_________________________________________________________________ Selections from "Whiteboard News" _________________________________________________________________ This item comes by way of Matthew Johnston: Ogden, Utah: A missing-person report filed by a Utah husband anxious about his wife uncovered the shocking truth: The "wife" was actually a man who is accused of taking the husband for up to $40,000 during their 3 1/2-year marriage. Felix Urioste is in jail on $20,000 bail on fraud charges, and Bruce Jensen is confused, embarrassed and broke. Jensen told police he didn't know his wife was a man until officers convinced him. "I feel pretty stupid," Jensen, 39, told the Standard-Examiner of Ogden, Utah. The deception unraveled when Urioste, 34, was arrested in Las Vegas for using 33 credit cards that were fraudulently obtained in the names of Bruce and Leasa Jensen and others. Prosecutor Bill McGuire said Jensen was "just incredibly naive." "You've got a situation where a guy didn't have a normal marriage," he said. "The victim is just a really nice guy." Authorities said Urioste was able to pull off the deception because he looked like a woman and because Jensen never saw him naked. _________________________________________________________________ This item comes by way of RB Williams: London, England: An armada of 29,000 plastic toy ducks are bobbing their way toward the coast of Britain, The Times newspaper said today. "Britain should be put on duck alert," Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer from Seattle, who has been using computer simulation to track the toys, told the newspaper. The animals, which also include some blue turtles, red beavers and green frogs, were washed overboard in heavy seas from a container ship in the north Pacific in January 1992. They had been frozen in the Arctic sea but are expected to be carried south by the Gulf Stream, completing their 12,000-mile voyage on the British and Irish coasts. _________________________________________________________________ This item comes by way of Tim Ingram: Jacksonville, Florida: An unidentified man working as Santa Claus at a mall in Jacksonville walked off the job after telling a 6-year- old he wouldn't get any presents if he was a Florida Gators fan, a newspaper reported Friday. Chip Crabtree said he and his wife, Lori, took their sons -- ages 2, 4 and 6 -- to visit Santa at the mall. When Santa saw the children's mother wearing a Gators sweatshirt, he remarked: "Santa Claus doesn't like Gator fans...Santa Claus wishes that Florida State would beat the Gators in the Sugar Bowl." After exchanging unpleasant remarks with the Crabtrees, Santa stormed off the stage and out of the mall. Mall general manager Tom Funari apologized. "Santas are trained that they are supposed to be impartial," he explained. He didn't know the Santa's real name. The Santa operation is run by Suncoast Photography, not the mall. Tom Lane, co-owner of Suncoast, also said he didn't know the name of that particular Santa. Crabtree later told his children that this wasn't the real Santa. "Sometimes Santa uses helpers, and this one was an impostor," he said. Crabtree's 6-year-old said that he knew it wasn't Santa, because "there wasn't any magic in his eyes." _________________________________________________________________ Jerusalem, Israel: Rabbis have ruled that a couple's 1982 marriage is illegal because of a sin committed by the wife's family 2,500 years ago, news reports said Monday. Shoshana Hadad and Masoud Cohen could face criminal charges of misleading the rabbi who married them, the Religious Affairs Ministry said. The ruling is based on a historic rumor. Rabbis believe a distant ancestor of Hadad, a Tunisian immigrant, illegally married a divorcee in about 580 B.C., the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said. That transgression marked the entire family. Rabbis decreed that the family's daughters for generations -- including Shoshana Hadad -- could never marry a Cohen. Cohens are descendants of the original Jewish temple priests and are expected to follow certain laws in family matters. When rabbis in Tiberias in northern Israel refused to marry them in 1982, Cohen and Hadad had a religious wedding in Meron, another Galilee town, Hadad said on Israel radio. She said that she believed that made it official despite the doubts about her family's past. The newspaper indicated that the couple only learned the wedding wasn't recognized when recently they tried to register their 4-year-old son at the Interior Ministry. Hadad was told she was still listed as single. The Religious Affairs Ministry claimed the couple were told from the start they couldn't marry, but Hadad disputed that on Israel Television, saying they never knew about the problem. "This is scandalous," Hadad told the newspaper. "It's intolerable." "What are we to blame for what some grandfather did?" she said on television. "If some great-grandfather did something during the days of the first temple, do we have to suffer for it to this very day?" Moshe Friedman, spokesman for the Religious Affairs Ministry, accused the couple of marrying by "deception and in criminal ways," and said the rabbi involved would complain to police. The couple can appeal the ruling, which carries legal weight because Orthodox rabbis set the guidelines for weddings in Israel. _________________________________________________________________ This item comes by way of Michael Hardoby: Spokane, Washington: A nurse who accidentally dropped a donated human heart, then threw it in a trash can without telling transplant officials, was reprimanded and fined, officials said Wednesday. Fearing she had contaminated the organ, Wanda R. Condon, a registered nurse, discarded it and then falsified documents to indicate the heart had been shipped to a tissue recovery laboratory. The heart had been brought to Sacred Heart from Alaska, but the transplant operation was canceled when the potential recipient's condition deteriorated. Because no other transplant candidates were immediately available within the four hours an organ can be kept outside the body, doctors decided to recover valves so the heart would not be wasted. The incident occurred November 28, 1993, while Condon was preparing the heart for shipment to a tissue processing laboratory. "This was an accident. An isolated accident can happen to any surgeon, any nurse at any time," said Janet Steele, director of the Organ Procurement Agency. "The failure in this was she didn't report it immediately. A life was not lost in this. There was a loss of valves, which are certainly precious, but no life was lost." Steele said she learned of the missing organ when the tissue recovery lab in Marietta, Georgia, reported they had never received the heart. Condon last August signed an order agreeing to pay a $250 fine. In addition, a written reprimand has been placed in her records. _________________________________________________________________ Seoul, South Korea: South Korea banned toothpicks in restaurants, starting February 1, to make garbage safe for pig feed. Violators could be fined $3,700. _________________________________________________________________ Luxembourg: A poll of Luxembourg residents shows that their favorite activity is sleeping. In second place: resting. _________________________________________________________________ Torrington, Connecticut: A frantic search for a missing toddler ended when police found the 2-year-old asleep in the cushions of the family's overstuffed couch. _________________________________________________________________ London, England: The Bad Sex Prize, a British award for the worst description of sex in a novel, was awarded to a director of the auction firm Sotheby's. Philip Hook fought off stiff competition from best- selling novelist Jilly Cooper and conservative politician Edwina Currie, runner-up for her novel "A Parliamentary Affair". The passage of Hook's book "The Stonebreakers" that clinched his victory included the lines: "Their jaws ground in feverish mutual mastication. Saliva and sweat. Sweat and saliva. There was a purposeful shedding of clothing." The magazine The Literary Review awarded the prize. _________________________________________________________________ This item also comes by way of Chuck Yerkes: Amsterdam, Netherlands: A set of false teeth lost in the North Sea have been returned to their Dutch owner after being found in the belly of a cod. Dutch newspapers said 60-year-old Cor Stoop lost his teeth overboard when he was seasick on a pleasure trip three months ago. The dentures were discovered in a cod caught by an Amsterdam angler at the weekend. Stoop heard about the find in a broadcast and went to the radio station to try the teeth on. They were a perfect fit. _________________________________________________________________ Hong Kong: A tugboat captain chugged into Hong Kong harbor and made off with a barge carrying $3.85 million worth of cargo while its crew was at dinner. _________________________________________________________________ Homosassa Springs, Florida: A teenager who went to a hardware store looking for work allegedly ended up stealing two handguns and a watch. Police say he wasn't hard to find: He left his job application. "It was about the dumbest thing I have ever seen," said hardware store manager Joe Clark. David Lee McCumsey Jr., 18, was charged with two counts of grand theft and one count of petty theft. He was released on $4,250 bail. After the teenager applied for a job Friday and left in a hurry, store employees noticed two handguns and a man's watch were missing. Sheriff's deputies found McCumsey's application where he had left it -- on top of the gun case. Deputies said McCumsey later admitted to the theft. _________________________________________________________________ Columbia, South Carolina: Call it the poor man's "Sea Hunt." Cable television viewers in Columbia are hooked on the Fish TV channel, which features a 55-gallon aquarium, some saltwater and a school of 12 that works for scale. That's it, although new fish sometimes are added for visual variety. "It's exactly what you would envision," says Hal Schlenger, marketing manager for Columbia's Cablevision Industries, which created the channel. "You see the fish and you hear jazz music. It's simple and to the point." Fish TV started out as a fluke, a six-month stopgap before airtime could be filled by the Sci-Fi channel. "We wanted to put on something...that once we took it off, people probably wouldn't miss," says Schlenger. People missed it. Many called in to complain. "Fish in particular...have a very soothing effect on people," says Chris Andrews of the National Aquarium in Baltimore. So Fish TV returned on a different channel, splitting airtime with the Bravo channel. CVI doesn't keep track of subscribers watching the channel, but they're out there. "It's nice if you want something that's soothing," says Columbia resident Princetta Harper. "And the music is just beautiful." "Quite frankly, you get what you might get at home," says Schlenger, "but you don't have to feed the fish and you don't have to clean the tank." _________________________________________________________________ London, England: A woman who ended up in a British court because her rabbits mated too noisily agreed to build a garden shed so her neighbors would not have to hear the animals' constant "scratching, thumping and banging." Joyce Hartley of London told the hearing that she would somehow find the funds to build the sound barrier by the end of the month. Neighbors Ernest and Frances Haskins complained to the crown court that the cavorting rabbits kept them awake at night. _________________________________________________________________ Los Angeles, California: More than three-quarters of all the paper money in Los Angeles has some amount of cocaine or some other illicit drug stuck to it, according to a federal appeals-court decision that vividly illuminates how extensively the drug trade touches mainstream commerce. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals relied on that fact to dismiss a case against a man suspected of drug trafficking. In powdered form, the court said, cocaine is so sticky that a bit stays behind when a drug dealer wraps it in a bill folded like an envelope or a user snorts it through a dollar used as a makeshift straw. As that bill is pressed against another in a wallet or counted in combination with others in a bank or cash register, those other bills get contaminated too. That means, the court said, that almost everyone in Los Angeles is conceivably at risk of being barked at by drug-sniffing police dogs. _________________________________________________________________ Hollywood, California: "In an interview, Vanna White says since her son was born, she wants to work less. Vanna, you turn tiles for a living. If you worked any less, you'd be the triangle player for K.C. and the Sunshine Band." Comic Dennis Miller, on "Dennis Miller Live." _________________________________________________________________ Fast News Forum: * Five Colombian prisoners on a hunger strike in an Ecuadorian jail sewed their lips shut to emphasize their demand to be sent home to serve out their time. * A North Carolina construction worker whose earth mover flipped and crushed one of his legs used two eightpenny nails to dig himself out and drag himself up a hill to get help. * A Colorado mechanic thought something was wrong when he felt a wall in a gas tank he was working on. The tank contained 70 pounds of marijuana. * A full-size replica of the ocean liner Titanic is to be built in Asia for a Japanese firm to use as a hotel. * It may be the law of the jungle, but that doesn't make it art, said French officials who shut down an avant- garde show of spiders, snakes, scorpions and toads devouring each other. * The Hendersonville-Sumner County, Tennessee, Film Commission is looking for a filmmaker to blow up the vacant Hawkins Middle School. That way the town wouldn't have to pay to tear it down, the mayor said. * A billboard promoting Boston's recently renovated Charles Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Science admonishes drivers to: "Visit Our Planetarium, You Tiny, Insignificant Speck in the Universe." * Gifford Riney, of Bullard, Texas, has filed a lawsuit accusing ex-wife Hilda Stanley of fraud for concealing her winning Lotto Texas ticket until their marriage was annulled. Stanley claimed her $4.3 million prize 137 days after winning, using her maiden name and refusing to allow use of her picture. * Mitchell Smith, who was prevented from stealing a car with a sleeping 6-year-old girl inside when the girl's mother