Curses, Foiled Again
Police said the father-and-son burglary team of Randall Popkes, 41, and Joshua Williams, 22, broke into Iowa’s Des Moines Golf and Country Club and used a reciprocating saw to cut into the safe. When they couldn’t get it open, they left a note that read, “Fuck you and your safe.”

“Apparently, they were upset that they couldn’t gain access to the safe,” West Des Moines Police Lt. Jeff Miller said. He added the burglars settled for tennis rackets and shoes. As they sped away, however, some of the gear fell from their vehicle, attracting the attention of a security guard, who jotted down the license number, which led to their identification and arrest.

Homeland Insecurity
Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, acknowledged the military is reviewing soldiers’ complaints that their ammunition is inadequate for the type of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Current and former soldiers interviewed by the Associated Press said the military’s M855 rifle rounds, which were designed decades ago to puncture the steel helmets of Soviet soldiers from hundreds of yards away, aren’t powerful enough for close-in fighting in cities and towns.

The Department of Homeland Security has awarded $381,948 in anti-terrorism grants to a private Colorado Springs shuttle-bus service that transports gamblers to casinos in three Colorado mountain towns. A Federal Emergency Management Agency official told the Colorado Springs Gazette the most recent grant of $184,415 to Ramblin Express is to provide vehicle security and GPS systems.

Peek-a-Boo
David Joe Limones, 27, cut a hole in a woman’s couch and hid in the carved-out space until she came home, according to police in Newburgh, N.Y., who said the woman sat on the couch and felt a bump in the cushions move. She jumped up, and Limones emerged from his hiding place, knocking a cell phone from her hand. The woman had been talking to a friend, who called police.

A 57-year-old Japanese man who became suspicious after food began disappearing from his kitchen in Fukuoka installed security cameras that sent images to his cell phone. When one of the cameras showed someone moving inside his house, he alerted police, who found the door locked and windows closed. “We searched the house, checking everywhere someone could possibly hide,” police official Hiroki Itakura told the Asahi newspaper. “When we slid open the shelf closet, there she was, nervously curled up on her side.”
The 58-year-old woman explained she had no place to live and sneaked into the man’s house a year earlier when he left it unlocked. She had moved a mattress into the small closet space and even took showers, Itakura said, describing the woman as “neat and clean.”

Identity Crises
Czech Republic soccer federation official Vaclav Tichy resigned and his deputy was fired after a match in Prague at which the Latvian flag and a photo of the Latvian national soccer team were featured in the game program and the Latvian national anthem was played. The Czech team’s opponent was Lithuania.

A man police chased and arrested for trying to grope a woman in Lowell, Mass., gave his name as Martin Walsh, who is the state representative from Dorchester. He told the officers they were ruining his life. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he said, according to the police report. “She was flirting with me, I was flirting with her.”

The man later revealed he was state Sen. J. James Marzilli Jr., 50, and “began to cry,” prosecutor Richard M. Mucci read from the police report at Marzilli’s arraignment. “He said they could not arrest him, that his life was over.”

Pump Runs Dry
Nevada brothels began offering gas cards and other incentives to stem the decline in business by long-haul truckers, who Geoffrey Arnold, president of the Nevada Brothel Owners’ Association, said account for 75 percent of the revenue at the state’s 16 rural brothels, located along Interstate 80 and U.S. Highway 95. Arnold said business at his two I-80 brothels has dropped 19 percent this year. Meanwhile, the state’s 12 other legal brothels, which are closer to Reno and Las Vegas and rely more on tourists and conventioneers, reported this year’s business is up.

Neck Chops
Rabbinical authorities in Israel declared that giraffes are kosher. According to the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, veterinarians treating an adult female giraffe at the Safari Park in Ramat Gan noticed its milk clotted in the way required for kosher certification and submitted a sample for verification. Noting that the giraffe is a grazing animal with cloven hooves and chews its cud, Rabbi Shlomo Mahfoud said, “The giraffe has all the signs of a ritually pure animal, and the milk that forms curds strengthened that.”

Excrement Adventure
Rescuers responding to reports of a man stuck in a portable toilet in Lebanon, Pa., found Shannon P. Hunter, 31, drunk, naked and wedged up to his waist. Deputy Fire Commissioner Chris Miller told the Lebanon Daily News Hunter had been trapped for about 30 minutes and suffered scrapes and abrasions around his hips. “I’m not sure what exactly was taking place inside the port-o-pot,” Miller said. “He would only say he needed to use the bathroom, and he claimed he fell in the toilet. When I asked him why he was naked, he just shrugged his shoulders.”

Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Submit items, citing date and source, to P.O. Box 8130, Alexandria VA 22306.