TWW'S CRAZY NEWS STORIES

[TexasStooge]

Dress code takes sparkle out of students' smiles

Arlington ISD: Officials limit mouth, ear jewelry

By TOYA LYNN STEWART / The Dallas Morning News

ARLINGTON, Texas - Karrick Senegar says rapping and grills go together like cars and tires.

That's why the 16-year-old aspiring rapper and Arlington student spent $200 in April on the mouth jewelry known as a grill. But the Sam Houston High School junior won't be able to flash his six-tooth white-gold diamond-cut grill around campus come August.

The Arlington school district has changed its dress code to ban the trendy mouth jewelry. Also added to the unacceptable list are tall tees – oversized shirts that hang to the knees – and the practice of stretching out earlobes, sometimes called gauging.

Sam Houston student Devonte Wright recently lost his grill and is saving up to buy another. He isn't happy he can't wear it at school.

"Really, a grill is just like an earring. It's fashion," said Devonte, 16, a junior. "I wouldn't wear a gauge, but that's a way to express yourself, too."

It might be self-expression for students, but school district officials who monitor the latest trends say some don't belong on campus. They end up adjusting the dress code annually to keep up with the kids' desire to wear short skirts, saggy pants or see-through shirts.

"The district is having to respond to fads because they've become distracters or a safety hazard for those around them," said Malcolm Turner, executive director of student services for the Arlington school district. "They don't serve a purpose for schooling; they're for cosmetic purposes."

Other area school districts, including Irving, Grand Prairie and DeSoto, specifically ban grills. Several also have enough leeway in their policies to address gauging.

Deja Thomas, 17, a junior at Sam Houston, said she understands why there are rules banning short skirts and sagging pants but doesn't get why grills have got to go.

Neither does LaVeda Antwine, 17, a senior at Sam Houston.

"If they bought it, they should be able to wear it," she said.

Not so, says school board trustee Gloria Pena, who sought to ban the practice of stretching earlobes, which can be permanent.

"We want to instill in them a sense of modesty and a sense of community," she said. "We're preparing them for the workforce, and in the workforce there are rules."

Kayden Dorman, 31, a tattoo artist at Arlington's Tantalizing Tattoos and Body Piercing, said a lot of students come to the shop.

"I think if they're allowing people to wear earrings, they should allow them to wear bigger earrings," Mr. Dorman said, referring to the plugs, retainers, spacers and eyelets worn during the earlobe-stretching process.

"It's about exploring and going to the next level of self-expression and extreme body modification," said Mr. Dorman, who began stretching his earlobes when he was 27.

Abbie Thomas, a parent of two Sam Houston High School students, said she favors the list of newly banned items.

"Certain things are a distraction," Ms. Thomas said. "You are here for work. You're here to learn. Just leave it at home."

While that sentiment might be popular among parents, it doesn't sit well with students.

Heather Gonzales, 14, a freshman at Arlington's Seguin High School, said: "I would think it would be the student's choice. I don't really see what the big deal is."

Tariq Izuagbe, 17, a sophomore at Sam Houston, is a fan of the tall tees and grills. Until he learned of the new dress code, he was planning to buy a grill.

"I'm not about to spend all that money and not be able to wear it," Tariq said.

The mouth jewelry has gained popularity through hip-hop and rap music; St. Louis rapper Nelly recently had a hit called "Grillz."

"It attracts a lot of girls sometimes," Karrick said of his grill.

Grills sold at J's Grill cost $180 to $3,000, said Bob Cho, owner of the Arlington store. Mr. Cho said some parents come by to purchase grills for their children who have received good grades.

Still, "it's better for the strict rules," he said. "When you put grills in, you can't talk well."

Jordan Cheatham, 15, a sophomore at Sam Houston, said administrators "should be worried about our grades, not what we have on our backs."

But Shane Nelson, an assistant principal at Arlington High, disagreed.

"I think there's certain attire that's appropriate at school. The district is acting in its best interest in preserving school as a learning place."

