I have a shitload of news for you all.
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HUNTINGTON, Ind. (AP) - There was more than Good News in Amy Duckworth's Bible. Duckworth, 28, was sentenced Monday to six months in prison for smuggling cocaine to her jailed husband inside two Bibles.
Judge Pro Tem Tom Hakes gave her four years each on two charges of trafficking with an inmate, and ordered her to serve 90 days on each count. The remainder of both terms will be served as probation.
Duckworth, who has three children, does not have a criminal history.
"When I committed this offense, I wasn't thinking about my children," she said, reading from a written statement. "It only took one time to learn a lesson."
Duckworth had admitted to placing bags of cocaine in the spines of two Bibles and having them delivered in March to her husband, Anthony Duckworth, who was in jail on a misdemeanor charge of visiting a common nuisance.
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BERLIN (AP) - A drunken man withdrew more than $16,700 from his bank account and then started handing out the money to passers-by in a western German town Tuesday, police said.
Police in Darmstadt said they were alerted at lunchtime to a man sitting on a bench in front of a bank and handing out notes. He had the money stuffed into plastic bags and his pockets, and some of it blew away.
Officers took the 63-year-old back into the bank and counted the money.
They said in a statement that he had handed out $1,935, but that he "didn't care because he had enough."
Police decided to hold on to the rest of the money temporarily. They told the man, whose name was not released, to come back and collect it once he sobered up.
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BERLIN (AP) - A mumbling caller dialed a wrong number and left a panicked German bank employee convinced that a bomb was on its way by express delivery, police said Tuesday.
The man had meant to call a firm in southwestern Germany that repaired pumps, but instead dialed a bank in the eastern city of Chemnitz, police said.
He told the employee who answered the phone that he had sent a pump by DHL and asked for a "diagnosis." However, police said his diction was so poor that the woman believed he was sending a bomb - "Bombe" in German, rather than "Pumpe."
She asked the caller what number he had meant to dial before alerting police - but missed the last figure. Police figured out what had happened by dialing through variations of the number.
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LAS VEGAS (AP) - A judge ordered a blood-alcohol test for a defense lawyer who was slurring his words, then declared a mistrial after declaring him too tipsy to argue a kidnapping case.
"I don't think you can tell a straight story because you are intoxicated," the judge told Joseph Caramango as she declared a mistrial for his client.
Caramango, 41, acknowledged in court that he was drinking the previous night, but maintained he was not drunk. If convicted, his client faces life in prison.
"I don't believe I've committed any ethical violation," Caramango said Tuesday, disputing the accuracy of the breath-alcohol test. "If it proved anything, it proved I was not intoxicated."
Clark County District Judge Michelle Leavitt announced Caramango had a blood-alcohol level of 0.075 percent. Nevada's legal blood-alcohol limit for drivers is 0.08 percent.
In an exchange recorded by courtroom video, Caramango arrived about 90 minutes late for trial and was slurring his words.
The judge asked if anything was wrong, and Caramango said he suffered a head injury in a rear-end car crash while driving to court.
Leavitt said she was suspicious because details of Caramango's account varied.
Caramango also identified a woman who accompanied him to court as his ex-girlfriend, Christine, but when questioned by the judge the woman identified herself as Josephine. She said they just met about 20 minutes earlier at a bar and coffee shop.
Leavitt did not hold Caramango in contempt of court, and it was not immediately clear if he would face discipline by the State Bar.
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ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) - An 85-year-old woman was found in the vault of a Swiss bank when she set off motion detectors hours after the bank was already closed, according to a statement released Wednesday.
Employees at the Zuercher Kantonalbank apparently forgot about the woman.
The director of the bank's safe allowed the woman into the vault on Monday before closing it punctually at 4:30 p.m. local time - with the woman still deep in study of her documents, ZKB said.
She remained so still that she initially failed to activate either the motion detector or the attached camera, the bank said in confirming a report that appeared in the Zurich-based daily "Tages-Anzeiger."
