TWW'S CRAZY NEWS STORIES

[TexasStooge]

23 teams compete to see if concrete floats

STILLWATER, Okla. (AP) - Can concrete float? Twenty-three student teams from around the country are competing in a concrete canoe competition to find out.

Staying afloat has a lot at stake — there's even a national champion.

The 19th annual competition is organized by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The teams competing for the championship put their boats through aesthetic, presentation and swamping tests on Thursday, with technical presentations on Friday and, finally, a series of races Saturday on Boomer Lake in Stillwater. Teams came from coast to coast and from Canada to the Gulf.

Mike Carnivale, chairman of the national competition committee, said designing, building and floating these concrete canoes pushed students to learn in a way they might not elsewhere.

"They learn about concrete, design, project management, the works," Carnivale said.

Matt Kinney, leaning against The Arrrgregate, a boat adorned with skulls-and-crossbones, said his team couldn't begin to calculate the hours that went into designing their boat. Just getting it from the University of Maine to the competition took 37 hours on the road.

"Our goal was to get here," Kinney said.

Almost every team expressed a desire to win the national championship, and each touted different virtues of its canoe.

Roy Berryman said the University of Alabama-Huntsville team saw technology as its edge. Unlike the rigid design of most boats, the Huntsville, Ala., team constructed a sleek, black canoe that flexes in the water.

"We want to win nationals," Berryman said.

"Yeah," added Jordan Farina, another team member, "we're going to Disneyland."

[TexasStooge]

Fried whaleburger woos young Japanese customers

By Takanori Isshiki

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) - To woo young customers more fond of burgers than traditional whale cuisine, a Japanese restaurant has come up with a new taste sensation: the fried whaleburger.

The sandwich, which features fried whale meat nestled in a bun with salad greens and lashings of mayonnaise and ketchup-based sauce, is the creation of a small whale restaurant in the town of Wada, about 100 km (62 miles) southeast of Tokyo.

"Young people think whale and bread really go together well, so the burgers are quite popular," said restaurant owner Akiji Ichihara.

For the whaleburger and a whale cutlet sandwich, both of which sell for 300 yen (1.41 pounds), he uses the meat of Baird's Beaked whales taken by Wada-based ships.

The third sandwich option, a whale hot dog priced at 350 yen, is made from minke whale meat taken by the "scientific whaling" programme run by the Japanese government.

Customers gave the sandwiches, which Ichihara serves only one day a month, good reviews. On one record day he sold 700.

"I thought whale meat was too tough to eat, but actually it's tender and very delicious," said Yuko Takahashi, 25, as she bit into a whaleburger.

Juichi Matsunaga, 38, chowed down on a whale cutlet and whale hot dog, which he also pronounced delicious.

The praise is music to the ears of Japanese policymakers, who say that eating whale is a treasured cultural tradition but find demand low among young consumers, many of whom have few chances to try the usually pricey delicacy.

Japan stopped commercial whaling in 1986 in line with an international moratorium but began what it calls "scientific whaling" a year later, arguing that endangered species need protection but others, such as the minke, are numerous enough for limited hunting.

"I think we could whale more, because the number of whales has now increased to the extent that they are damaging the ecosystem by eating too much fish," Matsunaga added.
_____________________________________________________________

You know what else woos customers? Deep-fried Hamwinkies!

Image courtesy of E!'s "The Soup"

[TexasStooge]

Hot air, wet pants spice up Mexico election race

By Catherine Bremer

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A squawking wild turkey as president, voodoo, a dancing grandpa pharmacist and a nervous criminal urinating in his pants on television -- welcome to Mexico's election race, as wacky as it is vitriolic.

Full of colourful insults, blaring pop songs and nonsensical sparring, the campaign for the July 2 election has been based as much on personalities and petty point-scoring as policies.

Sick of weeks of mudslinging and silliness, voters have been sticking pins in voodoo dolls of the candidates, and the Federal Election Institute has axed some political ads as too slanderous to be aired.

"It's a very basic, very crude, very coarse, very clumsy election campaign," commentator Guadalupe Loaeza told Reuters.

