BARICHARA, Colombia (AP) - The first loud crackle tastes and feels like popcorn, but by the time the juices spray wildly in your mouth and the filament-like legs slide down your throat, there's no mistaking this toasted ant queen.
The people of sun-soaked northern Colombia have been eating ants for centuries. They believe the accurately named "hormiga culona" - big-butt queen ant - is everything from a natural form of Viagra to a protein-rich defense against cancer.
Now the invertebrates are going global: A businessman in Santander province exported more than 880 pounds of the inch-long queen ants last year, many of them to be hand-dipped in Belgian chocolate and sold in fancy packaging at $8 for a half dozen at upscale London department stores like Harrods and Fortnum & Mason.
But even as the delicacy begins to expand beyond Colombia, the ants appear to be dwindling in Santander, and that worries the region's ant-eating bipeds.
This year's harvest, which usually begins around Easter and lasts as late as June, was one of the worst on record, with peasants in the artist colony of Barichara reporting half their normal year's haul.
Entomologists say the winter was unusually harsh and spring rains were late, which may have disturbed the virgin queen ants' nuptial flights - the one time a year when they emerge from their dune-like ant hills to seek a mate and form a new colony. Almost as often, the queens are grabbed by lizards, birds or humans.
Expanding fields of beans, tomatoes and tobacco also have replaced the region's last remaining wilderness and farmers consider the leaf-cutting ants - the species atta laevigata - to be serious pests.
"It's an age-old dilemma for the farmer - should I kill it or eat it?" said Andres Santamaria, who was given a $40,000 grant from Santander's government to develop an environmentally sustainable, export-oriented program for breeding the ants.
Whatever the local conditions, overseas demand by itself won't endanger the ant supply, say those involved in the trade.
"We're never going to eat Colombians out of their ants," said Todd Dalton, a 30-year-old chef in London whose yen for the exotic dish led him to create Edible, a novelty food brand whose products are not for the squeamish.
Last year, Edible sold some 220 pounds of the ants, most of them dipped in chocolate, along with other specialties like lollipops with scorpions inside.
In Colombia, people generally toast the ants in salt at community gatherings and eat them as a snack. But there is innovation. Restaurants in Barichara offer an ant-based spread for bread and an ant-flavored lamb sauce.
Stuffed tortilla "atta wraps" led the menu at a recent tasting at the Montreal Insectarium, an insect museum in Canada.
"In France, they're so highly regarded people started calling them the caviar of Santander," said Stephane Le Tirant, curator at the Montreal Insectarium.
During harvest time in Santander, ants by the bagful are sold at almost every roadside stop. But although relatively abundant, they're not cheap - costing as much as $11 a pound.
The culona is a source of regional pride, its image gracing everything from the logo of a long-distance bus company to the provincial La Culona lottery. It also connects locals to the province's indigenous past, when ants were a part of a complex mating ritual of the Guane Indians.
Rising demand from the outside has helped push up prices that peasant harvesters are getting.
"A few years ago they cost half as much," said Hernando Medina, the province's main exporter.
Not everyone is cashing in. Jorge Raul Diaz maintains 37 ant colonies on a small farm outside Barichara, but in homage to native culture, he gives them away.
During last year's harvest, he organized the first culona-gathering contest, in which 22 participants competed over two months to see who could bag the most insects.
Carmen Rondon, a jovial 71-year-old cleaning woman, finished second and won an electric blender.
She no longer eats the ants, because of a near toothless mouth, but Rondon says she eagerly awaits the yearly hunt, when she scrambles about on hands and knees while ants crawl up and down her legs.
"Whenever the culonas come out, I'm there the first day!" she said.
--------
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - New Orleans quarterback Adrian McPherson went to the locker room early in the third quarter after a golf cart ridden by the Titans' mascot hit him at the end of halftime Saturday night.
A Saints spokesman wasn't immediately available for an update on the quarterback, who's heading into his second season.
