Offbeat News

NEW YORK (AP) — It’s a promotion that could be straight out of the “Mad Men” Don Draper playbook. The iconic Peter Luger Steak House in New York City has teamed with Madame Tussauds to have celebrity wax figures, including Jon Hamm in Draper mode, mingle with patrons on Friday

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) — Two men have navigated down the precipitous shoulder of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park and alternately skied and rappelled back to the valley floor in an unusually daring feat. Jason Torlano and Zach Milligan completed the descent in five hours on

By CURT ANDERSON Associated Press ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Pythons, iguanas, monitor lizards, oh my! Florida is moving to restrict 16 invasive reptile species that have caused havoc in the Everglades and across the state. Burmese pythons, in particular, have been especially destructive to

By ROBERT JABLON Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) — A cat that went astray about 15 years ago has been reunited with its owner. Brandy is a brown tabby and was reunited Monday with Charles, a Los Angeles computer technician who adopted her as a 2-month-old kitten in 2005. Charles says he cried

By MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The huge parachute used by NASA’s Perseverance rover to land on Mars contained a secret message. Systems engineer Ian Clark used a binary code to spell out “Dare Mighty Things” in the orange and white strips of the

By ARIEL SCHALIT Associated Press MICHMORET, Israel (AP) — When it comes to saving sea turtles, Israeli rescuers have discovered that mayonnaise is a miracle. Employees at Israel’s National Sea Turtle Rescue Center are treating endangered green sea turtles affected by a devastating oil

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A two-story Victorian house in San Francisco was loaded onto giant dollies and moved Sunday to a location six blocks away. Onlookers lined the sidewalks to snap photos as the 139-year-old structure rolled at a top speed of 1 mph. Veteran house mover Phil Joy told the San

CINCINNATI, Ohio (AP) — Customs authorities in Ohio say they intercepted a shipment of cereal earlier this month with a special frosting — cocaine. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in Cincinnati reported finding 44 pounds of cocaine-coated corn flakes that had been shipped from

By MARK THIESSEN Associated Press ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — An Alaska woman had the scare of a lifetime last weekend when using an outhouse in the backcountry. She was attacked by a bear, from below. Shannon Stevens tells The Associated Press that she sat down on the toilet and felt something

NEW MIAMI, Ohio (AP) — A police bomb squad responding to a suspicious package call at an Ohio church made an unexpected discovery: six newborn kittens and their mother inside a duffel bag. The Butler County Sheriff’s Office says its bomb squad was called to a church in New Miami on