The battle for the presidency is the first since 71 years of one-party rule ended in 2000 and fierce competition between the three main parties has sparked flaming tensions.

Probably the oddest campaign moment yet is a TV ad by third-place candidate Roberto Madrazo showing a criminal wetting his pants out of fear for Madrazo's tough stance on crime.

"For me, it's lacking in creativity. Vulgar. It's resorting to something very childish," said Loaeza.

Among outlawed ads are spots by conservative Felipe Calderon calling his leftist arch-rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador a danger and linking him to Venezuela's fiery leader Hugo Chavez.

Calderon, a balding lawyer whose hairline is inked in on his campaign posters, is in a neck-and-neck race with Lopez Obrador, a crusader for the poor who dons floral garlands and tropical-style guayabera shirts.

In their latest spat, Lopez Obrador sent Calderon's campaign office huge cardboard boxes he said contained documents proving Calderon awarded his brother-in-law lucrative contracts when energy minister.

But Calderon said the boxes were a farce, empty but for a few meaningless papers. He said his rival was a liar, called him "Lopez Hablador" (Lopez Talker) and his aides "clowns."

Rhetoric has been harsh, reflecting a nation split between left and right that is still learning some of the rules of democracy.

"If the players persist in just insulting each other, they may win the contest but could not lead the country," wrote columnist Javier Oliva in daily La Jornada.

DANCING PHARMACIST

Lopez Obrador has laid into President Vicente Fox, who he says is illegally helping Calderon, dubbing him a "chachalaca" -- a wild turkey known for its piercing squawk.

"He acts like a chachalaca, he screeches like a chachalaca," the leftist said, also accusing Fox of "verbal incontinence."

Keeping with the bird theme, he told supporters after a heated election debate last week that his rivals "came to eat pigeon, but what they got was a fighting cock."

Amid all the madness, frustrated voters have lobbed plastic bottles, paper airplanes and inflated condoms at candidates and even offered one, Patricia Mercado, a puff of marijuana.

Some of the most colourful campaigners cannot legally run because no political party will back them.

They include oddball magnate Victor Gonzalez, who has adopted the persona of his pharmacy chain's rotund and grandfatherly mascot, "Dr Simi," with fluffy white hair and moustache.

Claiming more Mexican fans than Mickey Mouse, and fond of models in mini-skirts, Gonzalez hires people to wear spongy Dr Simi costumes and dance outside his pharmacies.

"I have money but I earned it honestly. I have women but I am single. The people love these things," he said recently.

Also seeking support is Zapatista rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos, who gave his first live TV interview in years in his trademark ski mask and smoking his pipe to call for the overthrow of the government, whoever wins.

(Additional reporting by Miguel Angel Gutierrez)

[TexasStooge]

Grisly discovery at accident scene

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A man transporting his wife's severed head in a pickup truck crashed into an oncoming car, killing a woman and her 4-year-old daughter, police said. The impact sent the head flying onto the road.

A Boise police officer was driving behind Alofa Time's truck on a busy road when he noticed the man's erratic driving and then watched him slam into the car, police spokeswoman Lynn Hightower said.

Time, 51, who was not injured, told officers he was involved his wife's death, investigators said.

After searching Time's house in Nampa, police found the decapitated body of 47-year-old Theresa N. Time in a car inside the garage, authorities said. She likely had been dead for several hours, Nampa Police Lt. LeRoy Forsman said.

An autopsy was scheduled next week to determine Theresa Time's cause of death, Canyon County Coroner Vicki DeGeus-Morris said.

Time was being held on two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Samantha Nina Murphy, 36, of Boise, and her daughter Jae Lynne Grimes. Murphy's other daughter was injured and was in stable condition at a Boise hospital.

"It was one of the more horrific and complex crime scenes on memory," Hightower said. "A woman and her child killed in a crash, and a severed head from an earlier homicide: It's nothing short of bizarre and tragic."

[TexasStooge]

DNA test to clear up Confucius confusion

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese claiming Confucius for an ancestor can now use a genetic test to prove a direct blood connection to the grandfather of Chinese social mores, a state newspaper said Friday.

