Zoliad!

 John Carney was dumping a load of brush at the local waste transfer station last week when he noticed a man’s gold wedding band partially buried in the sand.

Intrigued by the “Ed and Linda” and “June 9, 1996″ engravings inside the band, Carney decided to do some detective work.

With the help of local librarians, the 57-year-old South Deerfield man went through the Deerfield town report for 1996 and looked up weddings. He found a listing for Ed and Linda LaCoille on June 9 of that year.

Last week, he returned the ring to the LaCoilles’ house. Ed Lacoille had lost the ring more than six months ago.

“I never expected to find it again,” Linda LaCoille said. “It was amazing.”

It was the second time in just over a year the ring has been returned after being lost. Ed LaCoille said he lost the same band at a lake in Maine while on vacation. He left a note at the lake house for future renters.

A couple of weeks later, the ring was returned by mail.

LaCoille said he recently lost weight, which may explain why the ring keeps slipping off his finger. He’s keeping it in a box now until he can get it resized.

“The chance of it being found a third time is outrageous,” he said

[via AP]

After two years on the lam, a pink flamingo that escaped from the Sedgwick County Zoo has been spotted with a wild Caribbean flamingo in a ship channel area of southwest Louisiana.

The latest sighting three weeks ago was in the Calcasieu Ship Channel on private land accessible only by boat. Officials with the zoo in Wichita learned of the wayward flamingo’s whereabouts late Friday because the birds were identified by numbers on their leg bands.

The zoo’s flamingo was still traveling with the same companion that was with it during an earlier sighting. The two birds were seen at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf Coast of Texas in December 2006.

The other bird, a rosy-red wild greater flamingo, came up from Mexico during hurricanes Rita and Katrina. The discovery excited bird watchers in Louisiana because it was the first documented sighting of a wild greater flamingo in the state.

“We’re very happy to see he’s been spotted again,” said zoo spokeswoman Christan Baumer.

The zoo does not plan to try to get the flamingo back.

“There really isn’t an easy way to recapture the bird. It would only disturb wildlife where it’s been found and possibly could do more damage to the bird than just leaving him alone,” Baumer said.

Flamingos are social birds, so it is not unusual they are staying together, she said.

Members of Louisiana’s ornithological society tried to locate the birds a few days after they were identified, but they had left the area. The zoo expects more sightings as the birds continue to look for safe places, food and water.

The Sedgwick County Zoo’s flamingo is one of two that escaped June 27, 2005. Its other escaped flamingo has not been spotted.

[via AP]

Tamera Bremer titled the life-size nude self-portrait she laboriously wove into a rug “the sexy sex: all-nude review rug one.” Somebody apparently found it fetching, and late Monday it vanished from an exhibit floor at Linfield College.Bremer said the latch-hook work took thousands of hours and she valued it in the five-figure range.

It was the first in a five-rug project the Portland artist, an adjunct professor at Linfield, has in the works.

The curvy cutout was fashioned from monk’s cloth, a heavy cotton, and hand-painted in 10 colors on alpaca yarn.

“I don’t understand why anyone would want to steal something like this,” she said. “Whoever did it doesn’t understand what they’ve done. It’s my life’s work.”

A video camera and two pieces of student art also were missing.

McMinnville Police Capt. Dennis Marks said officers will check with local second-hand stores. But if it’s college kids, it’s probably in somebody’s room, Marks said.

[via AP]

Cynthia Hunter spent almost two months in jail over a vial of cat urine. Hunter, 38, was arrested Aug. 15 on a charge of petty theft after she was accused of stealing from a Wal-Mart store.

Deputies added charges of possession of a controlled substance after finding a vial containing a yellow substance in her purse. A drug field test suggested the substance was methamphetamine, The Tampa Tribune reported.

Hunter had protested, saying the substance was dehydrated cat urine for her son’s science project and that it had been purchased at an animal clinic. She was released Thursday after lab tests found the substance was, in fact, cat urine.

Hunter pleaded guilty to petty theft and a judge gave her time served. It was not clear if she had an attorney and why the substance might have tested positive for methamphetamine.

