Oregon man wins Great American Think-Off

NEW YORK MILLS, Minn. (AP) — An Oregon man is the winner of this year’s Great American Think-Off, a national philosophy competition that gives ordinary people the chance to debate some of life’s perplexing questions.
This year’s question: ”Does immigration strengthen or threaten the United States?“
Craig Allen, of West Lynn, Ore., won a gold medal Saturday after a live audience in New York Mills decided he was most convincing when arguing that the system of immigration and immigration policy is broken. He says it encourages an influx of illegal immigrants and poses a threat to the country.
During the debate, the four Think-Off finalists touched on what it means to be an American and stressed that American identity is evolving.
The debate is held by the New York Mills Regional Cultural Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding the cultural and creative opportunities of rural Americans. New York Mills is a farming town of some 1,200 people in central Minnesota, about 170 miles northwest of Minneapolis.
The silver medal winner was Deana Cavaliere from Richfield, Minn., who argued that immigrants of diverse cultures have created a mix of ideas that makes America an innovative and wealthy country.
The other two finalists received bronze medals. Tom Bailey of Nashville, Tenn., argued that immigration strengthens the U.S., and Nick Thayer of St. Cloud, Minn., argued that it threatens the country.

Voter turnout for tiny North Dakota town: Zero

By JAMES MacPHERSON
Associated Press Writer
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Pillsbury Mayor Darrel Brudevold said voter turnout in the city’s primary election usually is fairly high.
”I dare say a half-dozen people usually make it to the polls,“ he said. That represents about a quarter of the residents in the Barnes County farming community, in southeastern North Dakota.
But on June 10, no one showed up. Not even those on the ballot.
Brudevold ran unopposed for re-election. His wife, Ruth, and Dan Lindseth faced no challengers for their alderman seats.
”Everybody has got a job and they’re busy,“ Brudevold said. ”It just worked out that nobody seemed to go down there to the polls.“
Only about 11 people live in Pillsbury proper, and the remainder of the residents live on farms outside the city. There is no precinct in town, so residents must drive about 12 miles to neighboring Sibley to cast their votes.
Brudevold’s wife, Ruth, runs the beauty shop and is the town’s postmaster. She said she was too busy with work to make it to the polls.
Brudevold said he intended to vote, but that he had crops to tend.
He said he assumed at least one person would show up to vote. But since no one did, Brudevold said he’ll ask state election officials what to do next.
Brudevold, who has been mayor for a dozen years and was an alderman before that, said he doesn’t think the current five-member body will change.
Barnes County Auditor Ed McGough said those in office can stay there and appoint people, including themselves, to the jobs until the next election.
”I presume things will stay the same,“ Brudevold said. ”We’re just a little village, and when you’re elected to one of those jobs, well, once you get it, you got it.“
The council meets about five times a year, Brudevold said. Members are each paid $48 annually, and a good portion of that goes for doughnuts at the meetings or gas to get there, he said.
Brudevold said he has no need for a gavel because attendance at the meetings is lackluster at best.
”Not everybody usually makes it to the meetings, so it really doesn’t get out of hand,“ he said. ”The only time we really get people to show up is when we want to raise taxes — then everybody shows up.“

Wis. board on HS sports fans: No shirt, no problem

GREEN LAKE, Wis. (AP) — The organization that governs high school sports in Wisconsin won’t force fans to keep their shirts on.
The Board of Control of the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association has rejected a committee’s recommendation that bare-chested fans be banned from attending indoor events. The decision was made Thursday.
Committee members had argued that being shirtless had nothing to do with sporting events. They also said body paint sometimes caused damage when it dripped onto cloth seats.