She was freed from the room four hours after the vault was closed.
The bank gave the woman a bouquet of flowers for suffering from the ordeal and said it would decide on further nonfinancial compensation.
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SAO PAULO, Brazil - The door of a plane fell off minutes after takeoff Tuesday and plunged into a supermarket's concrete awning, the airline said.
The Fokker-100 plane, carrying 79 Rio de Janeiro-bound passengers, returned to Sao Paulo's Congonhas Airport less than 20 minutes after departing when the door "unexpectedly" flew open and "detached" itself from the plane, TAM Linhas Aereas SA said in a statement.
The passengers continued their flight to Rio on another TAM aircraft, the airline said. No one was injured on the plane or ground.
The cause of the accident was being investigated, TAM said.
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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Hillary Snyder said she isn't going to let her boyfriend's antics get under her skin. Snyder, 20, awoke recently to find she had been tattooed by her boyfriend while she slept.
She said she took a painkiller with a sleeping pill before she went to bed Saturday night. When she awoke, she discovered a tattoo of a five-pointed star on her right ankle.
Snyder said she had previously told her boyfriend she didn't want a tattoo. He wanted her to get a tattoo of a five-pointed start to match one of his own, she said.
"At least he didn't flub it up," she said
The boyfriend wasn't identified. No arrests had been made. The investigation was continuing.
A police report accuses the now-former boyfriend of domestic assault. But Snyder isn't so sure.
"I mean it's not like he beat me up. There were no bruises or blood or anything. I'm just not going to see him again."
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BEDFORD, N.H. (AP) - A store surveillance video captured footage of two small children sneaking behind display cases to steal thousands of dollars in jewelry, apparently on instructions from their mother and grandmother.
Bedford police made the video public this week and said Wednesday that they believe they are close to making arrests. They started getting tips minutes after the video first aired on local television.
"We're fairly certain ... they are a family working together," Detective Matt Fleming said. "Can you believe a grandmother, mother and children?"
The video, taken Aug. 2 at a store called the Consignment Gallery, shows one woman, possibly the children's mother, directing them to pocket certain items. An older woman, believed to be the children's grandmother, stuffs items down her shirt.
Police said the children are under 10; the video suggests they could be significantly younger.
"It's pretty upsetting to watch," Fleming said. "Watching the children methodically move through that jewelry area and take the items out for the mother is just astonishing."
Fleming said more than $2,000 in jewelry was stolen.
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OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - A state panel has disciplined three judges, including a Tacoma jurist who ordered courtroom cheers for the Super Bowl-bound Seattle Seahawks before issuing a manslaughter sentence.
The state Commission on Judicial Conduct gave each judge an admonishment, the panel's lowest-ranking punishment, in rulings released Friday.
Pierce County Superior Court Judge Beverly Grant's discipline stems from a Feb. 3 hearing in which she sentenced Steve Keo Teang to 13 1/2 years for manslaughter in the 2005 shooting death of Tino Patricelli, 28.
Before the proceedings, Grant asked about 100 people in court to say "Go Seahawks" before taking their seats. Dissatisfied with the low volume of the response, she repeated the request.
The Seahawks played in the Super Bowl that weekend. Patricelli's stepmother said she was offended in part because the game fell on the anniversary of her stepson's death.
Grant, who was appointed to the bench in 2003, apologized the following Monday. She eventually filed the formal conduct complaint against herself.
"Although my intentions were to defuse the courtroom situation, I realize now the inappropriateness of my opening comments," Grant told the commission.
Grant agreed to review the state's Code of Judicial Conduct, and to not repeat her behavior in the future.
"The behavior in the Grant case was well-intentioned, but a misstep," conduct commission director Reiko Callner told The News Tribune of Tacoma. "The conduct did not materially affect her ruling as a judge in the case."
Also disciplined on Friday was Tacoma Municipal Court Judge David Ladenburg, who kicked a Muslim woman out of court when she declined to remove her headscarf.
