A July 29 headline in the Ken-Ton Bee in Kenmore, New York, caught the attention of The Buffalo News: "Leprechaun spotted looting cars on Hamilton Boulevard." Kenmore Police Capt. A.J. Kiefer told The News a white male with orange hair and wearing a green shirt (and "possibly plaid pants") was reported to be looting vehicles on the street July 23. Police arrested the 36-year-old, who measured 5 feet 11 inches and had someone else's debit card, but no pot of gold, according to Kiefer. He was charged with petit larceny. [The Buffalo News, 7/30/2020]

Government in Action

About 176 Rhode Island taxpayers waiting for their refund checks got a surprise when the checks they received in late July arrived bearing the signatures of "Mickey Mouse" and "Walt Disney" instead of state officials. State Department of Revenue chief of staff Jade Borgeson told WPRI that the division of taxation uses the signatures on dummy checks for internal testing, and the test image files were mistakenly added to real checks. "Corrected checks will be reissued to impacted taxpayers within one week," Borgeson said. [WPRI, 7/31/2020]

Karen Not Karen

Domino's pizza restaurants in New Zealand were forced to end a promotion to give free pizza to women named Karen "that aren't, well, Karens," the promotion announcement read. United Press International reported that customers named Karen were invited to fill out an application for one of 100 free pizzas, but people objected online, suggesting the chain offer food to minorities or people who have been impacted by COVID-19. "We wanted to bring a smile to customers who are doing the right thing -- Karen the nurse, Karen the teacher," the company posted on Facebook, but "people interpreted this in a different way." [UPI, 7/30/2020]

Least Competent Criminals

-- Edward Thomas Schinzing, 32, was charged July 28 with arson for allegedly setting fires inside the Justice Center in Portland, Oregon, on May 29, beginning two months of protest in that city. The Oregonian reported the shirtless Schinzing stood out among about 30 people who broke into the building around 10:59 p.m., vandalizing offices and setting fires, because of the large tattoo of his last name clearly visible across his shoulders on surveillance images, according to court documents. Schinzing, who was on probation at the time for domestic violence assault, is being held at the Justice Center. [The Oregonian, 7/28/2020]

-- Pueblo, Colorado, police were intrigued to find a young man sleeping in a car parked behind a motel on Aug. 2, "since motels have rooms, with beds, that you can sleep in," said Capt. Tom Rummel in a tweet. Upon running the car's license plate, he continued, the officers found it had been stolen in an armed carjacking, and "there on the front seat was a sawed-off shotgun, just like the victim said was used yesterday!" KKTV reported the sleepy thief, a juvenile, was taken into custody and the car was returned to its owner. [KKTV, 8/2/2020]

Police Report

A 26-year-old man in Plymouth, England, was detained on July 9 after officers working nearby heard a commotion and looked up to see the man struggling with a seagull and biting it. "He sunk his teeth into it before throwing it to the floor," a police spokesperson told Plymouth Live. The man told police the seagull had attacked him, trying to get his McDonald's meal, and also "volunteered ... that he was under the influence of drugs ... The seagull was clearly injured by the incident but flew off before we were able to check on its welfare," police said. The man was taken to a hospital for treatment. [Cornwall Live, 7/10/2020]

Can't Take a Joke

After pub owner Steve Cotten jokingly announced in July that the beer garden at the Poltimore Arms in Devon, England, would become the Yarde Down International Airport for the summer, offering sightseeing flights, he was surprised to receive an official letter from Exmoor National Park Authority's planning officer expressing concern about the change: "We have a duty to look into such matters to understand if there is a breach, and if so, whether any action is necessary." Devon Live reported Cotten responded promptly in a social media post, saying, "All long haul flights have been suspended forthwith ... We apologise for any delays, and remind you that the departure lounge facilities are still open." The park authority replied with good humor, and the taps remain open. [Devon Live, 8/4/2020]

Awesome!