[TexasStooge]

Fugitive otter recaptured after month on the run

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - An escapee who had spent almost a month on the run, eating the finest food and frolicking in clear public sight on the beach of one of New Zealand's swankiest suburbs has been recaptured by desperate authorities.

Jin, a short-clawed Asiatic otter which escaped from Auckland Zoo on June 13, was found in a trap on an island in the Hauraki Gulf -- part of the harbor that forms the eastern sea entrance to New Zealand's largest city.

The otter was sighted by a sailor Sunday and extra food was laid out for her around traps on islands in the Gulf. Zoo staff said she had been caught overnight.

"She is in pretty good shape. But obviously she will be a little worse for the wear for being out there," zoo spokeswoman Jane Healy told the New Zealand Press Association.

Jin was being taken back to the zoo for checks by a veterinarian, Healy said.

While on the run, Jin had captured the public's attention with almost daily media coverage on her continued evasion despite the best attentions of the zoo and New Zealand's Department of Conservation.

Jin and two other otters escaped from a new compound in the zoo last month. The other otters were caught but Jin was believed to have swum down a creek and into the harbor.

She crossed the harbor and made her way to the beachfront at Devonport, which is considered one of New Zealand's more well-heeled suburbs.

[TexasStooge]

Trains kill father, son at same spot

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A train has run down and killed a man at just the spot where his father met the same fate eight months previously, a Malaysian newspaper said on Saturday.

The 34-year-old man, V. Marathai, was cut in half when a moving train hit him early Friday in the northern Malaysian town of Ipoh, the Star reported.

His father, N. Veerapan, 64, died at the same spot last November when he crawled under a train he thought was stationary.

"My father used that tract as a shortcut to his friend's house," the paper quoted V. Chandran, a brother of the bachelor Marathai, as saying.

[TexasStooge]

Cruise from hell inquest reveals sex predators, death

By Paul Tait

SYDNEY (Reuters) - It began as the holiday of a lifetime but descended into a lurid spiral of alcohol, drugs and sexual predators for a suburban mother of three whose humiliating death at sea could help change the global cruise industry.

A coroner's inquest into the 2002 death of Dianne Brimble on board the P&O liner Pacific Sky has shocked Australia with its graphic descriptions of her treatment by a group of men she met on board.

The inquest has heard that Brimble, 42, died of an overdose of gamma hydroxybutyrate, a "date rape" drug also known as fantasy, mixed with a high blood alcohol level.

No charges have been laid and the inquest is being held to determine the circumstances in which she died.

Her family has joined an international group set up by victims of other apparent crimes at sea in demanding cruise ships be made more accountable and better protect passengers.

International Cruise Victims (ICV) says at least 18 people are believed to have gone missing from cruise ships since 2004.

"When you put 3,000 people on a piece of metal floating around in the ocean, you would expect things are going to happen," Diane Brimble's former husband told Reuters.

"Why should they be a law unto themselves?" said Mark Brimble, who represents ICV in Australia after being contacted by the group's American founders.

DRUNKEN PREDATORS

The coronial inquiry has attracted blanket media coverage, making it one of the highest-profile inquests since the infamous backpacker murders in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

It has painted an unflattering picture of predatory, drunken behavior, where nudity and public sex were said to be common, and of a flawed and delayed investigation.

Local media have shown photographs of a beaming Brimble boarding the ship in September 2002 with her then 12-year-old daughter, her sister and friends at the start of a South Pacific cruise for which she had saved for two years.

Within hours Brimble was lying naked and dead in the cabin of four men whose main concern was that the death of a woman one of them described as a "dog" had ruined their holiday.

The inquest last month began hearing testimony from the first of eight men, all gym and nightclub friends, who police describe as "persons of interest." Unemployed store clerk Letterio Silvestri said in the transcript of a police interview that he had brushed Brimble off when she spoke to him in a bar soon after the ship sailed because she appeared drunk and was not his type.

"She smelt, she was black and she was ugly," he told police.