The commission found that Ladenburg, who has been a judge for three years, created an appearance of bias or prejudice against the woman in the January incident.
Ladenburg told the commission he prohibited head coverings in his courtroom unless a person could show religious or medical reasons for wearing one. He acknowledged that he had not fully considered how his policy might infringe upon personal religious rights.
Ladenburg agreed not to repeat his conduct, to study judicial conduct rules and compete a course on cultural competence at his expense.
In Ladenburg's case, "as soon as his error was pointed out, he apologized and changed his behavior," Callner said.
The third admonishment involved Spokane County Superior Court Judge Robert D. Austin, who told jurors he was surprised by their guilty verdict in a 2005 drug case.
According to the commission's official order, Austin told jurors he had dismissed an earlier motion to dismiss drug-possession charges against a nurse because he believed the jury would find the defendant innocent.
Austin, a judge since 1989, said he didn't believe his words to be critical of the verdict at the time, but acknowledged they could have been interpreted that way.
Austin agreed that he violated judicial canons prohibiting praise or criticism of jurors' verdicts. He pledged to familiarize himself with conduct rules.
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LITTLEROCK, Calif. (AP) - Thieves apparently under the influence of alcohol stole six U-Haul moving trucks and went on some destructive Mojave Desert joyrides, authorities said.
Four of the dented rental trucks were found abandoned later but the California Highway Patrol was still looking for two of the missing U-Hauls. There were no arrests.
"This is a first," U-Haul rental office owner Monica Hall said.
The thieves apparently got the vehicle keys out of large drop box used for after-hours key returns. The box was ripped off a concrete pillar in front of the office between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. Monday, Hall said.
Judging from the smell of the recovered trucks, the thieves were likely boozed up, CHP investigators said.
The heists were discovered just before dawn when the CHP got a report of a hit-and-run accident near 90th Street East and Palmdale Boulevard.
"The victim described the offending car as a white and orange U-Haul truck," CHP Officer Gabriel Morado said.
Officers then spotted a suspicious U-Haul parked diagonally in the middle of a grocery store parking lot near the U-Haul office and damage matched the side swipe from the hit-and-run incident.
Two more banged up U-Hauls were then found abandoned in a nearby alley.
"It looked like they had just dumped them there and crashed into each other while doing it," Morado said.
A fourth U-Haul was recovered in Palmdale.
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BLACKEY, Ky. (AP) - Mayor Mike Dixon posted a sign on the fence around his overgrown lawn. "There are more important things in life than tall grass," it reads. Dixon hasn't mowed his lawn since last year, and has declined offers from neighbors to cut the grass.
"He's just that type that likes to be his own person," said Martha Burns, a member of the Blackey City Council and the Blackey Improvement Committee. "He's always been like that."
Burns said she doesn't have a problem with the mayor's unkempt lawn.
"If he likes it like that, it's fine," she said. "... I kind of feel like maybe he is right. Maybe there are more important things than mowing grass."
Dixon's next-door neighbor, Jo Ann Walters, said the mayor is a fine man and a good neighbor who just doesn't intend to mow his yard.
"I've laughed about it," Walters said.
Neither the city of Blackey nor Letcher County has a law requiring residents to keep their lawns trimmed. Letcher County officials considered passing a nuisance ordinance two years ago, but decided against it.
Dixon, a psychology professor at Hazard Community College, said he has several reasons for letting his yard grow, including in remembrance of his late wife, Jane, who died of breast cancer in November.
"What I wanted to say was, 'yes, I let my yard grow up, but I'm still the same person. Let's talk about it,'" he said.
Dixon said people can save time and money by giving away their mowers like he did.
"I don't want to fight nature anymore," he said.
Dixon said flowers began popping up in his yard when he stopped pushing a mower across it. He said birds and squirrels also moved in.
"I don't know why we cut grass, but I do know that I like to sit here in the evenings and enjoy what we have in eastern Kentucky," Dixon said.
