Offbeat News

BEAVERTON, Ore. (AP) — Authorities have released police body camera video showing the moment when officers in Oregon realized a suspected robber holed up in a bathroom was really a robotic vacuum cleaner.  The Washington County Sheriff’s Office says deputies discovered the menacing

WEST CHESTER, Pa. (AP) — Two thieves who snatched a statue of a lion from outside a home in a Philadelphia suburb had a change of heart after police posted surveillance video of the heist. The statute was taken from the West Chester residence on Wednesday. But by Friday, police posted a video

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Somebody slowed the police’s roll: Thieves keep stealing the wheels off of the patrol cars in Mississippi’s capital city. Jackson police spokesman Sgt. Roderick Holmes tells local news outlets that three police cars were towed Saturday after police discovered

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — A California business owner says store surveillance video recorded a man stealing a small chain saw by stuffing it down his pants. Jeff Bennett of RG Equipment tells the Fresno Bee his security camera caught the theft Wednesday afternoon. The video shows the man take the

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine customs officials were astonished when they opened nicely gift-wrapped boxes of cookies and oatmeal flown in all the way from Poland and found a hair-raising contraband: hundreds of live tarantulas. Bureau of Customs personnel seized the 757 tarantulas at a

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — A Lithuanian man flying to Italy got a pleasant surprise when he boarded the plane: He was the only passenger on the Boeing 737-800.  Skirmantas Strimaitis, who was flying from capital Vilnius to the northern Italian city of Bergamo for a skiing holiday March 16, had

MARLBOROUGH, N.H. (AP) — Police in New Hampshire say they cited a driver who had a kid in her lap — the baby goat kind. Marlborough police say they pulled the woman over on April Fool’s Day when they saw her using her cellphone. They soon realized that she was driving without a valid

KEY WEST, Fla. (AP) — A Maryland man accused of abusing a pelican has returned to the Florida Keys to face charges. Thirty-one-year-old William Hunter Hardesty of Riva, Maryland, was booked into jail in Key West late Monday, according to a statement from Monroe County Sheriff’s spokesman

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — There’s no escape from the long arm of the law in Sweden. Not even sitting naked in a sauna. Police spokewoman Carina Skagerlind says an off-duty police officer found himself sitting in the same sauna in Rinkeby, a Stockholm suburb, as a fugitive who had dodged