The fifth-century BC social philosopher's ideas of filial piety and deference to elders influence Chinese society and politics even today.

Now his countrymen can establish a genetic link in a test that will cost more than 1,000 yuan ($125), according to the Shanghai Morning Post.

"We would like to help these unconfirmed claimants to test their DNA and to establish a Confucius-DNA database," it quoted Deng Yajun, a DNA expert from Beijing Institute of Genomics at the Chinese Academy of Science, as saying.

How the scientists had obtained a sample of Confucius's DNA was not explained.

"One of the most difficult things in the project is to confirm the blood connections of these numerous claimants," said Kong Dewei, one of the editors of the new family tree, who has the same Chinese surname of Confucius, "Kong" in Chinese.

Association with Confucianism was fatal during the tumult of the Cultural Revolution, when "old China" and its traditions were condemned as reactionary by fervent Communist Red Guards.

But since the 1990s, Beijing has been encouraging Confucianism as part of celebrating traditional Chinese culture -- and of pushing a message of obedience to those in power.

[TexasStooge]

Mother duck makes annual traffic-stopping trip

DUBLIN, Ireland (Reuters) - A mother duck brought traffic in central Dublin to a standstill for an annual event Friday as she marched her seven ducklings to a pond for their first swim.

The duck, encouraged by delighted passersby, was relocating her young from their birthplace in the grounds of Trinity College to St. Stephen's Green, the city's historic public park, around half a mile away.

"She's been doing it for about the last six or seven years now -- laying her eggs at the college and then taking the babies to the green," Trinity groundsman David Hackett told Reuters.

"Usually she's good and picks an evening when it's quiet to waddle them up the street but sometimes she doesn't and in the past we've had to have the police help us out with the traffic."

This time two members of Trinity's zoology department escorted the new family safely along several busy streets.

[TexasStooge]

School coursework being scanned for plagiarism

LONDON, England (Reuters) - A new computer program, sensitive enough to detect even small fragments of copied work, is scanning school coursework this Summer, to see whether candidates have been lifting essays wholesale from the Internet.

Exam board Edexcel is using the Turnitin program on coursework submitted for GCSEs and A-levels.

Students accused of plagiarism will receive no grade for the module or possibly for the whole exam.

"We are determined to ensure that those who cheat are caught," said John Black, Edexcel's Head of Compliance and Quality Management.

"Additionally, this software will also benefit head teachers by providing detailed information and evidence, which they can use when discussing plagiarism with colleagues and candidates."

The Turnitin program scans billions of pages from the Internet, checking for match-ups between submitted coursework and previously published work.

Concerns about plagiarism resurfaced earlier this month after a study revealed the phenomenon of "contract cheating" in which students use legitimate out-sourcing Web sites to employ others to write essays for them.

[TexasStooge]

11 cousins give up stomachs after tests

LOS ANGELES, Calif. (AP) - Mike Slabaugh doesn't have a stomach. Neither do his 10 cousins. Growing up, they watched helplessly as a rare hereditary stomach cancer killed their grandmother and some of their parents, aunts and uncles.

Determined to outsmart the cancer, they turned to genetic testing. Upon learning they had inherited Grandmother Golda Bradfield's flawed gene, these were their options:

Risk the odds that they might not develop cancer, with a 70 percent chance they would; or have their stomachs removed. The latter would mean a challenging life of eating very little, very often.

All the cousins chose the life-changing operation. Doctors say they're the largest family to have preventive surgery to protect themselves from hereditary stomach cancer.

"We're not only surviving, we're thriving," said Slabaugh 16 months after his operation at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto.

Advances in genetic testing are increasingly giving families with bad genes a chance to see the future, sometimes with the hope of pre-emptive action. People have had stomachs, breasts, ovaries, colons or thyroid glands removed when genetic tests showed they carried a defective gene that gave them a high risk of cancer.

But what about people whose families don't have these rare, but powerful genetic defects? Experts say that someday, doctors may do DNA tests as routinely as they check cholesterol levels now, spotting disease risks that can be lowered. That day isn't here yet, but progress is being made.