Dixon said he doesn't like to hear the buzzing sound of lawn mowers and weed cutters when he is trying to relax and enjoy his surroundings.
"I think I have scared a lot of people off," he said. "They probably think I am weird."
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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - Three would-be thieves broke into a bank in northern Malaysia but failed to make off with any cash as they yanked out the wrong machine - a check deposit machine instead of an automated cash dispenser, the national news agency Bernama reported Wednesday.
The three men broke into the entrance area of the bank in the northern town of Bukit Mertajam early Wednesday, and tied a rope - attached to two vehicles - around a machine, police district investigation chief Chor Ah Sing said, according to Bernama.
They jerked the machine off its hinges, sending it crashing to the ground floor, Chor added.
The crashing sound alerted a security guard to the breach who chased them away, it said.
The three men had already managed to open the machine, but found no cash as it was a check deposit machine, the national news agency said. It is not immediately clear if they made off with any checks.
Local police officials could not be immediately contacted for comment.
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BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (AP) - A 64-year-old man admitted to using a slingshot to vandalize his brother's car dealership Wednesday. William Gault, of Brackney, Pa., pleaded guilty to one count of felony third-degree criminal mischief.
He was frustrated with the circumstances of the family estate and expressed his unhappiness with a pattern of vandalism that spanned eight years. He declined Wednesday to further elaborate on his motives.
The damage has cost the dealership as much as $500,000 over the years, but Gault's plea involved a single incident that occurred Feb. 8. He was originally charged with two counts of third-degree mischief.
Gault will be sentenced Oct. 27.
He will avoid jail time if maintains good behavior leading up to his sentencing.
Gault is expected to be sentenced to five years probation and $6,655.45 in restitution, with a 5 percent surcharge
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ROYAL OAK, Mich. (AP) - A man charged with robbing a 7-Eleven might have avoided capture if he'd spent some of the loot at a nearby gas station.
David K. Booth, 44, of Royal Oak, was arrested early Tuesday while sitting in the getaway truck, its gas tank empty, police said. He pleaded not guilty Wednesday in 44th District Court to one count of unarmed robbery.
Booth entered the 7-Eleven, implied he had a weapon and demanded the money in the cash register, police said. The clerk complied, then called 911 after the robber drove away, police said.
An officer responding to the call noticed a pickup parked on the side of a road about a mile away. The suspicious officer checked inside, saw a man matching the robber's description, arrested him and, for good measure, found the allegedly stolen cash.
"We recovered everything," Deputy Police Chief Chris Jahnke told The Daily Tribune.
District Judge Terrence Brennan set bond for Booth at $50,000 and scheduled a preliminary hearing for Aug. 18, a court clerk said.
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MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish police have arrested four Frenchmen for jumping in front of cars on a busy road so that they could film them and post the footage on the Internet, the newspaper El Pais said Tuesday.
The four jokers took turns to leap in front of cars, forcing the drivers to swerve or brake sharply and putting themselves and other vehicles in danger, town hall officials in Alicante were quoted as saying on the El Pais Web site.
Their intention was to film the reaction of drivers, on the road between Benidorm to La Nucia, and post them on the Web, the officials said.
Relatively rare in Spain, a youth craze known as "happy slapping" took off in Britain last year, in which groups of teenagers slapped or mugged strangers while filming the victims' reaction on camera phones. The images were then sent to friends or posted on Web sites.
Spanish police and local government officials were unavailable for comment.
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WHAT Craig Moore did not know when he blew up a roadside camera to destroy evidence of his speeding was that the blast triggered the mechanism and captured him on film.
Moore, 28, a railway worker from Doncaster, had been flashed by the camera when he was speeding on Mottram Road, Hyde, Greater Manchester. He returned with a quantity of explosive hoping to destroy the evidence, caused £11,700 of damage to the camera top, but did not realise that his picture had been taken once again and that the image showing his vehicle’s registration number was stored safely in the machine’s base.