"Anything that's over 60 kilos, I don't talk to," he said.

Silvestri said he left the bar and went back to the cabin he shared with three friends, took three sleeping tablets and went to bed.

He said he later awoke to find Brimble in bed with him and trying to arouse him for sex. Silvestri said he pushed her onto the cabin floor and went back to sleep.

"Apparently she helped herself to me," Silvestri said.

Silvestri, who demanded an apology from the ship's captain, told the inquest that cabin-mate Mark Wilhelm had given Brimble the drug when he brought her back to the cabin.

Melvyn Armitage, a former P&O passenger services director on the ship, said Silvestri became agitated when he was stopped from returning to the cabin while a doctor and two nurses tried to revive Brimble.

"He was saying, 'get the mean lady out of my room, that's my room'," Armitage told the inquest in June.

The inquest has heard from other passengers who accused Silvestri and some of his friends of "cruising for sex" and offering to pay a teenage girl to dance in their cabin the night after Brimble died.

P&O has said it deeply regrets Brimble's death but could not comment on her case, although it said it has increased security on its ships since the inquest began.

"We cannot begin to imagine what Mrs Brimble and her family went through and we are determined to do everything in our power to ensure that this never happens again on board one of our ships," P&O Cruises Australia said in an April statement.

The inquest has heard a string of damaging testimony, including claims staff had tried to cover up Brimble's death.

Kathleen Taylor, a night shift manager on board the Pacific Sky, told the inquest that incidents of nudity and public sex on board P&O cruise ships happened up to 20 times a night.

P&O said after that testimony that unruly passengers would be kicked off future cruises.

LOST AT SEA

International Cruise Victims has lobbied the U.S. Congress with a 10-point plan to tighten security on board cruise ships and address what it sees as a fundamental problem: the hazy legal jurisdiction of ships once they enter international waters.

The advocacy group was formed early this year after several U.S. families found they had similar cruise ship horror stories after family members mysteriously disappeared at sea.

It lists dozens of cases of apparent crimes at sea.

The group wants faster reporting, revision of alcohol serving procedures on cruises, and tighter security including independent marshals on board ships.

"It's to post international police on a boat and have them being independent to the ship itself because cruise liners are driven by profit, they're not driven by responsibility, security and safety," Mark Brimble said.

P&O have just announced they will refund Brimble's fare. An earlier insurance claim lodged by the family was rejected because illegal drugs were listed as the cause of death.

[TexasStooge]

'Elvis' performs underwater

BIG PINE KEY, Fla. (AP) - He wasn't wearing blue suede fins, but an Elvis impersonator was among the snorkelers and divers who swam in the Underwater Music Festival.

Neil Goldberg, of Key West, costumed in a white-caped jumpsuit and flashy gold chains, joined several hundred visitors and residents who took the plunge for the six-hour weekend radio broadcast piped underwater at Looe Key Reef.

"We even had a Chihuahua in goggles and a swim vest on one of the dive boats," said festival founder Bill Becker.

Other participants dressed as a mermaid with a blue and purple tail and a hot-pink angelfish with gauzy fins, while an underwater band pretended to play instruments sculpted to resemble deep-sea creatures.

The broadcast featured melodies ranging from Jimmy Buffett's "Fins" and the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" to classic Presley hits. The songs were mixed with public service announcements promoting reef preservation and warning the divers to avoid touching the coral.

[TexasStooge]

La. garden yields yard-long ... cuculoupe?

HOUMA, La. (AP) - They're a yard long and a good few inches across. The skin is waxy, sort of like a cucumber, but yellow and ridged like a canteloupe. A half dozen of them grew between the cucumbers and cantaloupes in a Houma home garden.

"We call it a cuculoupe," Karen Dusenbery said.

As good a name as any.

"Science is strange sometimes," LSU AgCenter agent Barton Joffrion said after examining the whatsits.

"You see crosses like that. What happens is they planted them close in proximity, and they are in the same family," said Joffrion. "But it's not that common."

