Don't Panic! Lighten Up!S


Stormtrooper

Paratroopers Mistakenly Land at Prison

CANON CITY, Colo. - A unit of 25 military paratroopers landed inside the perimeter of a state prison, but not to quell a riot or attempt some movie-script breakout. They just goofed.

Wine

Oh My Goodness! The day God was taken to court

A Romanian man who sued God for "fraud" and "betrayal of trust" for failing to answer his prayers has had his case dismissed in court, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Mircea Pavel, 40, who is serving 20 years in prison for murder, brought charges against "the defendant God, who lives in the heavens and is represented in Romania by the Orthodox Church," the daily Evenimentul Zilei reported.

Heart

Twins separated at birth reunite after 15 years

QUITO, Ecuador - A chance meeting has reunited identical twin sisters who were separated at birth nearly 15 years ago - and touched off a legal dispute over how two doctors adopted one of the girls.

©Diario El Universo / AP
Identical twins Andrea Freire and Marielisa Romo found out about each other during a chance meeting in the southern Ecuadorean town of Milagros, nearly 15 years after they were separated. Their biological parents accuse two doctors of taking one of the twins after delivery.

Petita Penaherrera says she did not know she had twins until she and her daughter Andrea came face-to-face with Marielisa Romo four months ago in the southern Ecuadorean town of Milagros - meaning "miracles" in English.

Evil Rays

Tank Rampage Targets Mobile Phone Towers, Power Stations In Sydney

Police arrested a 45-year-old man after a 90-minute rampage through Sydney's western suburbs in an Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) on Saturday. Police cars followed the APC as it destroyed six mobile phone towers and damaged an electricity sub-station.

Police were finally able to arrest the man after the APC stalled, as it was heading towards another electricity sub-station.

Police Chief Inspector Guy Haberley told the ABC, "The vehicle continued to other locations within the Mount Druitt local area command and continued to destroy mobile phone tower communications sheds by crashing through the perimeter fence and colliding with structures, causing significant damage."

Bizarro Earth

Attempted robbery ends in group hug

Police on Capitol Hill are baffled by an attempted robbery that began with a handgun put to the head of a teenager and ended in a group hug.

Monkey Wrench

Oops! Shuttle's Name Misspelled On NASA Launch Pad Sign

The first NASA sign at launch pad 39A encouraging the next launch of space shuttle Endeavour at Kennedy Space Center was misspelled and noticed by someone looking at the craft.

When the shuttle rolled out from the Vehicle Assembly Building Wednesday, a giant "Go Endeavour" sign was put on a fence in front of the craft.

©Local6.com

However, one item was missing from the sign: the "u" in Endeavour.

Attention

'Killer' Wasps Menace State Department

As if the insurgency in Iraq and the fight against terrorism wasn't enough, U.S. diplomats are now struggling with a new threat: menacing "killer" wasps that have infested areas around the State Department's headquarters.

Mail

What's al-Qaeda's take on the iPhone?

In-depth analysis In a fortnight during which just about everyone on the planet, excluding naturally those in a coma or temporarily indisposed up some tributary of the Amazon, has offered their two bits' worth on the launch of Apple's iPhone, it comes as a bit of a surprise that al-Qaeda has dismally failed to contribute to the brouhaha.

Bizarro Earth

Fashion Alert: UK judges abandon traditional wig and gown in civil cases

Judges are to end centuries of tradition and abandon the wearing of wigs and gowns in hundreds of civil and family cases.

The decision to abolish the 300-year-old horsehair headgear, along with wing collars and bands, was announced yesterday by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers.

However, in a compromise ending one of the most hotly disputed legal debates of recent years, judges sitting in criminal courts will continue to wear their wigs.

And solicitor-advocates, who have long fought for parity with barristers, will be allowed to wear the same traditional costume that is the hallmark of the Bar. The issue of what judges and advocates should wear has split the profession and been the subject of several lengthy consultation exercises.

Star

Rock star back at university again after 33 gap years

Brian May, the multimillionaire guitarist who founded the rock group Queen, has finally completed the PhD in astrophysics that he abandoned more than 30 years ago.

The 59-year-old composer of hits such as Fat Bottomed Girls and We Will Rock You turned his back on the stars for international fame with Freddie Mercury and his band. His thesis on interplanetary dust clouds lay gathering dust of its own in the attic of his home in Surrey.

May's interest in the subject was rekindled last year when he co-authored a children's science book with the astronomer Sir Patrick Moore. He discovered that remarkably little research had been done in the intervening 33 years.

He dug out his old handwritten notes and spent nine months conducting further research at Imperial College, London, where he had studied before Queen hit the big time.