[via AP]

A 6-year-old boy was hungry and decided he’d go to Applebees. So he grabbed the car keys, took his booster seat from the back seat of his grandmother’s car and placed it in the driver’s seat, then made a go of driving himself to the restaurant Tuesday.

He made it about 75 feet. Unable to take the car out of reverse, he crossed the street and ran into a transformer and communication box, knocking out electricity and phone service to dozens of townhomes.

Nobody was injured and the boy, whose name was not released, got out of his car and told his grandmother what happened.

“He proceeded to start the car and started backing up,” said Sgt. Colleen O’Connell of the Broomfield Police Department. “He went backward about 47 feet, hit the curb, then went backward another 29 feet.”

Investigators couldn’t figure out how the boy reached the accelerator.

No charges will be filed.

“I have five children of my own, so I know you cannot watch them every minute they’re awake,” said nearby resident Nancy Hollis, whose power was knocked out by the accident.

[via AP]

Doctors plugged an Italian tourist into a drip-feed of vodka to save him at a hospital in Australia that ran out of the medicinal alcohol it would normally have used for treatment.The 24-year-old Italian, who was not further identified, was brought to Mackay Base Hospital in northeastern Queesland state and was diagnosed as having ingested a large quantity of ethylene glycol, a common ingredient of antifreeze that can cause renal failure.

Pure alcohol is often given in treating such cases because it can inhibit the toxic effects of ethylene glycol.

Mackay Base Hospital Dr. Pascal Gelperowicz said the man was given pharmaceutical-grade alcohol when he arrived, but that the hospital’s supplies soon ran out.

“We quickly used all the available vials of 100 per cent alcohol and decided the next best way to get alcohol into the man’s system was by feeding him spirits through a naso gastric tube,” Dr. Gelperowicz said in a statement.

“The patient was drip-fed about three standard drinks an hour for three days in the intensive care unit,” he said. “The hospital’s administrators were also very understanding when we explained our reasons for buying a case of vodka.”

The patient, was believed to have ingested the poison in an attempt at self-harm, made a successful recover. The incident occurred about two months ago, though the hospital just released information on the case.

[via AP]

An Indiana appeals court upheld a worker’s compensation award Tuesday for an exotic dancer who was injured while performing on a pole at a strip club.The Indiana Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Angela Hobson and ordered the state Worker’s Compensation Board to determine if she was entitled to double compensation.

Hobson claimed she suffered neck pain and numbness after injuring herself while dancing at the Shangri-La West club in Fort Wayne on Dec. 20, 2001. She underwent surgery for a herniated disc in her cervical spine, according to court records.

Hobson said she reported her injury to her employers, but they later denied knowledge of the injury.

In 2006, the compensation board awarded her temporary total disability benefits and other compensation totaling more than $10,000 and found that Shangri-La did not have a worker’s compensation policy and was not approved as a self-insurer.

Shangri-La appealed, arguing that the board erred when it found Hobson more credible than its witnesses. But the court declined to reweigh the evidence and upheld the original award, adding a 5 percent increase due to the passage of time.

The court also instructed the board to determine whether Hobson was entitled to double compensation due in part to the allegation that Shangri-La violated state law by not having worker’s compensation insurance.

Dino Zurzolo, who owned the club at the time, said the lack of worker’s compensation insurance at the time was a temporary oversight due to a missed payment.

A phone message left late Tuesday for attorney Samuel Bolinger, who represents Wholesalers Inc., the company that does business as Shangri-La, was not immediately returned.

[via AP]

New Zealand doctors lost an elderly man’s false teeth during surgery but found them four days later – stuck down his throat, a Health and Disability Commission report said today.

However, the commission found that doctors had taken all due care during the surgery.

The man had entered hospital for back surgery in February 2005 and his upper denture, which doctors noticed was loose, was removed before the operation, the report said.

Somehow the false teeth got back into his mouth, though no one admitted putting them there and, according to a nurse, there was “no way” the heavily sedated man could have put them back himself.

After the operation the patient said he was in “extreme pain” and was given painkillers.

Nurses noticed the elderly man was “very chesty,” spoke with a particularly husky voice, and couldn’t eat more than a couple of spoons of milky porridge at a time, the report said.