"We do not yet have a general DNA test that fits into that category, but we're headed for it at a pretty good clip," said Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

By 2010, there might be several such tests, along with recommendations to help high-risk people avoid certain diseases, he said. (In fact, newborns are routinely tested now for some genetic conditions, but those tests generally focus on substances in the blood rather than DNA.)

To come up with a useful DNA mass-screening test, it's not enough to identify a particular gene variant that raises the risk of a disease, experts said. There are other questions:

_Are there enough potential cases in the general population to make mass screening worthwhile?

_Is there good evidence that screening would improve health?

_Is the risk of disease high enough to make the test result useful?

_How useful is the test in various ethnic groups?

_Is there a way to lower the disease risk?

For now, "mass screening with DNA testing isn't quite ready for prime time," said Dr. Ned Calonge, head of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which recommends steps people can take to prevent disease.

The task force recently recommended against routinely testing women for harmful mutations in BRCA genes. Those mutations raise the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. But it endorsed such testing for women whose family histories show certain suggestive patterns of cancer — a situation like stomach cancer in the Bradfield family.

Slabaugh, who lives in Dallas, reunited with his many scattered cousins recently in Las Vegas just two months after the last in the group — Bill Bradfield of Farmington, N.M. — had his operation. Several hadn't seen each other for decades while others met for the first time.

They gambled, went to shows and dined in the City of Sin.

"Rather than live in fear, they tackled their genetic destiny head-on," said Dr. David Huntsman of the University of British Columbia, who found the gene mutation in the family.

About 22,000 Americans will be diagnosed with stomach cancer this year and half will die, according to the


American Cancer Society. But the form that runs in the Bradfield family called hereditary diffuse gastric cancer is extremely rare with about 100 families diagnosed worldwide.

The CDH1 gene mutation was first discovered in 1998 in a large New Zealand family with a history of stomach cancer. Those with the mutation have a 70 percent risk of stomach cancer.

It killed Golda Bradfield in 1960. She passed the faulty gene to seven of her children. Six died of the disease in their 40s and 50s.

The 18 grandchildren learned of the defective gene after one of them, David Allen, died of stomach cancer in 2003. His doctor had sent a blood sample to Huntsman's lab, which confirmed the genetic mutation.

Soon after, the remaining 17 got tested. Eleven who had the bad gene had surgery.

Slabaugh, haunted by his mother's death since his teen years, didn't hesitate to have the operation. He and five other cousins had it done at Stanford. The other family members had surgery closer to home.

"I wake up every morning and think, 'This is a free day. I get a bonus today,'" said the 52-year-old marketing executive.

During surgery, doctors removed the entire stomach and surrounding lymph nodes and attached the bottom of the esophagus to the intestine to create a pouch. Without a stomach, patients typically lose significant weight and must eat smaller meals more often. They can still digest food through the small intestine.

Insurance paid for part or all of the procedure, which cost between $65,000 to $85,000.

While the stomachs of all six Stanford patients looked normal before surgery, a study of the tissue revealed early tumor growths, said Dr. Jeff Norton, the surgeon.

The long-term effects of stomach removal surgery are still unclear. Researchers around the world are following families with hereditary stomach cancer to find out how the procedure affects quality of life.

It took about a year for Linda Bradfield, a 55-year-old merchandising coordinator from Irvine, Calif., to adjust to her missing stomach. Initially, she could only eat 800 calories a day and was on a strict bland diet. She gradually added vegetables such as cabbage and lettuce, but still avoids white bread, which she finds tough to digest.

"Life is pretty good without a stomach," she said.

Before Diane Sindt and her two older sisters had their stomachs taken out, they ate their "last supper" during Thanksgiving. True to their sisterly bond, they scheduled their operations at Stanford on consecutive days in December 2004.

The upside is that Sindt dropped from a size 12 to a 2, since the surgery. But she has trouble keeping down certain foods like ice cream and tends to shed weight easily if she over-exercises. To overcome it, Sindt sticks with meat and has replaced running with "power walking."

"It's definitely a new normal for us," said the 51-year-old real estate broker from the Sacramento area.