Both are members of the Cucurbit family, which includes pumpkins and gourds as well as melons and cucumbers.

Cucumbers and cantaloupes are closely related enough to swap genes, Joffrion said. He'd never seen anything like the Dusenberys' whatever.

"In the first generation, they'll cross and you'll get an unusual fruit," Joffrion said.

The firm flesh inside is yellow and somewhat sweet but has a flavor more like cucumber than cantaloupe, Tim Dusenbery said.

The Dusenberys said they are saving the seeds and hope to get more next year.

However, Joffrion said a crossbred plant usually reverts back to one of its original forms in subsequent generations.

"It'll be interesting to see what it does revert to," Joffrion said.
___

Information from: The Courier

[TexasStooge]

Fugitive urges cop to watch TV program

COVINGTON, Ky. (AP) - A man suspected of a dozen bank robberies called a northern Kentucky police detective to make sure he watched an episode of "America's Most Wanted."

The episode of the crime-fighting show featured a profile of the fugitive, Warren Lee Back.

"It was kind of an odd thing. I've never had a fugitive call me before," said Detective Mike McGuffey with the Covington Police Department.

Back was caught by FBI agents in Indianapolis last week, less than two weeks after the call to McGuffey.

He met Back when Back lived in Covington — well before he was linked to a series of bank robberies in the Dayton and Cincinnati areas.

McGuffey was working as an off-duty security guard at a bingo parlor where Back was accused of stealing pull-tab bingo cards.

[TexasStooge]

2 centuries of N.Y. kvetching revealed

NEW YORK (AP) - Two centuries of kvetching, kvetching, kvetching. That's New York-ese — Yiddish, actually — for complaining, complaining, complaining. And it's the subject of a new booklet of letters both funny and fascinating — "The New York City Museum of Complaint" — that were written over centuries to the mayor of a city famed for denizens who whine in public.

"Would it be possible to amend the law so that girls in the burlesque shows in New York would be allowed to display their charms more without interference of the police?" one correspondent asked Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in 1935.

A prude also wrote to the mayor, saying: "Please, Please, Please put an embargo on the new mesh swimsuit!"

The booklet was compiled by Matthew Bakkom, a conceptual artist, from letters he found in 30,000 boxes of archived mail to the mayor going back to the 18th century.

In 1797, one letter reports that dead animals are being pitched into a city pond, creating putrid water that also contains gunk from a glue factory — a combination that "may prove fatal to the health of the inhabitants" of the neighborhood.

In others letters, a merchant wants money to cover earnings lost during a smallpox scare; a man is mad that his 12-year-old son was allowed into a vaudeville show; and a widow bemoans the dirt clogging her drain.

There's no evidence any of the letters resulted in action, but they're written in the loud civic spirit that makes New York, New York.

As the city moved toward modern times, problems changed. But some New York cliches endured: the noise and the smell, from construction blasting to radios blaring in the street.

One thing, for sure, has changed: There's no African pygmy tribesman being kept in a cage at the Bronx Zoo. That display elicited a letter of complaint to the mayor in 1906.

Bakkom packaged the historic missives into a tabloid-size booklet that he'll hand out for free in the next few days.

[TexasStooge]

Mich. balloons travel 630-miles to Conn.

SHERMAN, Conn. (AP) - A high-flying hello from strangers in Michigan made its way through storms and across several hundred miles, landing recently near a Connecticut woman's home.

Marcella Lourd, 80, who lives in the western Connecticut town of Sherman, found a cluster of about 17 bright orange balloons last week near her home's tennis court, their helium nearly spent and a business card dangling from their tied-together strings.

When Lourd sent an e-mail to the address on the card, she received surprising news: The balloons, the idea of a 9-year-old girl, had been released one day earlier in the western Michigan city of Grand Rapids.

They apparently made the 630-mile trip to Sherman in about 13 hours despite — or perhaps helped by — the storms that swept eastward into Connecticut during that time.