The mascot was riding on a golf cart and throwing items into the stands during halftime, and was heading off the field when the Saints were returning from their locker room for the third quarter.
The cart hit McPherson, who stayed on the field for a few minutes being checked out by a trainer on the sideline. He then walked off the field.
------
PHOENIX (AP) - Dealing with a strict state law banning junk food and soda, creative educators have thought of a way to feed students chunks of potatoes that aren't fried.
Because of the new state law prohibiting fried food, soft drinks and junk food in K-8 schools during the school day, French fries are off-limits. But now, many school districts think banning French fries - a staple for many youngsters - is simply too much, and are whipping up imitation fries as a consolation prize.
The low-fat impostors go by various names, including oven wedge, oven fry and potato stick. They're baked and have fewer calories.
"They're not bad," said Kelby Lytle, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Payne Junior High School in Queen Creek "But I still like the old ones better. These are mushier."
Chandler Unified and Mesa Public Schools are among the districts that replaced French fries with baked ones this year. Fries were taken off the regular lunch menu at many schools years ago because of federal limits on fat and calories. But schools could get around this restriction by selling them as a side item.
Arizona's new state law requires that all food sold during the school day in K-8 schools meet certain nutrition standards.
A lot of thought went into the baked fries.
Wes Delbridge, a Chandler Unified food and nutrition supervisor, taste-tested different brands and passed out samples to employees to get their opinions. He said the fries had to bake quickly, not turn soggy under warming lights and, above all, taste good. Except for being lighter in color, the final version looks just like a real fry, although it lacks the old fries' crunch and full-flavored, oily taste.
The oven wedges at Payne Junior High have half the fat and 25 percent fewer calories than French fries.
A 4-ounce bag goes for $1, the same price as the French fries used to run.
Some kids say they're pleased with the change.
"They're good. I love them," said seventh-grader Brock Davis.
-------
TUCSON - Authorities followed their noses to nearly a ton of marijuana hidden in a Tucson stash house.
Pima County sheriff's deputies were on a call about 6:30 a.m. Sunday when they smelled fresh marijuana coming from next door, said Deputy Dawn Barkman, a spokeswoman for the department.
The smell got stronger as they approached the house from where the odor was coming, she said.
The deputies contacted the Counter Narcotics Alliance, which obtained a search warrant for the house. When alliance officers entered the house, no one was there.
But they did find 1,835 pounds of marijuana in a room hidden behind a wall, Barkman said.
The house was "obviously a stash house" and had no furniture, she said. The false wall was removed to reveal a door to the room where the marijuana was stored.
The marijuana was taken as evidence.
This stash house was at least the eighth discovered in the Tucson area this year. Tucson is a key logistical point in the illegal drug business, investigators say. Shipments from Mexico make their way to Tucson, where they are stored and distributed to dealers in other cities and states.
-------
PORTAGE, Ind. - A judge fed up with teenage traffic violators is hitting them where it hurts - in the driver's seat - by sentencing them to the embarrassment of riding the school bus.
Porter Superior Judge Julia Jent got the idea after a girl in her court for a moving traffic violation appeared not to take seriously either the offense or the possible fine.
The judge said she knew she had found a way to reach the teen after she ordered her to park her car and ride the school bus.
"The girl cried outside my courtroom. I guess I found the right button," said Jent, who said she's trying to save the lives of young drivers, or at least teach them responsibility.
Jent not only orders teens ages 16 to 18 found guilty of traffic infractions to ride the school bus instead of driving to school, but also warns their parents that they could be held in contempt of court if they drive their child to school.
"Kid does crime, kid does time, and mom and dad can't get them out of it and don't have to feel guilty for not helping," Jent said.
If the teens comply, the case is dismissed.
If they don't -and Jent has been checking with schools and bus drivers to make sure - then the teens' licenses are suspended and they are fined.
