Don't Panic! Lighten Up!S


Beer

Baby otters safe after excursion, stop at pub

PETALUMA, Calif. --Two baby river otters are safely in the care of a wildlife rescue group after a weekend excursion that took them through several Petaluma neighborhoods, including a stop at a local pub.

Residents began calling the Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue hotline Friday night, reporting sightings of the pair slinking across porches and diving under fences.

The first otter was caught Saturday morning after a homeowner caught the animal sleeping between a garbage can and a flower pot. The second one, however, kept moving through town and was spotted by a man outside Mario & John's Tavern that night.

"He was afraid he'd sound crazy or we'd think he'd been drinking too much. But he said it hissed at him twice and then ran across the street into some bushes," said Donnie Figone, co-owner of the tavern.

Someone finally trapped the baby otter at an auto parts store Monday morning and called the rescue group.

Rescuers believe the mother of the 2-month old siblings, each about the size of a shoebox, may have been injured or died. Baby otters cannot survive long without their mother, spurring the weekend search for them.

Officials say a third otter also could be on the loose in town.

Take 2

Venezuela TV punished for 'Simpsons' run

CARACAS --Venezuelan regulators are forcing a local TV station to show public service announcements as punishment for broadcasting "The Simpsons" during a time slot reserved for children's programs.

The Televen channel yanked the animated hit from its lineup in April after regulators said its 11 a.m. showing violated broadcast rules intended to protect young viewers. "The Simpsons" returned to the air at night, and was replaced in the morning with "Baywatch Hawaii."

Beer

US: Woman crashes into store then tries to buy beer

NORWALK, Calif. --A convenience store became an unwilling drive-in when a 74-year-old woman plowed her car through the front window and then tried to buy a six-pack of Budweiser, police and the owner said.

Lynne Rice of Norwalk drove her 1988 Cadillac into Joe's Food Mart and Video on Sunday evening, Los Angeles County sheriff's Lt. Jenny Ha said.

The car plowed about halfway through the store but nobody was injured. Rice got out of the car, walked over to the cooler and pulled out a six-pack of Budweiser beer, said the store owner, who gave only his last name, Awada, to the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

"I don't know how she managed to walk," Awada said, adding a cashier declined the sale and instead called police.

Rice was taken to a hospital for examination because she had a pre-existing medical condition, Ha said.

She was also arrested for investigation of misdemeanor driving under the influence and released on $15,000 bail, authorities said.

Cow

French man with two asses surprises Swedish officials



Asses
©Adam Lhse/Scanpix

Customs officials in Gothenburg were at a loss as to how to deal with Jacques Abdelaziz and his two four-legged pack animals when the trio wandered off a ferry boat from Denmark on Sunday afternoon.

Abdelaziz, who hails from Brittany in northwestern France, has been wandering around Europe for the past two months with his two donkeys, Nounou and Toutoune, according to the Göteborg-Posten (GP) newspaper.

And the journey had been going smoothly, if not slowly, until the pilgrims landed on Swedish shores, whereupon they were met by requests for permits and paperwork.

"I had thought about just going to Stockholm and then heading back but now I'm not sure what's going to happen. All they care about are documents," Abdelaziz said to GP as he nodded toward the customs checkpoint.

Better Earth

Satire: We Must Preserve The Earth's Dwindling Resources For My Five Children



Melford
©The Onion

As we move into the 21st century, it is our responsibility to think of the future of the earth - not for ourselves, but for those who will inherit what my husband and I leave behind when we're gone. If we do not join together and do what's best for this, our only planet, there may not be an environment left in which my five children, and their 25 children's 125 children, can grow up and raise large upper-middle-class families of their own.

Nothing less than the preservation of my descendents' lifestyle itself is at stake.

X

Exam student's reward for writing 'f*** off'

Write 'f*** off' on a GCSE paper and you'll get 7.5%. Add an exclamation mark and it'll go up to 11%

Pupils are being rewarded for writing obscenities in their GCSE English examinations even when it has nothing to do with the question.

One pupil who wrote "f*** off" was given marks for accurate spelling and conveying a meaning successfully.

His paper was marked by Peter Buckroyd, a chief examiner who has instructed fellow examiners to mark in the same way. He told trainee examiners recently to adhere strictly to the mark scheme, to the extent that pupils who wrote only expletives on their papers should be awarded points.

Mr Buckroyd, chief examiner of English for the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA), an examination board, said that he had given the pupil two marks, out of a possible 27, for the expletive.

To gain minimum marks in English, students must demonstrate "some simple sequencing of ideas" and "some words in appropriate order". The phrase had achieved this, according to Mr Buckroyd.

Magic Wand

Good news a must in Romania

Bucharest - Upbeat news would have to make up half of all newscasts on all of Romania's radio and television stations, under legislation adopted unanimously on Wednesday in the senate.

"News programmes on TV and radio shall contain, in the same proportion, news with positive and negative themes," states the legislation, which is going to President Traian Basescu for adoption.

Comment: "Events cannot be programmed, nor can minds."

Really???


Padlock

Driver arrested after speeding 22 times in 45 days

PHOENIX, Arizona - A Nevada woman has been arrested after photo enforcement cameras on a Phoenix freeway captured her behind the wheel of a car speeding 22 times in a 45-day span, authorities said.

Padlock

Sweden: Officials place chatty bird under house arrest

Politicians in Lerum in western Sweden have ruled that Girli the parrot may only spend two hours each weekday in its outdoor cage and must remain indoors for the entire weekend.

Girli's neighbour's think she talks too much and first reported the bright green Amazon parrot to the authorities in 2002.

The neighbours demanded that action be taken against Girli and forty other caged birds in the same garden.

Bizarro Earth

Sarkozy gets it in the neck for presidential gift

Conscious of the need to whip up some enthusiasm for France's imminent accession to the EU presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy has not neglected those closest to home.

All 577 MPs at the national assembly have received a gift from the Elysée Palace to mark the occasion. But what should have been a harmless PR exercise has turned into a blunder, alienating the assembly's 107 women and mystifying many others. Inside the little black case left in each MP's letterbox was some very tasteful stationery - pencil and notepad - a towel rail, and ... a pale grey tie. "Yet more proof of the male chauvinism reigning among the political class!" said one young female Socialist in Le Parisien.