Brian Buck, 35, had released the balloons, prompted by his daughter Anna's curiosity about how far they'd travel. Buck, a stay-at-home father who works part-time at a store that sells balloons, called it "all just a bit of fun, really."

"We once saw a TV report about a balloon that was released on St. Valentine Day and ended up in France, so my daughter said we should try to do the same thing," he told The News-Times of Danbury. "We have to get rid of the balloons every night anyway because the helium inside can affect the store's security detection system."

Still inflated, the balloons have found a welcoming home with Lourd.

"They still have air in them so I think I'll just keep them," she said. "They'll make a nice little ornament."

[TexasStooge]

Officials in a lather over suds fountain

NORTH MANKATO, Minn. (AP) - Here, the bubbles runneth over. A park fountain in this southern Minnesota town has been hit by suds-dumping pranksters at least 10 times in the past few months. And now, city officials are in a lather.

"Baby-sitting a fountain just isn't a good use of our time," said police Capt. Wayne Hoffman.

Every time the fountain is "soaped" — as the police and parks workers call it — several clean up and repair jobs must get done. The fountain has to be turned off and drained. Then the inside of it and the water-circulating lines must be rinsed out. It's then refilled with hundreds of gallons of water and the pH levels are tested and rebalanced. The process — which sometimes has to be repeated — takes about one and a half hours. Leaving a sudsy fountain running isn't an option since soap can damage the pump.

Hoffman said the police are taking the case of the effervescent fountain as seriously as they can. They plan to shut the fountain down earlier in the evening so vandals won't be able to immediately see the fruits of a nighttime prank. Since Hoffman is almost certain kids are to blame, he said police will be looking out for youths in the area at night.

Hoffman said anyone caught could be forced to pay for all the employee hours spent cleaning the fountain.

Despite all the foam and froth, the city has no plans to shut down the fountain.

[TexasStooge]

Calif. man makes bad writing judges cringe

By RON HARRIS, Associated Press Writer

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - A retired mechanical designer with a penchant for poor prose took a tired detective novel scene and made it even worse, earning him top honors in San Jose State University's annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad writing.

Jim Guigli of Carmichael submitted 64 entries into the contest. The judges were most impressed, or revolted perhaps, by his passage about a comely woman who walks into a detective's office.

"Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean," Guigli wrote.

"The judges were impressed by his appalling powers of invention," said Scott Rice, a professor in SJSU's Department of English and Comparative Literature. He has organized the bad writing contest since its inception in 1982.

Guigli will receive "a pittance" for his winning entry, a bit of cash he said he may put toward the purchase of a motor boat. His work for the contest represents a sampling of a career that never quite developed for him.

"At one time I thought I wanted to write to detective novels," Guigli told the Associated Press Monday. "I never got a good start on it."

His bad start was to be celebrated Tuesday, when the contest results were to be officially announced by Rice.

The contest is named for Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" began with the oft-mocked, "It was a dark and stormy night."
___

On the Net: Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

[TexasStooge]

Top 10 pick-up lines? Don't get too excited.

LONDON (Reuters) - Was your father a thief? Because he stole the stars from the sky and put them in your eyes.

Equipped with that pick-up line, you can be certain to score in the universal language of love. So say the authors of a new top 10 list of pick-up lines which have been translated from English into Czech, French, Italian, Spanish and German by the publishers Chambers.

Taking inspiration from its new range of pocket-sized phrasebooks, Chambers compiled its own list of the definitive top 10 pick-up lines.

The UK publisher picked the lines from the assorted phrase books and compiled their own light-hearted list, to assist vacationers heading out to European destinations this summer.

Anna Stevenson, from Chambers Harrap, said "The French and Italians are especially renowned for their romantic ways but it seems that chat-up lines are the same no matter what language you are speaking."

"Our chat-up lines show budding English- speaking Romeos how to impress the girl of their dreams whatever country she is from, but it also allows British women to wise up to the charms and cheeky ways of foreign suitors," said Stevenson.