Moore, who admitted the offence yesterday at Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, was remanded on conditional bail until September 6, when he will be sentenced. The maximum penalty for destroying a speed camera is ten years’ jail.
None of the circumstances surrounding Moore’s action was aired in open court, but sources close to the case said that after being caught by the speed camera the first time, he feared that an accumulation of points on his licence might lead to a driving ban, which could lose him his job. Twelve penalty points can result in a ban.
Moore was said then to have acquired a quantity of Thermite, a powdered mixture of aluminium and iron oxide which creates extremely high temperatures when ignited and is widely used on the railway for welding rails.
Far from destroying the evidence of Moore’s earlier speeding, however, the explosion jogged the camera into taking a second picture of his van and its registration number. Police inquiries led to a speedy arrest.
Agreeing to a request from Timothy Savage, Moore’s counsel, for an adjournment to allow for pre-sentencing reports, Judge Adrian Lyon ordered Moore not to contact any witnesses while he remained free on bail. The judge gave no indication as to what the sentence might be.
Had Moore admitted the original speeding offence, he would almost certainly have been fined the usual fixed penalty of £60, and had three points added to his licence. But, according to sources, he felt that his job was in jeopardy.
“He went to great lengths to cover his tracks and escape the sack,” one court source said. “There are a lot of drivers out there who will resort to all sorts of measures to get out of being done for speeding. But blowing up the speed camera really takes the biscuit.”
Speed cameras rank among the most assaulted pieces of equipment in the country: hundreds have been set on fire, uprooted, spray-painted and even shot at by disgruntled motorists. Last year nearly £800,000 of damage was done to speed cameras in 14 of Britain’s regional safety camera partnerships — more than double the bill in the same 14 regions for the previous year.
EXCUSES, EXCUSES
John Hopwood, 44, moved a 40mph sign into a 30mph zone to avoid a fine after being caught speeding twice on cameras. He sent a photo of the moved sign to authorities but was caught and jailed for 56 days by Stockport magistrates last month for perverting the course of justice
Jeffrey Stott, 41, of Oldham, was jailed for three years after admitting being paid to claim falsely that he had been at the wheel of more than 50 cars that had been caught speeding
The former Tory MP Neil Hamilton and his wife Christine escaped a fine for doing 63mph in a 50mph limit in 2003 after claiming that they could not remember who had been at the wheel
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GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) - It looks almost like any other shopping cart, except sensors allow it to follow the shopper around the supermarket and slow down when needed so items can be placed in it, and it never crashes into anyone's heels.
Gregory Garcia dreamed up the robotic cart to solve a childhood peeve of being accidentally hit with shopping carts by his sister.
His cart, also known as B.O.S.S. for Battery Operated Smart Servant, was one of about 30 robots on display Wednesday by students at the University of Florida, who worked the past semester on the projects using their engineering backgrounds.
"The immediate thing that jumped to my mind was all those times as a kid when my sister would accidentally hit me with a cart," Garcia said. "It seems like the public would really want this since everybody shops.
Jeremy Greene, 23, of Panama City, created a robot named Atlas, which balances a blue ping pong ball on a flat piece of wood as it moves across the room. He said he sees no real world application for his robot other than entertainment.
When the electric engines of Antoin Baker's robot Cypher roared to life, the device lifted about a foot off a table, tethered by rubber bands. Cypher, a flat wooden square topped four engines, could be made into a flying device to lift heavy objects in the same way a helicopter does, Baker said.
"If the rubber bands break, run very fast," said Eric Schwartz, one of the two professors in the robot course.
Rolando Desrets' small robot made of wheels, gears and sensors, picks up pingpong balls. It then aims and tosses into a basketball net. He said he will later use the robot to compete against other colleges.
Students were given free rein in deciding the type of robot to construct. Robots range from Carlo Pasco's poker robot that deals cards to poker players to Bryan Talenfeld's invention that tells color blind people the color of a traffic light.
