Don't Panic! Lighten Up!S


Attention

Man using GPS drives into path of train in New York suburb

BEDFORD HILLS, New York - A Global Positioning System can tell a driver a lot of things - but not when a train is coming.

Life Preserver

12-year-old catches 551-pound bull shark in Florida waters

A 12-year-old Connecticut boy may be the new Florida state record holder for catching the heaviest bull shark.

Aidan Murray Medley had a spent a half day at sea Tuesday when he reeled in the 551-pound bull shark just north of the Palm Beach Inlet.

Smiley

Flashback Satire: CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years

A report released Tuesday by the CIA's Office of the Inspector General revealed that the CIA has mistakenly obscured hundreds of thousands of pages of critical intelligence information with black highlighters.

Question

Woman in Burning Truck Keeps Driving

PAW PAW TOWNSHIP, Mich. - Having live electrical wires fall on her truck and set it on fire wasn't enough to slow a motorist in southwest Michigan. State police say the unnamed woman ran a stop sign Monday night in Van Buren County's Paw Paw Township and hit a cable supporting a utility pole.

Magic Wand

Traveling without moving: Iron mask wager 'was a fib'

Even the great fictional traveller Phileas Fogg would have baulked at such a wager: walk around the world while pushing a pram and wearing an iron mask, and pick up a wife along the way without ever letting her see your face or know your name.

Beer

Men shoot themselves in tattoo attempt

Getting a tattoo can be a painful proposition, but usually it's just the needle you have to worry about. Two men trying to trace a loaded .357-caliber Magnum as a pattern for a tattoo accidentally shot themselves, the Otero County Sheriff's Department said Monday.

Robert Glasser and Joey Acosta, both 22, were treated at a hospital in El Paso, Texas, after the shooting Thursday evening in nearby Chaparral.

Document

'Surge' makes the banned-words list

Resist the urge to say you will "wordsmith" your list of New Year's resolutions rather than write one. And don't utter, "It is what it is" when you fail to meet your first goal.

Those are two of the 19 words or phrases that appear in Lake Superior State University's annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness. The school in Michigan's Upper Peninsula released its 33rd list Monday, selecting from about 2,000 nominations.

Among this year's picks are "surge," the term for the troop buildup in Iraq. "Give me the old days, when it referenced storms and electrical power," Michael Raczko of Swanton, Ohio, said in nominating the word.

Magic Hat

Diners find rare pearl in plate of clams

LAKE WORTH, Fla. - A Florida man was about halfway through a plate of steamed clams when he chomped down on something hard - a rare, iridescent purple pearl. George Brock and his wife, Leslie, had been spending a day at the beach Friday in South Florida and stopped at Dave's Last Resort & Raw Bar for a bite. Their find could be worth thousands.

Phoenix

Driver blames crash on pterodactyl

A 29-year-old Wenatchee man told police a pterodactyl caused him to drive his car into a light pole about 11:30 p.m. Thursday.

Smiley

"Holy smoke" in nunnery tops 2007 weird news

From a Greek nunnery turned into a marijuana farm by two men posing as gardeners to a South African man with a gunshot wound told by a doctor to "walk the pain off," the world was full of weird news in 2007.

A Moscow woman set fire to her ex-husband's penis as he sat naked watching television and drinking vodka. The couple divorced three years ago but continued to share a small flat.

"I was burning like a torch," the wounded ex-husband told Tvoi Den newspaper. "I don't know what I did to deserve this."