosses started to deep fry a turkey inside the offices at the airport last week, .

According to the Post, the controllers' union has written a letter to complain that before a holiday party management decided it would be a nice idea to DEEP FRY A TURKEY in the Dulles administrative quarters, surrounded by carpet, linoleum, an airport, aircraft, a control tower, thousands if not millions of gallons of jet fuel and thousands of passengers and employees.
A fire marshal ordered that the cooker be shut off before the turkey was done, the Post says.
A baby Jesus statue that disappeared from a Buffalo family's Nativity set last year was returned the other day, along with a photo album entitled The Baby Jesus Chronicles, , a Gannett-owned station.

There's pictures of him wearing a seat belt, there's pictures of him in the shower, they kept him clean, pictures of him camping there's a drink so he's well hydrated, says owner Joan Leising. They didn't go anywhere expensive and spend a lot of money on Jesus, but they showed him a really good time.
WGRZ-TV has a and of the statue's adventures.

The kidnappers left a note with the booklet that said: We have done the best possible job to keep baby Jesus safe in our loving arms. We meant for this adventure to be in no way blasphemous or disrespectful.
A California man has been inundated with hundreds of calls from children who are trying to reach Santa Claus but dialed the wrong number, the Associated Press reports from Goleta, Calif.

I just sit down by the fireplace and play Santa Claus, John Dickinson said. I'll probably be playing Santa every year.
About 100 children a day dial the wrong number.

It's been fun, Dickinson said.
The kids are real serious, and very specific, he said. They get right to the point.

They say, 'I want this, I want this, I want this.' I always make sure they've been nice.
(Photo of 3-year-old Jack Cricker Eckholm by Bob King, The Duluth News

Not a 'Merry' Christmas card, by any means

'Tis the season when most folks wish others well.

Susette Kelo of New London, Conn., told some of those on her holiday card list that she hopes they go to hell.
, including the poem that Kelo sent to 30 or so current and former members of the City Council and New London Development Corp.

, who she holds responsible for taking her home from her in an eminent domain case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

They didn't have to do what they did to us, and I will never forget, she tells the Day about those on her list. These people can think what they want of me. I will never, ever forget what they did.

One recipient, Reid Burdick, says he put his card on his mantel. I think the poor woman has gone around the bend, he told the newspaper.
A British man who suffered a head injury at work that resulted in a loss of inhibition and led him to use prostitutes and phone sex services received about $6.

2 million in damages from his former employer, according to media reports.
Stephen Tame, 29, had been married to Sarah, 30, for eight months when he fell from a gantry while working in a cycle warehouse in January 2002. Although he recovered from the accident after two years of treatment, the injury unleashed a libido that could not be kept in check, reports.

Judge Michael Harris, awarding £3.166m damages, said Mr. Tame had misbehaved in the presence of women, watched pornographic videos and called phone sex lines.

His loss of inhibition also led to him making embarrassing remarks and interrupting conversations.
The paper says a lawyer told the court that Tame, a devout Christian, had all but destroyed his marriage by patronizing prostitutes and having an affair with a 57-year-old woman. In addition to libido problems, the Guardian says Tame suffers from a range of disabilities including tunnel vision, a difficulty in tolerating noise, weakness on his left side, slurred speech, fatigue and poor concentration and memory.

The judge said Tame wasn't likely to find paying work in the future and concluded that it was doubtful that his marriage would last another year. This meant Mr. Tame, of Wickford, Essex, would be without the care of his 30-year-old wife, who is currently living with her parents in Basildon, and would have to pay for professional support, Britain's paper says.

His former employer admitted liability, but contested the size of the award.
For more on sexual dysfunction, see our posting last week:
A South Carolina man who rode his motorcycle wearing a Santa suit posted $100,000 bail today after being charged with kidnapping for taking an 8-year-old girl for a ride in his sidecar — with her parents in hot pursuit, the .
John Michael Barton, 55, said the incident was a "huge misunderstanding," explaining that he had given children rides all day.

"That's what I do this time of year." He acknowledged, however, "I was wrong, but I thought I had done nothing wrong."
Now, the how, according to AP:
"The girl, of Augusta, Ga.

, and her family stopped at a convenience store off Interstate 20 on Sunday night when they noticed Barton, dressed in a Santa Claus suit, refueling his motorcycle, police said.
"Parents told police that Barton asked the children to come over and look at a stuffed Rudolph he had in his sidecar. Then, parents saw Barton driving away with their 8-year-old girl, authorities said.

"The girl's father followed Barton, reaching speeds up to 80 mph and flashing his headlights repeatedly, police said. Barton eventually stopped at a parking lot and the father picked up the girl, who was not injured.
"Barton was arrested later Sunday when police found him hiding in a utility room at a nearby bar, authorities said.

"Barton said his Santa suit was confiscated and he doubted he would dress up again because "it has caused too many problems for me and other people."
What was the top story of 2006?
Click read more for our list of the top 40 stories from the last 12 months.

Use the comments section to let us know which one was the most important or interesting of the year.
We'll share our picks later this week, along with results from the AP's annual survey of newspaper editors.
The newspaper tells the tail .

.. er, tale .

.. this morning of what happened when a commuter train rolled right over a pug -- who survived without a scratch and seems to have touched the heart of the assistant conductor who later found him.

Max and his owner have been reunited and assistant conductor Pete Tomassini, who has never had a dog himself, is now thinking of getting one.
Could it be just a coincidence that Max ?
A 50-year-old woman walked up to a sheriff's deputy last week and complained that a drug dealer had just sold her bad crack, according to .

Eloise Reaves told the deputy that a man in the parking lot had sold her bad crack. [Police] said Reaves then took the crack from out of her mouth and placed it on the trunk of the deputy's patrol car, the station reports. ( .

)
When a field test identified the substance as cocaine, Reaves complained that it was wax and cocaine mixed, and that she wanted the deputy to make the man give her her money back, police said.
The man was searched and released. Reaves was charged with drug possession.

In the immortal words of Whitney Houston, crack is whack.
If you're in the mood for another dope story, check out this one:

Ahhh! New bungee record set

A.

J. Hackett, the self-styled father of bungee jumping and Hong Kong movie star Edison Chen launched themselves off Hong Kong's Macau Tower on Sunday.