Offbeat News

BRISBANE, Australia (AP) — A patron at a hotel on Australia’s Gold Coast has foiled a holdup by attacking the robber with a bar stool and a pot plant. A video release by the Queensland police shows a hooded man enter the Mermaid Beach Hotel in the early hours of Friday morning and

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Nevada Highway Patrol says passengers must be alive in order to be counted as occupants in cars using the high occupancy vehicle lane. The reminder was prompted by a traffic stop Monday involving a hearse traveling on the carpool lane on Interstate 15 in Las Vegas. A trooper

NEW YORK (AP) — A police officer’s craving for cake batter ice cream put him and his colleagues in the right place to take action when a loaded gun fell out of a man’s shorts at a Baskin-Robbins shop in New York City. Police say three officers were at the shop in Coney Island,

PRATTVILLE, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama sheriff says jail inmates were caught making some truly “disgusting” alcohol out of fermenting vegetables. News outlets report it turned up when dozens of officers conducted a shakedown for contraband Monday at the Autauga Metro Jail. Autauga

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A New Jersey man who illegally imported scorpions, giant millipedes and other invertebrates, some of which escaped inside a postal delivery truck, has been spared a prison term. Wlodzimie Lapkiewicz instead was ordered Tuesday to serve six months of home confinement and

CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) — Police say a $5,000 tip a woman left on a $55 cafe bill wasn’t a case of generosity or charity. The woman is accused of using her boyfriend’s credit card to leave the tip as revenge, and she’s charged with theft in the incident. Clearwater police say

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A recently adopted puppy that disappeared after her owner crashed in Arizona survived 13 days in the mountains and has been reunited with her owner. The Arizona Daily Sun reports volunteers found Bella, a 4-month-old mixed yellow lab, almost two weeks after driver

LISBON, N.H. (AP) — A man accused of forging a police report to back up his bogus story that he used as an excuse to his boss is facing real charges in New Hampshire. The Caledonian-Record reports that 51-year-old Paul Neilson was charged last week with forgery, a felony punishable by up to

GEORGIA, Vt. (AP) — Deputies have arrested a Vermont man who is accused of stealing more than two dozen street signs. Mynbc.com reports 19-year-old Joshua Hanselman has been charged with larceny and unlawful mischief after acknowledging that he and others stole the 26 street signs. The signs

MYERSTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Authorities say a man who allegedly placed a homemade bomb in a parking lot behind a Pennsylvania hotel told them he did it to warn police about aliens bent on destroying the planet. State troopers responded to the Bahney House in Myerstown on Sunday. They discovered a