Zoliad!

The founder of an Oakland food factory that laces everything from cookies to barbecue sauce with marijuana surrendered Thursday to face a federal drug charge.

Michael Martin, 33, was freed on $300,000 bond on the charge of conspiring to manufacture and distribute marijuana.

Federal drug agents last week raided Tainted Inc. in Oakland and arrested three of Martin’s employees on drug charges for allegedly producing such marijuana-laced products as honey, soda and other snacks. Federal officials couldn’t find Martin and considered him a fugitive. Martin said he was on vacation and arranged to turn himself in once he heard of the raids, according to his supporters.

Martin’s supporters with the nonprofit Safe Access Now organization said he was making the products for medical marijuana clubs in California. Martin’s attorney Sara Zalkin didn’t return a telephone call to her office.

California law has legalized marijuana use to treat medical conditions, but federal law bans the plant’s use for all purposes. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that federal law trumps state law when it comes to medical marijuana.

According to the search warrants, Tainted Inc.’s products first came to the attention of investigators in April 2004 when an internal Drug Enforcement Administration publication reported that agents had recently seized marijuana-laced candy bars called Buddafingas and Stoners that were wrapped in packages mimicking the popular brands Butterfingers and Snickers.

The three others charged along with Martin are Jessica Sanders, Michael Anderson, and Diallo McLinn. All are free on bond. None have entered a plea.

[via AP]

When Beverly and Ernie Fischer gathered up their cattle this fall in Morton County, they rounded up a little more than they expected.

“We were moving some cattle, and we got a moose,” Ernie Fischer said. “He thinks he is a cow,” said his wife.

Ernie Fischer said it was difficult to get the young bull moose away from the cattle, and workers put it in a separate corral until it could be released. The moose also broke fences on the ranch 20 miles south of Mandan.

It’s not the only such incident in south central North Dakota this year. Emmons County rancher Sam Gross recently reported a lone bull moose in his cattle herd, and a moose also was spotted in a cattle herd in McIntosh County.

[via WRAL.com]

After 25 years, the cube is coming home. Hundreds of competitors are meeting for the fourth Rubik’s Cube world championship Friday in the Hungarian capital, which hosted the first such event in 1982.

The mechanical puzzle invented by Hungarian Erno Rubik sparked a global craze in the early 1980s. Some 7 million cubes were sold last year.

Competitors from 32 countries will take part in the three-day event, with prizes to be awarded in 17 categories, with experts trying to solve the classic 3×3 cube and its variations while blindfolded, with one hand, or with their feet.

The current world record for solving the 3×3 cube — which has six sides of a different color with nine tiles on each side — is 9.86 seconds by Thibaut Jacquinot of France, set in May at the Spanish Open.

Matyas Kuti, 14, is one of the host country’s biggest hopes for a top finish. Kuti first picked up a cube he found at home in February 2006 and began competing a few months later.

Kuti is considered a master of the blindfolded event, in which he has set 11 world records and has 24 first-place competition finishes.

He practices about three hours a day and his favorite cube is souped up with cubes rotating more easily because of filed down rough edges and silicon lubricants applied. Such alterations are legal according to the rules.

“The 5×5 cube and doing it blindfold are my favorite events,” Kuti, from Budapest, said. “These are the most complicated versions and it’s a great feeling to solve them.”

The United States is expected to have the biggest delegation, with 39 competitors.

Prize money totals $28,000, with the top prize of $7,000 going to the fastest 3×3 cube solver.

[via AP]

It won’t take much for Jenna and William Cotton to remember the birthday of the newest member of their family.Daughter Kayla was born Tuesday, which was Oct. 2 — the same date her brothers were born.

Ayden Cotton arrived on Oct. 2, 2003; Logan was born Oct. 2, 2006.

The parents said they had a feeling their baby daughter might come a couple of days past her Sept. 30 due date. Sure enough, Jenna Cotton, 23, began having contractions early Tuesday, hours before a planned birthday party for the boys.

She had a doctor’s appointment scheduled later in the day and hung in for the party. Ayden, the 4-year-old, wanted to know if his new baby sister would make the festivities, Jenna Cotton said.

Kayla, at 7-pounds, 8-ounces, was born at 7:07 p.m. Tuesday.

The odds of a family having three children born on the same date in different years are about 7.5 in 1 million, said Bill Notz, a statistics professor at Ohio State University.

[via Cleveland.com]

A man who thought he was asking a friend about a drug deal instead sent a text message to the state police and was arrested, authorities said.

Joshua Wayne Cadle, 19, allegedly sent the message Wednesday to a phone number that used to belong to an unidentified friend. The number is now held by the State Police, Trooper B.H. Moore said Thursday.

“He text messaged that and asked his friend if he wanted to buy some reefer,” Moore said.