-- For her birthday, 5-year-old Macey Clemens of Parker, Colorado, went on her first horseback ride and was hooked, so she wrote her wish for a pet horse on a balloon, signed her name and let it soar. On Aug. 2, Jennifer Houghton, who owns seven horses and lives about an hour away, found the balloon stuck in a fence, and it wasn't long before the two found each other through social media. "I feel like every little girl should get to enjoy the horse world," Houghton told KOAA. "I couldn't get her a pet horse, but at least try and help her ride and make somewhat of a dream come true." She's working with Macey's family to find a horse close to home that the family can lease. "Hopefully, one day we'll be able to meet up and go for a ride together." [KOAA, 8/4/2020]

-- Father's Day in Taiwan is celebrated on Aug. 8, and EVA Air wanted to make it special, so working around global travel restrictions, it announced a Hello Kitty flight to nowhere, Travel & Leisure reported. The anime character-decorated airplane is scheduled to take off from Taipei Taoyuan Airport and fly over the coasts of Taiwan for three hours at 25,000 feet, then land again at the same airport. Guests will receive a special goody bag, enjoy a seafood feast created by a Michelin three-star chef and be given the opportunity to purchase Hello Kitty duty-free products at a big discount. Tickets cost $180 for economy seats and $215 for business class. [Travel & Leisure, 8/3/2020]

Revenge

An unnamed man in Cairns, North Queensland, Australia, posted notices offering a $100 prize to the person able to best impersonate Chewbacca from "Star Wars," but the contest turned out to be a hoax designed to harass the woman who dumped him. The posters listed the woman's phone number and invited contestants to call and deliver their best Chewbacca roar. The woman, identified only as Jessica, told 9News: "I'm getting phone calls at really strange hours of the night. ... I thought it was quite funny, actually, a good joke." However, she drew the line when the ex abandoned his car, without tires, in the driveway of her home, blocking her in. "The police ... are going to do something about it," she said. [9News, 7/23/2020]

Nature Calls

An Amazon delivery driver in Nuthall, Nottingham, England, is out of a job after Sharon Smith, 53, discovered him defecating in her back garden in late July. Smith said she saw the man run toward her garden and went to investigate. "I asked what the heck he was doing," Smith told Metro News, "and he just remained pooing whilst asking me what my problem was -- the cheek of it." The driver told police he wasn't feeling well and was desperate, and he didn't realize he was in a private garden. Smith agreed to not press charges as long as he cleaned up the mess and his employer was informed; Amazon promised a gift voucher as a goodwill gesture. [Metro News, 8/4/2020]

Gabriel and Tracy Brawn moved into Gabriel's childhood home in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, in 2012 and enjoyed a warm relationship with next-door neighbor Steve Ritter, whose garage had been partially built on the Brawns' property decades ago. But after Ritter passed away in 2016, his wife and grown children took over the property, sometimes renting it out, and "this place turned to craziness and chaos," Tracy Brawn told the Bangor Daily News on July 16, leading finally to Gabriel Brawn grabbing his Sawzall on May 26 and cutting the Ritters' garage in half, right down the property line. "We're putting up a fence," Tracy Brawn said. "Fences make good neighbors." Dover-Foxcroft police Chief Ryan Reardon said, "We were aware of the situation and believe it's been resolved at this point." [Bangor Daily News, 7/18/2020]

Latest Alarming Headlines

A roving gang of baboons in Knowsley Safari Park in Merseyside, England is known to vandalize cars and otherwise alarm visitors, but lately, The Sunday Times reported, they've been seen carrying knives, screwdrivers and a chain saw, which workers believe they've acquired from visitors. "We're not sure if they are being given weapons by some of the guests ... or if they're fishing them out of pickup trucks and vans," an employee said. Park officials have pooh-poohed the reports, saying, "We believe that many of these stories have grown in exaggeration as they've been retold." [Sunday Times viz NY Post, 7/27/2020]

Predictable

A $64,000 glass replica of a Disney castle on display at the Shanghai Museum of Glass in China was shattered in July after two kids "hit the exhibit counter when they were chasing each other," a museum spokesperson posted on Weibo. The Today Show reported Spanish glassblower Miguel Arribas spent 500 hours creating The Fantasy Castle in 2016, but "luckily it's not destroyed," said Arribas Brothers company spokesman Rudy Arribas. When COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, Miguel will go to Shanghai to repair the castle. "We're used to kids and this kind of stuff happening," said Rudy. "Glass breaks." [Today, 7/27/2020]

Lost and Found

-- Chris Marckres of Hyde Park, Vermont, went skydiving on July 25, but, he told NECN, "I think my adrenaline was so high and I was just so excited, I didn't realize I had lost it." "It" was one of Marckres' two prosthetic legs. The double amputee was harnessed to an instructor and landed safely, but he didn't know where the leg ended up. His plea for help on Facebook was answered the next day by farmer Joe Marszalkowski, who found the prosthetic in his soybean field. Marckres said the leg suffered a few scratches but was otherwise unharmed. "We kind of take for granted sometimes how many truly good people there still are in the world," he mused. [NECN, 7/27/2020]

