The first bear hunt in New Jersey in 33 years is scheduled for December, but only 6,300 hunters applied for the 10,000 available hunting permits, meaning that a lot of the Jersey bears are going to be able to use flanking maneuvers.

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Elton John will get $54 million over two years to be the stand-in for Celine Dion at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on Celine's nights off. Celine is getting $100 million over three years. By our calculations Elton has the better deal. Estimating 15 songs per show, Celine receives only $11,111 per warble, whereas he gets $12,000 per number. The diva should bitch about it.
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Daniel James Martin, a 19-year-old sophomore, was killed when the slamdancing at a Virginia Tech party got so intense that a chain reaction propelled five people through a third-story window to the ground below. Can you say "alcohol expulsions"?
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Edna Morris was booted as president of the Red Lobster restaurant chain after her all-you-eat crab dinner promotion triggered a sell-off of shares and wiped out $405.9 million of stock value in one trading session. The dinner was priced at $22.99, but so many people went back for third and fourth helpings, and wholesale crab prices rocketed up so quickly, that the company had to write off $3.3 million for the first quarter. Customers still searching for the "Endless Crab Dinner" will be told by their waiter, "You'll love our fish sticks!" -0- Ten thousand minks were released into the wild by agents of the Animal Liberation Front who broke into a mink ranch in Sultan, Washington. The minks then proceeded to destroy the wild fish population in the area, kill many exotic birds, and, after two months of roaming the dense woods in search of food, cannibalize one another. Thank God they died humanely. 
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  A white tiger mauled Roy Horn, of "Siegfried and Roy" fame, during their nightly show at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas. Roy bopped the tiger on the nose and it lunged at his throat, then dragged him off the stage. Siegfried appeared moments later and canceled the show. The audience, of course, kept expecting both of them to appear at the back of the auditorium in a spotlight with their arms thrown open, riding on elephants.
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Lucio Gutierrez, the president of Ecuador, kicked off a campaign to fight lateness--the practice of the whole country showing up 15 to 30 minutes late for all appointments--with a ceremony at which the nation synchronized its clocks and watches. A civic group estimates that Ecuador loses $700 million because of everyone being late, but the figure might not be accurate because they won't finish running the statistics until tomorrow.
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High-school dropout Jimmy Dean, who left Plainview High School in Plainview, Texas, in 1946 to join the Army Air Corps, then went on to a career as a country singer, TV personality and sausage magnate, was awarded his diploma under a new Texas law that allows people to graduate if they left school to join the military. Next stop for Jimmy: freshman orientation in the pork production department at Texas Tech.
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At a Burger King in Hilltown, Pennsylvania, a female customer punched the counter girl in the face because she was mad about her order not being prepared correctly. The woman escaped, but was being hunted down by policemen equipped with tranquilizer guns.
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Neiman-Marcus unveiled its 2003 Christmas catalog, which features His & Her Robots that can put away laundry, walk the kids to school, carry groceries, walk the dog, take out the trash and answer the door. At $400,000, they're cheaper than a teenager.
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Brian Florence, best known for having sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral while Opie and Anthony gave play-by-play on their WNEW- FM radio show, died of heart failure at his Virginia home. The death was sudden and unexpected, since he was 38 and, obviously, frisky.
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Madonna was slapped with a lawsuit claiming that most of the images in her new "Hollywood" music video were stolen from the works of the late French fashion photographer Guy Bourdin. A week before she made the video, Madonna toured a Bourdin exhibit at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, but she probably forgot all about it.
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Four hundred Japanese tourists hired five hundred Chinese prostitutes and brought them to the Zhuhai International Conference Center Hotel in Zhuhai, China, resulting in a three- day drunken orgy that strained relations between Japan and China and left frat boys all over the world struck dumb with awe.
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The Census Bureau announced that 43.6 million Americans have no health insurance, an increase of 2.4 million in the past year, and put the blame on employers who no longer provide it. Those would be the same employers who told Hillary Clinton in 1993 that she was a crazy woman who was trying to get the government to do what private industry can do better.
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Elia Kazan, one of the greatest stage and film directors of the 20th century, died at 94, and the media couldn't help harping on his testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which is still held against him even in death. His moral dilemma, dramatized in his film "On the Waterfront," involved testifying truthfully about who he knew to be a member of the Communist Party in the 1930s, while he himself was a member of the Communist Party. He had recanted his Communist beliefs and decided to name names. Given that he did this after Stalin had been leading the Communist Party for almost 20 years indicates to us that it wasn't much different from someone today identifying people who have attended Al Qaeda training camps, but for some reason the testimony was held against him to the end of his life and beyond. When he was given an honorary Academy Award in 1999, many Academy members withheld their applause. What you can't argue with, however, is "A Streetcar Named Desire," "East of Eden," "A Face in the Crowd," "Splender in the Grass" and--on Broadway--the original productions of "All My Sons," "Streetcar," "Death of a Salesman," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Sweet Bird of Youth." Oddly enough, the two Arthur Miller plays--"All My Sons" and "Death of a Salesman"--are among the most anti-capitalist plays ever written, indicating to us that perhaps this complicated man was more interested in art than politics.
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Little Joe the gorilla busted out of his enclosure at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston, grabbed a 2-year-old girl from a zoo worker, threw the child to the ground, stomped on her, scaled a moat and led police on a two-hour chase through the Roxbury neighborhood before being spotted at a bus stop and felled by tranquilizers and taken back to prison. Little Joe, who has escaped once before, will be kept in the primate equivalent of Guantanamo until further notice.
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State legislator Marty Seifert of Marshall, Minnesota, proposed trimming the state's $4.2 billion budget deficit by feeding each prison inmate "a tablespoon of lard" instead of a meal. The daily meal cost per inmate is currently a steep $3.07, but by using lard to satisfy national standards for calorie intake, that figure could be cut to, oh, about 3 cents. How can they afford not to do it?
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A University of Maine food laboratory announced the perfection of a blueberry hamburger, cherry turkey and prune chicken through a blending process that resulted in all kinds of fairly horrifying fruit-and-meat combinations, but could possibly be of enormous value at the Minnesota State Prison.
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Beetle larvae in cheese, chocolate-covered crickets and tasty mealworms were all served up at the Ohio State Fair as part of a project sponsored by Bugman Educational Enterprises of Columbus. Next test market: Stillwater, Minnesota.
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Kobe Bryant lost his endorsement deal with Ferrero, an Italian company that makes a hazelnut-and-chocolate spread called Nutella. The company said they will no longer be doing consumer marketing, preferring to sell directly to Minnesota state inmates.
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Scenes from domestic life: 
* David Quinn of Rockville Centre, New York, was steamed when his girlfriend's daughter was raped, so he tried to hire someone to mutilate the rapist's private parts, according to police. Unfortunately, the mutilator-for-hire turned out to be an undercover cop, and the offending member remains intact at press time.
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Federal District Judge Lee R. West of Oklahoma shot down the national do-not-call list after telemarketers sued to put a stop to it. West ruled that the Federal Trade Commission had overreached its authority in creating the list. Later that night Judge West was known to be seriously considering changing his long distance provider, purchasing a vacuum cleaner, and ordering several new magazines.
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Lloyd Forsythe and Mary Halford were married at the Wal-Mart in Houma, Louisiana, in front of 300 guests and 3,000 boxes of Beanee Weenies.
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The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, which has jutted into the Arctic Ocean from Canada for 3,000 years, has started breaking up, destroying a freshwater lake and a plankton ecosystem and basically becoming a bunch of jumbo ice cubes bobbing around in the water like crumbling olives in a dirty martini. Don't think about this when you start your car.
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Five thousand minks were being hunted through the streets of Kokkola, Finland, after they were released from a fur farm by parties unknown. Animal rights groups have been rounding them up and carting them off, explaining that, to prevent the animal from becoming a mink stole, they stole mink.
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Genshin Fujinami, a Buddhist priest, finished a 24,800-mile running ritual in Japan that dates from the eighth century and is believed to be a path to enlightenment. It took Fujinami seven years to complete the spiritual marathon, and afterwards he pronounced himself "satisfied." He had attained such a high karmic state that he constantly repeated the unanswerable mystical question, "Nike or Puma?"
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Four peacocks on the ranch of Hunter S. Thompson in Woody Creek, Colorado, were found dead on the road, prompting the shotgun-loving writer to vow vengeance against the likely suspects, a pack of feral marauding wild dogs. Magazine editors, take note: this is already worth a $5,000 advance.
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After 25 years, the ski resort of Vail, Colorado, is getting rid of its Saab patrol cars, even though Saab was taking a loss on the $319-per-month leases. The new squad car: a Ford Explorer. Now that's just wrong.
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A man hung himself from a tree on President Bush's motorcade route to the United Nations, but his timing was off. Quick- responding police had him cut down by 7:30 a.m., and the Prez didn't pass by until 8:55. Location was excellent, though: two car lengths.
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The famous underwater dancing mermaids of Weeki Wachee Springs, 55 miles north of Tampa, Florida, got a reprieve when the Southwest Florida Water Management District backed off its threat to close the park, which has been staging the mermaid shows since 1947. They said problems with the sewer system might contaminate the springs themselves, but the brave mer-girls obviously aren't going to let a little pollution stop them from swanning and piking for tourists.
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Twenty-seven reserve pilots in the Israeli Air Force signed a petition saying they would refuse to bomb Palestinian areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, because the taking of innocent civilian life is "illegal and immoral." The petition follows a similar statement signed by hundreds of reserve soldiers who refuse to serve in the West Bank or Gaza. The recipient of the letters, Major General Dan Halutz, was sharply critical of the renegade soldiers, saying they should not take political positions about those pesky baby-and-grandma issues that come up in any war.
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As a symbolic protest against affirmative action policies, the Young Conservatives of Texas held a bake sale on the campus of Southern Methodist University, advertising cookies at $1 a piece for white men, 75 cents for white women, 50 cents for Hispanics, and 25 cents for blacks. This little act of political theater has been carried on at several colleges across the country since February, but at SMU it lasted only 45 minutes. Weenie university authorities shut it down after a black student complained. He wanted the right to pay full price, or, uh, something.
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Matthew Scott, a 19-year-old British backpacker, leapt off a cliff to escape his Colombian kidnappers, then wandered through the jungle for ten days in heavy rain before being rescued by an Indian tribe. He left behind seven other kidnapped tourists who were snatched at the ruins of Ciudad Perdida on September 12. He appeared to be healthy enough when interviewed from his hospital bed, despite the prolonged lack of tea.
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Sarah Ward, a 66-year-old grandmother in Newbury, Massachusetts, was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for downloading songs on KaZaA, including Trick Daddy's "I'm a Thug." Since Sarah uses her Macintosh computer to email her kids and grandkids--and since a Macintosh can't run the KaZaA file-sharing service--the full legal weight of the music industry failed to extract from her the usual little symbolic settlement that they seem to be going after. The association withdrew the case as "a gesture of good faith." How about a gesture of "We're morons"?
