”PARTY, PARTY, PARTY”
”Party Guest Gone Wild”
LONDON — A teenager dropped his pants while standing only yards away from Queen Elizabeth II at a London garden party.
The youth was tackled by a Yeoman of the Guard at the Buckingham Palace event.
The 17-year-old boy, who was invited to the Tuesday event with his parents and brother, kept his boxer shorts on as he charged through the crush of 8,000 guests, the London Telegraph reports.
Police say the youth did it on a bet.
Some witnesses said his shorts were around his ankles, but the police denied he was naked from the waist down.
There’s no word on whether the queen or other members of the royal family saw the incident. Buckingham Palace issued a statement saying it was a police matter.
No charges were filed.
”Party Before Prison”
NEW YORK — On his last night of freedom before entering prison, ImClone founder Sam Waksal lived it up with close friends in New York.
Bags of food from Manhattan’s toniest groceries Balducci’s and Citarella and three or four cases of wine were seen entering his SoHo loft, the New York Post reported.
His friends and associates, who did not want their names revealed, told the Post, it was a friendly and intimate gathering, “not somber,” and that Waksal was handling the stress well.
Waksal, 55, pleaded guilty to charges of securities fraud, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, perjury and bank fraud.
He reports Wednesday to Schuylkill Federal Correctional Institute in Minersville, Pa.
Waksal admitted tipping off relatives and friends to sell ImClone stock ahead of news the Federal Drug Administration rejected ImClone’s cancer drug.
”BAD TOE STORIES IN THE NEWS”
”Woman Accused of Planting Human Toe”
TOLEDO, Ohio — For months, a Michigan dog handler has been under scrutiny for allegedly planting human body parts at potential crime scenes.
Fulton County’s “toe case” has turned into a federal investigation of possible evidence planting.
The toe is among several cases casting doubt on countless others on which handler Sandra Anderson has worked with Eagle, her Doberman mix.
“I was shocked by (the allegations),” Toledo police Sgt. Keefe Snyder, head of the department’s crime scene unit, told the Toledo Blade. He has worked on several cases with Anderson, once calling Eagle “the best thing since DNA.”
The bones found during the search for Megan Pratt belonged to an adult.
“We trusted her,” the sergeant said. “Everybody did. I think everybody felt a little betrayed.”
Anderson, in an interview with The Blade, flatly denied any wrongdoing.
”Baby’s Severed Toe Reattached”
ORLANDO, Fla. — Hospital officials in Florida are trying to determine how a nurse accidentally cut off a part of the toe of infant Ameriona Simmons.
With a bandage almost up to her tiny knee, the infant spent a fussy day at home Tuesday, the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel said.
The incident occurred while the nurse was trying to remove the baby’s identification tag at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children & Women. She has been placed on administrative leave.
The toe was reattached Monday but her doctor isn’t sure about chances of success for the reattachment. The baby is due back in his office for an examination in two weeks.
Dr. Richard Shure, a surgeon with Jewett Orthopaedic Clinic, said, “We just have to wait and see.”
“I’m very angry,” the baby’s grandmother, Elizabeth Laster, said. “We put our lives and our kids’ lives in doctors’ and nurses’ hands, and we think they should do their jobs.”
”GIVE THAT JUROR SOME COFFEE”
”All in The Eye of the Beholder”
CINCINNATI — Law enforcement officers said the video Shawn Jenkins was selling was disgusting pornography but when it was shown to a jury, it put one juror to sleep.
The Cincinnati Post said the sleeping juror and the fact that two others averted their eyes when the video was played resulted in the judge declaring a mistrial Wednesday — the second mistrial in the case.
Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis Jr., notorious for his efforts to jail Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt for selling pornography, charged Jenkins with pandering obscenity.
In declaring a mistrial, Judge Richard Niehaus said: “Justice is blind to the influence of bias and prejudice, but justice cannot be blind to the evidence.
“Justice requires the evidence be reviewed and considered in its entirety.”
The case is now set for a Jan. 12 retrial. The charge carries a sentence of up to a year in prison.
”LOVE IN THE AIR”
”Russian Space Agency Against Space Wedding”
HOUSTON — There’s controversy swirling over the space wedding of a Russian cosmonaut and his fiancee from Texas, The Houston Chronicle reported.
The Russian Space Agency has said repeatedly the wedding between Yuri Malenchenko, 41, the orbiting cosmonaut, and his fiancee in Texas has been postponed.
But the bride-to-be says not so.
“Nothing is going to stop us from getting married. It is still going to happen,” Ekaterina Dmitriev told the Chronicle.
Evidently, the invitations are in the mail.
Dmitriev and Malenchenko were issued a marriage license in Fort Bend County in Texas and plan to marry Aug. 10 while he is in orbit aboard the international space station, according to the Chronicle.
The ceremony will be at a Clear Lake-area restaurant via phone to the space station. If technical problems prevent the phone link, the wedding will be conducted by proxy, Dmitriev said.