beat him senseless with the antitheft device The Club, was sentenced to life by a Detroit, Michigan, court. Smith's record of three prior felonies allowed the sentence. * Patricia Tanzi, 45, buried her Cadillac in her Patterson, New York, backyard, then reported it stolen and collected $16,000 in insurance, police say. The car was found 13 feet deep with a boulder the size of a Volkswagen on top of it. * In Rapid City, South Dakota, a seven-year prison sentence was imposed on Delano White Eagle, 24, who pretended to have a gun during a $5 holdup, after which he asked the victim to join him for a beer. * North Little Rock, Arkansas, can breath a little easier now that Roger Davis has turned in his driver's license. Davis, who is legally blind as well as 55% deaf, claims a Revenue Department employee helped him with test answers when he applied for and received his license. * Japanese scientists purportedly have produced a new product for seducers' olfactory arsenals: pheromone- laced underpants. * A Moore, Oklahoma, 17-year-old boy arrested after an Army veteran saw him clean a car's dipstick with a U.S. flag will not be charged, officials said. Cited: First Amendment protects flag desecration. * Arlington, Virginia, police said they've been getting calls from angry escort service customers who feel cheated because the escorts refused to provide sex. Police said they can't help these clients. * A man serving time on sex abuse charges in Kentucky has persuaded the governors of six states to proclaim October 8 as "Love Day." Officials said they knew Lou Torok was an inmate, but were unaware he molested two boys. * Prentiss Mitchell, 20, was arrested for bank robbery after he was caught playing with dye-stained money at Circus Circus Casino, officials said. * After years of searching, botanists in New Zealand found an orchid believed to be extinct. It was lying flattened under a groundsheet when they took down their tent. * West Contra Costa County (California) School Board member Charles Ramsey says he won't resign despite charges he solicited a prostitute. He said quitting would set a bad example for students. * A $1.2 million federal grant the city of Manchester, New Hampshire, hoped to use to buy a building constructed during the Industrial Revolution arrived six hours too late. Owner Norm Poisson, unaware the grant was OK'd, had crews destroy it to make way for a parking lot. * A 7-year-old in Colebrook, New Hampshire, was riding his bike to school when he realized he would be late, so he stole a Ford Escort, police said. The owner had left the keys in the car. Police stopped the boy as he drove. * The Yankton, South Dakota, School District will appeal an order to provide special education for Tracy Schramm, 17, who has cerebral palsy. Already one of their top students, she needs no special classes, officials say. * Conway, Arkansas, Superintendent Ray Simon asked pupils to help decide -- through a writing contest -- if he should wear a toupee. "That would be like putting a Cadillac hood ornament on a Ford Pinto," one entry said. Entrants mostly opposed; he says he'll abide. * Five Wichita, Kansas, fire department crews rescued a scarecrow from the Arkansas River on Sunday. If they let it float by, people would have reported bodies in the river all day, a spokesman said. * Tampa, Florida, resident Etta Stephens is suing Barnnett Bank for the heart attack she had after receiving an incorrect statement. It said her $20,000 money market account was empty. The bank refused comment. * Connie and Gerald Ostermann, "hosed" awake by their son Joel last August while Minneapolis, Minnesota, radio station KEGE-FM broadcast their screams, are suing the station. They want $50,000 for emotional and mental duress. * The Alliance for the Mentally Ill in Rhode Island says that the Crazy Burger Cafe is insensitive to the mentally ill. Menu items include the Neurotic Burger, Loco Burger and Just Plain Nuts Burger. * Lucas Sifuentes, 18, was caught a day after he walked out of the Pettis County (Missouri) Jail's front door. A sign now reads, "Keep this door closed and locked at all times. Not an inmate exit." * Chicago undercover police say they watched as tow-truck driver Michael Williams, 28, hooked a legally parked car, then dragged it to an illegal spot, photographed the auto illegally parked, re-hooked it and towed it away. He was charged with possession of a stolen vehicle. * Danish comedian Jacob Haugaard, promising better weather, shorter lines and the right of men to be impotent, got the shock of his life by being elected to Parliament. * Fredrick Ward is charged with stealing $506 from Hot&Speedy Pizza of Waterbury, Connecticut. He was arrested after he ordered a pizza from the same restaurant a week later and the delivery man recognized him as the robber, police say. * Newly sworn-in Senator Sammy Boan, of Columbia, South Carolina, who won the seat left vacant when former Senator Theo Mitchell was expelled, has decided not to accept his $10,400 salary. He will only hold his seat for two days before the session ends. * A candid panhandler in Washington, DC, carries a sign that reads: "Hell, why lie? I need a beer." * A double-murder trial in a California court was halted after a juror accidentally glued shut her right eye. * The northern English city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne was branded one of Britain's most polluted spots because scientists misguidedly put a smog monitor right on top of a department store's loading dock. * A man was charged with stealing a condom machine from the men's restroom at a bar in Waterford, Michigan. "All we can figure is, he was anticipating a big weekend," a police spokesman said. * A woman once recognized as the world's fattest by the Guinness Book of Records has sued a supermarket tabloid for comparing her to a baby elephant and a small family car. The Sellerville, Pennsylvania, woman, once 1,000 pounds but now a svelte 300, says the story cast her as a "thing" or "animal." * Two men who broke out of the county jail and stole a milk truck in Benton, Arkansas, were tracked down by police who followed a trail of milk that spilled out of the truck's back door. * A small-time burglar in Port St. Lucie, Florida, stole a bowl and $5 in change, but police were baffled as to why the culprit clipped all the sprouts off a chia pet. * A Memphis grammar school held a dance to reward pupils for good behavior, but the activity was marred when a female teacher and female counselor got into a fistfight. * Swedish customs officers noticed "something weird" about a woman's bosom. On further investigation, they found 65 baby snakes in her bra. * A paraplegic in Minnesota has been charged with aggravated robbery and theft for allegedly using his wheelchair to knock down and rob an 85-year-old man. * The Aurora, Illinois, City Council voted to reprimand an alderman who had passed out nude photos of himself at a council meeting. * The city of Inchon, South Korea, sacked all the members of its municipal choir after they ignored their conductor during a concert and created a near-riot in front of 700 angry people. * In inmate who claimed he violated his own civil rights by getting arrested filed a $5 million lawsuit against himself -- then asked the state of Virginia to pay because he has no income in jail. Detroit residents chopped down a