Ohio reformatory officials helped one prisoner escape recently after he got stuck in a very compromising position.
The masked prisoner wasn't your usual inmate but instead a raccoon who got its head stuck in a jar of peanut butter. And those who helped with the breakout weren't really prison officials but volunteers for the 100-year-old Ohio State Reformatory, which is now a museum, in Mansfield.
An off-duty police officer, who volunteers at the reformatory helped rescue "Rocky" after the raccoon was spotted bumping into a tree and then climbing to the top.
A rope and a snare got the animal down from the tree, and once the plastic prison was removed, Rocky beat feet for the bushes.
A 23-year-old Australian woman was less one pair of underwear when a mugger lifted up her dress, pulled off her panties and then stole her purse in broad daylight earlier today.
The woman was grabbed from behind, police said, as she was walking home around 4:30 (AEST) in the afternoon from the Newmarket train station in Brisbane.
The brazen attack left police baffled since there was no attempt to sexually assault the woman who was so upset she didn't even know her bag had been taken until some time later.
Police believe the underwear may have been taken as a trophy.
I wonder what kind of trophy this scum bucket would have taken if the young woman was following Britney's example and not wearing panties.
Candy and gum in the shape of tobacco products soon may go up in smoke if one New Jersey town has its way.
Woodbridge is considering banning chocolate cigars and bubble gum shredded to resemble chewing tobacco in all shops across the township, according to council members, because it may lead to "potentially dangerous behavior."
The nonprofit Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids claims several studies have shown that kids who play with candy cigarettes are more likely to become smokers when they get older.
Woodbridge already bans vendors it licenses from selling toys or candy in the shape of tobacco at public events. Ireland has outlawed candy cigarettes, and they have been restricted in parts of Canada and Australia.
And just how will the warning labels will read? Chocolate cigarettes may cause obesity in young children with a propensity to develop bad habits that taste so good. And they will rot your teeth.
Facing accusations of being a racist, a Watchung businessman is hanging in there with his belief that the window display at his Halloween Scene store of a man in a noose is nothing more than a prop resembling a decaying person and not that of a black man.
New Jersey store operator Robert Lap said the "Hanging Victim," manufactured by California-based First Imperial Trading Company, is just an inflatable prop to be used as a special Halloween effect.
Delores Jackson, a fifth-grade teacher at the Charles H. Skillman Elementary School in Plainfield, however, saw it as appalling and racist, and complained.
Jackson said she was especially concerned that the mock hanging appeared just days after protests erupted over the Jena Six, a group of six black teenagers charged with the Dec. 4, 2006 beating of a white teenager in Jena, La.
Jackson also was upset about the display's proximity to a neighboring store that sells school supplies to parents, teachers and children.
The teacher was the only person in Halloween Scene's 30 stores in New York and New Jersey to complain about it, according to Lap.
While Lap said how people perceive the display is "in the eye of the beholder," he confirmed that it would be removed from all Halloween Scene stores "for obvious reasons."
First mistake: Musician Luke Jacunski, 30, proposed to his artist girlfriend, Mami Nagase, 24, at a romantic gazebo in Central Park ... at night.
Second mistake: Jacunski had $120 and a Rolex watch on him in Central Park ... at night.
Third mistake: Love is blind because Jacunski from Cincinnati was unaware of the New York City gunman who came out of the bushes and robbed the couple right after he popped the question.
What was he thinking? Probably that he was lucky the gunman didn't get the engagement ring he managed to slip off his girlfriend's finger and hide in his pocket when the thug made them lie on the ground.
Thug's mistake: He didn't search Jacunski's pockets before he took the money and ran.
It was an unfortunate beginning for the couple who didn't get to have that romantic dinner (where Jacunski should have proposed) because they were at the police station. They did share a bag of potato chips while looking at mug shots, though.
The good news: Nagase said "Yes" despite her future husband's big Duh! moment.
Here's one ringy dingy of an idea that will allow advertisers to display ads on computer screens based on what's being talked about from phone calls connected via the Internet.
Puddingmedia, a Silicon Valley-based company, is launching software today on its Web site http://www.ThePudding.com that recognizes speech patterns of visitors placing free calls to the U.S. and Canada, and then displaying ads relevant to what is being discussed.