On the second day after the operation doctors recorded that his voice was down to a whisper and ordered chest X-rays. They found evidence of congestive heart failure.

The man was moved into his own room after suffering coughing fits.

His condition deteriorated as his coughing continued, his blood oxygen level plummeted and, while he was being washed, the 81-year-old stopped breathing, the report said.

Doctors put a laryngoscope down the man’s throat and found his missing denture plate.

They removed the teeth, resuscitated him and transferred him to a public hospital, the report said.

It noted the elderly patient recovered fully, but died within a couple of years from respiratory illness.

Experts reviewing the case said a serious underlying neurological condition had allowed the man to have his teeth stuck down his throat without gagging reflexively, as would have happened with a normal person.

The neurological impairment was caused by a cyst in the centre of the man’s spinal cord.

The fluid-filled sac pushed on his brain stem, damaging the parts responsible for swallowing and the feeling in the back of his mouth.

The names of all those involved were withheld by the commission.

[via breakingnews.ie]

Security guards refused to allow a woman into a federal courthouse until she removed a bra that triggered a metal detector.

Lori Plato said she and her husband, Owen Plato, were stunned when U.S. Marshals Service employees asked her to remove her bra after the underwire supports set off the alarm.

“I asked if I could go into the bathroom because they didn’t have a privacy screen and no women security officers were available,” Plato said Wednesday. “They said, ‘No.’

“I wasn’t carrying a shank in my bra. If it’s so dangerous, why did they give it back and let me put it on?”

Patrick McDonald, the U.S. Marshal in Boise, said appropriate security protocols were followed in the Sept. 20 matter, and guards suggested she simply remove the bra in her car outside, or find a restaurant bathroom.

“She’s inflating it,” McDonald said. “All of a sudden she just took it off. It wasn’t anything we wanted to happen and it wasn’t anything we asked for her to do. She did it so fast.”

Plato, of Bonners Ferry, said she was parked on a busy street and wasn’t familiar with downtown Coeur d’Alene businesses. So her husband held up his coat to shield her from the rest of the people in the courthouse lobby while she removed her bra underneath her shirt.

Not generally a security threat
Generally, McDonald said, undergarments aren’t considered a danger to security.

“I don’t think they’re considered a weapon, really, the last time I looked,” he said.

He declined to discuss other ways the federal courthouse guards could have screened Plato for weapons.

Plato wants the Marshals Service to apologize and stop forcing women to disrobe.

“It was very humiliating,” her husband, Owen Plato, said. “They could have handled it with a much more professional attitude.”

[via AP]

A Japanese bureaucrat has been reprimanded for shirking his duties to make hundreds of Wikipedia contributions about toy robots, officials said Friday.

The agriculture ministry said the bureaucrat, whose name was not released, contributed 260 times to the Japanese-language Wikipedia entry on Gundam, a popular, long-running animated series about giant robots that has spun off intricate toys popular among children and adults who belong to the so-called “otaku culture” of fascination with comic books, animation and robots.

“The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam,” ministry official Tsutomu Shimomura said.

The agriculture ministry verbally reprimanded five other bureaucrats who contributed to entries on movies, typographical mistakes in billboard signs and local politics. The six employees together made 408 entries on the popular Internet encyclopedia from ministry computers since 2003.

The ministry did not object to employees making limited contributions on World Trade Organization and free trade agreements.

The reprimands emerged from an internal probe following recent media allegations that a growing number of Japanese public servants were contributing to the Web encyclopedia, which anyone can edit, often to reflect their views. An unspecified number of other bureaucrats apparently had contributed to Wikipedia on Gundam, but could not be identified, Shimomura said.

Shimomura said the ministry reprimands were not related to WikiScanner, a recently introduced free program that reveals the identities of the computers used to make Wikipedia changes.

The agriculture ministry issued an order prohibiting employees from accessing Wikipedia at work, while disabling access to the site from the ministry, Shimomura said.

An Imperial Household Agency official was reprimanded last month for deleting references criticizing imperial tombs on the Wikipedia through the agency computer.

[via AP]