Unlike his other cousins, Bill Bradfield of New Mexico wrestled over what to do. He wondered how his life would change without a stomach. Would he still have enough energy for his demanding job as a mechanic for a natural gas company?

But after watching his other cousins slowly regain parts of their former lives, Bradfield went ahead with the operation at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in March, becoming the last in the family to give up his stomach.

"We're all going to die of something," he said, "but I know I won't die of stomach cancer."

[TexasStooge]

Jersey City mayor arrested in bar incident

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - Jersey City's mayor said he was arrested and roughed up by police over the weekend for intervening in an argument outside a beach bar.

Mayor Jerramiah Healy said he had just left Barry's Tavern in Bradley Beach — a bar owned by his sister — around 2 a.m. Saturday when he saw a couple arguing in a nearby parking lot. He said the man was jumping on the hood of his girlfriend's car.

After he calmly talked the man down, Barry said, police arrived and threw him on the ground and Maced him. When his wife tried to retrieve his glasses, police shoved her to the ground too, according to Healy.

"My lawyer has asked me not to speak, but I did absolutely nothing wrong," Healy told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Bradley Beach police did not return calls Sunday from The Associated Press.

A police spokesman told The Jersey Journal of Jersey City that Healy interfered in an investigation of the couple's argument and ignored warnings from officers that he would be arrested if he didn't leave.

Healy was charged with two disorderly persons offenses and resisting arrest.

He faces up to six months and jail and $2,000 in fines if convicted.

[TexasStooge]

Deer gets inside house, attacks Ohio woman

BROADVIEW HEIGHTS, Ohio (AP) - A 75-year-old northeast Ohio woman is recovering from injuries she received this week when a deer got into her home and attacked her.

Mary Blake of suburban Cleveland opened her patio door Wednesday to let her border collie back inside and was shocked when a female deer followed close behind.

Blake says she tried to shut the door, but the deer knocked it off track and then knocked into Blake and started stomping her.

Blake frantically called police as the deer damaged her walls, furniture and some keepsakes.

Two police officers arrived and were able to coax the deer outside.

Blake was treated at the hospital for bruises and cuts on her arms, legs and stomach. She has 27 stitches on her right knee.

[TexasStooge]

Montana city deploys goats to eat weeds

VIRGINIA CITY, Mont. (AP) - Bringing goats to Virginia City was one of Allyson Adams' first acts as the new mayor of this old gold mining town. Nearly 200 of the animals are on Boot Hill, eating knapweed.

"We need more goats," Adams, who became mayor this spring, recently told some people at Virginia City's Metropolitan Market. "Next year, we'll probably need 1,000."

Goats were brought from Conrad to eat weeds that threaten Virginia City's native plants. Adams sees the animals as an alternative to spraying chemicals, but said chemical use along some roadways here will continue.

The mayor believes goats remind Virginia City's tourists and residents that Montana is an agricultural state, where animals serve a purpose.

"With all the development happening and people moving in, it's important to keep animals in front of people's eyes," she said.

The use of goats is being termed an experiment, for now.

"Anytime you try something new, people are skeptical, and they should be," Adams said. "That's why we called it an experiment — the goat experiment."

Several participating landowners are likely to keep the goats busy all summer, said Kim Harris, who owns the animals. He charges $13 for every acre they cover.

Between Thursday afternoon and Friday afternoon, they chewed their way across 10 acres of city property.

"They've really demolished that," Harris said approvingly as he surveyed a patch of land that used to have a lot of knapweed.

Harris hopes that by summer's end the goats will have made two sweeps on the 650 acres or so where he has been asked to reduce weeds. Of that total, only about 30 acres belong to the city.

Harris said that since his arrival in Virginia City on Thursday, several people asked to have goats on their land.
___

Information from: Bozeman Daily Chronicle

[TexasStooge]

California man wins Senior Spelling Bee

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - Hal Prince of Palo Alto, Calif., correctly spelled piezometer to win the 2006 National Senior Spelling Bee Saturday. "Part of the reason I did this was to see if it's possible to learn the whole dictionary," Prince said. "It's not."

A piezometer is an instrument for measuring pressure or compressibility.