If their top-rated suggestion does not have the desired effect, then try in one of six languages to say: "Didn't it hurt when you fell from heaven?"

Or maybe: "You must be tired because you've been running through my mind all day."

Scraping in at Number 10 in the romance parade comes "The only things your eyes haven't told me is your name."

[TexasStooge]

Darryl Peebles meet ... Daryl Peebles

LOS ANGELES, Calif. (Reuters) - When an American minister, Darryl R. Peebles, typed his name into an Internet search engine he was surprised to find another Daryl R. Peebles living in the Australian island state of Tasmania. But the surprises kept coming.

After the minister contacted the Australian Daryl Peebles and over a series of e-mails the two found they had far more in common that just a name.

They were both born in 1949. Both have three children with a child born in 1975 and in 1977. Their fathers both came from small towns and worked on lathes of some kind.

The two Peebles also found they are both keen performers, and enjoyed magic, ventriloquism and playing music.

After over a year of e-mailing, the two men got together last weekend in Graham in North Carolina where the American Peebles runs the Providence Christian church and put on two variety shows for about 400 people. Neither was disappointed.

"It is as through we have known each other forever. Our minds and our personalities are so much alike. It's as if we were brothers," the minister Peebles told Reuters on Monday.

"What are the chance of finding someone with your name with so many similarities. I still can't believe it has happened."

The American Peebles said he now hoped one day to get to Tasmania for a second series of shows with the Australian Peebles, who works for the Tasmania government.
_____________________________________________________________

Are you sure they're twin brothers?

[TexasStooge]

China con man proves money doesn't grow on trees

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese man who conned dozens of farmers out of 2 million yuan ($250,400) to grow trees he said would be used in the 2008 Olympics has been jailed for 12 years, a Chinese newspaper said Tuesday.

Liu Lutang was barking up the wrong tree when he duped more than 50 farmers into contracts to buy saplings of a maple tree for 20 yuan ($2.50) each, promising them he would buy them back at a higher price after six months, the Beijing News said.

"He told the farmers (they) would be used in the Olympics," the paper said.

Liu, who had set up a bogus forestry company with offices in several Chinese cities, convinced the farmers the trees would sprout six to eight branches in a year and that he would pay them 8 yuan ($1) per branch, the paper said.

Liu's con was perpetrated between December 2001 and March 2002. He was arrested in 2002, but then skipped bail and evaded police for nearly three years, the paper said.

[TexasStooge]

Family cleans up with long-lost Chinese vase

LONDON, England (Reuters) - An 18th century Chinese vase given as a retirement gift to a cleaning lady 60 years ago netted a small fortune for her family Monday when it was snapped up after being proved to be a missing Imperial treasure.

The eight-inch high Qianlong vase, which has stood unrecognized next to the family's television for years, fetched 92,000 pounds ($169,700) at London's auction house Bonham's sale.

"This is a lost treasure of the Qing dynasty," expert Julian King of Bonham's Asian art department said.

"It is a truly remarkable legacy of the 20th century that this rare vase, commissioned for the Qianlong emperor in the 18th century, ended up being given to a cleaner in the 1940s and is now going back to China," he added.

Bonham's said the vase had been bought by a Chinese collector.

The owner decided to contact the auction house after seeing a newspaper report about a long-lost Chinese Imperial vase being sold for 240,000 pounds -- and the rest is history.

[TexasStooge]

Keep the change -- literally

MANILA (Reuters) - Smugglers have tried to ship out millions of older one-peso coins from the Philippines, not for their face value of less than 2 U.S. cents each but for the copper and nickel content as metals prices soar.

The central bank said customs authorities seized a 40-foot container at the weekend that was loaded with 2-3 million coins, weighing 12.2-18.3 tonnes, bound for Japan. Any export of coins worth more than 10,000 pesos ($191) must be declared.

It was the latest attempt this year to illegally ship the one-peso coins minted until 2003, after seizures of about 400,000 pieces in May and 1 million pieces in February, central bank Deputy Governor Armando Suratos told Reuters Tuesday.

