Midnight knitter spinning nocturnal yarn over US shore town, putting sweaters in trees

WEST CAPE MAY, N.J. - Someone is spinning quite a yarn over one New Jersey shore town. An unknown person dubbed The Midnight Knitter by West Cape May residents is covering tree branches and lamp poles with little sweaters under cover of darkness. Mayor Pam Kaithern says police are looking into the guerrilla needlework, which technically is against the law because it is being done on public property without permission. - Read more...

Crime doesn't pay much: Police say robber scored $6 from holding up 11 people at US market

THERMAL, Calif. - They say crime doesn't pay. For one robber in California, it did - but not much. Authorities in Riverside County say a woman with a gun robbed 11 customers at a market and got away with $6. - Read more...

Calgary Zoo's newest male tiger shows signs of bonding with female tiger

CALGARY - The Calgary Zoo's new male tiger appears to like his new roommate. Baikal came to Calgary from the Bronx Zoo in January as part of the Siberian Tiger Species Survival Plan. Officials hope that Baikal will mate with a female tiger named Katja and on Tuesday, the two met whisker to whisker for the first time. - Read more...

Strange fruit: Dutch police discover half-ton of cocaine stashed in plastic pineapples

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - First it was drugs among the flowers. Now, drug traffickers have stuffed real drugs into fake fruit in an effort to smuggle cocaine into the Netherlands, authorities said Wednesday. On Monday, police uncovered C25 million ($34 million) worth of cocaine hidden plastic pineapples that were scattered among a shipment of real fruit, prosecutors said. - Read more...

Odd odour leads police to 200 marijuana plants in California warehouse

LOS ANGELES - Los Angeles police say all they needed to find marijuana growing in a Van Nuys warehouse was a sense of smell. Authorities say someone reported an unusual odour at the warehouse on Roscoe Place on Monday. Police and a Fire Department hazardous materials team were called and found more than 200 marijuana plants inside. - Read more...

Purloined parrot recovered; Alberta birdnapper, bird safely behind bars

LETHBRIDGE, Alta. - An alleged birdnapper and a purloined parrot are now both safely behind bars after an incident in Lethbridge, Alta. Police received a call that the valuable bird had been stolen from Petland on Monday afternoon. - Read more...

Forget about brandy and bourbon, ghosts are this year's must-have spirit

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - The rare spirits that went under the gavel at a recent online auction in New Zealand weren't aged brandies or hard-to-find liqueurs. Instead, two glass vials purportedly containing the ghosts of two dead people sold for $2,830 New Zealand dollars ($1,983) at an auction that ended Monday night. - Read more...

Schools superintendent in rural Montana accidentally fires black powder gun during class

BILLINGS, Mon. - The superintendent of a rural school district in Montana says he was showing students his black powder muzzleloader gun when he accidentally fired the weapon into a classroom wall during a history lesson. Dwain Haggard, who used to be a Civil War re-enactor, was showing the gun to five students in Reed Point High School's American history class Friday when it fired. - Read more...

Cold War artifact: Underground English nuclear bunker sold on eBay for $30,000

LONDON - An underground Cold War nuclear bunker set in the picturesque English countryside has been sold on the auction site eBay. It was sold by an unidentified private owner for 20,600 pounds ($31,000) Monday after more than 40 bids were received. - Read more...

Woman believed to be oldest person in US dies at 114 years, 294 days

WESTMORELAND, N.H. - A woman certified as the oldest person living in the United States has died. Mary Josephine Ray, who was born in Canada, died Sunday at a Westmoreland nursing home at 114 years and 294 days old. Katherine Ray said Monday that her grandmother remained spry until about two weeks before her death. - Read more...

6th-generation Key West, Florida, resident wins island's conch shell blowing contest

KEY WEST, Fla. - A sixth-generation Key West resident, who first blew a conch shell as a child, played two shells simultaneously to take top honours Saturday in the island's 48th annual Conch Shell Blowing Contest. Clinton Curry, 36, followed his two-toned toot with a portion of composer Aram Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance" on a single shell, earning applause from several hundred spectators. - Read more...

1,000 free rain boots go to Polish school children facing months of muddy building site

WARSAW, Poland - Hundreds of Polish school kids are getting a leg up with free rubber boots as they face months next to a muddy construction site. Officials in the town of Jarocin gave 1,000 pairs of free made-to-fit boots to children and teachers whose school is set in an area where new underground water and sewage pipes are being installed. - Read more...

Cleveland sets record for largest gathering of people wearing fleece blankets

CLEVELAND - Cleveland has its original world record covered. Fans attending Friday's game between the Cavaliers and Detroit Pistons set a world record for the largest gathering of people wearing fleece blankets. All fans in attendance had a Snuggie placed on their seats prior to the game. During a timeout in the first quarter, fans were asked to wear the wine-coloured blankets with arms for five minutes as a clock on the scoreboard counted down. - Read more...

US man sent to prison for 15 years gets new trial after jury didn't take oath to be honest

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - A Michigan man sent to prison for 15 years is getting a new trial after the judge failed to do a routine procedure - ask the jury to take an oath. Timothy Becktel was sentenced in 2008 for assault with intent to murder. But his appellate lawyer successfully argued that the verdict should be thrown out because the jury didn't swear to return an honest decision based on law and evidence. - Read more...

Waste watchers? British trash bins being fitted with microchips, some fear garbage spies

LONDON - Monitored by millions of cameras and spied on by a secretive domestic intelligence network, Britons could be forgiven for feeling up in arms over the latest threat to their privacy: Intelligent garbage bins that can monitor how much they throw out. Although the technology is already nearly a decade old, a U.K. privacy rights group says the number of local authorities fitting their trash bins with sensors of some kind has risen dramatically in the past year - affecting at least 2.6 million British households. - Read more...

Mexican gov't official fired for painting teen's buttocks as punishment for graffiti tagging

MEXICO CITY - A mayor in central Mexico says he has fired one of his town officials for spray-painting the buttocks of a teenage boy as punishment for graffiti tagging. The mayor of San Juan del Rio in Queretaro state says police caught the 13-year-old tagging a wall last week and turned him over to the official. The official's job is to impose penalties for petty crime. - Read more...

Autopsy: US man electrocuted by touching downed wire with hand, not through urine stream

MONTESANO, Wash. - Autopsy results show a man was electrocuted by touching a downed power line with his hand, not through his urine stream, as first suspected. Greys Harbor County Chief Deputy Dave Pimentel said the results showed 50-year-old Roy Messenger touched the wire and the current shot through his body to his feet. - Read more...

Toting horse-puck rakes and heated turbans, inventors pitch for TV fortune

LOS ANGELES - There wasn't a bottle of Oxiclean or a ShamWow anywhere. But there was Dawn Stephens' nifty new, all-in-one toilet-bowl-cleaning brush. "We don't have to look for the cleaning liquid and the brush. The cleaning liquid is right inside the brush!" the chirpy, singsongy Stephens shouted in delight as she pitched her invention Wednesday to a panel of judges that included infomercial king AJ Khubani. - Read more...