-- Mike Evans of Woodson Terrace, Missouri, went for a 5-mile float trip with friends on the Meramec River on July 25 and decided to get out of the raft and walk behind it in the water for a bit. As the water got deeper, he had to swim to catch the raft, and as he climbed back in, Evans discovered his prosthetic leg was gone, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. He searched with no luck, but a Missouri state trooper responding to a call nearby heard about the loss and coordinated a dive team to help. It took divers a couple of hours the next day to find the leg, saving Evans about $27,000 to replace it. "It was a happy ending to a stressful few days," Evans said. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 7/28/2020]

-- After Christian Meyer of Berlin, Germany, lost his running shoes to a thief, he posted a notice on a community sharing platform and learned other residents had also lost shoes that were left outside. Meyer soon discovered the culprit, telling local media on July 26 that he caught a fox "red-handed" with a pair of blue flip-flops in its mouth and eventually found its stash of more than 100 multicolored shoes, according to Fox News. Meyer's shoes, however, were not among them. [Fox News, 7/28/2020]

The Street Where You Live

Concerned friends of Hartford, Connecticut, retiree Victor King contacted police on July 26 when they couldn't reach King, who had recently reported being threatened with a samurai sword by a man he rented a room to, according to an arrest warrant. The Hartford Courant reported that first responders arriving at the house on Asylum Avenue found King's body, badly slashed and decapitated. Police began a search for the renter, Jerry David Thompson, who was soon found and arrested, but refused to cooperate with detectives, referring them instead to paperwork in his car indicating he believes himself to be a sovereign citizen and therefore not subject to the law. He was arraigned on July 28 and held on $2 million bail. [Hartford Courant, 7/28/2020]

Awesome!

A Gwinnett County (Georgia) Sheriff's deputy is recovering at home thanks to three inmates who came to his rescue. The unnamed inmates noticed the deputy didn't seem well as he conducted security checks, the sheriff's office said in a July 28 statement, and then saw him lose consciousness and fall to the floor, "splitting his head open." The inmates began shouting and banging on their doors, which roused the deputy enough that he "thought an inmate needed help and somehow managed to rise to his feet and press the control panel to open cell doors." The inmates rushed out and called for assistance as the deputy lost consciousness again, the Gwinnett Daily Post reported. "These inmates had no obligation whatsoever to render aid to a bleeding, vulnerable deputy, but they didn’t hesitate," the sheriff's office said. "We're proud of them." [Gwinnett Daily Post, 7/28/2020]

Inexplicable

Out for an early morning stroll on July 27, Mariel Kinney, 32, and Kevin Pinto, 30, drew the attention of residents in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, who called police to report a naked couple walking their dog down the street, authorities said. "It was kind of wild," Police Chief Joseph Bennett told the Milford Daily News. "They were buck naked." Officers asked the couple why they weren't wearing clothes, but they declined to answer or were incoherent, Bennett said, and "(t)here was a short foot pursuit." After a struggle, they were captured and charged with indecent exposure and assault and battery on a police officer, along with other crimes. [Milford Daily News, 7/27/2020]

-- Commuters in Berlin, Germany, are required to wear masks on public transportation, and are subject to fines if they don't. Despite that, reports Deutsche Welle, so many people wear their masks incorrectly (covering the mouth but not the nose) that Berlin's transport company, BVG, is now suggesting that riders skip deodorant when they're getting ready for the day, in hopes that the body odor on crowded trains will keep those masks in place. "Given that so many people think they can wear their masks under their noses, we're getting tough," read a bright yellow posting from July 1 on Twitter. "The BVG is calling for a general deodorant waiver. So now do you still want to have your nose out?" [DW, 7/3/2020]

-- Farm families in Botswana living beside the Chobe River have long battled herds of elephants that often pass through their fields at night, trampling crops as they move toward the river. Barking dogs and fences have failed to stop the elephants, the BBC reported on July 7, but farmers are having remarkable success with a new weapon: disco lights. Scientists from Elephants Without Borders placed solar-powered strobe lights that flash color patterns along the sides of fields elephants are known to walk through, frightening the elephants away. One farmer reported that before he had lights, "I had more elephants raid ... but in these two seasons with lights I have harvested successfully." [BBC, 7/7/2020]