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Al Goldstein's Screw magazine was kicked out of its offices on West 36th Street in New York after failing to pay six or seven months rent. Screw editor Chip Maloney quit the magazine after two of his paychecks bounced. The magazine missed two issues. Goldstein's late-night cable talk show "Midnight Blue" has been cancelled for failure to pay his bill to Time Warner Cable. But Goldstein, speaking to The New York Post from his home in Pompano, Florida, said not to worry, he had things under control, and there was a good explanation: his Mafia distributor screwed him.
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Guantanamo Prison Camp may be infested with as many as five spies, according to the Pentagon, which arrested a senior airman and charged him with espionage. Ahmad al-Halabi, an Arabic translator at Gitmo, was caught with a dirty laptop, as was James Yee, the Army Muslim chaplain who was detained earlier on suspicion of spying for detained Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners. Nice screening system, guys! You forgot to check the employees who speak their language.
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President Bush went to his favorite place--the United Nations--to make a speech asking other nations to help rebuild Iraq. He got polite applause and didn't bring up the whole U.S. government bankruptcy thing.
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The owners of Southern Comfort redesigned the bottle for the first time since 1936 and launched a new ad campaign aimed at a youthful audience. Invented by New Orleans bartender M.W. Heron in 1874, the unique blend of spices and fruits is not just for redneck grandmas anymore.
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Unlike many humans, who frolicked in the eccentric surf caused by Hurricane Isabel and died as a result, the famous wild ponies of Assateague Island simply moved to sheltered high ground well in advance of the storm, stayed there until it had passed, then moved down into the marsh and started grazing. All the ponies are excellent swimmers, but they decided, under the circumstances, they shouldn't go in the water. Wimps.
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The Beatles sued Apple Computer, claiming that a 1991 agreement with Apple founder Steve Jobs gave him the right to use the name Apple only as long as he didn't go into the music business. (The Beatles interests are managed by Apple Corps Ltd., which was formed in 1968.) In April Apple Computer launched the iTunes Music Store, through which music can be downloaded for a free. So far Apple has sold 10 million downloads in four months. In court, Apple Computer is expected to use the "It was a long time ago" defense.
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Scenes from domestic life: 
* Liliana Valera of Brooklyn became angry when her 4-year- old son Carlos threw up during a Christmas Eve dinner. Suffering from intestinal problems and tuberculosis, weighing only 37 pounds, he obviously needed a good beating with her slippers to help his appetite, according to police accounts. When paramedics were called to her apartment three days later, they found the boy not breathing. An autopsy revealed numerous bruises, broken ribs, lacerations and a ruptured bowel that led to intestinal collapse- -all the result of efforts to have a nice family dinner together.
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The Los Angeles City Council voted 13-0 to ban lap dancing in strip clubs. The new law, which could go into effect as early as October, would require dancers to remain six feet from customers and would ban direct tipping. Several strippers had testified before the council, claiming that their livelihoods would be destroyed, but the cold-hearted legislators gave them the equivalent of an icy Kamikaze poured down their thong bikinis by a drunk surfer with a mullet.
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Sheb Wooley died in Nashville, victim of a one-eyed one- horned flying purple people eater.
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Richard A. Grasso resigned as chairman of the New York Stock Exchange after being criticized for receiving $139.5 million in defferred pay and retirement benefits. Everybody agreed he did a great job, they just didn't like the position of that decimal point.
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In Indonesia you can buy Sony underwear and Rolex cigarettes, according to the Wall Street Journal. It's one thing to make knockoffs, but in Jakarta they apparently put brands on things that the real company doesn't even make. Lately, though, the legal system is reacting to international pressure and starting to enforce trademark and copyright infringement laws, but in the meantime we have our eye on a very attractively priced case of Marlboro malt liquor.
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First a University of Iowa student, John Roche, was arrested on charges of leaving a message at the home of Kobe Bryant's 19- year-old accuser, threatening to sexually assault and kill her. Then a Swiss man who claimed to be part of the Russian Mafia was arrested for allegedly trying to shake down Kobe Bryant for $3 million in exchange for a promise to kill the girl. Patrick Graber, who goes by the name "Yuri," is a 31-year-old bodybuilding coach with an expired Swiss visa, and he shaves his head to look like a tough guy. But can he yodel?
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When sixth-grader Christine Zuniga showed up at the Bronx Preparatory Charter School in blue jeans instead of the required uniform--a collared polo shirt and skirt--the school principal, Marina Bernard Damiba, made a skirt out of a garbage bag and forced her to wear it to class all day. The girl's mother, Joy Vasquez, was initially angry, but then met with the principal and decided to side with the school. In an interview with the New York Daily News, she said, "She got a lesson out of it." What? No lawsuit? What is the world coming to?
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Wesley K. Clark, the ex-general whose plan for stopping house-to-house bayonetting of civilians in Kosovo was to bomb Belgrade, announced for the Democratic presidential race in Little Rock, Arkansas, to confuse the enemy. The first plank in his platform is surgical air strikes against anyone who's bothering us.
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Anastasia Volochkova, an ice cream addict, was kicked out of the Bolshoi Theater ballet company in Moscow for being too fat for her partners to lift. In America they'd just call it "conceptual dance."
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Donald Rumsfeld, while touring Afghanistan and Iraq, told reporters that news reports in the Middle East, especially on Al Jazeera, are making it difficult to win the war on terrorism. He said that some foreign news networks report the remarks of American senators opposed to the war, as well as documentaries on past situations in which Americans withdrew from battle after taking a blow--in Somalia, Lebanon, Haiti, etc. This makes it easier to raise money for terrorist organizations. Summing up all his remarks: those darn Middle Easterners have TV sets, too!
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The "Bridges of Madison County" arsonist was it again. Exactly one year after the famous Cedar Bridge in Madison County, Iowa, was burned, two more bridges were set afire. First the covered bridge near Delta was destroyed. Two days later the Hogback Bridge in Winterset was set on fire, but passers-by put out the flames. There are only five covered bridges left in Madison County, but they're all staked out by a special S.W.A.T. team dispatched by the Lifetime Network to back up John Walsh.
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Michael Jackson sold tickets at $5,000 per person for a day at Neverland Valley Ranch, his 2,700-acre estate near Santa Barbara, California, which features bumper cars, a merry-go- round, a Ferris wheel, a zoo with giraffes, monkeys, llamas and camels, an arcade, gardens, a movie theater, a train, lakes, a wax museum, the "magic tree" Jackson sits in to write his songs, and a fruitcake.
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Two thousand protesting students swarmed through the streets of Cancun, Mexico, where the World Trade Organization was meeting, then had pina coladas.
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Vicky Rutter was mauled by a deer named Popcorn at the city zoo in Northfield, New Jersey, when she walked through the deer pen after cleaning the cougar cages. Officials could offer no explanation for the deer's aggressive behavior, except the obvious attempt to prove that anything a cougar can do, he can do better.
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American soldiers fired on Iraqi policemen in the town of Falluja, killing at least eight cops as they were chasing a stolen BMW. There were conflicting accounts as to why the soldiers would kill cops, but it will all be explained on Fox TV's "Wildest Police Videos."
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The federal government went after Tommy Chong, of Cheech & Chong fame, for selling bongs and drug paraphernalia over the Internet, and managed to get a verdict of nine months prison and a $20,000 fine for the world's most famous stoner. The conviction was in Pittsburgh, the new federal prosecution center for morals crimes. (It's the same prosecutor who's going after the Los Angeles porn movie business.) Chong's defense: he doesn't remember.
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The cabinet of Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon voted to expel Yasser Arafat from the country, raising a trivia question: Does he have a passport, and what could it possibly look like?
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Everybody should have a hobby. Steve Gough decided to walk the length of Britain naked, starting at Land's End in the southwest and bound for John o'Groats, Scotland, 847 miles to the north. Unfortunately he was arrested in St. Ives and charged with breaching the peace. Fortunately the charges were dropped, and so were his drawers as he continued his trek. Three days later another interruption occurred when he was arrested in Newquay for indecent behavior. That charge was dropped for lack of evidence, and his pants once again went into his backpack. At last report he was in the Inverness jail, awaiting an October 3 trial on a breach of peace charge. We hear crowds are already forming in John o'Groats, where, you might imagine, it can get extremely chilly in October.
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Unabomber Ted Kaczynski filed suit in Sacramento against the federal government, demanding the return of all his belongings confiscated from his Montana shack when it was raided by FBI agents. One of the items he wants returned: a pipe bomb. For sentimental reasons only, of course.
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A Jim Beam warehouse containing 19,000 barrels of bourbon burned to the ground in Bardstown, Kentucky, sending flames 100 feet into the air and resulting in 47 D.W.I. convictions of people passing by on the Interstate.
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Cindy Lenz of Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, bought a $49 inflatable swimming pool at Wal-Mart for her children--and received a citation from a building inspector who told her she needs a building permit for a swimming pool or else she could be fined. The pool is 18 inches deep, an obvious safety hazard to disoriented gnats.
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Scenes from domestic life: * Joan Harris of Port St. Lucie, Florida, kept telling her husband Robert to stop watching the football game on TV and help her prepare for Hurricane Isabel, but he couldn't tear himself away from the game--until she flung a knife at him, stabbing him in the right leg, according to police. Hasn't the woman ever heard of halftime?

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Brianna LaHara, a 12-year-old seventh grader who lives with her mom in public housing in New York, was sued by the Recording Industry of America for downloading Christina Aguilera songs and other music through the KaZaA file-sharing system. Her mom Sylvia Torres had paid the $29 price of the service and considered hiring a lawyer. But faced with massive fines and judgments as part of a $150 million national lawsuit, she quickly agreed to the RIAA's settlement offer--of $2,000. Brianna had shown a vicious disregard for the law, downloading Mariah Carey, the themes to "Family Matters" and "Full House," and the often- pirated classic "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands." We hope she's learned her lesson and can be rehabilitated before it's too late.
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Suhayla Sorel was going topless at Chandler Park Family Aquatic Park in Detroit when security guards ordered her to cover up. There wasn't much to cover up, however, as Suhayla is three years old. She needs to learn to obey the law now so that later she doesn't become a hardened music downloader.
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Barbie was declared "a symbol of decadence" by the Islamic religious police in Saudi Arabia. Sheik Abdulla al-Merdas of Riyadh, speaking for the religious jurists, said Barbie is a product of "the perverted West" and that possession of the dolls- -already a crime--might lead women to "refuse to wear the clothes we are used to." This is not necessarily true, because we're certain that, given enough research and development time, Mattel could accessorize that burqa.
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J-Lo and B-Af postponed the wedding. Uh-oh.