You talk about dinner, you get restaurant advertisements bombarding your monitor. They company is even looking into adapting it for cell phones!
The advertising model is similar to that of Google Inc.'s Gmail, which shows ads based on scans of the user's e-mail correspondence.
I can just imagine what will pop up when two people are talking about having cybersex.
In case you haven't seen these pictures floating around the Internet, here are a few that show baby shirts parents actually put on their kids. And my favorite:
An English supermarket staffer refused to sell two bottles of wine to a 72-year-old West Kirby man because he refused to show ID to prove he was older than 21.
Tony Ralls claims it was a "stupid question" to ask a grandfather of three and told the clerk he wanted to see the manager.
The manager took away his wine and placed it back on the shelf, saying the store doesn't serve anyone who doesn't show ID.
What Ralls didn't know was that the store had been previously fined and wasn't taking any chances with anyone, even if he or she looked like a white-haired old coot.
Before Ralls left the store, he obtained a complaint form and phone number for Morrisons' headquarters. He says he wants an apology.
What he'll most likely get is: No "whine" before its time! (APP File Photo)
All three of my Chihuahua perma-pups can't negotiate the wood stairs because I polished them. Now, I have to carry the girls up and down.
Still, they try to follow me and go head over paws usually ending up in a lump on the landing or stuck on the stairway half-way up with their toenails scratching the wood as they desperately try to hang on.
Then I have to come to the rescue. It's getting a bit tiring.
Can't carpet the stairs because the girls think carpet is a big wee-wee pad.
So it seems now that Jersey City police say they have rounded up a gang of teenagers and charged them with video-taping a string of attacks on innocent people for the sole purpose of putting it on the Internet.
The five teen suspects, 18 and younger, who appeared to have found pleasure in their attacks, filmed the beatings, including one in which the gang broke a woman's arm and then chased her through a park.
An anonymous tip allowed police to recover the videos. Prosecutors are seeking to have some of the teens tried as adults.
Racehorse trainer Efrain Nieves expected to win on the racetrack with his 9-year-old mare Dona Chepa, but didn't think it would be with the longest consecutive losing streak.
Dona Chepa took the prize, a plaque, for her last-place finish at Camareo Racetrack in eastern Puerto Rico after surpassing the 0-124 record set by the Australian horse, Ouroene, who raced from 1976-83.
While Don Chepa comes from a distinguished line of champion racers, she beat Ouroene's record with her 125th loss yesterday. The closest she came to ever winning a race was in May 2003 when she finished second.
The star-crossed horse has won $12,971 despite results that include 22 fifth-place finishes and 90 others out of the money.
It's good to know that being last sometimes can make you first.
Now this is some garage ... but it has nothing to do with this story!
A New Jersey man was charged with criminal trespass after police discovered he had been living in a detached garage for weeks without the knowledge of the 91-year-old homeowner.
Michael Beam, 50, was nabbed near the home getting off a transit bus by police at 12:30 a.m. Monday after they received reports of a suspicious man in the Pompton Plains neighborhood.
A large quantity of feces, a tub of urine, food wrappers, clothes and a blanket were found in the garage, which led police to believe that Beam had been staying there for an extended period of time.
The homeowner said she had not given permission for anyone to stay in her garage and was not even aware that Beam had been living there. After Beam was taken to headquarters, he confessed and was released.
Hum, to go where, I wonder?
Photo of Volkswagen's Autostadt in Wolfburg, Germany, by AP photographer Fabian Bimmer.
One Idaho driver might not have been the only one who lost control when he crashed his SUV into a telephone pole because his friends were having wild sex in the backseat.
Joshua D. Frank, a carnival worker at Moscow, Idaho, Latah County Fairgrounds pleaded guilty to failing to notify police of the accident he claimed occurred when the SUV became tipsy from the movement of the couple having sex.
Frank suffered a minor head wound and his friends were treated for unspecified injuries. He was fined $188 for the misdemeanor offense.
Now there's a story you can tell your grandchildren.
I love the way other drivers just pull around this rollover caught on tape.
SUV rollover photo by Kim Scarborough is for illustration only and not the Frank accident.
At least their hands are, according to The Soap and Detergent Association.
When it comes to hand-washing hygiene, the association found (by secretly spying on people in public restrooms) that 33 percent of men don't bother to wash their hands after using the bathroom compared to 12 percent of women.