Prince said he studied by making lists of words and audio tapes of their pronunciation and spelling, which he listened to while commuting to and from work and while running or walking daily.

"I think people probably thought I was crazy because I walked along spelling words out loud," he said.

Twenty-nine people, ranging in age from 50 to 86, representing 15 states competed in this year's bee.

After a written round of 100 words, the top 16 spellers advanced to the finals, in which spellers can miss three words before being knocked out of the competition.

The final five contestants were: Dr. Darrell Noe of Arlington, Texas; Bill Long of Salem, Ore.; Tom Lavery of Akron, Ohio; Prince and Nancy Leasure of Danville, Calif.

Prince received $100 for winning. Noe finished second, Long third, Lavery fourth and Leasure fifth.

[TexasStooge]

All work and no play for government?

BISHKEK (Reuters) - Kyrgyzstan's leader banned top officials in his Central Asian state from taking holidays until later this year as a punishment for not doing a good job.

Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous nation to the west of China, has been plagued by violence and crime since President Kurmanbek Bakiyev came to power in a revolution last year.

"I'll take measures if I find out that even one of the ministers has gone on holidays before December," Bakiyev told top government officials during a meeting on Monday, according to a statement on the presidential Web site.

"I think it's not time to rest, it's time to work."

Kyrgyz ministers were not available for comment.

Bakiyev also ordered officials to cut the number of foreign trips and focus on domestic issues such as the 2007 budget and crop harvesting, the presidential statement said.

Most government officials in former Soviet states like Kyrgyzstan usually take up to a month off in July or August, bringing political life to a standstill during summer months.

[TexasStooge]

The crook, the police, the wife and her ticket

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - The tale of a bungling World Cup ticket thief who got his just desserts turned out on Monday to be an accidental invention of German police.

Munich police had released a statement about the "audacious thief" who snatched a woman's handbag, found the ticket inside and sat down to watch Brazil play Australia Sunday -- only to find himself next to her husband, who alerted the police.

But a police spokesman later said the statement had mixed up two different cases -- one of which did involve a Brazilian woman having her handbag and ticket stolen -- and the encounter between thief and husband never took place.

"It was a mistake...In the course of the investigation we realized we had mixed up things that didn't belong together," he said.

[TexasStooge]

Animal rights protest shuts restaurant

BEIJING, China (Reuters) - Banner-wielding animal rights protesters swarmed into a restaurant serving cat meat in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen and forced it to shut, Xinhua news agency said Sunday.

The 40 or so, mainly female demonstrators -- holding banners reading "cats and dogs are friends of human beings" -- entered the Fangji Cat Meatball restaurant and demanded the owner free any live cats on the premises, Xinhua said.

There were none in the building, as the owner had already moved them out, it said. But some burst into tears upon finding a skinned cat in a fridge.

"I cannot go on with my business, and I will not sell cat meat any more," the restaurant owner was quoted as saying, though he defended his trade by saying eating cat in Guangdong province was a tradition.

The organizer of the protest, identified only as Isobel, the founder of a cat protection Web site, said the restaurant had been chosen because it killed cats in the street and it was "very bad for the students from nearby schools."

A local beauty queen, Miss Shenzhen 2005, also took part, calling on people to "stop eating cats and dogs and become civilized," Xinhua said.

Many Chinese, particularly in the south, believe eating dogs and cats are good warming foods to eat during the winter.

But China is developing a nascent animal rights movement as more people raise pets, which during the country's Communist heyday was frowned upon as a bourgeois activity.

[TexasStooge]

Pregnant pause as Moms wait for baby bonus

SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) - Australian hospitals are bracing for a baby boom in July as expectant mothers try to delay imminent births to take advantage of a new welfare payment, researchers said Monday.

From July 1, a baby bonus paid to the parents for every newborn child will increase by A$1,000 ($740) to A$4,000.

Economists said that after the baby bonus was introduced in July 2004 about 700 births were delayed by a week to take advantage of the new payment.

Melbourne Business School economist Professor Joshua Gans and Australian National University colleague Andrew Leigh said that around 300 births were moved by more than two weeks.