plan to erect a 115- foot cellular-telephone tower disguised as a white-pine tree. * The editor of Columbia University's Daily Spectator was fired after she allegedly pulled a false fire alarm so a photographer could get shots of a new firetruck. * An Australian music store knew how to promote its annual spring sale. It offered free compact discs to anyone who showed up nude. Store owners had to turn away ogling crowds because the store's capacity was strained. * An armed man in a Halloween mask who tried to hold up the Cedar Glen Golf Course clubhouse in Saugus, Massachusetts, fled after one patron pulled off the mask and others laughed, police said. * Ernst Davis, 22, was injured after a 20-foot deep sinkhole developed in front of him as he drove near the onramp to I-70 near Frederick, Maryland. He managed to stop on the edge of the hole and climbed out of the car before it fell to the bottom, police said. * Christopher Ashley, 23, spent three days in the Norwood, New York, jail for failing to return three library books he checked out in 1992. _________________________________________________________________ Kenosha, Wisconsin: A man who speaks no English offered a judge a Monopoly- style "Get Out of Jail Free" card in hopes of avoiding a jail term. Municipal Judge John Neuenschwander didn't exactly honor the card when it was presented to him Wednesday by 22-year-old Jorge Rodriguez. But neither did he send him to jail. The card had apparently been distributed by Kenneth Polzin Jr. in his unsuccessful campaign for sheriff. Rodriguez, who speaks only Spanish, had no lawyer when he appeared before the judge for hitting a parked car while driving drunk. "Clearly, the defendant had the impression it was legitimate and was going to play that trump card," Assistant City Attorney Edward Antaramian said. The judge fined Rodriguez $1107 and suspended his license for nine months. Polzin said about 8000 of the orange cards were printed with the message "this card may be kept until needed, or sold, however it expires on January 3, 1995." Polzin would have taken office on that date if he had been elected. _________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: A woman who filed more than 700 lawsuits this year has been ordered to stop until she hires a lawyer or finds a doctor to certify that she is mentally competent. Brenda Butler Bryant has sued Burger King, the CIA, the University of Pennsylvania and the Philadelphia school board, among others. On Tuesday, Senior U.S. District Judge John Fullam demanded a halt to her "incomprehensible rubbish." Fullam said Bryant's handwritten lawsuits contain no complete sentences. He cited this excerpt from her latest filing: "Slavemaster Service, B/S Wholesale Club, Lane Bryant, Negro Services, BBB/KKK/LLL-Linda Lovelace/AAA." In all of her cases, Bryant asks for a waiver of the $120 filing fee, often claiming she was injured in a car accident on Mother's Day last year. Because of the waiver of the fee for each of her lawsuits, Bryant has cost the taxpayers $84,000. Judge Fullam has set a hearing date for December 13, at which time Bryant must show why the order is not justified. But Bryant has surmounted such challenges before: The last two judges who tried to shut her down became defendants in her next lawsuits. _________________________________________________________________ Milford, Connecticut: A driverless car spun in circles for more than two hours in Milford Wednesday when the car shifted into gear after its driver got out. Jeffrey Main said he pulled over and put the car into "park" because he was having problems with the brakes. After he got out, the car slipped into reverse with the steering wheel cocked at an angle. The spinning car drew crowds and caused a three-car crash on Interstate 95 as drivers slowed to gawk. Officials finally stopped the car by surrounding it with large trucks and rushing it with three bucket front-loaders. _________________________________________________________________ Toledo, Ohio: The mayor has come under fire after offering a possible solution to complaints about noise from the airport: Move deaf people into the neighborhood. Mayor Carty Finkbeiner raised the idea Wednesday. "That's like saying let the blind work at night because they can't see," said Dave Wielinski, chairman of Barrier Free Toledo. With an increasing number of flights at Toledo Express Airport, neighbors have complained about the jet noise, and the agency that operates the airport has been buying up homes. Earlier this week, Finkbeiner said the deaf might not be as bothered by the noise, and he raised the possibility of offering them homes that others are fleeing. "I think there may be people out there interested in living in a nice home if the noise factor was not going to be a problem," Finkbeiner said. A deaf woman called the suggestion an insult. She said deaf people can still feel the vibrations from the jets. _________________________________________________________________ Coffman Cove, Alaska: Nominated for a city council seat against her will, Elaine Price waged a campaign against herself -- successfully. She lost. "I put up signs, 'Don't vote for Elaine Price.' I told everyone who came in (her store), 'Don't vote for me,'" said Price, a liquor-store owner who lives in Coffman Cove, population 243, on Southeast Alaska's Prince of Wales Island. Her problem began with the municipal election October 4. According to Coffman Cove City Clerk Michelle Page, no one filed for the council seat, and none of the write-in candidates received the necessary 40 percent of the vote. Caroline Hodges got 14 votes. Five voters wrote in Price's name. Under city law, the top two vote- getters, willing or not, have a runoff. That left Price steamed. "I felt like I had a right to say whether I wanted to be a candidate," Price said. Not really, said the state attorney general's office, which advised the city clerk to keep Price's name on the ballot. Price had already served three years on the council. In the runoff, Hodges received 20 votes, Price three. _________________________________________________________________ Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania: What could have been the worst day of a man's life turned out to be one of his luckiest. Ted Yackera learned September 13 that he didn't have cancer. Hours later, he won $9 million in Pennsylvania's Wild Card Lotto. "I went through a lot that week," Yackera said of extensive tests before his doctor declared him cancer free. "After the cancer scare, I was feeling great, but after the lottery I was really trying to hold it together." Yackera, 34, picked up a check Friday for $305,000, the first installment of the jackpot. "I'm a very lucky man and I thank God for everything that's happened." His immediate plans include a trip to Disney World and early retirement from his job as a school-district business manager. _________________________________________________________________ London, England: A Carlsburg beer television commercial starring Brigette Nielsen has been banned in Britain. It shows her boringly serving beer to a herd of sheepish sheep until she's titillated by the arrival of a sheep dog and takes to impressing him by removing the beer-bottle cap with her breasts. _________________________________________________________________ New York, New York: Barbie