Don't Panic! Lighten Up!S


Heart

120-year-old love story uncovered as Australian painting is restored

Experts restoring a painting by one of Australia's best-known artists, Arthur Streeton, have stumbled across a 120-year-old love story concealed in the canvas. The impressionist work,Spring, which was completed in 1890, depicts an idyllic rural Australian scene, with a group of naked boys bathing in a hillside stream.

Magic Wand

19th-century weapon found in whale

A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt - more than a century ago. Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3 1/2-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale's age, estimated between 115 and 130 years old.

Bulb

Teen Dials Wrong Number, Gets Arrested

GULFPORT, Fla. - Investigators arrested a 14-year-old boy who apparently dialed a really, really wrong number. Authorities said the boy offered to sell drugs to the person on the other end, who happened to be a police detective.

Document

'Leprechaun' robbery suspect arrested

Not exactly the top o' the morning for this lad.

©Star-Telegram
Richard Earl Kemp (aka 'Leprechaun Bandit')

Bizarro Earth

Australia: Man leaves finger behind after bar brawl

A man who lost part of his finger in a bar brawl walked out of the pub and down the street before he noticed it was gone, police said Monday.

"He didn't know it was missing until he left the (pub)," police Inspector Mark Kellert told The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. "He was out on the street and realized there was blood on his hand, noticed his finger was missing, and went to hospital."

Security guards later found the severed finger "and a large amount of blood" in the pub's bathroom, New South Wales state police said in a statement.

Bizarro Earth

Jumping sturgeon injures woman in Fla.

A woman was injured over the weekend by a leaping sturgeon, the latest incident involving the flying fish on the Suwannee River, officials said.

Tara Spears, 32, of Bell, was knocked unconscious by the animal on Sunday while boating on the river north of Rock Bluff, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reported.

She was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries and was expected to recover, the agency reported.

Clock

Mystery of President Bush's watch in Albania

Now you see it. Now you don't.

George W Bush was visibly cheered when he received a hero's welcome in Albania at the weekend, with Albanians draped in the Stars and Stripes reaching out to hug him and shake his hand.

But perhaps the leader of the Western world should have exercised a little more caution and followed the standard advice to travellers in the Balkans to keep an eye on their belongings.

Film footage of the President being mobbed taken by the Albanian TV station News24 was broadcast today on Italian TV news bulletins and watched by thousands on YouTube - and it looks like Mr Bush may have had his watch stolen.

Magic Wand

Top criminals fixed Rio carnival result, say police

Underworld figures fixed the results of Rio de Janeiro's carnival parade this year, according to Brazilian police. Press reports suggest that top criminals used bribes and a hitman to buy and intimidate members of the carnival jury.

The fixing allegations centre on Anisio Abraao David, 69, the honorary president of the Beija-Flor (hummingbird) samba school, whose empire includes a penthouse apartment on Copacabana beach complete with a swimming pool with a hummingbird motif on the bottom.

USA

Butts charged with stealing toilet paper from courthouse!

Police blame a woman named Butts for stealing toilet paper from a central Iowa courthouse, and while they're chuckling, the theft charge could put her in prison.

Light Saber

Deaf Dolphin gives birth to healthy calf

A stranded deaf Atlantic bottlenose dolphin delivered her calf Monday at a marine mammal rehabilitation center in the Florida Keys. The unnamed calf is approximately 42 inches long and weighs about 30 pounds, according to officials at the Marine Mammal Conservancy.

©AP
In this photo released by the Florida Keys News Bureau, a dolphin calf, right, surfaces for air Monday, June 11, 2007, as it swims next to her mother, named Castaway, about an hour after being born Monday in at the Marine Mammal Conservancy in Key Largo, Fla. Castaway stranded late last year and experts determined the mammal is deaf. Officials at MMC are hoping the calf will develop communications' skills by electronically feeding live dolphin sounds from a nearby Florida Keys dolphin facility after the mother and calf have bonded.