------
LACEY, Wash. (AP) - An anti-tailgating strategy on Interstate 5 backfired in the form of unexpected traffic jams, state transportation officials have discovered.
Officials from the state Transportation Department and Washington State Patrol planned to meet Monday to reassess the $35,000 Two Dots To Safety pilot program on a two-mile stretch of the freeway north of this Thurston County town. Similar programs are in use in Maryland, Minnesota and Pennsylvania.
Road crews painted dots 80 feet apart and posted signs telling drivers to stay at least two dots - 160 feet - from the vehicle ahead, based on the traffic safety principle of being at least two seconds behind another vehicle when going 60 mph.
Long backups developed Saturday, the day after the program began, when drivers slowed down because of heavy traffic and continued to maintain the two-dot separation, although that much distance was not necessary at slower speeds, said Lisa Mordock, a Transportation Department spokeswoman.
Road crews covered the signs later Saturday pending reconsideration of the program, including the wording on the signs, Mordock said.
------
GREEN LAKE, Wis. (AP) - A detour that bypasses road work near this popular vacation spot sends motorists more than 50 miles out of their way, even though there's a five-minute alternative nearby.
The construction work is being done about 10 miles west of Green Lake, on a 10-block stretch of state Highway 23 in Princeton.
Locals avoid the construction by taking legal shortcuts through Princeton's downtown, about a five-minute trip.
But those who follow official signs travel a circuitous route spanning about 50 miles along state Highways 73, 21 and 49.
The official detour is long, but it's the best way to divert non-local traffic around the construction zone, said Kevin Garrigan, Department of Transportation manager for the project.
A detour using county highways would be shorter, he said, but many of those highways weren't built under state standards for lane widths and shoulder widths.
Also, not all county highways can safely handle higher traffic levels, he added.
-----
PAHOKEE, Fla. (AP) - A pregnant woman in labor, driving herself to the hospital, crashed her car and gave birth while trapped in the mangled, partially submerged vehicle, authorities said.
Kenyetta Biggs spent more than an hour in the car Sunday morning before she - and her newborn daughter - were rescued and taken to a hospital, authorities said. Her father said she had not told the family she was pregnant.
Biggs, 21, suffered a broken leg but she and the baby she named Myracle were reported to be doing well.
Palm Beach County sheriff's Deputy Stephen Maxwell had been starting his shift Sunday when he noticed a person's head poking out through some tall grass along a canal bank.
The deputy stopped and found Biggs trying to get out of her partially submerged car. She told him her baby was inside.
"As I looked around her I saw the newborn baby laying in the passenger seat with the placenta and umbilical cord still attached," Maxwell said.
Maxwell and another deputy pried open the door to free Biggs. Police said she had been driving to a hospital and a strong contraction caused her to lose control of the car shortly after 5 a.m.
Biggs' father, Kenneth Biggs, said he figured his daughter didn't tell relatives of her pregnancy because she was afraid of their reaction. None of that matters now, he said.
"We are definitely welcoming this baby with open arms," he said.
------
ATHENS, Ga. (AP) - Police have been looking for a disgruntled McDonald's customer who ran into two other customers with her car after a dispute over who was next in line.
Melinda Ann Thomas, 34, and Linda Ann Thomas, 51, were standing in a crowded line around 8:30 a.m. Saturday as they waited to order breakfast, police said. A cashier opened a new line and they stepped to the front of it - a move that angered another customer who was waiting to order.
According to the report, the unidentified woman started yelling at them and threatened to kill them.
The woman then left the restaurant before the Thomases and stayed in the parking lot, sitting in her dark blue Jeep Cherokee, witnesses told police. As the Thomases made their way to their car, witnesses said the woman pulled out of her parking space and sped toward the women, striking them both with the passenger side of the Jeep.
Neither woman was badly injured, the police report said.
The woman is being sought by police on charges of aggravated assault.