has been a favorite of girls since she was introduced by Mattel in 1959. But the girls' moms probably didn't know that the busty blonde was partly based on a for-adults-only German doll named Lilli. Lilli hit the market in 1955. Named for a cartoon character in the tabloid "Bild Zeitung," she was 11.5 inches tall, with a platinum ponytail and a set of black stiletto heels -- a risqu=E9 gag gift for men. Ruth Handler, a co-founder of Mattel, bought a few Lilli dolls in Switzerland and had her designers do a makeover. Viola! A German streetwalker became a wholesome, all-American icon. This is just one of the bits of Barbie lore in the book "Forever Barbie," by M.G. Lord, due out in November. _________________________________________________________________ Toronto, Canada: A Canadian mass murderer made it to the semifinals of a U.S. poetry contest before shocked judges pulled his entry after learning of his identity. Clifford Olson, convicted of killing eight girls and three boys in 1982, wrote a poem called "Success" for a quarterly contest operated by the Maryland-based National Library of Poetry. "We were shocked, it's something that has never happened before," contest spokesman Eric Mueck said Friday. The poem, penned while Olson is serving life in a Canadian prison, ends as follows: "A life that is clean, a heart that is true, "And doing your best...that's success." _________________________________________________________________ This item comes by way of Dean Elzinga: Los Angeles, California: It wasn't the Mazda RX-7's speed that caught the eye of Redondo Beach Police Officer Joseph Fonteno early Sunday. It was the hood ornament -- the 9-foot light pole draped across the hood and roof of the white car on Pacific Coast Highway about 1:00 AM. Minutes earlier, the car's driver allegedly had jumped a center divider at Sepulveda Boulevard and Rosecrans Avenue, clipped a three-phase traffic signal from its concrete base and proceeded about seven miles to where Fonteno pulled him over after a short chase. Fonteno reported that the driver, a 49-year-old Torrance man, appeared "dazed and confused." When the officer asked about the traffic signal, the driver replied: "It came with the car when I bought it." _________________________________________________________________ Copenhagen, Denmark: A Danish convict who escaped a month ago when a bulldozer smashed through a prison wall returned Wednesday -- homesick for jail comforts and begging to be let back in, police said. Missing the relative luxury of Danish prison conditions, fugitive Kim Steven Kyed, 27, rang the main entry bell at Vridsloeselille state jail in west Copenhagen at 2 AM. He asked speechless guards to take him back. Kyed, serving three years for robbery, apparently became homesick after the arrest Tuesday of fellow escapee Jamie Lars Corbett, 24. Twelve convicts fled August 27 when a bulldozer driven by an accomplice gashed a 13-yard-wide hole in the perimeter wall of Vridsloeselille during a prison-yard barbecue. Denmark's prisons are among the most humane in the world, and some inmates finished their steaks rather than joining the biggest jailbreak in Danish history. _________________________________________________________________ New York, New York: "What no one knows is that the Justice Department told us that the Unabomber had to write all the sketches. It may not have been funny but we saved lives." Norm McDonald, "Saturday Night Live" comedian, explaining why the show wasn't exactly up to par last season. _________________________________________________________________ Mineola, New York: A New York bus driver and his friend who told ghost stories to a group of children face charges they endangered the welfare of a minor child, police said Sunday. Police in Nassau County allege that one of the 5- and 6-year-old children aboard a bus operated Friday by Robert Horton, 22, was frightened so much that it was "injurious" to his welfare. Horton and his friend, Jamar Jackson, 17, were arrested Friday after one of the children told his parents about the ghost stories and the parents in turn complained to the police. A Nassau County police officer said it is a violation of the law if someone "knowingly acts in a manner likely to be injurious to a child's physical, mental or moral welfare." _________________________________________________________________ Beijing, China: Two universities in China have refused to admit a student who won high marks in national entrance examinations, saying he was too ugly, the Beijing Youth Daily said. "How does a school choose students, by marks or by appearance?" Yang Hongwei, 20, from Central Henan province, was quoted as asking. Yang, whose marks were among the highest in the province this year, has been turned down to study physics and computers by Lanzhou University and by Zhengzhou University. Yang was born with a misshapen face and couldn't afford plastic surgery, the paper said. Lanzhou refused to admit Yang, saying he was disabled and could not study normally. A vice president of Zhengzhou University, explaining why Yang was turned down, was quoted as saying: "Our school is an open university with many external activities. If we expect this kind of student, I'm afraid it could influence the studies of other students." _________________________________________________________________ Coeur d'Alene, Idaho: A 23-year-old Post Falls woman charged with fraudulently obtaining prescription drugs contends that one of her 3,817 personalities is actually the responsible party. _________________________________________________________________ Chicago, Illinois: Film critic Roger Ebert has reported on the popular Japanese animated film "Pompoko," which features a family of cute, badger-like animals -- and Ebert predicts it won't succeed here in America. The badgers' secret weapon is an ability to make their testicles grow large so they can crush opponents. Said a Japanese film fan: "The Japanese are more open about bodily parts." Kids in Japan find the secret weapon "hilarious." _________________________________________________________________ This item comes by way of Louis Grilli: St. Petersburg, Florida: The man stood before County Judge Paul Levine, accused of violating his probation. For the 17th time, he had been caught driving with a suspended license. Nevertheless, Defense Attorney Robert Pope urged Levine not to send his client to jail. The judge, scanning the 8 page printout of the man's driving infractions, wondered aloud about the most recent ticket, the result of a November 26, 1994 crash in Broward County. Pope conferred with his client, then gave this straight-faced explanation: It was Thanksgiving, and the man had picked up a frozen turkey and was taking it to his family. Suddenly, the car ahead of him stopped short, forcing him to slam on his breaks. The frozen turkey flew off the front seat, and wedged itself on the gas pedal, making the car lunge forward and strike two other cars, Pope claimed. Judge Levine said "I did give him credit for a wonderful story -- and I gave him 6 months in jail." _________________________________________________________________ Hollywood, California: If 88-year-old Doretta Garrigus gets in trouble, maybe her cats can dial 9-1-1. They did so Thursday. At 4 AM, 9-1-1 dispatchers got a call from Garrigus' apartment. The dispatcher heard