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Rapper 50 Cent, who has been shot nine times and stabbed once, was getting out of a sport-utility limo (no idea) in Jersey City, New Jersey, when shots rang out and he was forced to run into the lobby of the Doubletree Hotel to escape assassination. Cops recovered ten bullet casings from two different guns and speculated that the attempted hit was payback for the previous week's killing of rapper D.O. Cannon in Queens. Cannon was part of the posse of Ja Rule, who was shooting the movie "Cook Out" just a few blocks from the attempted 50 Cent hit, and Rule may think the Cannon hit was a result of the previous hit on Shadaha (Jah) Bey, who was a member of 50 Cent's posse. Meanwhile, 50 Cent is shuttling back and forth between the Doubletree and the Hyatt in Jersey City while he makes a music video, and Ja Rule is also staying at the Hyatt while filming his movie, and, uh, they're apparently arguing about who gets quicker room service.
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Charles McKinley shipped himself from New York to Dallas by stowing away in an airline cargo crate. He had a cell phone during the 15-hour journey through Kitty Hawk Cargo, but the phone didn't work, and his friends wouldn't have believed him anyway.
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After falling behind Detroit in recent years, Washington, D.C., reclaimed its title as the murder capital of the nation, with 45 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2002 and on pace to beat that number in 2003. Police Chief Charles Ramsey was recently given a five-year contract extension, to make sure no momentum is lost.
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KTVB-TV in Boise, Idaho, is refusing to air "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," which is a shame, because have you seen some of those caps they wear out there? * Continuing America's obsession with all-gay all-the-time television, ABC is considering a new show being pitched as "a gay 'Hart to Hart'" called "Mr. and Mr. Nash," featuring a pair of gay interior designers who moonlight as private eyes. In the first episode they bust up the West Hollywood Mafia and foil a plan to vandalize David Geffen's beach house in Malibu.
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The original cast of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" will be reunited for a March 2004 show written by series creator Carl Reiner, provided "everyone's in good health," according to Reiner. Inside sources say that the plot involves the 48-year-old Richie coming home with a new friend from Greenwich Village and telling Rob and Laura that he wants to work in Broadway revues on cruise ships. Laura puts on her old dancing tights and teaches him the barefoot beach dance from "Carousel," but Rob is furious and insists he learn some responsibility and join an NGO in Sierra Leone. The situation inspires a sketch on "The Alan Brady Show" in which Alan plays an African tribal chieftain and Richie and his friend are allowed to don muscleboy loin cloths and carry spears.
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Sixteen-year-old Daniel Robbins of Great Falls, Montana, ran over a jogger so he could have sex with the corpse, according to police. The victim suffered a broken pelvis and injuries to her vertebrae and ribs, and Robbins ended up in a jail where even the creepiest guys on the cell block decided there wasn't really a category for this one.
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Paul Alexander of Cape May County, New Jersey, went on "The Jerry Springer Show" with his 22-year-old girlfriend and talked about the 7-year-old child they had together. Result: statutory rape charges. He forgot to do the math.
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Jack Ass, the man who legally changed his name from Robert Craft in 1997 and founded the Hearts Across America campaign to get people to put up big red hearts along highways, shot himself with a hunting rifle, thereby becoming eligible for a segment on "Jackass."
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Multi-millionaire lottery winner Jack Whittaker left $545,000 in a briefcase on the front seat of his sport utility vehicle while he enjoyed the show at the Pink Pony topless club in Cross Lanes, West Virginia. When he emerged, the briefcase was gone. Amazingly, sheriff's deputies later recovered it behind a Dumpster in the parking lot. That's the kind of luck you have to have to do something impossible, like win the lottery.
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Bernie Barker is the world's only 63-year-old stripper, working as a cage dancer at Miami Gold in North Miami Beach, and wearing nothing but a fluorescent yellow G-string when he dances at Club LaBare, also in North Miami Beach. He's won 30 male strip competitions against guys young enough to be his grandchildren. We hear his Security Guard Fantasy Outfit is especially fetching.
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An opinion poll in North Korea revealed that dictator Kim Jong-il has an approval rating of 100 percent. Despite an economic slide and a nuclear-weapons confrontation with the United States, Kim's rating went neither up nor down over the past year.
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Ivan Zudropov is offering Hitler's mummified penis for sale at a bargain price of $12,000. He claims his father Vasily was a Red Army soldier in World War II who was part of the first group of Russians to take over Hitler's command bunker in 1945. Hitler's body was stripped, kicked, punched, hacked up, and various souvenirs were taken. For years they've been trying to come up with a sequel to the cult classic "They Saved Hitler's Brain." So "They Saved . . ." Naw.
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Newlyweds gain an average of five to 30 pounds during the first year of marriage, according to psychologist Catherine Cardinal of Santa Monica, California. This is still no reason to answer the "Have I gained weight?" question honestly.
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A riot broke out between the bride's family and the groom's family at a Sicilian wedding in San Giorgio, Italy. Dozens were arrested, and the dispute is expected to be sorted out and settled sometime within the next 400 years.
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Scenes from domestic life:
* Eighteen-year-old Christopher Bensinger of Woodbury, New Jersey, was upset when his girlfriend told him she'd been molested by the track coach at Deptford High, so he encouraged her to file charges--and she did. The coach's son, William Corsey IV, took revenge by stabbing Christopher to death. If the coach can have her, then nobody can--or something like that.

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Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder quaffed a couple of those giant brewskis that look like a whole beer pitcher in one glass and chortled about how the United States is coming to them to get a little help in Iraq. They said no, of course, just on general principle, but said they might say yes later. The key words here are "pretty please."
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Twenty-three previously unknown illustrations by Beatrix Potter were discovered in a private collection in Scotland and have been valued at $400,000, because the world can never have enough pictures of mice, kittens and bunny rabbits.
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A suitcase left in Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport contained 2,000 baboon noses, apparently lost in transit between Nigeria and the U.S., where they were to be used in traditional healing ceremonies. Travellers had complained of the stink, but at least it was that end of the baboon.
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Andrew Krieger, an international currency trader, wanted to build a private tennis court next door to his $4.2 million French-style mansion in Alpine, New Jersey, but he felt like he didn't have enough space, so he tried to buy the public parkland next door. When the Palisades Interstate Park Commission turned him down, he went ahead and knocked down hundreds of trees in the park anyway, then wrecked an old stone wall, damaged several streams, and bulldozed a mile-long hiking trail, according to police. Now facing criminal charges of theft, mischief and conspiracy, plus an Attorney General lawsuit for wanton destruction of parkland and disturbance of the natural habitat, Krieger has decided he doesn't want to live in Alpine anymore, so he's bought a new palace in nearby Franklin Lakes. Squirrels, beware.
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Arnold was Schwarzenegged.
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The Arnold Schwarzenegger campaign for governor in California suffered a slight setback when someone dug up his 1977 interview with Oui magazine, in which he said: "Once in Gold's Gym there was a black girl who came out naked. Everybody jumped on her and took her upstairs, where we all got together. But not everybody, just the guys who can f--- in front of other guys." Arnold's response: Hey, it was a long time ago. What's remarkable is, it worked! If only Bill Clinton had known this ten years ago.
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When Charles Taylor stepped down as president of Liberia and fled the country, he forgot to mention he was taking $3 million of the government's funds with him, according to the United Nations. That wacky Chuck, he always did have a problem balancing his checkbook.
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After economists predicted a modest gain of 12,000 jobs in August, signaling the beginning of the economic recovery, the figures came in: the nation actually lost 93,000 jobs. Can you pronounce "Euro"?
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Officials in the Bush administration leaked estimates to the press that it might take another $60 billion to prop up Iraq through 2004, since the oil fields have been sabotaged, looting has destroyed part of the infrastructure, and the troops there are costing $3.9 billion a month. The President then blew that out of the water in a televised address requesting not 60 but $87 billion, which would, of course, add to a deficit that is already $500 billion. For those whose eyes glaze over when figures like these are used, let's just say: never before in history. It's that whole "aftermath of war" thing.
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Miguel Estrada, nominated in 2001 as President Bush's appointment to a federal appeals court, ran out of steam in the face of a Democratic filibuster and decided that filling out a job application for two years looks bad on your resume.
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Doctors in Montreal said that male pregnancy is now theoretically possible after an ectopic pregnancy--a baby growing outside the womb of 30-year-old Dionne Grant--was carried to term, resulting in a healthy baby boy. Dr. Togas Tulandi, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Jewish General Hospital, said there's no scientific barrier to implanting an embryo in a man's abdomen, then delivering the fully formed baby through surgery. The implications are astounding, especially for Siegfried and Roy.
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Dr. Nabil Hilmi, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Al-Zaqaziq in Egypt, is preparing a lawsuit against "all the Jews of the world" in order to recover the gold, jewelry, cooking utensils, silver ornaments, clothing and other items stolen from Egyptian homes when the Jews were driven out of Egypt by the Pharaoh of Biblical times. Since the Jews admit the crime, and in fact celebrate it in their holy books, Hilmi thinks the reparations case is a slam dunk. He suggests rescheduling the debt over a thousand years, with cumulative interest, but he'll settle for the Jews dropping their own reparations lawsuits, which he says are frivolous. A billion shekels is not what it used to be.
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A trained hawk on anti-pigeon patrol attacked a chihuahua in New York's Bryant Park. The falconer employed by the city to control the pigeon population explained that his hawk probably thought he was attacking a rat, because the chihuahua had gone into the shrubbery. Dog owners were appalled, until they found it was a yip-yap weeniedog.
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Frank J. Koller, a parole officer in Camden, New Jersey, has sold 1,500 mullet wigs out of his home in Hamilton Township this year. He offers four models, all for $19.99: the Landscaper (also known as "the Ape Drape"), the Trash ("Kentucky Waterfall"), the Class of 1987 ("the Nebraska Neck Warmer"), and the Female Mullet ("the Bingo"). What, no Billy Ray Cyrus?
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Jodie Swallow, winner of the London Triathlon, can no longer run in World Cup events unless the logo on her jersey is measured by officials. All advertisements must be no more than 5 centimeters high, but her breasts are so big that, well, you get this stretching effect and International Triathlon Union officials are scandalized--not by the breasts, but what those puppies can do to a logo.
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A three-story-tall billboard of porn star Jenna Jameson went up in Times Square with the caption "Who Says They Cleaned Up Times Square?" Jenna has her hands over her breasts and teensy- tinsy panties on. It's not like we haven't seen it.
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The new 20-dollar bill has a blue eagle and peach colors next to Andrew Jackson's face, and the "20" in the lower right corner changes from copper to green according to the light. On the reverse are yellow "20s" floating in the margins. Unfortunately, it's still not worth 20 Euros.
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Kjell Henning Bjoernstad, a Norwegian Elvis impersonator, shattered the Guinness World Record for non-stop singing of Elvis classics (25 hours, 33 minutes, 30 seconds) by crooning a full 30 hours, then pitching forward head first in his bathroom and dying of a coronary. Only kidding about that last part.
