Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Digest

The skinny

By TIMES WIRES
Published June 2, 2007

OUTWARD INMATES

SWEDEN DENIES WOMEN IN JAIL RIGHT TO BIKINIS

There are certain rights that are just intrinsic. Like the right to have a bikini. The Swedish Web site the Local reports that women in a prison near Gothenburg have demanded access to the slinky swimwear. "How are we supposed to be able to sunbathe at all?" the women wrote in their request to officials. "The answer we have got is that we can sunbathe in shorts and sports tops." Well, that won't do. They go on to argue it is gender discrimination, since, presumably, incarcerated men can take off their shirts. "We want to be able to enjoy the sun just like everybody else in Sweden."

JAWBUSTED

Tons of candy can't mask load of pot

Drug-sniffing police dogs cannot be fooled by 40, 000 pounds of candy. Two men were arrested near St. Paul, Minn., after the dogs found about 3, 000 pounds of marijuana in a total of 41 boxes in the back of a truck ostensibly carrying Jawbreakers. The pot boxes were surrounded by 28 pallets of the hard candy. Two men in the truck were arrested. Police intend to incinerate the pot, which was probably its fate either way. Sad thing is they'll probably destroy the candy, too. "I initially thought about how we could give that away to kids forever. But I couldn't take the risk, " said Kent Bailey of the DEA. "Even though they were in cellophane, that package has been sitting for a month with a ton-and-a-half of marijuana next to it."

GREAT EXPECTORATIONS

Loogie lunge sends man to hospital

A 43-year-old man in Germany has learned the perils of using a little body English in your spitting-for-distance contests. Spiegel reports that the man in the eastern city of Forst was competing with a 12-year-old boy on a second-floor balcony. As the man let fly, he tried to build up some momentum by lunging forward. No one saw where his spit landed, because they were too busy checking out where he was landing. He fell over the railing, and his distance was pretty much zero feet, horizontally. Vertically, though, he hit the patio below and was hospitalized.

BIRD DROPPINGS

Dead chickens on attack in Australia

Police in Australia are trying to figure out why the heck dead chickens are falling out of the sky. The BBC reports that two houses in Newcastle have been damaged by the birds. When the first one was hit last month, the theory was that it had fallen out of an airplane. But when a second hit this week, that seemed unlikely. Based on damage, experts - on falling poultry? - estimate it fell from at least 1, 600 feet. And chickens don't fly that high even when they're alive. A local physics professor guesses it's the work of someone with a giant chicken-shooting slingshot, but did not give details on where such a device might be available. (FYI: "Giant chicken-shooting slingshot" returns zero hits on Google.)

Compiled by staff writer Jim Webster from Times wire services and other sources.

[Last modified June 2, 2007, 02:14:19]