only the continuos beeps of buttons being pushed on a phone, said police spokesman Todd DeAngelis. Because Garrigus' receiver remained off the hook, the dispatcher sent police to investigate. And that's when Sgt. Fred Lloyd found some of Garrigus' five kittens and the mother cat still at the scene of their crime. They were lying on the phone, which Garrigus keeps on her kitchen table, and the receiver lay on the floor. The cats would not comment. _________________________________________________________________ Bolzano, Italy: Mountaineer Reinhold Messner, the first man to scale Mount Everest without oxygen, was recovering in a hospital Saturday after falling off a wall at his home in Italy, doctors said. Messner, 50, who was also the first person to conquer all the world's peaks over 26,250 feet, broke a bone in his heel falling off a perimeter wall of his castle in the mountains of northeast Italy. Messner's brother Hubert, who has partnered him on several of his expeditions, denied reports the mountaineer was trying to climb in after locking himself out. _________________________________________________________________ New York, New York: A New York doctor has invented a hairpiece so easy to wear, it's a snap. The hairpiece snaps into tiny metal pegs that are surgically imbedded into the wearer's skull, said Dr. Anthony Pignataro, a cosmetic surgeon who designed and wears the hairpiece. So far, the doctor and two others wear the snap-on wig, but Pignataro said he believes 3,000 men will be wearing them in 1997. The metal nuts are imbedded into the skull 3 to 4 millimeters deep, and it takes about three months for the skin and bone to grow back before the hairpiece can be snapped on. _________________________________________________________________ Melville, New York: Cahners Publishing Company could discover it's not cheap, or easy, to fight a lawsuit by camera-maker Nikon over a botched magazine advertisement. The ad showed a photo of a woman working at a Nikon microscope, and lower on the page it carried the Nikon logo and the correct text. A large, bold-faced headline was supposed to say "User Friendliest! -- New Optiphot 300." Instead it read, "We're Shallow, Cheap and Easy." Nikon said it sued because Cahners didn't respond adequately after the ad appeared in the annual buyers guide of Test & Measurement World last month. "This enormous error has invited public complaint and made it difficult for our female salespeople on the job," said a Nikon spokesman. _________________________________________________________________ Birmingham, England: Now, at last, science confirms what we have always known: Toast really does land butter-side down. Robert Matthews, a visiting research fellow at Aston University, has proved it. In the July issue of the European Journal of Physics, under the title "Tumbling Toast, Murphy's Law and the Fundamental Constants," he demonstrates that when a slice of toast slides off a plate, it tips and spins at a uniform rate. And that rate, and the average kitchen table's height, virtually guarantee it will land on its face. Or as Matthews puts it: "The fate of the toast, whether it lands butter side up or down, boils down to the size of a ratio, and that ratio is the ratio of the size of the toast to the height of the table." _________________________________________________________________ Gresham, Oregon: Stupid is as stupid drives. A Northwest Portland man who allegedly drove a stolen van to court to appear on a charge of auto theft wins last week's boldness award. About 3 PM Monday, Gresham police officer James Seymour spotted a 1985 Toyota van parked, with motor running near the courthouse. He ran a check on the license plate and discovered the van had been stolen July 18. Portland Police Detective Lloyd Higgens took over and waited in a nearby unmarked car. Twenty minutes later, Kristopher Jae Hyslop, 30, jumped into the van and drove away. More police arrived and arrested Hyslop, who had just appeared in a Multnomah County courtroom on charges of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. Hyslop had been released without bail after agreeing to several conditions -- including the promise not to commit any more crimes. This time, Hyslop was booked into jail and held on $12,500 bail. _________________________________________________________________ Beijing, China: Residents of several highly polluted Chinese cities are stumbling to trendy new bars set up to give them a breath of pure oxygen to combat increasingly foul air. The official Xinhua news agency reported that the oxygen bars are especially popular among young Chinese who have become increasingly aware that the country has one of the highest levels of air pollution and the greatest number of heavily polluted cities. Some bars offer traffic-police officers one free ten- minute dose each week because they are exposed to more pollution than ordinary citizens. _________________________________________________________________ Santa Monica, California: In the "I swear it's true category": the ocean rescue of a suicidal man by Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon as Heidi Fleiss ran for a phone to call 911. The surgeon, Dr. Steven Hoefflin, said he and Fleiss were in a group walking off dinner on Santa Monica Pier Thursday when they saw a man with his hands cuffed behind his back jump into the water. Hoefflin, who had been at the same fashionable restaurant as Fleiss, had never met the woman convicted of running a call girl ring for the rich and famous. Hoefflin jumped in and struggled with the man in 56- degree water for 30 minutes, joined by a second person in the group. A Harbor Patrol boat was used to fish the three out. Hoefflin's hand was cut but all were otherwise unhurt. Fleiss ran to call 911 as the struggle ensued. _________________________________________________________________ This item comes by of Paul Butler and Jeff Gross: London, England: An anti-depressant drug is reportedly giving patients an uplifting bonus -- when they yawn, they have an orgasm. And some patients who are over their depression have asked doctors to be allowed to go on taking the tablets because of the side effect, British newspapers reported Monday. _________________________________________________________________ Berkeley, California: Two escapees from a Utah prison blew their cover by breaking an unwritten local law on acceptable nicknames for San Francisco. Anthony Scott Bailey and Eric Neil Fischbeck both said they were from "Frisco" when questioned by University of California officers who found them sleeping on campus Monday. Use of the name -- loved by tourists but loathed by residents -- set off the alarm bells that their prison break didn't. "No one from here ever says that," campus police Sergeant David Eubanks said. Pressed further about which schools they attended, one said he couldn't remember and the other said he never went to school. When one provided two alternate spellings for his purported last name, officers took them in, fingerprinted them and discovered their true, fugitive status. Bailey, 27, and Fischbeck, 21, had escaped Saturday by crawling under a fence at a minimum-security prison in Bluffdale, Utah. Both were serving time for burglary and Bailey was serving a sentence for drug possession. Four months away from parole, they now face up to 15 more