Purdue University team concocts hamburger-making device to win Rube Goldberg contest

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) — A team of Purdue University students concocted a 156-step recipe to prepare a hamburger to win Saturday’s annual national Rube Goldberg Machine Contest.
This year’s task was to assemble a burger consisting of no less than one precooked meat patty, two vegetables and two condiments, sandwiched between two bun halves.
The victory by the 17-member Purdue Society of Professional Engineers was the team’s third such win in the past four years in the contest, named for the late cartoonist known for his drawings of complicated devices performing simple tasks.
Texas A&M University placed second; the University at Buffalo in New York was third.
After winning the regional contest in February, Purdue’s team added 55 more steps to perfect its machine, said captain Drew Wischer.
”We put 4,000 to 5,000 man-hours into this machine since September, and all the hard work has been well worth it,“ said Wischer, a senior in aviation technology from Cedarburg, Wis.
The competition, sponsored by Phi Chapter of Theta Tau fraternity, rewards machines that most effectively combine creativity with inefficiency and complexity. Machines must complete the assigned task in 20 or more steps.
Winning machines must complete two successful runs. Points are deducted if students have to assist the machine once it has started. Judges award points on the creative use of materials, team chemistry, flow of the machine and each machine’s theme.
Other teams competing Saturday were Ferris State University in Michigan; Michigan Technological University; Penn State University Brandywine; and the University of Texas at Austin.

Immigration issue separates 96-year-old Utah man from his Canadian wife

PROVO, Utah (AP) — A 96-year-old man who outlived two wives is separated from his third — by immigration problems.
Canadian Doreen Buttery, 73, was a temporary visitor when she met Leonard ”Woody“ Woodward at a senior center in Provo. They wed this year and honeymooned in Alberta — which gave Buttery the chance to sell her house and prepare to move to Provo permanently.
But she hadn’t filled out the paperwork to immigrate and was stuck at the border as her husband took the bus back to Provo.
”We tried to provide her as much guidance as we could,“ said Larry Overcast, port director at the Customs and Border Protection entry point in Sweetgrass, Mont.
Woodward and a neighbor who has a law degree are trying to put together the paperwork to bring Doreen back. But it’s a complicated process that takes time.
”It’s on a merry-go-round,“ Woodward said.
Buttery will also have to go through an interview, so U.S. officials can determine the marriage is legitimate and not just an attempt to bypass immigration rules.
Woodward said can still get by on his own, but he doesn’t like it.
”I need her home, bad,“ he said.

Man is convicted on drug charge, immediately marries woman in court and is taken off to jail

DURANT, Okla. (AP) — A man who had just received a 10-year prison term exchanged marriage vows with a woman in the same courthouse before being led away in shackles.
Forrest Lynn Foreman, 49, was sentenced to 10 years Friday after pleading no contest to making methamphetamine, but he wanted to marry 30-year-old Amie Gayleene Lang before beginning his sentence.
In a third-floor courtroom of the Bryan County courthouse, Calera Police Chief Don Hyde Jr., who is an ordained minister, performed the marriage ceremony after being asked to do so by a court clerk deputy.
”It was an emotional moment because the two had professed to love each other and do what was right and unite as a family,“ Hyde said. ”It was a situation, that from talking to the two of them, he was going away a long time and they wanted to become legal as a couple.“
Hyde said that the service was beautiful and that the couple cried.
”It was just an emotional thing,“ he said.
After the service, Foreman was taken to jail.

Woman steals boa constrictor from Mich. pet store by slipping it down her pants

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A woman stole a boa constrictor from a pet store by slipping the snake down her pants, the owner said.
The animal was stolen Thursday afternoon from Preuss Animal House in Lansing.
”I am far less concerned for the person than for the snake,“ owner Rick Preuss said. The 20-inch snake was worth $174.
Jayzun Boget, assistant manager of Preuss’ reptile department, called the heist ”audacious.“

Tire falls from helicopter, crashes through roof of mechanic’s home in Monroe, Ga.