Leona Helmsley’s well-heeled dog loses $10 million

NEW YORK (AP) — Leona Helmsley’s dog isn’t quite as well-heeled as she used to be.
Manhattan Surrogate Judge Renee Roth has reduced the trust fund for the little dog, named Trouble, from $12 million to $2 million.
The remaining $10 million now goes to Helmsley’s charitable foundation.
The 9-year-old Maltese lives in Florida with the general manager of the Helmsley Sandcastle Hotel.
Helmsley became known as the ”queen of mean“ during her 1989 trial for tax evasion. A former housekeeper testified that she heard Helmsley say: ”We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.“
Helmsley denied having said it, but the words followed her until her death last August at age 87.
The court decision, made April 30, became public Monday.

Barge floats 2-story home from Wash. to Canada

HUNTS POINT, Wash. (AP) — Rolling the waterfront house onto a barge on Lake Washington took slightly more than 20 minutes. The home’s maritime trip to British Columbia is taking a bit longer.
In an effort to preserve a spectacular home at a bargain price, a Canadian family is moving the 3,360-square-foot, two-story house from this suburb east of Seattle to Vancouver Island.
The former owners bought the house and property for $9.4 million, according to property records, but they wanted only the 44,000-square-foot lot.
So they contacted Nickel Bros. House Moving, which then listed the home for $335,000 — including the cost of the move.
”This saves 200 tons of waste that would go into a landfill,“ said Jeff McCord, sales representative for Nickel Bros.
After weeks of planning and preparation, crews emptied the Tudor-style house, except for kitchen fixtures and a hot tub. They rolled the home onto the barge on Tuesday and the structure started its slow trip to Canada and its new owners, Tim and Jennifer O’Farrell.
”This is a good deal,“ Jennifer O’Farrell said. ”If I were to build this house, it would be a minimum of twice as much.“
The home was built in 1979 and features leaded windows and hand-carved moldings.
The house was floated across Lake Washington, then through the Ballard Locks and out through Puget Sound. It had crossed the border around noon Wednesday and was expected to reach its destination on Thursday.

Wis. board on HS sports fans: No shirt, no problem

GREEN LAKE, Wis. (AP) — The organization that governs high school sports in Wisconsin won’t force fans to keep their shirts on.
The Board of Control of the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association has rejected a committee’s recommendation that bare-chested fans be banned from attending indoor events. The decision was made Thursday.
Committee members had argued that being shirtless had nothing to do with sporting events. They also said body paint sometimes caused damage when it dripped onto cloth seats.

Chase turns sour for lemonade stand robber

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — Call it a lemonade standoff.
A girl whose lemonade stand was robbed of $17.50 chased the suspect into a nearby home and called police, who spent nearly an hour trying to coax the man into surrendering.
”The guy came up and was, like, ’Give me your money,“’ said 12-year-old Dominique Morefield, who was running the lemonade stand with a group of friends. ”I was shocked. It was just my immediate reaction to chase after him.“
Dominique dashed after the man who ran into a house, and then she called police. Officers eventually persuaded Steve Tryon, 18, to come outside after 45 minutes and arrested him on a preliminary felony charge of robbery.
Tryon made an initial appearance in Superior Court on Tuesday and was ordered to be held in the Vigo County Jail on $50,000 bond. He will be formally charged Friday, county Prosecutor Terry Modesitt said.
A telephone message seeking comment was left at the office of Michael Wright, a public defender assigned to represent Tryon.
”I didn’t think anyone would come up to a lemonade stand and steal. That’s really low,“ 12-year-old Fred Erstine said.
The kids said they would continue to sell lemonade, but with an adult’s supervision.

Australian judge halts drug trial because jurors were playing Sudoku

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — A judge halted a drug conspiracy trial Tuesday after some jurors were found to have been playing the puzzle game Sudoku while evidence was being given.
Sydney District Court Judge Peter Zahra ended the trial Tuesday for two men facing a possible life sentence for drug conspiracy charges. The trial had been running for 66 days and had cost taxpayers an estimated $950,000.
The judge was alerted after jurors were observed writing vertically, rather than horizontally. It had been assumed they were taking notes.
”Yes, it helps me keep my mind busy paying more attention,“ the jury foreman told the judge Tuesday. ”Some of the evidence is rather drawn out and I find it difficult to maintain my attention the whole time, and that doesn’t distract me too much from proceedings.“
Jurors in the trial are anonymous, and no action can be taken against them for the puzzle playing.
The foreman admitted to the judge four to five jurors were playing puzzle games for up to half the time the trial had been going.
”Jurors are sort of the judges of the facts and it’s very disappointing they weren’t giving our clients a fair trial,“ said Robyn Hakelis, a lawyer for one of the defendants.
A new trial is expected to begin in a few weeks.