"It could be because of the metal content," Suratos said. "In 2002, the cost of producing a one-peso coin was already 1.40 to 1.60 pesos."

Until 2003, an alloy containing 75 percent copper and 25 percent nickel was used to make the 6.1-gram coins -- which has made their metal content now worth about 3.50 pesos each.

Suratos said the central bank started minting one-peso coins made of steel and plated with nickel in 2004 to cut costs.

Copper at the London Metal Exchange has risen nearly 75 percent since the start of the year, ending at $7,730 per tonne Monday, partly due to strong demand for industrial metals from China and tight supplies.

Nickel touched a record high of $24,800 per tonne Monday before closing at $24,650.

($1=52.20 pesos)

[TexasStooge]

Indian cops called to investigate ghosts

NEW DELHI (AP) - Malevolent ghosts stealing your chickens and torturing you in the night? Who you gonna call? For farmer Sunil Das, his first call was the police, who laughed at what they thought was a joke, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported Tuesday.

But a judge in India's northeastern state of Assam saw little humor in Das' allegation that ghosts controlled by his neighbors were making off with his poultry at night. Instead of laughing, the judge ordered police to get to work and find the culprits, the newspaper reported.

In his complaint, Sunil Das accused his neighbors of using their "obedient but malevolent" ghosts, "subjecting me to physical and mental torture," the newspaper reported.

Das said his neighbors were notorious for using black magic against people they had a grudge against.

Superstitions and belief in ghosts are widespread across India, particularly in rural villages.

Nevertheless, police working the case said it was a first for them.

"We have dealt with hardcore criminals and armed militants but this is the first time we are required to pursue a case with a spooky angle to it," the newspaper quoted a local police officer as saying.

"We are yet to crack the case but investigations are on," said the unidentified officer.

[TexasStooge]

Mystery of missing balloons untangled in Denton

Advertising novelties for restaurant, store are returned to owners

By DONNA FIELDER / Denton Record-Chronicle

Stolen balloon: case closed.

Recovered balloon: case closed.

Denton police have put two balloon mysteries behind them with the safe return of the Krystal hot-air balloon Saturday and confirmation from a Lewisville Albertson's store that its "store-closing sale" balloon – first believed to be the missing Krystal balloon – probably is the one found in a treetop on South Loop 288.

Krystal franchise owner David Friedman said his returned balloon looks like it's in good shape.

"We're looking for a place on the roof to put it this time," he said.

The big hot-air balloon, complete with blower and tie-downs, disappeared from in front of the newly opened hamburger restaurant sometime between July 1 and 4. Mr. Friedman filed a police report, but he also offered a no-questions-asked reward for its safe return.

On Friday, after a Denton County Crime Stoppers tip, police thought they'd found the light bulb-shaped balloon tangled in the upper branches of a tree about a block northeast of the restaurant.

But the 12-foot blimp-shaped helium balloon advertised a store-closing sale, not tiny hamburgers.

Chelsie Hutto delivered the hot hot-air contraption to Mr. Friedman on Saturday night. She didn't steal it, she said, but she knew who did. She held Friedman to his "no-questions-asked" promise, and he handed over the first installment of her reward – the first bag of 12 burgers of the 52 bags she earned.

"They were just stupid boys being boys," said Ms. Hutto, a student at the University of North Texas. "Just regular, goofy boys. I don't really know what they are thinking, if they were thinking at all."

Ms. Hutto learned from a friend that the thieves, acquaintances of hers, had the now-famous purloined balloon.

"I didn't give them an option. I said, 'Hey, I'm taking the balloon back.' They told me I'm giving it to 'the man,' and 'the man' wants the balloon back, and I said, no, my stomach wants the balloon back. I'm a college student, and free food for a year is too good to pass up."

The balloon and its accompanying paraphernalia were really heavy, she said. She and a friend piled it into the trunk of her Honda Civic, and she drove it to the Krystal.