Another trooper who received the message responded and set up a meeting. Moore arrested Cadle on Wednesday night in the parking lot of a shopping center in South Charleston.

Cadle, of Cross Lanes, was charged with delivery of a controlled substance and possession with intent to deliver. He was being held Thursday in the South Central Regional Jail.

A person who answered the phone at the jail did not know whether Cadle had hired an attorney.

[via AP]

A man who made more than 600 telephone calls to a shoe store and other businesses to ask women about their shoes and feet must pay a $200 fine.

James Lee Fink, 31, placed 119 calls from his cell phone to the Chambersburg (Pa.) Mall, 513 calls to a Holiday Inn in Havelock, N.C., and 17 calls to a Comfort Inn in Chambersburg between Jan. 1 and May 8, 2006, Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Jeff Bopp said Thursday.

The caller would ask the women what kind of shoes they were wearing and whether they would show him their feet if he came into their store.

The man identified himself as Brian Thompson, but State Police used phone records to link the telephone number to Fink, whose last known address was in Martinsburg.

Fink pleaded guilty to harassment in August in Franklin County Court in Pennsylvania. He was sentenced Wednesday.

In addition to a fine, Franklin County Court Judge John Walker ordered Fink to serve a year on probation. Fink also was ordered to stay away from The Shoe Department in Frederick, Md., and one woman whom he continuously harassed.

[via AP]

A man was arrested after he hit his wife in the back of the head with an onion. James Izzolena, 54, of Des Moines, had been drinking, became upset with his wife, Nicole Izzolena, 27, and threw an onion at her during an argument on Wednesday, police said.

Police said James Izzolena admitted throwing the onion at his wife but said he didn’t mean to hit her.

His wife told police it made her head hurt.

[via AP]

Motorists traveling Southern California highways are used to seeing all sorts of debris, from mattresses to luggage to clothing. But the ultimate in freeway flotsam has landed along the Hollywood Freeway: a house.

Patrick Richardson’s now immobile home was being moved Saturday from Santa Monica to Santa Clarita when several mishaps - including a roof-shredding blow while attempting to pass beneath an overpass - slowed its progress and it fell off its trailer.

Richardson, 45, got an oversized load permit from the California Department of Transportation. But instead of following the authorized Santa Monica-San Diego-Golden State freeways route, authorities said, he headed through downtown Los Angeles and then onto the Hollywood Freeway.

In the downtown area, the wheels started falling off, California Highway Patrol Officer Jason McCutcheon said.

“It was pretty ugly.”

Richardson made some repairs and the roadhouse was moving again. But then the roof struck an overpass and he had to pull over in the Cahuenga Pass, which separates Hollywood from the San Fernando Valley.

Authorities towed the house to a roomy freeway shoulder not far from the Hollywood Bowl. It will sit there, surrounded by orange Caltrans cones, until Richardson gets it safely moved again. In the meantime, vandals have scrawled graffiti all over it.

“It’s in bad shape. There is no hard-and-fast rule about how long a house can sit on the side of the freeway,” Caltrans spokeswoman Maria Raptis said. “It will stay there until it can be moved safely.”

[via AP]

Federal agents thought there was something fishy about Leroy Carr. On four occasions since last December, Carr either crossed the Canadian border or was found near it with thousands of dollars in cash, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court. He also sometimes carried night vision goggles and a GPS device programmed with coordinates for a well-known drug-smuggling trail.But Carr refused to speak with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and they let him go — until he called to ask if they had seen his cocaine.

According to the complaint, he told agents that on Aug. 3, he had stashed two blue backpacks containing 68 pounds of cocaine by the entrance to a Boy Scout camp near the Canadian border. When he returned the next day, they were gone, he said.

Carr, of suburban Federal Way, asked if ICE could put out a news release saying that federal agents had seized the drugs. That way, according to the complaint, the organization he was working for would believe his statements that he hadn’t stolen them.

Two weeks later, a Boy Scout ranger found the backpacks, which were dry and in good shape, and called police.

Carr was arrested last weekend on a federal charge of cocaine possession with intent to distribute. He made his initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Monday and is scheduled for a detention hearing Thursday.

Carr’s attorney, Nancy Tenney, was out of the office Wednesday morning and did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

[AP]

Authorities said a man wearing nothing but a hat tried to rob a convenience store in Carbondale. Police say the 24-year-old man charged in last month’s robbery attempt often stands naked in front of the window of his apartment.He was first arrested on an accusation of exposing himself to two women at his apartment building. Carbondale Police Sgt. Thomas Heller says the man ultimately confessed to being the one who tried to rob the store — and said he did so because he was bored.

The clerk at the store kept her cool during last month’s robbery attempt. She refused to give the man money and dialed 911. The man left, still undressed, without getting any cash.

[AP]