LA reservoir covered with balls to protect water

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of shimmering black plastic balls were dumped into one of the city’s last open-air reservoirs to prevent a sunlight-fueled chemical reaction that can harm the water supply.
Workers on Monday unleashed 400,000 of the hollow, 4-inch ”shade balls“ down a slope to cover the surface of the Ivanhoe Reservoir, which provides water to parts of downtown, central and south Los Angeles.
Earlier this year, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power drained two of its six remaining open-air reservoirs because a rare sunlight-and-chlorine reaction tainted the water with bromate, a cancer-causing chemical. The amounts were small and didn’t violate federal water regulations, but the water was dumped as a precaution.
The plastic spheres are ”a cost effective method of creating shade without elaborate construction, parts, labor or maintenance,“ the department said in a statement.
The balls are a temporary fix while the city completes an underground water storage project to replace the open-air reservoirs within several years.

Mom in NY finds snake in crib, coiled around baby’s leg

BRENTWOOD, N.Y. (AP) — A woman who awoke to her baby’s cries was shocked to peer into the crib and find a foot-long snake wrapped around her 7-month-old daughter’s leg.
Cari Abatemarco said she was visiting family in the Long Island town of Brentwood last week when she made the startling discovery.
”Once I lifted her up and the snake fell off of her, she stopped crying. But then I was the one crying all night,“ Abatemarco told Newsday. She was in town from Troy, in upstate New York.
A relative removed the hissing snake from the crib with a back scratcher, and placed it in a bucket until animal control officers arrived. The child was unharmed.
The reptile, identified as a non-venomous California king snake, didn’t belong to Abatemarco’s family members. Officials say they don’t know where the snake came from.
The animal is being cared for at a Long Island animal shelter.

Ohio man stalls long enough to get new outhouse

BATAVIA, Ohio (AP) — An ailing, retired farmer who refused to give up his outhouse after authorities declared it to be a public nuisance finally got a new one.
Elbert ”Lew“ Preston, 79, stood his ground long enough for a nonprofit group to come to his aid and build him a sturdy new outhouse with a waste tank underneath.
”There she is,“ Preston said as he showed off the new outbuilding. ”She’s a lifesaver.“
The wooden outhouse, complete with a crescent moon on its door, replaces a 1960s-built version that had run afoul of public health officials in Clermont County, east of Cincinnati. While the old one was over a hole in the ground, this one sits atop a concrete base and a 1,000-gallon tank.
”It’s too nice and complicated to be an outhouse,“ Preston said. ”I call it a privy.“
Preston, a former trustee for Washington Township, challenged the board of health for months before seeking help from People Working Cooperatively, a nonprofit that has done thousands of projects for low-income, elderly and disabled residents in southern Ohio and northern Kentucky.
Past jobs have included replacing roofs and building wheelchair ramps, but this was its first outhouse.
Preston lives near a busy shopping area and has 175 acres of potentially lucrative real estate but didn’t want to go to the expense and complications of installing a septic system.
Preston, who is slowed by diabetes and has colon problems and pacemaker, said he never saw the need to replace the old outhouse — which once was picked up and carried into his garden by a tornado without major damage.
He said he has used an outside toilet since settling in Washington Township 40 years ago and likes the privacy of a privy.
”When you’re in a house, sounds carry,“ Preston said. ”Everybody knows your business.“

Mich.-shaped meteorite sells for $20K at auction

DETROIT (AP) — A meteorite resembling Michigan’s Lower Peninsula has been sold at auction, but bidders weren’t quite as smitten with the mitten as the seller expected.
The 75-pound nickel-and-iron meteorite sold for $20,000 Sunday at Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas. It had been expected to sell for $32,500 to $40,000.
Michigan native Darryl Pitt, the meteorite’s owner, says he is disappointed by the low price. He says he thinks the space rock is worth $50,000.
There was more interest in a three-quarter-ton nickel-iron meteorite that resembles the Indian subcontinent. It sold for $90,000.