Based on observations last month of more than 6,000 people in four big cities - Atlanta, New York, Chicago and San Francisco - the results of the stakeouts were revealed at a meeting of infectious-disease scientists yesterday.
Ya gotta hate dirty spies. I guess Big Mother (with eyes in the back of her head) really is watching.
Ogden, Utah, officials have enlisted citizens, with the help of a $1,475 olfactometer, to sniff out objectionable odors in the city.
The city has received complaints for years about the odors permeating from a nearby pet food company, American Nutrition Inc., so a sniff squad, headed by municipal code enforcement officers, was formed.
The volunteers will be trained to use the device that hopefully will help identify noxious odors that impact air quality.
Agricultural and manufacturing facilities, other than those processing animal or marine products, will not be in violation of the law if they can demonstrate they are using the best available technology to control odors.
But rest assured, no one will raise a stink if the sniff police, armed with a book of matches, turn up their noses when the meter malfunctions due to an olfactory overload.
One Australian teen was left with serious facial injuries after being hit by a propeller when he and two of his friends mooned a group of people on the shore from the motorboat they were in and fell out.
The failed practical joke was blamed for the Gold Coast accident that occurred after the boat became unstable as the trio stood up to bare their buttocks.
Once they lost their balance and fell into the canal at Broadbeach Waters, the unmanned boat continued to circle them before striking the 17-year-old Kanimbla teen in the face. He was rushed to the hospital where he was listed in stable condition.
A 20-year-old Rochedale South man was charged with drinking and driving a watercraft.
Nothing like getting caught with your pants down ... or just falling out of a boat.
OK, so the photo illustration by Nelson Minar is of a drunk, getting high while riding a luge not a boat. What do you want from me?
In an effort to raise slumping population numbers, officials are offering couples refrigerators, dishwashers and even cars if their babies are born June 12, Russia Day.
To have a shot at winning the prizes, the government allows couples to take Sept. 12, nine months prior to Russia Day, as a day off from work so they can stay home and do, well, what men and women do to conceive.
Sounds like a deal, right? Make love, have baby, get car.
Unless the Russians are taking a page out of Hitler's Aryan race book, why don't they reward couples for adopting foreign children who really need a home.
And really, they wouldn't have to go very far, say ... Kiev.
One Pennsylvania man discovered that climbing over a 12-foot high wrought-iron fence was hardly worth the effort to get to a rock concert after he impaled himself on the top.
Nineteen-year-old Aaron C. Fry of Washington Borough had to steady himself for 45 minutes until rescuers were able to cut three, 1-inch rods away from the fence that were embedded in his thigh (one nearly eight inches) before they could lower him to the ground.
Fry later was listed in stable condition after having the two-foot section of the fence removed. No charges were filed.
But here's the "irony": Fry and his friends, who successfully cleared the fence, had tickets to the concert. They just didn't want to pay the $5 fair fee or walk further down the block to the gate.
It'd be my guess that those guys are likely to think twice before taking another stab at such tomfoolery.
That was the dilemma for confessed rapist Bobby James Allen who pleaded guilty Monday in a Panama City, Fla., court to three counts of armed sexual battery and other charges surrounding the attacks in 1998 and 1999.
Allen chose castration.
All of his victims agreed with the plea bargain.
Circuit Judge Michael Overstreet will sentence Allen to 25 years in prison instead of life only if he goes through with the operation within the next eight days.
Afterward, Allen can expect hormonal changes that could lead to the development of breasts, osteoporosis and hot flashes, the judge said.
Some sentence. This lowlife should be a real hit among the boys in the big house.
The art of killing oneself has been taken to another level.
A distraught Michigan man was "very determined to end his life," police said, when he built a guillotine in the woods and used it to kill himself.
The body of the 41-year-old man was discovered by workers from a nearby shopping center in the Detroit suburb of Melvindale Monday next to the 6-foot guillotine bolted to a tree.
Guillotines, with roots going back to medieval times, were used to slice the heads off their victims. This particular one had a swing arm and must have taken quite some time to build, police said.
It's inherently sad that this poor bloke didn't even get to experience 15 minutes of fame for his ingenuity.