News That Sounds Like a Joke

A man attempting to elude police in a stolen Toyota Land Cruiser on July 5 in Newberg, Oregon, crashed into a woman driving a Buick Regal that had been reported stolen three weeks before, giving police a two-fer. Newberg-Dundee police said they arrested the driver of the Toyota, Randy Lee Cooper, 27, and then found the driver of the Buick, Kristin Nicole Begue, 25, to be under the influence of intoxicants and arrested her, too, KOIN reported. Neither driver was injured [KOIN, 7/6/2020]

Suspicious

Liberty County (Georgia) sheriff's officers who found a body lying next to a railroad track in Allenhurst on July 14 followed protocol by covering the body with a sheet and waiting for the coroner. When the coroner arrived, detectives looked for injuries and quickly discovered the body was a female sex doll. WSAV reported that the doll was fully clothed and was anatomically correct. Officials think they may have been victims of a prank. [WSAV, 7/15/2020]

Least Competent Criminal

Wendy Wein, 51, of South Rockwood, Michigan, was arrested July 17 after offering an undercover state trooper $5,000 to kill her ex-husband and giving him money for travel expenses, WXYZ reported. Wein met the trooper after allegedly visiting the fake website rentahitman.com, where she completed a form requesting a consultation and named her ex-husband as the target. The owner of the website contacted Michigan State Police, who sent the undercover officer. "I'm very surprised that someone thought this website was a true website," said state police spokesman Lt. Brian Oleksyk. The website owner said over the last 15 years he's been contacted a number of times by people wanting someone killed, and he turns all of those requests over to law enforcement. [WXYZ, 7/21/2020]

Wait, What?

Iceland is offering a stressed-out world a unique way to blow off some steam, reports Sky News -- scream therapy. The country's tourist board is inviting people worldwide to record their screams to be played over loudspeakers in one of seven remote locations. "You've been through a lot this year," says the project website, "and it looks like you need the perfect place to let your frustrations out. Somewhere big, vast and untouched. It looks like you need Iceland." Psychotherapist Zoe Aston approves: "Using a scream as a way to release pent-up emotion allows you to ... reclaim the power that is inside you." Iceland has suffered relatively little during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 1,905 cases of the disease and 10 lives lost. [Sky News, 7/15/2020]

Compelling Explanation

What started as a report of a naked man running down a road hitting cars in Owensboro, Kentucky, on July 16, soon turned into a home burglary in progress, reports WFIE. Daviess County Sheriff's deputies said they arrived at the home around 1:30 a.m. to find John Stefanopoulos, 41, standing inside, naked and covered with mud and blood. Authorities said the suspect rushed the officers while repeatedly telling them he had used "mushrooms with Jesus and that they were playing a virtual reality video game together." Stefanopoulos was eventually tased and taken into custody. [WFIE, 7/17/2020]

"Incorrigibel"

Robert Berger, 25, of Huntington, New York, was scheduled to be sentenced last October after pleading guilty to possession of a stolen Lexus and attempting to steal a truck, but in an effort to avoid jail, he tried faking his own death, prosecutors charged on July 21. The scheme, they said, unraveled when authorities discovered a spelling error and inconsistencies in the font styles and sizes on the fake death certificate submitted by his lawyer. Further, The Associated Press reports, while Berger was "dead," he was arrested in Philadelphia for providing a false identity to police and stealing from a Catholic college. "It will never cease to amaze me the lengths some people will go to to avoid being held accountable on criminal charges," Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas said. "It's never a good idea to submit phony documents to the district attorney." [Associated Press, 7/21/2020]

Suspicions Confirmed

Andrea Balbi, president of the Gondola Association in Venice, Italy, announced on July 22 that the organization is reducing the maximum capacity allowed on the iconic boats from six persons to five, CNN reported. The change comes not because of social distancing, but because "over the last 10 years or so, tourists weigh more," Balbi said. He noted that heavier loads often mean the boats take on water, which makes it harder for the gondoliers to navigate in heavy traffic. "Going forward with over half a ton of meat on board is dangerous," remarked Raoul Roveratto, president of an association for substitute gondoliers. [CNN, 7/22/2020]

The Passing Parade

Fashion designer and activist Vivienne Westwood, 79, dressed in canary yellow, perched on a swing inside a giant metal birdcage outside London's Old Bailey court on July 21 and led a crowd in chanting, "Free Julian Assange!" Fox News reported Westwood said freeing Assange would mean "journalists can continue to tell the truth." The Wikileaks founder is being held in London awaiting an extradition hearing now scheduled for Sept. 7. [Fox News, 7/21/2020]