"My friends and I play poker all the time, but there is one kid who we do not deal because he is notorious for dealing from the bottom of the deck," Pasco wrote in his introduction about his robot. "An automated poker dealer would take the doubt out of human dealing, alleviating this problem once and for all."
The student-built submarine called the SubjuGator 5 has won first place for two years in a row in competition with other universities.
The robot is a clear tube about two feet long. It has cameras and sensors it uses to follow a simulated pipeline, said student Carlos Francis, 24, of Gainesville.
Francis said similar robotic submarines could be used to check underwater pipelines and could send back pictures to people on land or in boats.
Topped with a wig of dredlocks and a colorful hat, one of the most popular robots is Koolio. The robot delivers cold drinks to faculty and students who order them over the Internet.
Adam Grieper has a similar robot called the Beertender, which senses people and offers them a beer.
"At this university, every piece of the robot puzzle has been solved," Schwartz said.
He said students have designed flying, walking and swimming robots.
About half of the students are registered for the summer 2005 semester of the Intelligent Machine Design Laboratory course. The other half are students in the Machine Intelligence Laboratory or students in the MIL's National Science Foundation sponsored Research Experience for Undergraduate program.
UF students have been building autonomous mobile robots since 1993 ranging from submarines to helicopters, from planes to snakes, and from hydrofoils to alligators. Most of the students showing robots Wednesday were seniors in engineering or graduate students.
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DECATUR, Ala. (AP) - A cigarette butt casually tossed to the ground sparked a daylong argument between four neighbors that escalated into a fight that sent at least three of them to the hospital and got them all arrested.
"It's sad that people were injured over a cigarette butt," Lt. Chris Mathews, spokesman for the Decatur Police Department, said Thursday.
Police said a guest visiting Bobby Joe Ray, 42, tossed a cigarette butt toward the edge of Ray's yard on Aug. 4. The butt landed near a fence belonging to Ray's neighbor, Michael Alan Bradford, 24. Bradford got angry and started shouting about it.
Several residents of the neighborhood said Ray and Bradford argued about the butt all day, Mathews said, and eventually Ray's sister, Shirley Lynn Ray White, 32, who lives across the street, tangled with Bradford's wife, Heather Mills Bradford, 27, and the men soon joined in.
At least three went to the hospital for treatment of injuries, and all four were arrested Tuesday and were released on bond the same day.
Shirley Lynn Ray White is charged with third-degree assault. Bobby Joe Ray and Heather Mills Bradford are charged with harassment. Michael Alan Bradford is charged with harassment and third-degree assault.
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SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - The wedding party chuckled when the pastor said the line about "in sickness and in health."
Jared Darr and Amanda McCadden were getting hitched in a hospital, hours after a car crash shattered the groom's leg on their wedding day.
The college students said they weren't about to let the accident stall the ceremony - especially since they hadn't kissed during their six-month engagement.
"I just want to kiss her so bad, and there's no way I'm going to put it off," Darr said, lying pale and on painkillers shortly before Wednesday's ceremony.
Darr, 21, and McCadden, 23, had just picked up an archway for their wedding reception when their car collided with a second car at an intersection in Chattaroy, north of Spokane.
Darr, in the passenger seat, had raised his foot to put on a dress sock and the air bag sent his leg through the windshield, he said.
"So many people are just like, 'This is a sign you've got to run,'" Darr said.
Instead, once Darr woke up from the anesthesia, the couple said their vows in a Deaconness Medical Center conference room, making a videotape to be shown to their 150 guests at the reception.
The pastor played guitar, the wedding party prayed and sang, and the bride wiped tears from her eyes. When the bridesmaids, groomsmen and relatives left for the reception, she stayed behind.
"Party like we're in your heart, because we are," she told them.
And as for the couple's planned honeymoon on the Oregon coast? That'll have to wait.