On May 23 at a McDonald's in Covington, about 30 miles southwest of Athens, a man ran over two women and their three children, killing a 2-year-old. A suspect is facing murder and aggravated assault charges in the attack, for which authorities have said they have no motive.
------
NIXA, Mo. (AP) - A leisurely Sunday morning turned frightening for one southwest Missouri man when a giant sinkhole opened up and swallowed a portion of his home, including his garage and a car parked inside.
The homeowner was reading the paper when the ground started shifting around 8:30 a.m. Initially, the man thought a tornado was responsible for the loud rumble, said city spokesman Bryan Newberry.
No one was hurt, but at least six other homes in a half-block area were evacuated while geologists evaluated the widening hole. It measured between 55 and 65 feet in diameter and about 75 feet deep.
Newberry said the geologists, including one from Missouri State University, were considering several possibilities, including that an underground cavern gave way.
By early evening, only two homes remained off limits - the partially collapsed residence and another home to the north of it. Newberry said the neighborhood was built in the late 1960s.
"These homes had been there without problems until this point," he said.
-------
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - Single male (red hair, long arms, interests include hanging in trees and grooming) seeks female for long-distance relationship and possibility of meeting up in future to help save species.
Zookeepers in the Netherlands are planning to hook up Dutch and Indonesian orangutans over the Internet and believe the link could at some stage be used as an online dating service where apes could get to know one another and keepers could work out whether they would be compatible mates.
First things first: A romantic dinner for two.
"We are going to set up an Internet connection between Indonesia and Apeldoorn so that the apes can see each other and, by means of pressing a button, be able to give one another food, for example," said Anouk Ballot, a spokeswoman for the Apenheul ape park in the central Dutch city of Apeldoorn.
She said the chance of two orangutans actually mating as a result of the online interaction was small due to the problem of transporting them between the Netherlands and Indonesia. "But I wouldn't rule it out completely," she told The Associated Press.
Ballot said the primary aim of the computer link between Apenheul and an orangutan center on the Indonesian part of Borneo was to raise public awareness of the apes and their plight. Activists say that the spread of palm oil plantations, coupled with logging, especially on Malaysian and Indonesian territories on Borneo island, is threatening animals such as wild orangutans with extinction by chewing up their native jungle habitat.
Ballot said that, in the past, captive orangutans separated by a wall have communicated with one another via a mirror placed in front of the two enclosures. Using Web cams and computer screens is an extension of that, she said.
She stressed that only orangutans who show a natural interest and aptitude will take part. The Apenheul park has 13 orangutans among its collection of apes.
There is still work to be done to set up the Internet connection. "We need to find ape-proof cables and screens," Ballot said, adding that the zoo hopes to have the orangutans online by the end of this year or early 2007.
So next time you run into someone in a chatroom and think "what a baboon," think twice: it just might be.
-------
JERUSALEM (AFP) - One Israeli woman has received an unexpected boost from her breast implants during the Lebanon war -- the silicone embeds saved her life during a Hezbollah rocket attack, a doctor said.
"This is an extraordinary case, but it's a fact that the silicone implants prevented her from a more serious and deeper wound," Jacky Govrin, of the hospital in Nahariya that treated the woman, told army radio Tuesday.
"The young woman went through surgery two years ago to have a larger chest," he said. "During the war she was wounded in the chest by shrapnel" that got stuck in the implants instead of penetrating further.
The woman did not emerge from her ordeal completely unscathed, however.
"The shrapnel was removed but the implant had to be replaced," Govrin said.
------
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) -- Ignore the reports -- the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology said it does not have the body of the legendary Bigfoot.
An Internet site "reported" that one of the mythological creatures had been shot near Slim Buttes on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and that the body was taken to a School of Mines laboratory for studies.
The school has $14 million in research projects under way, but "no facilities dedicated to Bigfoot or other cryptozoology research," the School of Mines and Technology said in a statement.
The body of Bigfoot was supposedly seen and given a ceremonial treatment by three Lakota elders, including Wilmer Mesteth.