”TIL DEATH DO YOU PART”
”One-Half of World’s Longest Marriage Dies”
BEIJING — The female half of the longest marriage in the world died this week, family members said Wednesday.
Liu Yang-wan, 103, died Monday at her home in Taoyuan County, China, from natural causes, leaving behind her 104-year-old husband, the China News Agency said.
“She went peacefully and didn’t suffer much,” said Chen Ying-ru, their daughter-in-law.
The funeral is scheduled for Saturday.
Married in 1917, Liu Yang-wan and Liu Yung-yang were certified at a ceremony by the Guinness World of Records in November as the couple with the world’s longest marriage — 85 years and seven months.
Their marriage is two years longer than their nearest rivals, a couple in Kentucky who married 83 years ago.
”WILD ON ANIMALS”
”Monkey Love”
LONDON — Don’t know about humans, but among monkeys, boys with red faces seem irresistible to girls, a study by a British university indicates.
Researchers at Stirling University say female rhesus macaques prefer males with red faces. Such faces may show high levels of testosterone and may mean a healthy immune system and good genes among the males, researcher Corri Waitt told the BBC.
Her team used a computer to manipulate images of 24 wild adult males. The females spent much longer looking at the red faces and used gestures such as lip-smacking to show their interest.
There may be a lesson, in reverse perhaps, for humans from such monkey sex appeal factors. Waitt says it may explain why women apply cosmetics to redden cheeks and lips.
Nobody knows why non-human primates have the brightest coloration among mammals but Waitt says, “We have found that the females do seem to be interested in the bright coloration.”
”The Cat Collector”
SAN FRANCISCO — A 63-year-old San Francisco woman faces arrest for allegedly keeping some 200 cats in squalid conditions in her home, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
The arrest warrant was issued against Marilyn Barletta after she failed to show up in court to face the felony animal cruelty charge. The woman had posted a $50,000 bail Friday after spending several days in jail and been ordered to appear in court Tuesday.
Prosecutors said Barletta had similarly skipped two earlier appearances in the 2-year-old case. Her attorney unsuccessfully argued his client has psychological problems and that it would be wrong to treat her as a common criminal.
Barletta was charged with two counts of animal cruelty after police found more than 200 cats — some dead or sick — in her home in May 2001. Some of the cats were later adopted, but many were destroyed.
If convicted, she faces three years in prison.
”Appetite of an Ape”
MADISON, Wis. — High cholesterol can be improved by eating foods our primate ancestors dined on, according to a study by University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found the so-called ape diet as effective at lowering LDL cholesterol — the bad kind — as a cholesterol-lowering statin drug.
The ape diet contains healthy doses of soy protein, oats, barley, nuts, fiber, vegetable oils and fruits and vegetables, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
The study followed 46 people with high cholesterol for one month. Some were put on a low-fat diet, some had the same low-fat diet plus the cholesterol-lowering drug lovastatin, also known as Mevacor, and some had the ape diet.
All saw substantial decreases in cholesterol, but the ape diet performed nearly as well as the low-fat diet plus the statin drug.
”Killer Bees: A Military Weapon”
KAMPALA, Uganda — An unusual debate is occurring in Uganda over a proposal to use killer bees to help defeat a religious group fighting Uganda’s secular government.
The BBC said traditional healers are proposing using killer bees and diseases, such as smallpox, to help beat the Lord’s Resistance Army, which has been fighting a brutal war since the 1980s to replace President Yoweri Museveni’s government.
The government has appeared powerless to halt recently intensified rebel attacks.
But now the secretary general of the National Council for Traditional Healers and Herbalists, Karim Msasizi, told BBC News his organization has sent its proposal to the government.
Msasizi said the traditional healers would also empower the army with charms that “will make them invincible.”
However, Msasizi has several demands, among which are that all white people must leave Urganda. He said, “The white people do not respect our culture and their presence would be detrimental to the operation.”
”AND NOW FOR DESSERT”
”The Ice Cream Cone has 100th Birthday”
WASHINGTON — The ice cream cone will be 100 years old on Monday, Sept. 22, but plans are already being made to celebrate the event.
Dairy Queen stores will be giving away free 5-ounce cones on that day, but the date is not without controversy.
Dairy Queen officials say Italo Marchiony, the legally credited inventor, immigrated to New York from Italy in the late 1800s. He began wrapping paper and making a crude form of the cone, later replacing paper with pastry.
On Sept. 22, 1903, he applied for a patent for a cone shaped mold. On December 15 he was granted U.S. Patent No. 746971.
Although Marchiony is credited with the invention, a similar creation was introduced at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis by Ernest Hamwi.
The Syrian concessionaire provided a wafer-like waffle pastry called zalabis, which were rolled up and filled with ice cream. This marked the beginning of the evolution of the modern ice cream cone.
Copyright 2003 by United Press International. All rights reserved.