W.Va. mayor still opposes his own pay raise

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — A West Virginia city council has pared a planned pay raise for its mayor, but the mayor still says no.
The Huntington council first discussed increasing Mayor David Felinton’s pay from about $62,000 a year to $90,000. On Monday, the council dropped it to $80,000 and is expected to vote in two weeks.
Council members say it’s needed to attract top candidates to run West Virginia’s second-largest city.
But Felinton still says he’ll veto any raise because the city has other priorities. Other city workers will get no raises next year and are making concessions in health insurance coverage. He says he’ll support a raise in better economic conditions.

Hen who lived at a McDonald’s finally captured

TEMECULA, Calif. (AP) — In the end, the elusive chicken that took up residence outside a McDonald’s just got too comfortable in its new home.
For four months customers tried unsuccessfully to catch the brown hen using bait or bare hands. Last week, the fast fowl was finally captured after it settled in for the night right on top of the drive-through window box.
A group of employees distracted the bird with bites of hamburger bun and nabbed it.
Restaurant manager Chona Cauley said the chicken’s downfall was that it got a little bit too comfortable around the drive-through.
”Normally, the chicken sleeps in the bushes,“ Cauley said.
The bird won’t end up on the menu. It has been sent to live as a pet with other chickens at the home of a restaurant worker.
Since the chicken arrived, customers often found themselves waiting to order their McNuggets while the bird blocked the drive-through lane.

Conn. police find pipe bomb stuffed inside chicken

SIMSBURY, Conn. (AP) — Authorities in Connecticut are wondering who stuffed a raw roasting chicken with a pipe bomb and left it on a roadside.
Simsbury police Capt. Matthew Catania says a motorist noticed the chicken Friday morning. He says the bomb was large enough to harm a person if it went off.
The road was closed while the Hartford Police Department’s bomb squad came and blew up the chicken.
Nobody was injured. No arrests had been made Monday night.

90-year-old accepts high school diploma in Mich.

By COREY WILLIAMS
Associated Press Writer
DETROIT (AP) — John Lawrence Locher has accomplished many things in his 90 years, including living through the Great Depression, fighting in the Pacific during World War II and a long career with General Motors.
But missing was the diploma whose pursuit he abandoned in the early 1930s to help feed his family in Detroit.
Locher checked it off his list, wearing his cap and gown in Detroit Southwestern High School’s 2008 commencement ceremonies Monday night — more than 70 years after he dropped out.
”I feel 100 percent lighter,“ he said. ”I appreciate this moment very much. ... It really was overwhelming.“
The school sent the General Motors Corp. retiree an honorary diploma for ”life credits“ this past winter to his home in Cape Coral, Fla. Southwestern Principal Garnet R. Green later said Locher’s family had contacted the school about the diploma and allowing him to participate in commencement.
”When I opened it up, I almost fainted,“ Locher said a few hours before the ceremony from his daughter’s home outside Lansing. ”I thought someone was playing a real cruel joke on me.“
Locher left school after 10th grade, with the city and rest of the country mired in the Depression and his father suffering from tuberculosis.
”My family was starving, literally,“ he said. ”I had to make some provision to make money. I was the oldest. I had a paper route. I did all kinds of work. I worked one place for 33 cents an hour, and I worked my fanny off.“
He latched onto GM in 1936.
”I worked 38 years with GM,“ he said proudly. ”I was a senior design engineer at the time, and I didn’t have a high school diploma. God has been really good to me.“
Five of Locher’s eight children and his 80-year-old wife, Mary, were among relatives attending the ceremony.
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Associated Press writer David Aguilar contributed to this report.