"Tell them it's a bunch of baloney," Mesteth said. "I think someone is playing a practical joke."
The people of sun-soaked northern Colombia have been eating ants for centuries. They believe the accurately named "hormiga culona" - big-butt queen ant - is everything from a natural form of Viagra to a protein-rich defense against cancer.
Now the invertebrates are going global: A businessman in Santander province exported more than 880 pounds of the inch-long queen ants last year, many of them to be hand-dipped in Belgian chocolate and sold in fancy packaging at $8 for a half dozen at upscale London department stores like Harrods and Fortnum & Mason.
But even as the delicacy begins to expand beyond Colombia, the ants appear to be dwindling in Santander, and that worries the region's ant-eating bipeds.
This year's harvest, which usually begins around Easter and lasts as late as June, was one of the worst on record, with peasants in the artist colony of Barichara reporting half their normal year's haul.
Entomologists say the winter was unusually harsh and spring rains were late, which may have disturbed the virgin queen ants' nuptial flights - the one time a year when they emerge from their dune-like ant hills to seek a mate and form a new colony. Almost as often, the queens are grabbed by lizards, birds or humans.
Expanding fields of beans, tomatoes and tobacco also have replaced the region's last remaining wilderness and farmers consider the leaf-cutting ants - the species atta laevigata - to be serious pests.
"It's an age-old dilemma for the farmer - should I kill it or eat it?" said Andres Santamaria, who was given a $40,000 grant from Santander's government to develop an environmentally sustainable, export-oriented program for breeding the ants.
Whatever the local conditions, overseas demand by itself won't endanger the ant supply, say those involved in the trade.
"We're never going to eat Colombians out of their ants," said Todd Dalton, a 30-year-old chef in London whose yen for the exotic dish led him to create Edible, a novelty food brand whose products are not for the squeamish.
Last year, Edible sold some 220 pounds of the ants, most of them dipped in chocolate, along with other specialties like lollipops with scorpions inside.
In Colombia, people generally toast the ants in salt at community gatherings and eat them as a snack. But there is innovation. Restaurants in Barichara offer an ant-based spread for bread and an ant-flavored lamb sauce.
Stuffed tortilla "atta wraps" led the menu at a recent tasting at the Montreal Insectarium, an insect museum in Canada.
"In France, they're so highly regarded people started calling them the caviar of Santander," said Stephane Le Tirant, curator at the Montreal Insectarium.
During harvest time in Santander, ants by the bagful are sold at almost every roadside stop. But although relatively abundant, they're not cheap - costing as much as $11 a pound.
The culona is a source of regional pride, its image gracing everything from the logo of a long-distance bus company to the provincial La Culona lottery. It also connects locals to the province's indigenous past, when ants were a part of a complex mating ritual of the Guane Indians.
Rising demand from the outside has helped push up prices that peasant harvesters are getting.
"A few years ago they cost half as much," said Hernando Medina, the province's main exporter.
Not everyone is cashing in. Jorge Raul Diaz maintains 37 ant colonies on a small farm outside Barichara, but in homage to native culture, he gives them away.
During last year's harvest, he organized the first culona-gathering contest, in which 22 participants competed over two months to see who could bag the most insects.
Carmen Rondon, a jovial 71-year-old cleaning woman, finished second and won an electric blender.
She no longer eats the ants, because of a near toothless mouth, but Rondon says she eagerly awaits the yearly hunt, when she scrambles about on hands and knees while ants crawl up and down her legs.
"Whenever the culonas come out, I'm there the first day!" she said.
--------
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - New Orleans quarterback Adrian McPherson went to the locker room early in the third quarter after a golf cart ridden by the Titans' mascot hit him at the end of halftime Saturday night.
A Saints spokesman wasn't immediately available for an update on the quarterback, who's heading into his second season.
The mascot was riding on a golf cart and throwing items into the stands during halftime, and was heading off the field when the Saints were returning from their locker room for the third quarter.
