Don't Panic! Lighten Up!S


Coffee

Excuse Me, Is This Your Phone?

We dropped 30 phones in 32 cities. How many would we get back?

Bulb

Agency Offers AIDS Education to Elderly



©AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews
Joy Antonella, 91, center, reads a handout during an HIV/AIDS educational presentation and screening for seniors at the Peter Cardella Senior Center in Ridgewood, New York

NEW YORK - While volunteers passed out cups of Jell-O to the white-haired lunch crowd at a senior center, another group was distributing something that didn't quite fit amid the card games and daily gossip: condoms. "You're giving out condoms," 82-year-old Rose Crescenzo said with a wistful smile, "but who's going to give us a guy?"

But this was no joke.

Light Sabers

Police lose scooter in blazing 8 mph chase

This plucky pensioner led police on a low-speed chase around Middlesbrough - and then gave officers the slip.

The lukewarm pursuit started after he caused traffic chaos by crawling down the fast lane of a busy dual carriageway.

Police asked the stubborn senior citizen to pull over. But he defiantly cranked his battery-powered mobility scooter up to its top speed - 8mph - and somehow managed to escape their attention.

©Gazette Live

Comment: Man on the run... Man on the run...


Question

Pool and water stolen from New Jersey yard

Someone stole 1,000 gallons of water from Daisy Valdivia's backyard. And they didn't spill a drop.

Valdivia woke Wednesday morning to find that her family's inflatable pool, hip high and 10 feet in diameter and filled with water, was stolen from her backyard in the middle of the night. There is no evidence that the water was poured out, pumped out, evaporated or drunk.

©Leslie Barbaro / Herald News
Daisy Valdivia, of Paterson, is trying to figure out how thieves managed to steal the family's backyard inflatable pool and the 1,000 gallons of water in it during the night Wednesday.

Wine

Taxi panel won't retire 666

The devil gets to keep riding around in a San Francisco cab, the San Francisco taxi commission decreed on Tuesday.

After nearly half an hour of discussion and debate, the commission brought the weight of government to the question of whether to grant a request by a San Francisco cab driver seeking to retire Medallion No. 666 because of the number's association with Satan.

Telescope

Spying squirrels

Also in the animal world . . . From the BBC translators, an editorial by Saleh Eskandari headlined "spying squirrels," published July 10 by the Iranian newspaper Resalat.

"A few weeks ago, 14 squirrels equipped with espionage systems of foreign intelligence services were captured by [Iranian] intelligence forces along the country's borders. These trained squirrels, each of which weighed just over 700 grams, were released on the borders of the country for intelligence and espionage purposes. According to the announcement made by Iranian intelligence officials, alert police officials caught these squirrels before they could carry out any task.

Comment: According to various reports, the camera-wielding squirrels turned out to be American tourists. Iranians admit it was an honest mistake.


Black Cat

Oscar the cat predicts patients' deaths

Providence, Rhode Island - Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live.


©AP
Oscar, the furry reaper.

Wolf

Is this the proof that spirits DO exist?

At first, it seemed no more than a curious coincidence. Professor Klaus Heinemann, a researcher for NASA, the U.S. space agency, was studying a collection of photographs his wife had taken at a gathering of spiritual healers when he noticed that many of them featured the same pale but clearly defined circle of light, like a miniature moon, hovering above some of the subjects.

Question

Vivoleum - It's new, it's disgusting! And it fooled an oil industry group

Sometimes you can't make it up any weirder than it actually is. That definitely was the case on June 14, when a pair of environmental pranksters managed to promote themselves as keynote speakers at the Gas and Oil Exposition - aka GO-EXPO 2007 - in Calgary.

Better Earth

Search for Britain's most remarkable epitaph

Some choose their own. Others think it too morbid. Some boast of achievement. Others want to be modest.

They can be witty or doom-laden, long or short, informative or tell you very little that's useful. Epitaphs, from the ancient Greek literally meaning "on the gravestone" and the text that honours the deceased commonly inscribed on a tombstone, come in many forms.

But in Britain they have one thing in common - they are in danger of being lost for ever. So serious is the situation that today a campaign is being launched to try to record as many as possible before it is too late.

Each year in England 25,000 gravestones are lost and with them the important historical information they contain.

©waterlooogs.ca

"People want nice tidy churchyards and don't want to mow around higgledy, piggledy gravestones so they move them and they break, or they lay them face down and they get forgotten then broken up for paving stones," said Richard Stuart, the director of the National Archive of Memorial Inscriptions who has made it his mission to record details of as many as possible.