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In other Elvis news, a Chicago company launched the first all-Elvis digital music channel, offering 2,000 Elvis tracks. None of them are in Norwegian.
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Scenes from domestic life:
* Paul Hoffman of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, wasn't too fond of his girlfriend's 18-year-old son Chester Lee Miller, and apparently the boy's mother Lyda wasn't either. According to police, Mom and her lover beat the boy, fed him only scraps, and made him stand in a corner for hours--until he ran away, took a two-day bus ride to Florida in search of his father, and knocked on a stranger's door asking for help. By that time he weighed only 62 pounds. He died in a Milton, Florida, hospital, after his stomach ruptured, causing an infection. Paul and Lyda are both in jail, expecting to argue in their defense that the boy brought it on himself by failing to eat any scraps during those two days on the bus.
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Madonna was French-kissing all the girls at the MTV Video Music Awards, including Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. We're shocked! She's old enough to be their surrogate lesbian mother!
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Prince William, visiting a Maasai village in Kenya while on vacation, was taught by a tribal elder how to use a hunting spear. He then used his newfound knowledge to kill a small antelope called a dik-dik with a single fling. Animal rights groups in England went nuts, even though the dik-dik became part of a Maasai stew that, we are told, is quite tasty when combined with elephant fillet.
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Charles Bronson, Mister Death Wish, finally got his wish at the age of 81 when he succumbed to pneumonia in Los Angeles. The punks and hippies never got him.
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Cameron Diaz earned $41 million in the year 2001, making her the highest-paid actress. Besides, she always comes out of her trailer.
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The 27 Cistercian monks of Ile Saint-Honorat, an island off the coast of France near Cannes, have planted a hedge to prevent tourists from entering their property. It's their latest attempt to stave off the hordes of sunbathers who arrive every day, leave trash on the island, and act like they're on the Riviera or something.
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The Faith Temple Church of the Apostolic Faith in Milwaukee had a special prayer service to cure an autistic 8-year-old boy, restraining him by wrapping him in sheets while the congregation prayed over him for an hour. At the end of that time, the boy ceased to move, because he was dead. Bishop David Hemphill Sr. then pronounced the service a success. "The boy just had a problem in his mind, and what we were doing was asking God to fix it," said the bishop. "He chose to fix it by taking him back home to him." Oh, okay, well, in that case.
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Norbert Vollertsen, a German doctor and human rights activist, was attacked by South Koren police and injured while launching helium balloons containing radios into North Korea. Two days later, wearing a neck brace and using crutches, Vollertsen took his place in a protest group outside the World University Games, but he was picked out of the crowd and rushed by seven or eight riot police, knocked out, and carried on a stretcher to the hospital, where his injuries included a muscle contusion on his neck, a heavily damaged left leg, back pain, and the inability to walk or talk. In case you're confused, Vollertsen is protesting against North, not South, Korea, and he's doing it Inside South Korea. The South Korean police obviously have a very strict interpretation of "love thy neighbor."
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Oslo is the most expensive city in the world, according to a new survey by UBS, the Swiss bank. Rounding out the top ten, in order, are Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York, Zurich, Copenhagen, London, Basel, Chicago and Geneva. Of the 70 cities ranked, the cheapest in the world are Buenos Aires and Bombay. Which means that, for the price of an apartment in Norway, you could own an office building in Bombay. But you wouldn't be able to order that tasty raw shark finger sandwich with your $7 beer.
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=  Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was suspended from the bench as the Ten Commandments Slab Case started to reach theater-of- the-absurd proportions, with Bible-thumping Christians literally thumping their Bibles as they gathered at the Supreme Court building in Montgomery to support the jurist who is defying court orders and staking his whole career on the right to display the Ten Commandments in the courthouse. What are we missing here? If the highest state jurist refuses a court order, doesn't that pretty much throw all law out the window? Must be one of those Pentecostal things.
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India has been in an uproar for two weeks over whether it's safe to drink Coke and Pepsi. A report by the respected Center for Science and Environment found unsafe levels of pesticides in both drinks, causing Parliament to ban the colas in its cafeteria and protesters to symbolically smash Coke and Pepsi bottles in nationwide demonstrations. Sales declined 10 to 75 percent in various parts of the country. The government then conducted its own tests, after which the Minister of Health and Family Welfare announced that the pesticide levels were safe according to the standards of India. Especially disturbed were tourists who, having been warned not to drink the water, had been drinking the Cokes.
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A mayoral commission is recommending that foreign citizens be allowed to vote in New York City elections, because they already outnumber us anyway. 
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Alrosa, the Russian mining company, announced it had extracted a 301.55-carat diamond, lemon in color, that was part of an even larger diamond before they hacked it out. According to international trade agreements, diamonds this size must be sold directly to Elizabeth Taylor.
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  In "Quest for Saddam," a new video game introduced at a gamers convention in Los Angeles, the goal is to hunt down Saddam with weapons that become increasingly powerful as President Bush's approval rating goes down. At one point a Sean Connery impersonator says "Do you know the difference between the Republican Guard and falafel? Falafel has killed more people." One gamer told Wireless Flash, "We bagged the sons, and we'll Bag Dad too." Obviously the ultimate weapon for killing Saddam in this game would be Jackie Mason.
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Rural Ottawa County, Michigan, offers a brochure for newcomers featuring a scratch-and-sniff section that reveals . . . the aroma of manure. "The whole purpose," explains Mark Knudsen, director of planning and grants, "is that people should not move into a rural area unless they're willing to accept and embrace the practices that happen on a farming operation." A similar brochure offered by New York City features . . . no, you don't wanna know.
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In suburban Melbourne, a man lay dead in the front seat of his car as a parking inspector put a ticket on his windshield. The dead man has 30 days to appeal.
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In other corpse news, a man in Kobe, Japan, lived in the same apartment with a dead woman for a week. "I didn't know what to do so I stayed there with her," explained the man, who was taken into custody by police and questioned closely about why he didn't report the body so the proper parking citation could be issued.
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Omar Sharif, of "Dr. Zhivago" fame, got into an argument with the roulette croupier while gambling at the Enghien-les- Bains Casino near Paris, and when police were called, he headbutted a cop. Although he was given a one-month suspended sentence and a $1,700 fine, his question was never answered, namely "You call that a number?" (Arguments over roulette are kind of difficult to imagine.)
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A stripper at The School House in Jackson, Michigan, allegedly squirted a customer in the face with breast milk--one of the hazards of the job for nursing exotic dancers--but charges were not filed after police were unable to ascertain whether the patron's claim of assault was a squirt or merely an unintentional drip. The statutes are ambiguous on nude performance lactation.
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Scenes from domestic life: 
* Vernell Jones of Philadelphia, known around the courthouse as The Black Widow, conspired with her boyfriend Kenneth Harold Burno Jr. to kill everyone who had once been Vernell's lover, police say. Already serving five-to-10 for shooting a former boyfriend in October 2001, she recently pled guilty to luring ex- lover John Irving Davis to a secluded parking lot in a conspiracy with Burno to kill him. They were successful, but there are still some of those exes out there who don't yet know the meaning of "crazy ex-girlfriend."

  Of course, it happened in New York--the first grand-theft- Segway. A $5,000 Segway was reported stolen on the Upper East Side, and detectives eventually arrested Eddie Wang for felony possession of stolen property, because--think about it--it's kind of hard to fence a Segway. Wang claims he bought the device for $75 from a man in East Harlem. Reportedly the thief wanted to get rid of it fast because the dorkiness was affecting his street cred.

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One in 37 Americans goes to prison, according to a study by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, and as of last month there were 2.1 million people in American jails and prisons--a record number for the entire history of the country. In fact, we're writing this from jail.
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Marine Staff Sergeant Sherry Pierre used a Pentagon charge card to get her breasts enhanced. She is now Lance Corporal Sherry Pierre and is working off her $130,000 spending spree (there were other things besides the breasts) in the brig at Miramar, California. The left one's a little droopy, but the right one looks just fine.
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British tourists in Greece have been so wild this summer that police authorities are cracking down on the islands of Rhodes, Corfu and Kos, all known for their hedonistic night life. So far two Brits have died of alcohol-related causes, scores of others have been arrested for indecent behavior, and the last straw was a sex contest on a beach. Brits will apparently do anything to live down their reputations.
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Desperate Phoenix drivers, faced with a gas shortage caused by a ruptured pipeline, have taken to tailgating tanker trucks to find out which gas station they're delivering to, then waiting until the gas is pumped into the underground tanks. Of course, this wastes more gasoline, which in turn drives up prices (in some places over $4 a gallon), which causes people to be grumpy, but which does not even remotely suggest to anyone that perhaps mass transit would be a good idea out in the desert.
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Law enforcement officials from Arizona and Utah met in Salt Lake City for the first Polygamy Summit in order to share investigative techniques for hunting down multiple-wife families in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and bring them to justice. Things have gotten out of hand since the advent of Viagra.
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More than 10,000 died during the French heat wave, most of them elderly people left home alone while their relatives went on vacation. The number of deaths was so high that President Jacques Chirac has been roundly criticized for not interrupting his vacation in Canada during the heat wave, and leading the rest of the world to muse, "They did what to grandma?"
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Valdemar Lopes de Moraes, a farmer near the Brazilian town of Montes Claros, went to a clinic to have his earache treated, but got a vasectomy instead when he thought he heard his name called and wandered into the wrong room. He didn't complain or say anything as the doctor prepared an area pretty far away from his ear, and after it was all over and the mistake discovered, he was asked if he wanted it reversed and he said no. Of course, we don't know whether he heard the question or not.
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For two years J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. sent reports to credit agencies informing them that David Jokinen of Houston was dead, according to the Wall Street Journal. Jokinen was unable to refinance his house, unable to buy a car, unable to get new credit cards, and unable to do a number of other things that, by his reckoning, cost him $250,000. Tired of writing letters, making phone calls, and constantly reminding J.P. Morgan he was very much alive, he took a news crew to the Houston branch of J.P. Morgan, asked to speak to the manager, gave him a sheaf of documents, and asked the manager to check his pulse. The manager covered up his face with the documents, but J.P. Morgan finally apologized. Despite promising once again to clear everything up, Jokinen is unable to get credit at Radio Shack. Sure, the credit agencies say he's alive now, but how can we be sure?
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Icelandic fishermen harpooned their first whale in 14 years, skewering a minke off the west coast, as the nation lustily returned to the world of whaling. Afterwards, the men had a stiff grog.
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American officials in London asked the Queen of England for permission to move the U.S. embassy from Grosvenor Square, where it's been located since 1783, to Kensington Palace, the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales--but the queen said no. Over the past two years the current embassy has come to resemble a fortress, surrounded by wire and concrete barriers, closed roads and checkpoints manned by men with assault rifles, so much so that local residents have formed a protest group demanding that the unsightly fortifications be removed. The advantage of moving to Princess Di's old house--built in the 17th century--was that it's surrounded by a large park, can be accessed only by a long winding drive, and could be booby-trapped with land mines.