Most of those births involved caesarean sections or induced deliveries, they said.

In a bid to overcome Australia's low fertility rate and aging population, Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government has urged couples to have more children.

Treasurer Peter Costello suggested two years ago that Australian couples should have "one for mum, one for dad and one for the country."

[TexasStooge]

Bear eats oatmeal in woman's kitchen

WEST VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) - It was a real-life version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears — only in reverse — when a woman came home to find a young bear eating oatmeal in her kitchen.

The bear apparently entered through an open sliding glass door, broke a ceramic food container and started eating, West Vancouver police Sgt. Paul Skelton said.

"It sounds like a nursery rhyme, doesn't it?" Skelton said. "At least we have a health-conscious bear on our hands."

Three police officers who went to the home Thursday couldn't get the bear to budge, so authorities let the animal finish its meal.

"The bear didn't appear to be aggressive and wasn't destroying the house, so they just let it do what it was doing and eventually the bear decided to make its way out of the residence and down toward a forested gully," Skelton said. "It ended the best it could."

Skelton said bears in the suburbs north of Vancouver have been coming out of hibernation as hungry as ever but later than usual but this spring because of a heavier than normal snowpack from the winter. The report Thursday was one of six complaints police said they received about bears in the area that day.

[TexasStooge]

Man arrested after "nightmare" high-speed drive

LONDON, England (Reuters) - A man who drove down the A1 at speeds of up to 135 miles an hour and later said he couldn't slow down because his accelerator had jammed, has been arrested, police said Monday.

Kevin Nicolle escaped unhurt after crashing his automatic, eight-year-old BMW 318 into a roundabout at Nottingham after a 60-mile journey he said had been terrifying.

Examinations of the car by BMW and police after the incident in March found no defects.

Nottinghamshire police confirmed Monday that Nicolle had been arrested in connection with the incident.

"A 26-year-old man was arrested on May 24 in connection with a road traffic collision, which occurred at the A1 roundabout at Blyth in Nottinghamshire Sunday, March 4, a spokeswoman said.

The man had been released on police bail pending further inquiries.

[TexasStooge]

Sanctuary offers safe haven to Conn.

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) - An animal sanctuary is offering a safe haven to Lewis the cat, a Fairfield feline whose vicious attacks on neighbors have landed his owner in court.

Neighbors say they have been terrorized by Lewis, claiming the gray and white cat has used his long claws and stealth to attack at least a half dozen people and ambush an Avon saleswoman.

The Best Friends Animal Society of Kanab, Utah, which claims to be the country's largest no-kill animal sanctuary, offered to take Lewis free of charge.

"He would be cared for by specialists who know how to handle cats with behavior problems," Russ Mead, Best Friends' general counsel, wrote to Superior Court Judge Patrick Carroll.

The judge is expected to decide Lewis' fate on Tuesday, when the cat's owner, Ruth Cisero, returns to court. Cisero, who was charge with second-degree reckless endangerment, earlier refused another judge's offer of special probation because it carried the condition that Lewis be put to death.

Cisero's attorney, Eugene Riccio, has described Lewis as "a member of her family."

[TexasStooge]

Tailing a monkey man in search of healing powers

KOLKATA (Reuters) - Thousands of people are flocking to an impoverished Indian village in eastern West Bengal state to worship a man they believe possesses divine powers because he climbs up trees in seconds, gobbles up bananas and has a "tail."

Devotees say 27-year-old villager Chandre Oraon is an incarnation of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman -- worshipped by millions as a symbol of physical strength, perseverance and devotion.

"He climbs up trees, behaves like a monkey and is a strict vegetarian, but he is no god and his condition is just a congenital defect," says Bhushan Chakraborty, the local medical officer.

Tucked away in a hamlet in Banarhat, over 400 miles north of Kolkata, the state capital, devotees wait for hours to see or touch Oraon's 13-inch tail, believing that it has healing powers.

Doctors said the "tail" -- made up of some flesh but mostly of dark hair -- was simply a rare physical attribute.

"It is a congenital anomaly, but very rarely do we find such cases," B. Ramana, a Kolkata-based surgeon, told Reuters.