The lost-balloon publicity Saturday reminded Amanda Lund of something she saw July 1. She was sitting on the front porch of her apartment on State Highway 121 in Lewisville watching a storm roll in. The wind was getting up, she said. And then she saw something in the air.

It was the store closing advertisement blimp from the Albertson's next door to her apartment complex. It was headed north.

"There was nothing anybody could do," she said. "So we just watched it float away."

Word got around to Albertson's store manager Brian Mathis of the recovery of the blimp in Denton. Mr. Mathis said he will alert the company who rented him the blimp that it has been found.

The runaway blimp may have been less an act of God than an act of spite, Mr. Mathis said.

The supermarket chain has lost several balloons since an employee of another Albertson's store was fired, Mr. Mathis said. He believes that's what happened to his.

"That thing had seven straps tying it down," Mr. Mathis said. "It would take a lot of wind to blow it loose and all the way to Denton."

[TexasStooge]

Happy isle tops happy planet index

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The tiny nation of Vanuatu, one of the "happy isles of Oceania", has topped a new index that measures quality of life against environmental impact, with industrial countries, perhaps unsurprisingly, faring badly.

The UK-based New Economics Foundation (NEF) aimed to measure the environmental efficiency of global progress with its "Happy Planet Index" report, which it said painted a different order of world wealth but showed all countries could do better.

"The Happy Planet Index strips the view of the economy back to its absolute basics: what we put in (resources), and what comes out (human lives of different length and happiness)," the NEF said.

The Group of Eight (G8), an unofficial forum of the heads of leading industrialised nations meeting on July 15-17, failed to make the top 50. Host Russia came in at 172 in the 178-nation survey, with the United States at 150 and the UK at number 108.

The NEF, an independent group that did the index jointly with UK-based green campaign group Friends of the Earth, said the report showed high levels of resource consumption do not reliably produce high levels of well-being.

"The order of nations that emerges may seem counter-intuitive. But this is because policy makers have been led astray by abstract mathematical models of the economy that bear little relation to the real world," said NEF's policy director Andrew Simms.

NEF said Central America was the region with the highest average score, combining good life expectancy of 70 years with an ecological footprint below its globally fair share, while island nations scored above average and Switzerland came top in Europe.

Out of Asian nations Vietnam came highest at number 12 and Singapore was ranked lowest at 131. African countries made up seven of the bottom 10, with Zimbabwe coming last.

Vanuatu is part of a vast sprawling Pacific archipelago described as "the happy isles of Oceania" by author Paul Theroux.

The full Happy Planet Index is available at http://www.happyplanetindex.org.

[TexasStooge]

High metal prices drive coin smuggling

MANILA (Reuters) - Smugglers have tried to ship out millions of older one-peso coins from the Philippines, not for their face value of less than 2 U.S. cents each but for the copper and nickel content as metals prices soar.

The central bank said customs authorities seized a 40-foot container at the weekend that was loaded with 2-3 million coins, weighing 12.2-18.3 tonnes, bound for Japan. Any export of coins worth more than 10,000 pesos must be declared.

It was the latest attempt this year to illegally ship the one-peso coins minted until 2003, after seizures of about 400,000 pieces in May and 1 million pieces in February, central bank Deputy Governor Armando Suratos told Reuters on Tuesday.

"It could be because of the metal content," Suratos said. "In 2002, the cost of producing a one-peso coin was already 1.40 to 1.60 pesos."

Until 2003, an alloy containing 75 percent copper and 25 percent nickel was used to make the 6.1-gram coins -- which has made their metal content now worth about 3.50 pesos each.

Suratos said the central bank started minting one-peso coins made of steel and plated with nickel in 2004 to cut costs.

Copper at the London Metal Exchange has risen nearly 75 percent since the start of the year, ending at $7,730 per tonne on Monday, partly due to strong demand for industrial metals from China and tight supplies.

Nickel touched a record high of $24,800 per tonne on Monday before closing at $24,650.

($1=52.20 pesos)