years for escaping, authorities said. "Anybody who escapes with that little time left can't be very smart," Utah corrections spokesman Jack Ford said. _________________________________________________________________ "He's not necessarily so different from the rest of us. I went into his den last night, and his VCR is still flashing 12:00." Jay Leno, late night television host, after helping Microsoft's Bill Gates launch Windows 95. _________________________________________________________________ This item comes by way of Edwin Hoogerbeets: San Luis Obispo, California: Emerson Hunt's used Mercedes Benz has yielded all manner of surprises: photographs from around the world, a German sales slip, and 33 pounds of hashish that came tumbling down from a hiding place in the roof. The stash -- concealed perhaps two decades ago -- literally dropped on Hunt's head Saturday as he was redoing the interior of the 1976 camper van. "One of the roof panels had always hung down and bothered me," Hunt said. "So my father-in-law unscrewed the headliner and a big weight fell on our heads." It was one end of a plastic bundle. "I said, 'This is not insulation,'" Hunt recalled. Indeed. It turned to be 22 packages, each containing a pair of quarter-inch to half-inch-thick, 4-by-8-inch "brown, tarry wafers," Hunt said. "We opened one of the packages and it smelled very strong, like marijuana," Hunt said. "I was a teen-ager during the '60s ... and I thought it might be hashish.' Hunt notified a neighboring police officer and his boss, who also is a reserve sheriff's deputy. The reservist, in turn, contacted Detective Chuck Graves of the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Department. Graves said the drug probably was hidden in the mid- 1970s. "The question is why someone, after going to the trouble of concealing it, didn't remove it," he said. Hunt, 44, had admired the bulky diesel he affectionately calls "my white whale" ever since his father bought it four years ago in Fresno from a farm implements dealer who got it as payment for a bad debt. His father drove the van to Iowa a couple of times for family visits before giving it to his son at Christmastime, Hunt said. Hunt has been refurbishing it ever since. While gutting the interior, Hunt said, he found photographs behind the cabinets indicating the van traveled to Australia, New Delhi, and Peru. Hunt says he has the original sales slip that shows the car was bought from a German factory. Because it wasn't offered as an import model, some owner must have paid to bring it over to the United States, he said. But who hid the hashish and when remain a mystery. "Naturally the statute of limitations has run out in any criminal sense," Graves said but added he probably will try to trace the van's ownership out of curiosity. The hashish, meanwhile, was collected Saturday night by police and is sitting in storage. "I'm just very grateful we found it while we were refurbishing," Hunt said. "If we had ... gone on a trip and crossed a border and had a drug-sniffing dog find it, it could have been a very embarrassing -- if not treacherous -- situation trying to talk yourself out of that one." _________________________________________________________________ This item comes by way of Suzan Bear who suggests this possibly gives new meaning to the airline slogan "We Love To Fly And It Shows": Fort Worth, Texas: Early Friday, a naked 30-year-old man, who proclaimed that he was Jesus, tried to slip past the security checkpoint in a Dallas/Ft. Worth airport terminal, saying that he had to get to California to free OJ Simpson, witnesses told authorities. After a brief struggle, the man was stunned with tear gas, strapped face down on a gurney, covered with a sheet and steered into a waiting ambulance. He was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas for a mental evaluation. _________________________________________________________________ This item comes by way of Dani Ierullo: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada: DJ Scruff Conners was suspended indefinitely by his radio station Tuesday after tricking listeners into thinking they had won a trip to the Super Bowl in Miami. The 30 people selected from the 1,200 entries in the CJKR-FM contest realized too late that the prize was really a two-hour bus ride to the small town of Miami, Manitoba. Once there, they were taken to the Chatterbox Lounge, where they got to watch the game on a big screen television. The station said it is investigating. _________________________________________________________________ Washington, District of Columbia: Internal Revenue Service chief Richardson boasts that the agency has been recognized as "a leader among government agencies in customer service." But humor columnist Dave Barry says that is comparable to stating that "cement is a leader among construction materials for use as a dessert topping." _________________________________________________________________ This item comes by way of Ed Grether Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England: A man awaiting appearance for a breach of probation in Newcastle-upon-Tyne took advantage of a court recess to rob a woman of 100 pounds as she withdrew money from a local cash machine. Glen Telford, 21, had the shock of his life however when he finally made his court appearance in the afternoon and the woman he robbed turned out to be the Justice of the Peace in charge his probation case. Magistrate Linda Hoggs recognized her lunch break mugger immediately, and quickly dispatched the Northumberland man to jail for three years. _________________________________________________________________ Bellevue, Washington: "No, I'm Brian." That was the response a Clyde Hill woman got shortly after midnight Monday morning when she called out to a shadow entering her bedroom from the deck. She was expecting her husband to arrive and called out her husband's name. The figure wasn't her husband, it turned out, but a burglar who didn't want to be misidentified. After clearing up the mistaken identity, the burglar fled from the house and the woman called police. The thwarted thief was arrested in his car a short time later after dogs tracked his trail. His description -- and his real name -- matched the woman's description. _________________________________________________________________ Ventura, California: When the surf calls nowadays, it just beeps. About 430 dedicated windsurfers have bought into a paging service to get their attention at work or home when the wind is right. "A high percentage of windsurfers are professionals," said Dave DePaolo, a lawyer from Thousand Oaks. "We have busier schedules now and can't always clear out five-hour blocks of time to hang out and wait for the wind." The paging service, Call of the Wind, is the work of inventor and windsurfer Jim Martin. He persuaded friends three years ago to buy a $900 computer attached to a wind gauge. When the onshore breeze hits about 14 MPH, customers got beeped. Surfers pay about $210 for a pager and up to $21 a month for the service. _________________________________________________________________ Kent, Washington: A simple complaint about a laxative left a man flush and on the loose. Barry Lyn Stoller is wanted on theft charges related to a $98,002 refund he received in September 1993 from the Sandoz Corporation, maker