The cart hit McPherson, who stayed on the field for a few minutes being checked out by a trainer on the sideline. He then walked off the field.
------
PHOENIX (AP) - Dealing with a strict state law banning junk food and soda, creative educators have thought of a way to feed students chunks of potatoes that aren't fried.
Because of the new state law prohibiting fried food, soft drinks and junk food in K-8 schools during the school day, French fries are off-limits. But now, many school districts think banning French fries - a staple for many youngsters - is simply too much, and are whipping up imitation fries as a consolation prize.
The low-fat impostors go by various names, including oven wedge, oven fry and potato stick. They're baked and have fewer calories.
"They're not bad," said Kelby Lytle, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Payne Junior High School in Queen Creek "But I still like the old ones better. These are mushier."
Chandler Unified and Mesa Public Schools are among the districts that replaced French fries with baked ones this year. Fries were taken off the regular lunch menu at many schools years ago because of federal limits on fat and calories. But schools could get around this restriction by selling them as a side item.
Arizona's new state law requires that all food sold during the school day in K-8 schools meet certain nutrition standards.
A lot of thought went into the baked fries.
Wes Delbridge, a Chandler Unified food and nutrition supervisor, taste-tested different brands and passed out samples to employees to get their opinions. He said the fries had to bake quickly, not turn soggy under warming lights and, above all, taste good. Except for being lighter in color, the final version looks just like a real fry, although it lacks the old fries' crunch and full-flavored, oily taste.
The oven wedges at Payne Junior High have half the fat and 25 percent fewer calories than French fries.
A 4-ounce bag goes for $1, the same price as the French fries used to run.
Some kids say they're pleased with the change.
"They're good. I love them," said seventh-grader Brock Davis.
-------
TUCSON - Authorities followed their noses to nearly a ton of marijuana hidden in a Tucson stash house.
Pima County sheriff's deputies were on a call about 6:30 a.m. Sunday when they smelled fresh marijuana coming from next door, said Deputy Dawn Barkman, a spokeswoman for the department.
The smell got stronger as they approached the house from where the odor was coming, she said.
The deputies contacted the Counter Narcotics Alliance, which obtained a search warrant for the house. When alliance officers entered the house, no one was there.
But they did find 1,835 pounds of marijuana in a room hidden behind a wall, Barkman said.
The house was "obviously a stash house" and had no furniture, she said. The false wall was removed to reveal a door to the room where the marijuana was stored.
The marijuana was taken as evidence.
This stash house was at least the eighth discovered in the Tucson area this year. Tucson is a key logistical point in the illegal drug business, investigators say. Shipments from Mexico make their way to Tucson, where they are stored and distributed to dealers in other cities and states.
-------
PORTAGE, Ind. - A judge fed up with teenage traffic violators is hitting them where it hurts - in the driver's seat - by sentencing them to the embarrassment of riding the school bus.
Porter Superior Judge Julia Jent got the idea after a girl in her court for a moving traffic violation appeared not to take seriously either the offense or the possible fine.
The judge said she knew she had found a way to reach the teen after she ordered her to park her car and ride the school bus.
"The girl cried outside my courtroom. I guess I found the right button," said Jent, who said she's trying to save the lives of young drivers, or at least teach them responsibility.
Jent not only orders teens ages 16 to 18 found guilty of traffic infractions to ride the school bus instead of driving to school, but also warns their parents that they could be held in contempt of court if they drive their child to school.
"Kid does crime, kid does time, and mom and dad can't get them out of it and don't have to feel guilty for not helping," Jent said.
If the teens comply, the case is dismissed.
If they don't -and Jent has been checking with schools and bus drivers to make sure - then the teens' licenses are suspended and they are fined.
------
LACEY, Wash. (AP) - An anti-tailgating strategy on Interstate 5 backfired in the form of unexpected traffic jams, state transportation officials have discovered.