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Deadly kite-flying (yes, that's what we said) has forced a temporary ban of the sport in Lahore, Pakistan, where the reinforced-metal kite string has resulted in fingers sliced off, electrocutions and other entanglements, with 45 people actually dying in various bizarre ways that would normally be featured on the front page of the New York Post. It's not just for hippies anymore.
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Chinese scientists at Shanghai Second Medical University mixed human with rabbit DNA in order to grow embryonic stem cells, raising the specter of Oriental Frankenbunnies.
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J.L. Hunter "Red" Rountree, released from prison at the age of 90 after serving three years for a 1999 bank robbery in Pensacola, Florida, was arrested for bank robbery in Abilene, Texas, at the age of 91, but this time they think he can be rehabilitated in prison and eventually lead a law-abiding respectable life.
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Faced with lagging Big Mac demand and cutbacks all over the world, McDonald's is launching a gourmet Cajun restaurant called Chef Mac's (yes, that's what we said) in New Orleans (yes, that's what we said). The company did have the sense to locate it away from the French Quarter, lest their muffaletta get walloped.
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Dr. Erwin Thal, a professor of surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, warned drivers to stop driving with full bladders. Car wrecks are the most common cause of bladder injuries, he says, because seatbelts mash down on full bladders and pop them like balloons. This means that every time little Jamie in the back seat says "I have to go," if Mommy and Daddy answer "You just went!," they're now contributing to little Jamie's potential for internal trauma. Let's just hope the little buggers don't find out about this.
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Scenes from domestic life:
* Thirty years ago, Sher Altenhoff placed her infant daughter in paper towels and a plastic garbage bag and left her in an outdoor gazebo in Addison, Illinois. The father made a call to police and hung around until they found the baby. Fortunately the girl, Elizabeth Bagwell, was adopted at the age of two months, but her new mom didn't want her researching her family. When the adoptive mother died in 1996, Elizabeth found her adoption papers and started searching for her birth mother. She appeared on "Unsolved Mysteries" in 2000 and registered on a Web site called BigHugs in October 2001. In April 2002 the birth mother also registered on BigHugs, leading to a "surprise" reunion arranged by CBS for the show "48 Hours Investigates: Family Secrets." After that the long lost mother made two trips to Kingston, Tennessee, to visit her daughter, introduced Elizabeth to her three half-sisters, and bought plane tickets for Elizabeth's two sons to visit their grandmother during the summer. Two days before the boys were scheduled to leave, though, Altenhoff emailed her daughter to say she didn't think it was such a good idea after all, and that, furthermore, she should never call or email again. Apparently family visits once every 30 years are enough.
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Scenes from our secure republic:
* Philippe Riviere, an Air France co-pilot, was arrested at New York's Kennedy Airport after joking about having a bomb in his shoe. A New-York-to-Paris flight was canceled, his bond was set at $7,500, and he faces up to seven years in prison for "falsely reporting an incident." The French never could tell a joke right.
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As 50 million homes plunged into darkness, the United States blamed Canada, Canada blamed the United States, New York blamed Ottawa, Ottawa blamed something called the Erie Loop, the Erie Loop blamed lightning, a guy in Akron blamed a computer virus, and CNN blamed the irresponsible policies of the Fox News Channel.
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The body of Ted Williams has been decapitated and his head has been shaved, drilled with holes and accidentally cracked ten times, according to a report in Sports Illustrated, which also reported that his head and body are both preserved in liquid nitrogen at a facility in Scottsdale, Arizona, that is still trying to collect $111,000 of the $136,000 cryogenics bill. The next time he steps to the plate, pitchers are gonna be terrified.
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A Chinese toy company is releasing a George Bush action figure, with the prez dressed in the aviator fatigues he wore when he landed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, complete with workable zippers, flares, helmet, extra oxygen and a parachute harness. "Elite Force Aviator: George W. Bush--U.S. President and Naval Aviator" retails for $39.99. Flexible Congress is optional.
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Fox News Channel filed suit against Al Franken, claiming that his new book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," infringes its trademark on the phrase "fair and balanced." Court papers claim that the book is "likely to cause confusion among the public about whether FOX News has authorized or endorsed the book and about whether Franken is affiliated with FNC." Franken and his publisher, The Penguin Group, will now be forced to countersue, arguing that they trademarked the phrase "news channel" in 1967.
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Bob Guccione's Penthouse magazine filed for bankruptcy, citing flesh inflation.
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Pham Thi Mai Phuong, the reigning Miss Vietnam, was apparently kidnapped by her boyfriend because he didn't want her to leave the country to study business management at Luton University in England. The boyfriend, Nguyen Binh Khanh, is a police officer and the son of the Haiphong police chief, and he personally didn't need no book larnin.
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Faced with lagging Big Mac demand and cutbacks all over the world, McDonald's is launching a gourmet Cajun restaurant called Chef Mac's (yes, that's what we said) in New Orleans (yes, that's what we said). The company did have the sense to locate it away from the French Quarter, lest their muffaletta get walloped.
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Six financial institutions--Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Merrill Lynch--conspired with Enron to produce the imaginary numbers that led to its downfall, according to the final report of bankruptcy examiner Neal Batson. But that is so last year.
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Opium production in Afghanistan has skyrocketed under United States occupation, causing Russia to appeal to America to do something to stop it. Heroin has flooded into Russia, increasing drug use, HIV epidemics and hepatitis C, leading drug czar Viktor Cherkessov to point out that Afghanistan just recorded its second largest poppy harvest in history, after the drug business had been all but eliminated by the Taliban. Hey, they wanted plows, we gave em plows.
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Vincent Gallo, the "Brown Bunny" film director who issued a public curse on Roger Ebert's prostate in retaliation for the way he thought he was abused by the film critic at the Cannes Film Festival, had his assistant call the "Page Six" gossip column to say that the curse was successful. Ebert does indeed have cancer- -not of the prostate but of the salivary gland. Vincent is not into polite networking.
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J-Lo ordered a wedding dress from Vera Wang. Why do we always think this is the last time we'll have to write the word "J-Lo"?
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California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger released financial statements showing he's worth about $200 million and earned $31 million in the year 2000 and $26 million in 2001. Since Schwarzenegger is the winner of the 1983 Joe Bob Briggs Lifetime Achievement Award, engraved on an Oldsmobile hubcap--we have the picture of the grinning honoree around here somewhere--we think we're entitled to one policy question of the candidate. Here it is: Arnold, we know you love cigars, will you go after the California smoking ban? If so, then . . . Arnold! Arnold! Arnold!
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Michael McCormick was driving down a Florida highway when he saw an alligator crossing the road, heading directly for a woman holding two infants and with two children at her side. So he pulled over, made a loop in a length of rope, lassoed the gator, and dragged it back to a fence surrounding a retention pond. His friend called police in nearby Tavares--and the cops told him he was in violation of state wildlife laws and ordered him to cut the rope. They also called the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which showed up and slapped him with a $250 fine for being in possession of an alligator. Then they called for an official state-approved trapper to catch the freed gator, who was no doubt munching on a baby somewhere.
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When Alegra's Bridal Shop in Austin, Texas, became infested with ants, owner Nancy Owen thought she would simply exterminate them. Unfortunately, her landlord is an animal rights activist who wouldn't allow any killing to go on, ordering her to "move" the ants instead. Unable to figure out a way to move the ants, she moved her business instead, leaving a wonderful space waiting for a picnic supply store.
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A supermarket in the Mendoza province of Argentina is requiring cashiers to wear adult diapers to cut down on toilet breaks, according to a labor union investigating the case. Sounds like an urban myth. Is it true? Depends.
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Four homes in Cape Coral, Florida, were hooked up to the wastewater treatment system instead of the purified drinking- water system, resulting in . . . uh . . . we don't want to dwell on that.
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The chief priest of a temple in Tokyo was arrested for committing indecent acts on women after predicting their fortunes with tarot cards containing images of female genitalia. "Unless you see a woman's private parts, there's no way you can ever know what destiny the future holds for her," the priest said, vowing to fight the charges. What the future held for these particular woman was having their private parts probed, then lathered with black ink, so the priest could compress rice paper over the top of the genitals and create an image he would save in his card collection for future counseling. Cost of the service: 20,000 yen ($166). That included a complimentary breath mint on the way out.
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Supermodel Naomi Campbell says she has "intelligence sources" who keep close tabs on the movements of Osama Bin Laden, which could be explained by the fact that the media does not keep close tabs on the movements of Naomi Campbell anymore.
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Scenes from domestic life:
* Caine Cassidy of the Bronx dated Angela Riddick for five years but didn't seem to think that was long enough when she started pulling out of the relationship. First he punched her in the face. Five months later she found a bullet hole in the door of her apartment. Two weeks after that, Cassidy chased her through the streets of Mount Vernon, New York, shooting at her car from his car. That got him arrested, but he was free on bail when he stole a Ford Explorer, then waited outside her apartment building and shot her in the face with a pistol. He then fled to a Toys R Us parking lot, where he shot himself, no doubt swearing eternal love as he died.
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Scenes from our secure republic:
* When a package at the Lilburn, Georgia, post office started to vibrate suspiciously, a postal carrier took it into the parking lot and called police. The Gwinnett County bomb squad, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the Gwinnett County Fire Department evacuated the building and shut down surrounding streets, then sent in a robot to pick up the package and X-ray it. The X-ray showed wires and objects inside, leading to further suspicion. You know where this is going, don't you? Yes, they don't call them vibrators for nothing.
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Michael "Nicko" McBrain, the Iron Maiden drummer, arrived for a concert at New York's Jones Beach, became enraged when the parking attendant asked to see his V.I.P. pass, then rammed the attendant with his Jaguar, according to police. He was arrested for assault. His demands to have young people arrested for not knowing who he is went unheeded.
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Cheech and Chong are reuniting for their first film in 20 years, which is actually only two dope years.
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Environmentalists want to install windmills on platforms in windy Nantucket Sound off Cape Cod, but they're being opposed by, among others, Robert Kennedy Jr. and Walter Cronkite, who claim they'll be ugly and a hazard to yacht navigation. Yes, there are people so rich that a windmill on the horizon disturbs their sense of tranquility.
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Two men went on trial for murder in Fort Lauderdale, accused of killing a woman by injecting 12,000 cc's of silicone into each of her buttocks. The alleged crime occurred at a "pumping party," attended by transsexual men who pay $1000 for silicone injections, but in this case the victim was a woman, Vera Lawrence, who wanted an "insane amount" of silicone in her butt, according to the defense attorney. She had been getting the injections for five years, so at the time of death, her butt looked really really hot.
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A parents group in Oberlin, Ohio, said they would fight to have a white teacher removed as the instructor in a black history class, claiming that only a black can teach such a class. We know this because of all those American teachers who taught Russian history at universities during the Cold War. They understood so little about the Soviet Union that their research had nothing to do with us, uh, wiping it out.