Ark. jail guard accused of smuggling drugs in food

TEXARKANA, Ark. (AP) — A corrections officer who had been making frequent takeout food deliveries to the county jail was caught sneaking syringes inside tacos and marijuana under chili, authorities said.
Jordan Michael Waller, 25, tried to enter the Miller County jail with three pizzas at 3 a.m. Saturday, said Mike Liles, a county investigator. Twenty minutes later, Waller brought in what appeared to be a large bag containing chili and tacos, Liles said.
A jail sergeant became suspicious, searched the food and found marijuana that had been formed into three round patties under some chili and a couple of syringes inside tacos.
Waller was searched and found to also be carrying methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia, Liles said.
Waller was charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, possession of drug paraphernalia and furnishing prohibited items into a correctional facility.
Waller, who had worked at the lockup for two months, was in custody Tuesday. His bond was set at $100,000.
The public defender’s office said its attorneys had yet to talk to Waller, whose next court appearance is scheduled for June 17.

Ohio city OKs jail time for failing to mow lawn

CANTON, Ohio (AP) — Homeowners who don’t mow their grass in this northeast Ohio city now face stiffer penalties — including possible jail time.
The city council unanimously passed a law Monday that makes a second high-grass violation a fourth-degree misdemeanor carrying a fine of up to $250 and as many as 30 days in jail.
The previous law only made the first violation a minor misdemeanor, with a fine of up to $150 but no jail time. The new law is to take effect in 30 days.
”This is the type of action we need to take in order to clean up our neighborhoods and our city,“ Mayor William J. Healy II said.
The laws are an effort to reduce the roughly $250,000 the city spends to cut about 2,000 private lots each year and to address public complaints, Councilman Greg Hawk has said.

City workers rewarded for kicking cigarette habit

METROPOLIS, Ill. (AP) — Illinois’ adopted home of Superman considers cigarettes an enemy, and it’s ready to pay a handsome reward to any city employee who can vanquish their smoking habit.
The southern Illinois tourist trap says it’ll pay city workers $1,000 apiece if they can stay off smokes for a year.
Mayor Billy McDaniel says the city has been looking for a way to get its employees off cigarettes for good. So far, McDaniel says, 15 people have signed up for the program that began Monday.
The plan calls for random nicotine tests to identify cheaters. Nicotine patches and gum will not affect those tests.
McDaniel hopes the program leads to healthier employees, lower insurance premiums and lower labor costs.

Man unearths box filled with Depression-era cash

By DINESH RAMDE
Associated Press Writer
MILWAUKEE (AP) — Dan Deming had heard the rumors about the buried treasure on his central Wisconsin farm.
At first he made some halfhearted attempts to find it, and then searched in earnest for two or three years after receiving a metal detector for his birthday.
”I don’t know what I thought, if I thought it was really there or not,“ he said.
The mystery ended recently while Deming was tearing down a 100-year-old shed on his property. A rusted box tumbled from the rubble and wads of currency dating back to the Depression spilled on the ground.
”I couldn’t believe it. I started running to the house with it,“ Deming, 34, said Sunday. ”My wife thought I broke my arm because I was just hooting and hollering.“
The bills were so deteriorated that it was hard to count the money. But the box also contained scraps of newspaper with dollar amounts written on them, a possible tally of the loot.
Deming briefly considered selling the bills to collectors, but the money was in poor condition. Instead, he turned it over to the U.S. Treasury’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which redeems mutilated currency for face value, he said.
”I’m hoping it’ll be for $1,700 because that’s what the paper said,“ Deming said. ”It’s hard to say, though. It’s really difficult to tell what was in there.“
The legend of the buried treasure dates back more than 40 years.
”I heard from my grandfather that a man who lived here during the ’30s and ’40s was eccentric and might have stashed money,“ Deming said.
When he first saw the bills, he thought they were play money. Then he saw the words ”silver certificate“ across the top of a $1 bill and realized it was real. He also noticed the bills were dated between 1928 and 1934.
Deming says he’ll use whatever money he gets from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to build a replacement shed.
He also plans to tear down a rickety old barn on his land, and wondered for a fleeting moment whether there might be more money stashed there.
”I’m hoping maybe there’s something there — but I doubt it,“ he said. ”I mean, $1,700 during the Depression was probably this guy’s life savings.“

