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She left 30 cents and 31 diamonds, he gave it back

By TIMES WIRES
Published February 8, 2007

A woman got in a New York City cab and put a black bag carrying 31 diamond rings into the trunk. After an $11 ride, she tipped driver Osman Chowdhury,  30 cents, or just about enough to pay the tax on a cup of coffee in New York. But when Chowdhury later realized that she forgot her bag, he had only one goal: "When I find something left in my cab, and I can return it to the owner, I feel very happy. I feel proud," he said. So he tracked her down, and at first refused her offer of a big reward, but finally accepted $100 for the time it took to track her down. "I'm a hard worker," he said. "I'm not going to take someone else's money or property to make me rich. I don't want it that way."

Ireland loses a prodigious producer

Galtee Merci has died. Merci, born in Germany in 1992, has been described as a "hero of Irish agriculture." He is largely responsible for the bovine population of Ireland. Literally. "It's a very sad day here when we had to announce his passing because of old age," Dr. Bernard Eivers. Old age? At 15? Oh, and his obituary says he had "at least" 100,000 daughters and countless sons. See, Galtee Merci was a bull, and a darned prolific one. "His influence has been phenomenal with over 10 percent of the milking cow population probably related to him in some way." Eivers said Merci's daughters produce high quality milk with a very high protein content. "The policy has been to try and get him out there because his progeny are far more economical for Irish dairy farmers."

One way or another, he's going to space

Brian Emmett, 31, won a free trip on a future spaceflight in a 2005 contest. As much as he wants to take the trip, he had to turn it down, because the tax consequence of accepting the trip (estimated retail value: $139,000) was about $25,000. But where there are taxes, there are loopholes, and Benson Space Co. found it. The San Diego-area company will "hire" Emmett and send him to space on one of its first tourist flights in a consulting position as a "test passenger." The IRS is probably quite "amused." Jim Benson says he sympathized with Emmett. "He had a dream, the dream got broken and we fixed it."

Things heat up at Bulgarian bus stop

It gets cold in Bulgaria. Officials in Sofia, the capital, needed to figure out a way to keep the bus terminals warm at night. All they had to work with, really, was the giant video screens that show the schedules. They thought, well, to heat up the place at night, we could show some soft porn, according to Britain's Metro.com. "We wanted to give the passengers something to take their minds off the cold and to pass the time while waiting for a bus," said the station spokesman. One unforeseen side effect: Some people say that security guards spend more time watching the screens instead of on patrol.

[Last modified February 8, 2007, 00:17:36]