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The Kingdom Life Christian Church in Milford, Connecticut, raised $245,000 to buy a building that houses the Video Pleasures porno shop. They actually think that will work.
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All coffee breaks in Orange County, New York, were canceled. Orange County Executive Edward Diana announced the edict to try to repair a $7.5 million budget deficit, reasoning that eliminating the two 15-minute breaks per day will increase the productivity of the 2500 county employees. The good news is that most of them are still allowed to use the restroom.
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The United States and Mexico seized thirteen tons (!) of cocaine while rounding up 240 people in the Ismael Zambada Garcia drug ring. Meanwhile, Zambada Garcia relaxed on his ranch in the state of Sinaloa, laid up with the sniffles.
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A new Bulgarian vodka claims to eliminate hangovers before they happen by mixing, C, B1 and B2 vitamins, honey, milk and other ingredients into the distilled spirits. It's called Shock, because any Bulgarian who wakes up coherent will be.
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Ikea introduced a new children's bunk bed called the "Gutvik"--which was fine in Sweden but means "good fuck" in German. After the newspaper ads appeared for the first time in Germany, IKEA officials spent the day doing damage control and then had a cigarette.
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Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden says that, if his team wins the Super Bowl again this year, he'll dance down a highway in Tampa wearing only a jockstrap. Let's hope it's a lonely highway.
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Singer Julia Rose was banned from the Borders book store in Fredericksburg, Maryland, because she said President Bush has "chicken legs." Rose is a fitness advocate who suggested the prez pump some iron, but members of the audience took offense, and her regular Borders gig was canceled. The President wanted to kick her ass, but he couldn't swing his legs that hard.
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A gay shopping mall, called Victor and Victoria, opened in Sao Paulo, with 34 stores devoted to clothing, underwear, home furnishings, wigs, sex toys and a travel agency. We hear the eclairs are marvelous.
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The new Museum of Contraception and Abortion in Vienna needs old condoms, especially the ones that granddad kept in the backroom drawer, as well as antique gynecological instruments and sex-education brochures. The museum already has plenty of antique perverts.
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Jerry Lewis told Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly that Marilyn Monroe couldn't possibly have been fooling around with President Kennedy or Frank Sinatra because she was with him the whole time. And once you've had the bellboy, they're all boys.
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Marion Waldo McCheney of Pawlet, Vermont, displays mummified roadkill in her home, including frogs, lizards, chickens, turkeys and the occasional mailman.
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Frederick McDowell held up the Wells Fargo Bank in Fort Worth, Texas, by passing the teller a note written on the back of his resume, with predictable effects on his future job prospects.
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Patre Eugene Williams, nearing the end of his trial on charges of selling cocaine which could result in a 30-year prison term, used a recess in the trial to flee the courthouse in Fort Myers, Florida. Circuit Judge James R. Thompson decided to finish the trial without him. The opposing attorneys made closing arguments, and 30 minutes later the jury returned--with a not guilty verdict. It's unclear exactly what his status is now, but we think the technical term is "fugitive from injustice."
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Svetin Gulisija of Seget, Croatia, started a fire in the woods behind his house so he could avoid having sex with his wife Oleandra, according to police. Gulisija probably feels lucky to be in custody. If he was that desperate, the woman could have killed him.
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In an obscenity trial in Cincinnati, Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis Jr. played the film "Maximum Hardcore Extreme, Vol. 7" for the jury, but one of the jurors fell asleep during the showing and the judge had to declare a mistrial. We could have told them this was likely in advance. "Maximum Hardcore Extreme, Vol. 7" is an excellent video, but it's no "Maximum Hardcore Extreme, Vol. 6."
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Twelve Cuban migrants turned a 1951 Chevy pickup into a boat and floated it to within 40 miles of the United States before they were pulled over by the Coast Guard for failure to indicate a left turn.
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A University of Utah study found that using a cell phone impairs driving more than being drunk with a .08 percent alcohol level. Cell phone users suffered a 50 percent drop in the ability to process information. But the most remarkable aspect of the study revealed that drunk drivers using cell phones, smoking cigarettes, and playing a Nine Inch Nails CD were safer than elderly women wearing Easter hats.
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The Greek government will open up 30 additional brothels during the summer Olympic games in August 2004 to cope with anticipated demand. Several countries have protested against the decision--including Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who obviously don't know what "Olympic sport" really means.
*
Scenes from domestic life:
* Wealthy lawyer Sanford Asher of Scarsdale, New York, fell in love with a Swiss stripper working at the Paradise Club in Manhattan, left his wife and two daughters, and moved into an Upper East Side apartment with Line Grosjean, the all-nude dancer. But Grosjean had another boyfriend, Johnerson James of The Bronx, and together they planned to hire a hit man to kill Asher's wife Jayne and then frame the husband by leaving his glasses at the crime scene. Grosjean gave James $10,000 to pay the hitman, but James got scared and called cops instead, pleading to a lesser charge and avoiding jail. Then he tried to sell nude photos of Asher and Grosjean to Jayne Asher to help with her divorce--but the wife said no thanks. Fortunately the story has a happy ending. Grosjean only served four months in prison, then was released on parole, and found that Sanford Asher is the forgiving sort. He and his stripper are back together, shopping for apartments in Manhattan--and now he wears contacts.
*
Jane Barbe, the queen of telephone recordings, whose voice was heard an estimated 40 million times a day saying things like "Press '1' to hear your message" on voicemail systems, died in Roswell, Georgia, at age 74, but pressed pound for further options.
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The Pentagon cancelled a plan to run a terrorist futures- trading market after it was pretty much ridiculed by everyone on the planet. The architect of the plan, retired rear admiral John M. Poindexter, announced he would step down, because if you can't bet on assassinations, revolutions and coups d'etat, the job is just no fun anymore.
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Next to the dead body of Uday Hussein, U.S. troops recovered a briefcase carrying Viagra, cologne, dress shirts, fresh underwear, a silk tie and a condom, according to Newsweek. Now that's an optimist.
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A man in Malaysia divorced his wife by leaving a text message on her cell phone, thereby satisfying the Islamic law requiring him to declare his intention. Email divorce, voicemail divorce and the very popular Fax divorce are under review by the Malaysian government, which fears serious polygamous Muslims will start using the dreaded Spam divorce.
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Native American rights groups claim that the word "squaw" is a term for female sexual parts and have been trying to get it removed as a public name wherever it's found. Their latest victory came before the Arizona State Board of Geographic and Historic Names, which renamed Squaw Peak in north central Phoenix as "Piestewa Peak," in honor of Lori Piestewa, a Hopi Indian from Tuba City, Arizona, who was the first female American Indian soldier to be killed in combat when she died in the Iraq war. To do so, the board waived its usual five-year waiting period for a name change and rejected a minority recommendation that the mountain be renamed "Vagina Peak."
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Everybody was talking about gay marriage, with President Bush stopping just short of a call for a federal ban on it, and the Vatican calling it "gravely immoral." Meanwhile, futures in pastel party favors shot way up.
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The first high school for gay students was announced by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The Harvey Milk High School, opening in September in the East Village neighborhood, represents the first legally segregated school since the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. No news yet as to whether there will be separate drinking fountains for students and the heterosexual janitors.
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Democrats in the Texas Legislature fled the state once again in order to deny Republicans a quorum, this time holing up in Albuquerque. Republicans were spitting and fuming about the effort to sabotage their redistricting plan, but the fugitive lawmakers said they were simply indulging their passion for Indian jewelry.
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Legendary Sam Phillips of Sun Records, who introduced Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash to the world, died in Memphis at the age of 80, and the city was all shook up.
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The Artist Formally Known as Prince bought a $10 million mansion in Toronto, apparently because he's fed up with an American music industry that so far won't distribute his new album, "News." He has plans to sell the album directly through Amazon.com, but does he realize he'll now be required to double every song in French?
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Teenagers spend more hours a week surfing the Net than watching TV (16.7 vs. 13.6), according to a new study by Yahoo. Nielsen Media Research disputed the study, saying that the average person in fact watches 28 hours of TV a week, and the average young person watches more than that. Nevertheless, network executives rushed to protect their market share by putting a new reality show into production called "Panty Downloads."
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The North American Nude Bikers Club held its first rally in Rutherford County, Tennessee, and it was hell on the inner thighs.
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Chevy Chase is the frontman for a series of Turkish TV commercials for Cola Turka, the national drink invented to drive Coke and Pepsi out of the country. In one of the spots, Chase parks his station wagon at his suburban home, where his wife is preparing a Turkish meal for a big family gathering. Everyone sings "Take me out to the ball game" at the table--until they take a sip of Cola Turka, then break into a Turkish-language 1930s Boy Scout song. Chase then sprouts a mustache. They say there are some beautiful villas in Ankara.
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A seven-year-old Taiwanese boy is being treated for porn addiction. Yeah, we were thinking the same thing.
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Sir Mick Jagger celebrated his 60th birthday in Prague with a nice bracing bowl of oatmeal.
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A giant naked man bending over backwards with his hands on the ground and a two-foot erection thrusting heavenward was unveiled on the grounds of the Rupertinum Modern Art Gallery in Salzburg just one day before Prince Charles arrived on a state visit, sending Mayor Heinz Schaden into a tizzy with demands to deflate the supersized member. Outraged artists explained that the statue was intended as a tribute to Viagra, and the symbolism of emasculating it would be a blow to Austrian manhood. It's the kind of protocol matter that calls for a condom.
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Former baseball star Jose Canseco is auctioning off an afternoon with himself for a minimum of $2,500. Suggested activities for the winning bidder's trip to Canseco's south Florida home include private power hitting instruction, private martial arts instruction, a workout with Canseco, and a cookout by the pool. (Nightclub brawling instruction currently not available.)
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Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who accidentally discovered LSD in 1943, observed the drug's 60th anniversary by reminiscing about how he was trying to develop stimulants for the circulatory system in his lab when he made a batch of LSD from ergot, a fungus that grows on rye. Riding his bike home from the office that day, Hofmann had hallucinations, "a beautiful and pleasant trip." His employer, Sandoz AG, distributed the drug free of charge to research labs and clinics until 1966, when it became illegal in most countries. Hofmann is 97 and has some funny-looking tubes and beakers in his bathroom.
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A sadomasochistic exercise class called "Slavercise" debuted in New York, with students submitting to the orders of Mistress Victoria, a dominatrix with a riding crop, bustier and fishnet stockings who promises them they'll suffer and threatens them with severe spankings. The students wear face masks, dog collars and rubber suits, and when they do push-ups, they're required to kiss her stiletto heels. Sit-ups are performed with a heel poised over their crotches. Everyone must beg for water. And no one receives praise except Mistress Victoria. No pain, no gain.