One Vancouver, Wash., man finally may have the grounds for the divorce he was seeking after his wife of 30 years loaded a shotgun and attempted to take him out while he was sleeping.
Obviously, Sheryl Martin, 51, didn't take the news very well when her husband, Eddie, told her he was having an affair and wanted a divorce.
They argued, and Eddie went to sleep in their camper. But, it didn't take long before Sheryl followed her 51-year-old husband and shot him twice with a 16-gauge, double-barrel shotgun. She then reloaded and, with precise aim, shot him twice more.
This scorned woman meant business.
Sheryl then called the police and told them what she had done. Eddie survived the attack but may have to have a limb amputated.
Bruce Springsteen fans were prevented from hearing the E Street Band's rehearsal of his soon-to-be released album "Magic" when his people set up huge speakers tuned to a local radio station outside Asbury Park's Convention Hall.
Many had come from around the world for a chance to get a sneak "listen" of the so-called magical music The Boss has been making with the band for the first time in five years.
The album will be released Oct. 2, and Springsteen is set to start touring the same day.
Needless to say, die-hard fans were disappointed their legendary "nice guy" wasn't so accommodating. Still, 30 or 40 of them continued to hang around, hoping to get a photo of him or band members as they left the rehearsal. Talk about sheep.
Springsteen should know by now, he can't get a Slurpee here at the Jersey Shore without this newspaper covering him like a blanket.
Maybe it should be renamed "Greetings from The Asbury Park Press."
A Bay Shore, N.Y., senior citizen wasn't the easy target a tire iron-wielding mugger thought he was when he tried to rob the 74-year-old man.
Suffolk County police said the mugger pounded on Bruce Ferraro's car window outside a department store on Saturday and demanded cash from the elderly man. Undaunted, Ferraro got out of his car and asked his would-be assailant, "What, are you kidding me?"
The 32-year-old suspect then called the Bay Shore resident an "old man" and threatened to hit him with the tire iron if he didn't hand over his wallet.
Instead of giving up the goods, Ferraro fought with the man and disarmed him.
Without the weapon, the 32-year-old suspect ran to his car and attempted to drive away, but the vehicle stalled and the man then fled on foot. He later was found in his West Babylon home and charged with attempted robbery.
Ferraro received a scrape on the wrist in the scuffle.
I'm usually this first one to say enough is enough, but the fact that many people won't give Sept. 11 a second thought tomorrow irks me.
Six years after the horrific events of 9/11, the number of organized memorial services to be held in New Jersey, which lost nearly 700 residents in the terrorist attacks, has declined.
Some towns have decided not to hold formal services this year because many feel it's time to put the tragedy behind them.
I doubt family members who lost loved ones that day feel the same way. They need to know that someone still cares.
Yes, we can move forward and focus on life, but even if it's just with a moment of silence ... we must never forget.
Sept. 11, 2006 lower Manhattan memorial lights photo by Absolutwade
Some Minnesota motorists were riding on a wing and a prayer when their vehicles became involved in rear-end collisions caused by chicken parts spilled on a city street.
The slippery spill resulted in at least five accidents as vehicles approaching intersections were unable to stop. The slime covered more than eight blocks as well as many parked vehicles. The road conditions also caused one moped to tip over.
Winona police were trying to locate the truck responsible for the mess. They said it most likely had been hauling a load of chicken renderings from a processing plant in Arcadia, Wisc.
Now we know why it's not good for chickens to cross the road.
Given up for dead, a 76-year-old woman, missing for nearly two weeks, was found alive in a mountainous region of Eastern Oregon after she disappeared while bow hunting with her husband.
Doris Anderson suffered a hip injury and was dehydrated, but alert after surviving, in light clothing, the rugged terrain of the Wallowa Mountains where temperatures dipped overnight into the 30s.
Anderson and her husband, Harold, 74, had been pulling a utility trailer with their Chevy Tahoe when the vehicle got stuck, and Harold Anderson broke his wrist removing the trailer.
Walking for help, the couple became exhausted and Doris tried to return to their vehicle. A disoriented Harold Anderson later was found by a hunting party.
Guess they believed the Tahoe advertising:
Moral of the story? Never buy a car you can't push.
On a side note, Doris' sister-in-law credited the tough senior citizen's survival to prayer and Anderson's healthy lifestyle.