Officials from the state Transportation Department and Washington State Patrol planned to meet Monday to reassess the $35,000 Two Dots To Safety pilot program on a two-mile stretch of the freeway north of this Thurston County town. Similar programs are in use in Maryland, Minnesota and Pennsylvania.
Road crews painted dots 80 feet apart and posted signs telling drivers to stay at least two dots - 160 feet - from the vehicle ahead, based on the traffic safety principle of being at least two seconds behind another vehicle when going 60 mph.
Long backups developed Saturday, the day after the program began, when drivers slowed down because of heavy traffic and continued to maintain the two-dot separation, although that much distance was not necessary at slower speeds, said Lisa Mordock, a Transportation Department spokeswoman.
Road crews covered the signs later Saturday pending reconsideration of the program, including the wording on the signs, Mordock said.
------
GREEN LAKE, Wis. (AP) - A detour that bypasses road work near this popular vacation spot sends motorists more than 50 miles out of their way, even though there's a five-minute alternative nearby.
The construction work is being done about 10 miles west of Green Lake, on a 10-block stretch of state Highway 23 in Princeton.
Locals avoid the construction by taking legal shortcuts through Princeton's downtown, about a five-minute trip.
But those who follow official signs travel a circuitous route spanning about 50 miles along state Highways 73, 21 and 49.
The official detour is long, but it's the best way to divert non-local traffic around the construction zone, said Kevin Garrigan, Department of Transportation manager for the project.
A detour using county highways would be shorter, he said, but many of those highways weren't built under state standards for lane widths and shoulder widths.
Also, not all county highways can safely handle higher traffic levels, he added.
-----
PAHOKEE, Fla. (AP) - A pregnant woman in labor, driving herself to the hospital, crashed her car and gave birth while trapped in the mangled, partially submerged vehicle, authorities said.
Kenyetta Biggs spent more than an hour in the car Sunday morning before she - and her newborn daughter - were rescued and taken to a hospital, authorities said. Her father said she had not told the family she was pregnant.
Biggs, 21, suffered a broken leg but she and the baby she named Myracle were reported to be doing well.
Palm Beach County sheriff's Deputy Stephen Maxwell had been starting his shift Sunday when he noticed a person's head poking out through some tall grass along a canal bank.
The deputy stopped and found Biggs trying to get out of her partially submerged car. She told him her baby was inside.
"As I looked around her I saw the newborn baby laying in the passenger seat with the placenta and umbilical cord still attached," Maxwell said.
Maxwell and another deputy pried open the door to free Biggs. Police said she had been driving to a hospital and a strong contraction caused her to lose control of the car shortly after 5 a.m.
Biggs' father, Kenneth Biggs, said he figured his daughter didn't tell relatives of her pregnancy because she was afraid of their reaction. None of that matters now, he said.
"We are definitely welcoming this baby with open arms," he said.
------
ATHENS, Ga. (AP) - Police have been looking for a disgruntled McDonald's customer who ran into two other customers with her car after a dispute over who was next in line.
Melinda Ann Thomas, 34, and Linda Ann Thomas, 51, were standing in a crowded line around 8:30 a.m. Saturday as they waited to order breakfast, police said. A cashier opened a new line and they stepped to the front of it - a move that angered another customer who was waiting to order.
According to the report, the unidentified woman started yelling at them and threatened to kill them.
The woman then left the restaurant before the Thomases and stayed in the parking lot, sitting in her dark blue Jeep Cherokee, witnesses told police. As the Thomases made their way to their car, witnesses said the woman pulled out of her parking space and sped toward the women, striking them both with the passenger side of the Jeep.
Neither woman was badly injured, the police report said.
The woman is being sought by police on charges of aggravated assault.
On May 23 at a McDonald's in Covington, about 30 miles southwest of Athens, a man ran over two women and their three children, killing a 2-year-old. A suspect is facing murder and aggravated assault charges in the attack, for which authorities have said they have no motive.