of Ex-Lax. The 40-year-old drywaller had written to Sandoz, asking for a $1.99 refund for a package of Ex-Lax, "which he said had no effect on him," said Dan Donohoe, spokesman for the King County Prosecutor's office. The drug company complied, but someone mixed up Stoller's ZIP code (98002) with the refund amount, putting Ex-Lax in a bind. According to court papers, Stoller deposited the check in his bank account. Eight days later, he closed the account, taking $114,000 of his and Sandoz's money in cash. Stoller was charged March 3 of this year with first- degree theft for taking money "that had been delivered under a mistake." Authorities said there are a number of reasons why so much time lapsed between the cashing of the check and the filing of charges. Chief among them was the research needed to identify Stoller properly. Since Stoller has no previous criminal record and his fingerprints are not on record, other identifying criteria had to be developed. A Sandoz spokeswoman said the erroneously large check was written by a newly installed automated check paying system. "Obviously, since then we've corrected the problem," she said. _________________________________________________________________ Leonia, New Jersey: He was sacked for swigging the Snapple he was supposed to be stocking in stores. Now Kevin Simpkins has been seized for allegedly swiping a Snapple delivery truck while dressed in a Snapple deliveryman's uniform. "He just has an uncontrollable appetite for Snapple beverages," Detective August Greiner said. "He even had a Snapple T-shirt depicting a bottle of iced tea under his uniform. This guy just loves Snapple." Simpkin, 27, of Paterson, stole the unmanned truck outside a supermarket in Fair Lawn on Monday. The truck hit a utility pole in Hillsdale and, when Simpkin continued toward New York City, intending to sell the truck, he made a wrong turn and got lost in Leonia. The truck was stopped in Leonia where Simpkin and his 17-year-old nephew were arrested. Greiner said Simpkin had lost his job with Snapple's distribution office because he sampled the merchandise. "I asked him if he enjoyed working for Snapple and he seemed agitated and sighed," Greiner said. "But he seemed more pleasant when he told how much he loved Snapple and always kept a lot of the drinks at home." _________________________________________________________________ Ventura, California: A man furious over a failed land deal took it out on the property owner by having 90,000 magazines sent to her address. "I got every known magazine on the face of the Earth," lawyer Theresa McConville said after Reynaldo Fong was sentenced Tuesday. Fong got a year in jail for forging her name on subscription forms. "He could have won the Nobel prize if he would have put as much energy into his job as he did with me," said McConville, of Camarillo, who got the unsolicited magazines over the past 13 years. Fong, 45, of Santa Paula, is an anesthesiologist from the Philippines who had been in the United State illegally since his visa expired in 1980. According to a probation report, Fong said he had a vendetta against McConville because she rejected his bid for land she was selling. _________________________________________________________________ Phoenix, Arizona: Remember when your mother told you to shut up and eat your vegetables? Now an Arizona state law says you had better shut up and not say anything mean about them. Legislation dubbed the "veggie hate crimes bill" was signed into law this week by Governor Fife Symington. The measure allows farmers and produce shippers to sue anyone who maliciously spreads false information about Arizona farm products. _________________________________________________________________ Bangkok, Thailand: A 42-year-old Thai mechanic has been eating a daily lunch of auto-lube grease sandwiches the past five years, reports the Japan Airlines newsletter. The mechanics doctor is concerned, however, and wants him to come in for a checkup. (Every 5,000 miles, perhaps?) _________________________________________________________________ New York, New York: Here are some of the losers in the 9to5 organization's annual bad-boss contest: a company president who made his administrative assistant provide her urine for his annual drug test; a restaurant manager who told a waitress to wax the hair on his back. The winners: a marketing manager who had his administrative assistant assemble a sexual device for him, and an assistant who had to put her boss's dog, Mitzi, to sleep. _________________________________________________________________ Yakima, Washington: Subcontractors forgot a small but significant detail when they were finishing the city's new Public Works Administration Building last year. The building's sewer lines were never connected to the main line that carries waste to the treatment plant. For the past year, hundreds of feet of sewer line and several manholes have been filling up with raw sewage. Last week, there just wasn't any more room. "The toilets all exploded," said City Manager Dick Zais. Public Works Director Jerry Copeland said, "Right away you can tell something is wrong when stuff starts coming out of the floor drain." City crews pumped out the lines and discovered the sewer lines were never hooked up. The subcontractor, Ken Leingang Excavating, fixed the problem in a couple of hours. "Their reaction was the same as ours," said city transit planner John Haddix. "They couldn't believe it." _________________________________________________________________ Tripoli, Libya: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi says the Oklahoma City bombing signaled the start of a mass revolt against the U.S. government, and he offered President Clinton refuge in Libya. Gadhafi made the remarks in a speech late Saturday marking a battle between Libyans and an Italian military force 80 years ago. "Oklahoma was the beginning of the reaction of the masses living in America," Gadhafi was quoted as saying. "It was a reaction against the nightmare and tyranny." Saying "thousands of militias were currently waging armed popular revolution in America," Gadhafi invited Clinton and his wife, Hillary, to flee to Libya, "the only safe country in the world." _________________________________________________________________ This item comes by way of Christopher Hackett In April, radio station KMJ in Madera fired weather forecaster Sean Boyd. The station said it had a cumulative dissatisfaction with him, but Boyd said the precipitating incident was his refusal to forecast good enough weather for the station's annual public picnic in honor of Rush Limbaugh. Boyd, and 18-year veteran, had forecast "partly cloudy," which KMJ executives wanted changed to "partly sunny' so as not to discourage attendance. _________________________________________________________________ "I had to upgrade my former name to show some expansion and to show everybody who the biggest Geto Boy of all is." Bushwick Bill, rap artist and founder of the Geto Boys, who henceforth wants to be known as Dr. Wolfgang Von Bushwickin the Barbarian Mother Funky Stay High Dollar Billstir. _________________________________________________________________ To subscribe to Whiteboard News, send email to: JoeHa (Joseph Harper) joeha@microsoft.com _________________________________________________________________ pjf@cts.com