MONROE, Ga. (AP) — The mystery of a tire that plunged from the sky and crashed through the roof of a home here now has an explanation.
Federal Aviation Administration officials told home owner Mark Brown on Tuesday that the wheel plummeted to earth from a helicopter owned by the Loganville-based Forever Green Landscaping. The wheel is part of equipment used to haul the helicopter around the landing pad during maintenance.
Officials said the equipment should have been removed before flight.
The company’s owner told the Athens Banner-Herald he didn’t know his helicopter had lost a wheel.
Brown said he and his wife returned home last Wednesday to find pictures knocked to the floor and cracks in a hallway’s drywall. He crawled into the attic, where he saw a hole about the size of a loaf of bread in his roof, with a tire peeking through.
”When I crawled up there and saw it pushing through the roof, I thought, ’I must be dreaming,“’ Brown, a mechanic, told the Banner-Herald.
The Walton County Sheriff’s Office traced serial numbers on the tire to the landscaping company, FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said. The FAA is still investigating the incident, she said.
Monroe is 46 miles east of Atlanta.

UTexas students apparently copied parts of honor code draft from another school’s code

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Their goal was an honor code that discouraged cheating and plagiarizing.
However, the wording in a draft by students at the University of Texas at San Antonio appears to match another school’s code — without proper attribution.
The student currently in charge of the honor code project said it was an oversight, but cheating experts say it illustrates a sloppiness among Internet-era students who don’t know how to cite sources properly and think of their computers as cut-and-paste machines.
”That’s the consequence of the Internet and the availability of things,“ said Daniel Wueste, director of the Rutland Institute for Ethics at Clemson University. ”It doesn’t feel like what would be in a book. You Google it and here it comes.“
Student Akshay Thusu said that when he took over the project a month ago he inherited a draft by earlier project participants, including a group of students who attended a conference five years ago put on by The Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson.
Materials from the conference, which are used by many universities, were probably the main source of UTSA’s proposed code, Thusu said. That’s why parts of the Texas draft match word-for-word the online version of Brigham Young University’s code.
BYU credited the Center for Academic Integrity, but the San Antonio draft doesn’t.
That will change, said Thusu, who plans to include proper citation and attribution when the draft is submitted to the faculty senate.
”We don’t want to have an honor code that is stolen,“ Thusu said.

When officers come to seize Kentucky snakes, owner is having his bitten fingers amputated

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky man wasn’t around when officers seized reptiles from his home. That’s because he was at a hospital having fingers amputated after a snakebite, his wife says.
The state Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources seized seven rattlesnakes, a gaboon viper, a king cobra, an iguana, two monitor lizards, two alligators, a boa constrictor and a python.
The 36-year-old Campbellsville man faces 15 counts of transporting wildlife into Kentucky without a transportation permit and 10 counts of possessing inherently dangerous animals.

Police say woman they called about car thought they were drug dealers, tried to buy crack

LAKE CHARLES, La. (AP) — Police officers suspected that a car they had pulled over was stolen, so they called the registered owner and left a message.
But when the owner called back, officers say, she apparently thought the message was from a drug dealer, and she was busted for allegedly trying to buy crack cocaine.
”Officers put in a lot of energy to close a case, so we never mind getting one on sheer luck and stupidity,“ Lake Charles police Sgt. Mark Kraus said of last week’s arrest.
He said officers Hope Kingery and George Miller stopped a vehicle for a traffic violation and the driver could not produce identification or a valid driver’s license. Miller called the car’s registered owner and left a message, but in the meantime they determined that the vehicle wasn’t stolen and allowed the driver to leave, Kraus said.
About an hour later, Miller got a call on his cell phone from the apparent owner of the car ”who stated that she would like to buy $150 in crack,“ Kraus said.
Miller agreed to a meeting, which led to the arrest of Jill Foreman, 33, and fiance Larry Rieck, 49, both of Sulphur.
Foreman was freed on bail after being booked with conspiracy to distribute a controlled dangerous substance, the sheriff’s office said. No phone number was listed for her in Sulphur and the sheriff’s office had no lawyer listed Tuesday for either Rieck or Foreman.
Rieck remained in custody Tuesday on the same charge, the sheriff’s office said.