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DETROIT (AP) - A divorced couple could spend up to 10 years in prison if convicted on charges of stealing proceeds of bingo games for senior citizens, law enforcement officials said Thursday.
Neal William Greenfield, 41, of Westland and Shari Kay Greenfield, 39, of Livonia stole at least $20,000 from the Wayne Ford Civic League from 1999 until 2004, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said.
"Unfortunately, there are people in this country who will steal from anyone or anything at any time," Worthy said in a statement. "You have to shake your head in disgust when you hear about stealing bingo money from our seniors."
The Greenfields, who divorced in 2003, were arraigned Thursday in 18th District Court in Westland. They were charged with embezzlement more than $20,000, and their bond was set at $25,000 each.
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - When Debbie Phillips tried to report a crime, police just snickered. "I told him that someone came into my house and cleaned," the president of the Putnam County School Board said. "He just laughed."
The problem wasn't that her home smelled a little fresher or looked a little tidier. The problem was that Phillips had no idea who the mystery cleaner was.
Her husband denied cleaning up the joint. So did her next-door neighbor. Everyone she asked denied responsibility.
All she knew was the rugs weren't where she had left them that morning in June. Trinkets had been rearranged and in the master bedroom, the bed was made differently.
It didn't look like anything had been stolen, but she couldn't be sure.
Nearly a month passed before the mystery was solved. Her son called her at work recently after a cleaning lady arrived at the front door.
As it turns out, her neighbor across the street, with a similar house number, the same number of rooms to be cleaned and a house key hidden in a similar spot outside, had hired a cleaning service.
"They just came to the wrong door," Phillips said.
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MARION, Ind. (AP) - Ten to 15 people wearing masks left six 40-gallon trash bags full of taco sauce packets at a Taco Bell restaurant in what police described as a prank.
A note attached to the bags said the group had been accumulating them for the past three years, storing them in the trunk of a car, authorities said.
Police have suspended their investigation into the Tuesday night prank in the city about 50 miles northeast of Indianapolis without any arrests, said Marion Deputy Police Chief Cliff Sessoms.
"From everything we've got here, there doesn't appear that there has been any crime committed," he said. "It looks more like a prank than it does anything else, but not a very funny one because you've got that number of people coming in there with their faces covered up."
A spokesman for Taco Bell said he's never heard of people returning so many unused packets of sauce.
"I've heard a lot of people accumulate sauce packets in their glove compartments. We know people keep things and it's a pretty common phenomenon, but to have that many, I've never heard of that," said spokesman Rob Poetsch.
He said the packets would not be used, for safety reasons.
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PALM HARBOR, Fla. (AP) - William Fogarty doesn't understand the fuss. He just forgot to pay a parking ticket. When he finally realized it, the 86-year-old retiree made good and mailed in a money order, to pay a $1 ticket he got 60 years ago.
Fogarty got the ticket in Norfolk, Va., in May 1946. Soon after, he bought a $1 money order to pay the fine but forgot to send it in. About a month ago, as he was looking through a box of collectibles from his Navy days, Fogarty discovered a wallet with the money order inside.
So he wrote a letter to the Norfolk Police Department and included the money order.
"At my age, when I go out of here, I don't want to owe anyone a dime," he told the St. Petersburg Times.
Fogarty's money order will not be cashed, Norfolk police Officer Chris Amos said. Instead, it will be framed and displayed in the department's museum.
"It's one of those restoring your faith in mankind things," Amos said.
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BLUFFTON, S.C. (AP) - Customers in a bakery for a Bible study saw a different kind of buns Wednesday morning. A drunken teen came into the Atlanta Bread Co. shortly after it opened, used the bathroom in a storage closet, then walked out of the bakery naked, Bluffton Police Department spokesman Mike Creason said.
"He was sitting on the curb with no clothes on when the police showed up," Creason said.
Julius Daukus, 17, of Columbia, was charged with indecent exposure, police said.
The teen had apparently been drinking while visiting some friends at a nearby home and wandered off, Creason said.