------
NIXA, Mo. (AP) - A leisurely Sunday morning turned frightening for one southwest Missouri man when a giant sinkhole opened up and swallowed a portion of his home, including his garage and a car parked inside.
The homeowner was reading the paper when the ground started shifting around 8:30 a.m. Initially, the man thought a tornado was responsible for the loud rumble, said city spokesman Bryan Newberry.
No one was hurt, but at least six other homes in a half-block area were evacuated while geologists evaluated the widening hole. It measured between 55 and 65 feet in diameter and about 75 feet deep.
Newberry said the geologists, including one from Missouri State University, were considering several possibilities, including that an underground cavern gave way.
By early evening, only two homes remained off limits - the partially collapsed residence and another home to the north of it. Newberry said the neighborhood was built in the late 1960s.
"These homes had been there without problems until this point," he said.
-------
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - Single male (red hair, long arms, interests include hanging in trees and grooming) seeks female for long-distance relationship and possibility of meeting up in future to help save species.
Zookeepers in the Netherlands are planning to hook up Dutch and Indonesian orangutans over the Internet and believe the link could at some stage be used as an online dating service where apes could get to know one another and keepers could work out whether they would be compatible mates.
First things first: A romantic dinner for two.
"We are going to set up an Internet connection between Indonesia and Apeldoorn so that the apes can see each other and, by means of pressing a button, be able to give one another food, for example," said Anouk Ballot, a spokeswoman for the Apenheul ape park in the central Dutch city of Apeldoorn.
She said the chance of two orangutans actually mating as a result of the online interaction was small due to the problem of transporting them between the Netherlands and Indonesia. "But I wouldn't rule it out completely," she told The Associated Press.
Ballot said the primary aim of the computer link between Apenheul and an orangutan center on the Indonesian part of Borneo was to raise public awareness of the apes and their plight. Activists say that the spread of palm oil plantations, coupled with logging, especially on Malaysian and Indonesian territories on Borneo island, is threatening animals such as wild orangutans with extinction by chewing up their native jungle habitat.
Ballot said that, in the past, captive orangutans separated by a wall have communicated with one another via a mirror placed in front of the two enclosures. Using Web cams and computer screens is an extension of that, she said.
She stressed that only orangutans who show a natural interest and aptitude will take part. The Apenheul park has 13 orangutans among its collection of apes.
There is still work to be done to set up the Internet connection. "We need to find ape-proof cables and screens," Ballot said, adding that the zoo hopes to have the orangutans online by the end of this year or early 2007.
So next time you run into someone in a chatroom and think "what a baboon," think twice: it just might be.
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JERUSALEM (AFP) - One Israeli woman has received an unexpected boost from her breast implants during the Lebanon war -- the silicone embeds saved her life during a Hezbollah rocket attack, a doctor said.
"This is an extraordinary case, but it's a fact that the silicone implants prevented her from a more serious and deeper wound," Jacky Govrin, of the hospital in Nahariya that treated the woman, told army radio Tuesday.
"The young woman went through surgery two years ago to have a larger chest," he said. "During the war she was wounded in the chest by shrapnel" that got stuck in the implants instead of penetrating further.
The woman did not emerge from her ordeal completely unscathed, however.
"The shrapnel was removed but the implant had to be replaced," Govrin said.
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RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) -- Ignore the reports -- the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology said it does not have the body of the legendary Bigfoot.
An Internet site "reported" that one of the mythological creatures had been shot near Slim Buttes on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and that the body was taken to a School of Mines laboratory for studies.
The school has $14 million in research projects under way, but "no facilities dedicated to Bigfoot or other cryptozoology research," the School of Mines and Technology said in a statement.
The body of Bigfoot was supposedly seen and given a ceremonial treatment by three Lakota elders, including Wilmer Mesteth.
"Tell them it's a bunch of baloney," Mesteth said. "I think someone is playing a practical joke."