Spanish burglar nabbed while playing dead at funeral parlor

By DANIEL WOOLLS
Associated Press Writer
MADRID, Spain (AP) — A burglar who broke into a funeral home tried to fool police by playing dead, but two things gave him away. First, he breathed. Plus, he wore grungy clothes rather than the Sunday best of those settling in for eternal rest.
Police and the Crespo Funeral Home said Wednesday they had no idea what the 23-year-old Spanish man was trying to steal in the March 17 break-in at Burjassot, a small town just outside Valencia.
Neighbors living nearby alerted police when they heard the front door of the business being forced open in the middle of the night.
Police officers arrived with the owner, and eventually found the suspect lying on a table in a glassed-in chamber used for viewings of deceased people during wakes, a local police official said from Burjassot.
”The custom here is for dead people to be dressed in suits, in nice clothes that look presentable. This guy was in everyday clothes that were wrinkled and dirty,“ the police official said. Department rules barred her from giving her name.
”He was trying to fake being dead, but he was breathing,“ the officer said.
The suspect’s name was not released. Police said he had served jail time in the past for robbery.
The funeral home said it was mystified about what the man could have been after, because there were no valuables or cash inside the funeral parlor.

Both wives of a Malaysian man divorce him at the same time

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — When Roslan Ngah took a second wife, he might have wondered if she would get along with his first.
He need not have worried. The two women got on so well they decided to leave him at the same time.
Faced with their united stand, Roslan, a 44-year-old Malaysian Muslim, divorced his two wives, aged 46 and 35, in an Islamic Shariah Court in northeastern Terengganu state on Tuesday, a lawyer said Wednesday.
According to Islamic law, a woman can submit a request to leave her husband, but the pronouncement of divorce must come from the man or a court. Islam allows a man to have four wives.
Salwa Mansor, the second wife’s lawyer, said the wives cited irreconcilable differences and other complaints.
The Star daily quoted Roslan as saying that he was aware his two wives had become close over the years.
”They are like good friends but I never imagined that both of them had collectively decided to divorce me,“ Roslan was quoted him as saying. ”I never expected our marriages to end in this manner.“
Roslan has four children with his first wife and two with his second.
Roslan reportedly said he would marry again, ”God willing.“
”If my fate says so, I have no qualms and this time I hope that my marriage will last forever,“ The Star quoted him as saying.

Australian politician proposes designated day to hunt, euthanize toxic toads

BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — An Australian politician on Wednesday proposed designating a special day for residents to hunt and kill what he called one of the world’s most disgusting creatures: the poisonous cane toad.
The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has said it backs the plan by Queensland state lawmaker Shane Knuth to launch ”Toad Day Out,“ but only if the creatures are killed in a humane way, such as euthanizing them in a freezer.
”Obviously we’re not idiots. We understand a lot people will be highly reluctant to fill their fridges and freezers with dying cane toads, but at the moment that is the only humane way that we can recommend,“ said Michael Beatty, the society’s spokesman.
The toads were imported from South America to Australia’s northeastern state of Queensland in 1935 in a failed attempt to control beetles on sugar cane plantations. They now threaten many local species.
Knuth said he wanted ”a special day that Queenslanders, especially children, could all play their part.“
”The toad is probably the greatest environmental vermin and probably the most disgusting creature known to man,“ he said.
Knuth has long campaigned against the pests. Last year he suggested a bounty of 36 cents per toad.
Queensland’s Department of Primary Industries said it was important that native frogs are not mistaken for toads during any hunt.