A Connecticut man's shaving cream disguise dripped off his face during a
failed raid on a shop. Mickey Lyman has pleaded guilty to assault,
risking injury to a child and unlawful restraint after the raid on the
shop in Rockville. The 44-year-old entered the shop wearing the shaving
cream disguise and brandishing a starter pistol. Shop owner Shahab Mirza
said: "In a second we recognised him." Lyman is a regular customer.
A US magician's been arrested in Japan for allegedly trying to smuggle a
large amount of cannabis inside his juggling balls. Terence David Shaird
began performing one of his tricks when custom officials asked him to open
his bags at Narita Airport. The officials became suspicious and found a
kilogram of the drug inside two balls.
A pair of Siamese twins have found love with the same man. Cape Town's
Karen and Nikki Stafford have both settled down with trucker Ron Bullock.
"Nikki loves Ron's romantic side," said Karen. "And he makes me laugh."
Ron is equally complimentary. "Being with both Nikki and Karen is like
love in stereo."
An American TV executive has admonished viewers for ignoring adverts.
Jamie Kellner, chairman of Turner Broadcasting, complained that by
skipping the adverts, "you're actually stealing programming. Your contract
with the network is that you're going to watch the advertising spots."
Los Angeles school teacher Tracy Niederkirk has been fired after stripping
naked in an anatomy class. She claimed she was merely pointing out the
finer details of the female body.
A Belgian butcher has developed a salami containing surprise gifts for
children. Alain Fontain says he is hoping to rival the success of Kinder
surprise chocolate eggs.
An Indian woman has married a statue. Reports say the 21-year-old
convinced her father to buy the statue of Krishna when she saw it in a
shop in Mathura. The woman named by Sify News as Premlata from Kadaura
village then convinced her parents she wanted to marry it.
Two airline pilots have been charged with being drunk in charge of an
aircraft at Miami International Airport. The America West pilots were
ordered to return to the airport terminal moments before takeoff. Police
say security screeners had noticed a whiff of alcohol on the men when they
tried to bring cups of coffee through the checkpoint.
Tony Bennett and his group Active Resistance to Metrication, carried out a
three-year campaign against Lee Valley Regional Park Authority. In
December anti-metric activists damaged about 15 signs in the 10,000 acre
park which stretches from Ware in Herts, to the East India Dock Basin in
east London. The park has now admitted it had been wrong to change
footpath signs from imperial to metric.
Percy, a border collie mix dog, is running for Congress in Florida
againstSecretary of State Katherine Harris. The write-in candidate in
theRepublican primary has his own official website
www.percyforcongress.org which states: "Percy, District 13's only black
white candidate, fluent in Spanish, is a strong believer in cross culture,
cross species interface, and has vowed, if elected, to support programmes
that foment these ideals."
Paul Gordon-Saker, a partner in London law firm Stephenson Harwood, has
issued a writ seeking libel damages from Diners' Club after his card was
turned down by an exclusive London fashion store when he tried to buy a
dress for his wife. Gordon-Saker claims that this amounted to libel
because it erroneously suggested he did not have sufficient credit with
the company to meet the £380 cost of the dress.
The FBI and New Orleans police are looking for people who took bags of
money that fell out of the back of an armoured van. The Intertrust
Armored Services vehicle had exited a motorway when its back door opened
and the money dropped out. The driver didn't realise at first what had
happened and continued his journey.
Christopher Antus was arrested while wearing the bright orange shirt which
read: "Fugitive. You never saw me." Indiana State police Trooper Jerrod
Patty spotted the shirt after pulling the car over for allegedly drifting
off the roadway. When he checked the names of the passengers in the car,
he discovered an arrest warrant was out for Antus
Two Canadian otters at the National Sea Life Sanctuary in Oban, Scotland
have been placed under 24-hour protection from aggressive local otters who
are confused by their "foreign accents," a newspaper reported Wednesday.
Though almost twice the size of their wild Scottish relatives, the pair
are disadvantaged by their foreign accents and scent. Dialects are common
in animal communications, but because of the differences in the sounds
they make it will be difficult for these Canadian otters to communicate
with the native ones," Matthew Evans, an animal communications expert from
Stirling University, was quoted as saying. There is no doubt dropping two
foreign otters into a territory of wild locals would lead to the local
ones beating the living daylights out of the new ones"