Ticketed driver pays Wis. fine, 21 years later

KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — Someone in Texas apparently had a guilty conscience, paying up on a parking ticket handed out 21 years before.
The Kenosha Police Department says officers found a $6 payment for the ticket, issued Jan. 20, 1987, in a drop box.
A notice on the ticket indicated that failure to pay within 120 hours would result in doubling of the $3 forfeiture.
It was signed by a man who listed a Dallas address.

Iowa man says he planned to compost pot, not smoke

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Police in Iowa say a man caught with a large quantity of marijuana claimed all he had in mind was recycling.
A complaint by the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office says the 30-year-old man told police in Iowa City that he planned to turn several large bags of marijuana into compost.
Officers report the bags he had when he was arrested early Saturday held a ”gallon“ or more of marijuana each.
The complaint says officers didn’t buy the compost story. The suspect remained in jail Sunday without posting $14,000 bail on a charge of possessing marijuana with intent to distribute.

Wall Street broker acquitted of gym member assault

NEW YORK (AP) — A Wall Street stock broker accused of throwing a fellow health club member into a wall during a cycling class has been acquitted.
A Manhattan Criminal Court jury found 44-year-old Christopher Carter not guilty of assault against hedge-fund manager Stuart Sugarman.
Carter had complained about the 48-year-old Sugarman’s loud hollering and grunting during the high-impact spin class and asked him to quiet down. Sugarman says he refused. He says Carter lifted his exercise bike and hurled him into a wall, damaging a disc in his neck.
Both men weigh about 200 pounds.
A juror says the panel thought the injury occurred earlier.
Carter is a broker at Maxim Investments Group.

Starting from NY, rowers try to cross Atlantic

NEW YORK (AP) — Four men, one 29-foot rowboat — and about 3,200 miles to go.
A team of rowers from the United Kingdom set out from the Hudson River on Sunday to try to cross the Atlantic Ocean. They hope to end at the Isles of Scilly, a group of small islands off England’s southwestern tip.
The boat has an electronic tracking system, and a Web site dedicated to the effort says the rowers had gone 37 miles as of Sunday night. They hope to break a record of 55 days and 13 hours, set by two Norwegian-Americans in 1896.
The rowers are expected to take turns, with two people rowing in two-hour shifts and then switching off. They range in age from 19 to 43 and have been training for more than a year.
They are carrying about 1,500 freeze-dried meals and a device that can make saltwater safe to drink.
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On the Net:
http://www.woodvale-challenge.com/
http://www.row4home.com/thechallenge.html

Spell-check run amok changes names in Pa. yearbook

MIDDLETOWN, Pa. (AP) — A computer spell-checker run amok christened several Pennsylvania high school students with new — and in some cases unflattering — last names.
Middletown Area High School’s yearbook listed Max Zupanovic as ”Max Supernova,“ Kathy Carbaugh as ”Kathy Airbag“ and Alessandra Ippolito as ”Alexandria Impolite,“ just to name a few.
”It was kind of funny, but kind of rude at the same time,“ Ippolito said.
The mistakes were found on four of the yearbook’s 176 pages, co-editor Amanda Gummo said.
Ed Patrick of Taylor Publishing, which printed the book, said his company is responsible for the errors and will provide free stickers printed with the correct names.
”It happens all the time, every year,“ Patrick said. ”Look at any yearbook in the country.“