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7-Eleven introduced its own private label beer, called Santiago, which is priced lower than Corona and packaged to directly compete with it. One special feature is that a six-pack is the precise size of the space behind a pickup gun rack.
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KAQU in Sitka, Alaska, is the only "all whales, all the time" radio station in the country. The station broadcasts sounds picked up in a microphone in the Eastern Channel, where whales make grunting, snapping, popping and singing sounds. The format is not for everyone, but patient listeners will occasionally be rewarded with the rarest sound of all: the whoosh of a harpoon bull's-eye.
*
Scenes from domestic life:
* Michael Becker saw his estranged wife Lori Ann Becker trying to drive off in the family Volkswagen Jetta, so he ran out of the house wearing only socks and a T-shirt, jumped onto the roof, and began beating her on the thigh with a "small tool" as she drove away. He clung to the roof rack as she raced at high speeds, then crashed the car. Delaware police charged Lori Ann with attempted homicide, assault and drunk driving. Michael was charged with assault and terroristic threats. Most humiliating of all is that Michael was not charged with indecent exposure. Just how small was that "small tool"?
*
Uday and Qusay, the pig-Latin sons of Saddam Hussein, tried to shoot their way out of a palace as they were besieged by Special Operations forces, soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division, Apache helicopters, A-10 Warthogs and fighter jets. When it was all over, they were dead eatmay.
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The Eiffel Tower caught on fire, but quick-thinking Parisians put it out with insults.
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Ben Curtis of Kent, Ohio, a total unknown ranked 396th in the world who had never played in England before, won the British Open with the only sub-par score for the four rounds, holding off four of the world's best golfers on the final day: Thomas Bjorn, Vijay Singh, Tiger Woods and Davis Love III. The tournament was played in Sandwich, in the county of Kent, the namesake of Curtis' hometown, where he will be married next month. He has about three weeks now to win the lottery before going back to Mt. Olympus.
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Jugglers, tightrope walkers, acrobats and trapeze artists with the Moscow State Circus have been ordered by the European Union to wear hard hats while touring Europe this summer. European regulations require all workers employed at heights greater than the average stepladder to wear protective headgear-- but the Russian performers held a meeting and decided to defy the law. Especially incensed was Goussein Khamdouleav, who performs somersaults without a net on the highest indoor tightrope in Europe (45 feet). He pointed out that the helmet could slip, impair his vision, or throw off his balance. He obviously doesn't understand the meaning of the word "Brussels."
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Supreme Court Justice Emily Jane Goodman of New York City ruled that the words "bitch," "slut" and "whore" do not constitute slander because they are "used generically" "in this day and age." The epithets had been hurled by rap deejay Funkmaster Flex in an altercation with rival deejay Big Steph Lova outside radio station Hot 97, where Flex works. Lova had no comment. The ho just went home.
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The Nevada Legislature passed an $836 million tax increase that includes a 10 percent tax on "live entertainment," including the livest form of entertainment, prostitution. That's called taking a piece of the piece.
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A new game called "Hunting For Bambi," in which men pay $10,000 to track nude women through the desert outside Las Vegas and shoot them with paintballs, has attracted the ire of feminists (surprise!), who say that the company offering the sport--Real Men Outdoor Productions--is violating the dignity of women as well as assault laws. (If a sadist hits a masochist, has a crime occurred? We think not.) Mike Burdick, the enterpreneur who came up with the game, has offered to tone down the game by allowing some women to remove the red bull's-eyes from strategic places on their bodies.
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Stonehenge is a giant vagina, according to Anthony Perks, retired professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of British Columbia, writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Although the purpose of Stonehenge has been a riddle for centuries, Perks says that, viewed from above, the inner circle represents the labia minora and the giant outer circle represents the labia majora. The altar stone is the clitoris, and the open center is the birth canal. This would fit into that whole Earth Goddess thing, which should be great for lesbian tourism on the Salisbury Plain.
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Idi Amin, the former strongman president of Uganda, lapsed into a coma, no doubt brought on by excessive guilt over those 200,000 people he accidentally killed and tortured in the 1970s.
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The 11th Earl of Sandwich has set up a business to sell sandwiches. It was the fourth Earl of Sandwich who invented the sandwich during an all-night gambling session when he stuck a hunk of meat between two pieces of bread. The first Earl of Sandwich Cafe will open--where else?--at Disneyworld. The obscure eighth Earl of Sandwich scandalized the family by eating salads exclusively, but no one talks about that anymore.
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Corpulent pornographer Al Goldstein had his harrassment conviction overturned by the New York State Supreme Court, which ruled that the prosecutor had stated 40 times in his summation that Goldstein had lied. (Attorneys are not supposed to testify or make conclusions.) Goldstein had left obscene phone messages on his former assistant's voicemail and depicted her in the pages of his Screw magazine as . . . well . . . as just about everything you can accuse a woman of being. The Artist Formally Known as Prince bought a $10 million mansion in Toronto, apparently because he's fed up with an American music industry that so far won't distribute his new album, "News." He has plans to sell the album directly through Amazon.com, but does he realize he'll now be required to double every song in French?
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Congressman Pete Stark of California stood up at a meeting of the House Ways and Means Committee and addressed chairman Bill Thomas of California in the following way: "You little fruitcake, you little fruitcake, I said you are a fruitcake." At that point Thomas summoned Capitol Police, claiming he felt physically threatened. When police arrived, they scratched their heads and turned the matter over to the House Sergeant at Arms, who also scratched his head and did nothing. Democrats had been complaining about how Thomas was running the meeting to discuss a pension bill, especially when he wouldn't give them more time to study a text they had received just the night before. To head off a quick vote, the Democrats walked out to discuss the bill in the library. Stark lingered behind, had the confrontation with Thomas, and the cops were called. After the gendarmes left, both Democrats and Republicans rushed to the House floor to denounce one another. By the end of the day, they had exhausted all pastry expletives.
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Cornell Jackson, a defendant in an assault trial in Panama City, Florida, involving his ex-girlfriend, suddenly stood up in the courtroom, shouted "Cuckoo! Cuckoo!" and dropped his pants, mooning the jury. Deputies and bailiffs jumped on him--carefully- -and hauled him to jail. Three jurors were treated for what is known in the South as Bewtock Trauma.
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Trenton Veches, supervisor of a Newport Beach, California youth program, was sentenced to life in prison for sucking the toes of 20 boys. His defense: he suffers from Congenital Juvenile Digitalis.
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An auction of an Elvis Presley tooth failed to attract the minimum $100,000 asking price on eBay, snaggling the dreams of Flo Briggs, a Fort Lauderdale hairdresser who normally collects celebrity hair--she has strands shorn from George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and John Lennon--to promote her salon. The dental artifact was scaring off the electrolysis clients.
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Scenes from domestic life:
* Daniel Getter, a decorated corporal on the Doylestown, Pennsylvania, police force, didn't much like it when his fellow officer Dawn Harrison told him she was ending their 18-month love affair. First he left obscene threats on her cell phone during her work shift, then told her "I'm your worst nightmare--you better call everybody in because I'm coming to get you." He drove to the police station with a loaded gun, but was surrounded by the tactical squad and forced to drive away, then arrested a short time later in a park. Didn't the hussy ever hear of the blue code of silence?
*
Scenes from our secure republic:
* Southeast Airlines announced plans to install digital video cameras throughout the cabins of all its planes in order to record all faces and all activities of all passengers on all flights and keep the information for ten years. The company may even use face-recognition software to match faces to names, creating a handy little database for resourceful divorce lawyers searching for information about just who sat next to Daddy on that business trip to Cancun.
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 North Korea announced it had the plutonium needed to make six nuclear bombs--enough to create East Korea, West Korea, and the Seoul Deep Mining Region.
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The underwear of John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jackie Kennedy was auctioned off in New Jersey, with JFK's Navy-issue monogrammed boxer shorts listed at $10,000 and a pair of Jackie's pantyhose offered at $300. The most valuable item was JFK's "little black book"--the one he used to jot down speech ideas-- but buyers could also avail themselves of his pajama bottoms, one of Jackie's pink evening purses, or daughter Caroline's Barbie doll. (Couldn't she show up and claim that?) Word has it that most of the bidders were owners of kinky theme restaurants in Key West.
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Vicious roving cannibalistic packs of chihuahuas--yes, that's what we said--were rounded up by Los Angeles County authorities after a complaint about the dogs running loose on property in Acton, California. They found 236 of them, but 31 died during the roundup when they were mauled by their fellow midget pooches. Fifteen have been placed in foster homes and 36 more placed for adoption, but the remaining 190 have been deemed too vicious to live. A judge in Lancaster will be asked to sentence them to death, but meanwhile Gregory Peck's daughter-in- law, Kimi Peck, is leading a chihuahua-advocay group--yes, that's what we said--in a last-minute effort to have the animals reprieved. They're not that dangerous, she says, especially if you wear metal shin guards.
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Professor Gunther von Hagens, the man who performed the first public autopsy in 170 years on England's Channel 4 last fall, is at it again. This time he'll do a televised autopsy of a boy from Kazahkstan who had been growing inside his twin brother. The inner twin was male, alive, and had part of a head, hair, teeth, limbs and nails--until he was surgically removed. The professor will explain, in a series called "Body Shock," that it's a case of "foetus in fetu," in which one twin fetus grows around the other at an early stage of development. The program is expected to set ratings records once again because of the Icky Factor.
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Ninety per cent of women who cheat feel no guilt about having an extra-marital affair, according to Susan Shapiro Barash's new book on infidelity, "A Passion for More." Their most common reaction is that they feel "entitled" to the affair. Although only 25 percent of the women actually marry their lovers, 60 percent have had affairs and 65 percent say that sex is better with the lover than with the husband. Interestingly, 97 percent of them purchase Victoria's Secret items that they would never waste on a spouse.
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Asashory, the Mongolian superstar of Sumo wrestling, was shamefully disqualified after grabbing his opponent's topknot and pulling him to the ground by his hair. Should have gone for the diaper.
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Ulysses S. Grant fans were not amused by the Fourth of July performance by Beyonce Knowles on the steps of Grant's Tomb. Frank Scaturro, president of the Grant Monument Association, fired off a letter to NBC, Interior Secretary Gale Norton and National Parks Service Director Fran Mainella, complaining of "lascivious choreography" and a lack of decorum by the former Destiny's Child singer. We can't help thinking that the lusty larger-than-life Grant might have enjoyed it. Unfortunately, Mrs. Grant is buried there as well.
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Former Cincinnati mayor and talk show host Jerry Springer filed as a Democrat to run for the Ohio Senate seat of George V. Voinovich in 2004. Springer's platform includes leniency for transvestite hookers who are honest about who they are as people.
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Regina Kaiser, an East German dissident who was tortured and imprisoned for three years in the early eighties for smuggling anti-government writings to the west, has married her torturer, Uwe Karlstedt, and the lovebirds are expecting their first child. They've written a book about their experience, during which Karlstedt was brutal and Kaiser whispered her love for him in secret code. And people thought "Secretary" was kinky.