Daukus was confused when police arrived. "He was calm, just sitting on the curb," Creason said. "He didn't know where he was."
Employees at the store said the Bible study regulars just shook their heads at what happened.
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LONDON (AFP) - A British couple owned up to being behind a stunt that convinced hundreds of people in northeast England that aliens were among them and ended with police and defence chiefs involved.
Paul McKinney, 28, and Emma Henfrey, 30, released floating lanterns into the night sky to celebrate a move into their new home in the coastal town of Seaham, last month.
Images of the orange and white glowing orbs later appeared in local newspaper the Sunderland Echo and led unidentified flying object spotters to contact police and the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
After initially keeping quiet because of the fuss, McKinney told the newspaper Wednesday: "It was an awesome experience to watch these lanterns float up and away and we never thought for a second that people would think that they were aliens.
"I wasn't going to say anything because I thought it was quite funny, but then my cousin saw something in the Echo about the MoD investigating so I thought I better tell."
The lanterns -- made from a plastic bag, copper wire and a paraffin cube which glows as the fuel burns -- look like small hot air balloons and sell on the Internet for about 10 pounds (15 euros, 19 dollars) each.
The packaging warns they can soar up to 1,000 feet and can be mistaken for UFOs.
An MoD spokesman said they were "delighted" to have cleared up the mystery.
The government department routinely investigates UFO sightings, but only to establish whether British airspace has been "compromised" by unauthorised or hostile aircraft.
Declassified MoD files released in May this year revealed that none of the numerous "unidentified aerial phenomena" reported over Britain in the last 30 years was a flying saucer.
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POTTSTOWN, Pa. (AP) - The borough council authorized the purchase of a $600,000 fire truck in May, but this week several council members seemed to have forgotten about it.
"I was not aware we had authorized the purchase of the vehicle," Borough Council President Jack Wolf said after Fire Chief Richard Lengel told council members on Wednesday that the truck had been ordered.
"I would think it would be taken to the finance committee at least," Councilman Greg Berry said. "It seems like a lot of money to spend without a report."
After consulting minutes of previous meetings, council members realized that they had approved the purchase months earlier.
"Well, that's what the minutes say, so that's what we have to go with," Wolf said before apologizing for his faulty memory.
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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Sometimes when nature calls, there's no time to delay, but a Kentucky man sure picked the wrong spot for a pit stop.
Michael Ray Hunter, 37, found out Wednesday night that the parking lot of the West Virginia State Police headquarters in South Charleston isn't the right spot.
Trooper J.S. Crane just happened to be walking nearby as Hunter was relieving himself.
As Crane approached, he smelled alcohol. That discovery led Crane to the pickup truck where Hunter's buddy, James Alan Richardson, 40, was checking phone messages.
During a search of the truck, Crane and another trooper found a marijuana pipe and pills for which Richardson had no prescription.
Both men were arrested for public intoxication. Hunter also is charged with indecent exposure and Richardson is charged with possessing controlled substances.
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A woman who was caught 69 times by Scottsdale speed cameras since March told detectives she threw the tickets away because she didn't think anything could happen to her.
Now, she faces jail and $11,000 in fines.
Five of the citations issued to Francesca Cisneros, 32, of Chandler, were criminal speeding violations. She also was caught once by a red-light camera, and she faces two counts of driving on a suspended license.
Cisneros told officers she speeds because she often is late for meetings, Scottsdale police Sgt. Mark Clark said.
All but five of her 69 speeding tickets were on Loop 101; her top speed was 86 mph. The unpaid tickets are a Scottsdale record.
A City Court judge released her Thursday on a promise to appear at a later date.
The massive animal has been spotted in the Hudson River at least three times in the last week-first off Chelsea and Hrlem sections of Manhattan, then to the north in Sleepy Hollow in Westchester County. It is unusual for one of the creatures--often associated with the warm waters of Florida--to travel so far north, although they have been reported along the shores of Long Island and even Rhode Island