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Brad Barnhill, a preacher in the First Christian Fellowship for Eternal Sovereignty of Ravenna, Ohio, says that his wife can't be prosecuted in the courts because, according to his religious beliefs, he's the only one responsible for her actions in public and the only one empowered to punish her. His wife, Catherine Donkers, was stopped by the Ohio Highway Patrol and charged with child endangerment, failure to comply with the orders of a police officer, and several other infractions after she was spotted breast-feeding her baby while driving on the Ohio Turnpike. Her defense will be "My husband made me do it," and her husband's defense will be "The damn woman won't listen."
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When locksmith Robert M. Peters Sr. of Bangor, Maine, went to install a lock, he stayed to chat with a recently divorced woman who claims he made an off-color remark about her beauty and then exposed his erect penis, three inches of which protruded from the bottom of his shorts. When the case came up before a jury at the Northampton County Courthouse in Easton, Peters' defense was that it was impossible--because his penis is only four inches long when fully erect. According to a reporter for The Express-Times covering the trial, Peters then proved it. The 312-pound man dropped his pants for the jury, after which his lawyer suggested that the alleged victim probably saw a fold of the man's flab, not his penis. "What she saw," said lawyer Gary Asteak, "I suggest to you was a thigh. An ugly thigh, indeed." After examining Polaroids of Peters' two-inch non-erect penis, the jury agreed and found him not guilty. The victim complained that Peters had initially shocked her by complimenting her breasts. Peters claims she was talking about her husband leaving her for a younger woman and asking if he thought she was ugly. "I didn't know what to say," Peters said. "I said she was pretty. I said she has nice legs." She then looked at Peters' crotch, screamed and told him to leave. Peters tried to look at his own crotch, but his stomach obstructed his view, so he felt it to make sure he wasn't accidentally exposed. She continued screaming, so he left. "I just figured it was someone trying to get out of paying the bill," Peters said. It will be forever after known in legal annals as the Case of the Abbreviated Peters.
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A restaurant in Chengdu, China, was shut down after health inspectors found old underpants being used as dish cloths. Everyone knows that in this particular part of Szechuan, dish cloths are normally made from old athletic supporters.
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Scientists at the University of Wisconsin claim that hamburgers act on the body in the same way as nicotine and heroin, altering the biochemistry of the brain like an opiate. Social reformers are advocating free MethaMac clinics to bring people down easy.
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Buddy Ebsen's romance novel--yes, that's what we said--has sold briskly since his death. "Kelly's Quest," the story of a Hollywood stagehand searching for Mr. Right, was published in 2001 but wasn't doing too well until recently. The steamy payoff chapter is a fantasy sex sequence with Miss Jane being ravished by Jethro.
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A Maxwell Smart-style wristwatch telephone sold out in two months (5,000 units) after being introduced in Japan. The $310 four-ounce Wristomo can be used on the wrist or snapped off and straightened into a handset. Seiko Instruments, the manufacturer, has no plans to offer the Wristomo in other countries, saying at this point the Dork Factor is not high enough outside Japan.
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A $30 talking Bill Clinton doll, just released by an Irvine, California company, says "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" and "It depends on what the meaning of is is." Future versions will have less well publicized sayings of the President, such as "Fleetwood Mac sucks."
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Scenes from domestic life: * Judith Garland of Baltimore landed in jail on a drug charge, but couldn't raise $25 to pay a bail bondsman to get her out. So she called a cousin from jail and, according to police, offered to sell her two-year-old son to the cousin for $250. The state then took the son away from her and gave temporary custody to the cousin, proving that it was a good idea in the first place.
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Bush spent the week in the bush, fending off requests from African leaders to put American troops on the dark continent, especially in Liberia, where the people are clamoring for GIs. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan was urging Washington to lead forces into Liberia as well, but Bush told the bushmen the troops may already be bushed.
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Barry White never never gave up, nor did he get enough of your love, babe, but it wouldn't be much ecstasy to lay down next to him right now.
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The Erectile Dysfunction Wars are stiffening up, with Bayer AG and GlaxoSmithKline expecting approval of their new Levitra johnson-enhancer this month, thereby challenging the turgidly towering Viagra, owned by Pfizer. But that's not the only piston- pumper in the works: Eli Lilly and Icos expect to spring their new Cialis pill out of their jockey shorts by the end of the year, resulting in an array of droop-reversal drugs worthy of a rabbit warren.
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The Pentagon doubled its original estimates for the cost of the war in Iraq, saying the first nine months of this year would average $3.9 billion per month. To put this in perspective, the Iraq war alone for 2003 will cost the equivalent of the combined budgets for NASA, all foreign aid, all pollution control, the FBI, the National Cancer Institute, and all the national parks. We would all feel better about if they would find just a little poison in steel drums somewhere.
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Takeru "The Tsunami" Kobayashi won the Coney Island hot-dog eating contest for the third year in a row, consuming 44 1/2 dogs (equaling 13,750 calories and 896 grams of fat) in 12 minutes, but failing to beat his world record of 50 1/2. He felt humiliated, but that was nothing compared to William "The Refrigerator" Perry, who entered the contest to great fanfare but finished only a measly four dogs. The secret, the Fridge learned, is to get fat during the contest.
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Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers was charged with imprisoning a 19-year-old room service girl at the Lodge & Spa at Cordillera in Edwards, Colorado, then sexually assaulting her. Thousands of fans in Los Angeles rallied to Bryant's defense, claiming that everyone knows that when Bryant calls for room service, he means room service.
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Dezerrie Cortes applied for 27 marriage licenses over the last 19 years and married men from Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Peru and Pakistan in what New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau says was a series of green-card scams. She was arrested along with five other alleged rent-a-brides who had a top nuptial price of $1,000. Since New York is notorious for having more available women than men, these must have been some exceptionally ugly illegal aliens.
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At the dedication of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor pulled on a ceremonial ribbon to open the curtain--and instead caused a 40- foot-wide metal picture frame to come crashing down, injuring three dignitaries and throwing the ceremony into chaos. The Philadelphia Police Counter-Terrorism Unit, the FBI, and the U.S. Park Police all swarmed onto the scene to check for terrorists or, what seems more probable, slacker stagehands.
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R.K. Sharma, environmental secretary for the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, was suspended from office for approving a restaurant complex and shopping mall to be built around the Taj Mahal. Construction on the project was halted--and The Gap is peeved about it.
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Estel Wood "Ed" Kelley, a food industry executive who introduced Grey Poupon, A-1 Steak Sauce and Cool Whip to America, died in Indianapolis at age 86 after drowning his food.
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"Terminator 3" took in $44 million over the July 4th three- day weekend, and "Legally Blonde 2" earned $22.9 million--both far below what industry analysts had expected, indicating that America's love affair with sequels may be petering out. Motion picture ticket sales are running 5 percent behind last year, and the creative geniuses in Hollywood say there's only one solution: "Rocky VI."
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Prostitutes in Hunedoara, Romania, have started accepting installment payments so that factory workers can manage their sex budgets better. Amazingly, they accept time payments after the sex, instead of using . . . the layaway plan.
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The local council in Golant, England, wanted to print a tourist map, but before doing so they suggested a name change for one of the village streets: Cowshit Lane. Long-time residents were outraged, and refused the proposal. It's their heritage.
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Beauty queen Wu Rong was fired as the weather girl on the Hunan Entertainment Channel in southern China, because her five- minute program--in which she appeared in scanty fashions while offering beauty and fashion tips geared to the forecast--was deemed too racy for a nation of dedicated Communist workers. But isn't "thong" a Chinese word?
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Ashlie Williams of New Orleans tried to pay for her groceries at Sav-A-Center with a check and a driver's license. The cashier on duty was Gennifer Robinson, whose checkbook and driver's license had been stolen from her car five days earlier. Yes, there is a God.
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The Daily Planet, the first brothel to be traded on the Australian Stock Exchange, raised $3.5 million in its initial public offering, with shares offered at 50 cents each, opening at 70 cents, and trading at 90 to 95 by the end of the first day. The Melbourne company plans to open a chain of Australian brothels as well as a "mega-brothel" in Sydney and has hired Hollywood ex-con madam Heidi Fleiss to offer business ideas. First item to be discussed: dress code at the annual shareholders meeting.
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The Fire Department of Elma, Washington, conducted a training exercise by burning down a two-story house--that the police chief had just purchased and was planning to fix up for his ailing parents. They don't have a "This Old House" video for this one.
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Jack Altsman of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, went deer hunting with his father on his own property--and ended up sentenced to 15 years in federal prison. Because Altsman had two burglary convictions, he was not allowed to possess a firearm, so the judge was forced to follow a mandatory sentencing law called the Armed Career Criminal Act that required a minimum of 15 years. Altsman had waived his right to a jury trial and pled guilty, not realizing that when the judge proved to be a letter- of-the-law sort of guy, he would end up looking like a deer on the first day of season.
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When shops in Tainan, Taiwan, ran out of surgical masks, villagers started strapping bras to their faces to ward off SARS. At the local bra factory, workers cut the bras in half and sewed on extra straps, making everyone feel relieved, if not dignified.
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A 2,000-year-old bottle of wine was found in Xi'an, China, by archeologists excavating a tomb full of drinking vessels, bronze bells and jade. The bluish wine was encased in a bronze jar in the shape of a phoenix head. Experts immediately called for Robert Parker, the noted oenologist, to taste it and decide whether it can be consumed now or we need to wait another millennium or so.
*
Scenes from domestic life:
* Pearsall Leroy Gerald of Macon, Georgia, hated his girlfriend's grandmother, so one day he beat her with a four-foot stick, kicked her repeatedly in the face, poured fire ants onto her, stole her car, and took $300 from her to pay a debt to a drug dealer. The girlfriend is reconsidering the relationship.
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The President announced that six unnamed men would be charged with unspecified crimes and tried in secret before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, which is a legal no-man's land beyond the reach of any statute. He told the families of these men not to worry, because they'd all have fine secret unnamed lawyers.
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The William Wrigley Jr. Company applied for U.S. patent #6,531,114, which would deliver Viagra through chewing gum. One of the interesting side effects is that you can stand on your tongue.
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Israel declared victory over the 33-month Palestinian uprising as rebel forces came to the bargaining table. If they play their cards right, the Palestinian leaders should be able to negotiate an agreement that they be unchained from the table any day now.
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Daily attacks continued on American troops in Iraq as the United States offered a $25 million reward for the capture of Saddam Hussein or confirmation of his death. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld raged at the press for using the word "quagmire." There are no swamps in Iraq. The proper term is "hellhole."
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Unemployment rose to 6.4 percent, the highest level in nine years, indicating that President Bush's latest round of tax cuts failed to do the trick. Administration officials were quick to attack the new figures, indicating there was no tru