NewsQuirks 710

Curses, Foiled Again

Police in Edmonton, Alberta, arrested two youths who accosted a pizza delivery man and demanded the four pizzas and cash that he was carrying. The robbers, ages 17 and 18, then decided to take his car instead. Their getaway was thwarted because they didn't know how to drive a standard transmission. "It was a toss-up between pizzas and the car, and they knew how to operate pizzas," Edmonton Police representative Wes Bellmore said, adding that the suspects were apprehended after officers arriving on the scene spotted one of them entering the home where the pizzas were to be delivered.

Support Group

Thailand's health ministry announced it is dispatching a troupe of dancers to show women how to boost their bust sizes. Thai women who have been bombarded by media images of big-busted women often feel inadequate and resort to wearing ill-fitting brassieres, according to Pennapa Subcharoen, deputy director-general of the ministry's department of traditional medicine.

"Many women are not aware that wearing an appropriate size of bra and regularly taking bosom-firming dance can make their wish come true," she said. "So we are training 12 pairs of instructors to teach women how to take care of their breasts, and we plan to launch them on Valentine's Day nationwide." Pennapa added that each dance team would consist of one small-chested instructor and one large-chested instructor.

Worth the Risk

Increased cellphone use has led to more car accidents, but the value users place on being able to call from the road roughly equals the accidents' cost, according to the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. The center's study concluded that the yearly cost of accidents caused by cellphones, including medical bills and property damage, equals $43 billion. This figure is virtually the same as researchers arrived at for the value that drivers placed on the benefits of having cellphones, such as security and peace of mind, increased productivity, privacy and quicker crime and accident reporting.

First Things First

Minnesota resident Tyler Bratsch, 25, was sentenced to a year in jail after he admitted visiting pornographic, sports and music Internet sites and checking e-mail instead of watching his 13-month-old son, who drowned while taking a bath unattended.

Police in Placentia, Calif., charged Janet Chen, 31, with leaving her two young children home alone for nearly three weeks while she went to North Carolina to visit a man whom she met on the Internet. Officers, who discovered Chen's 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son after neighbors reported hearing them crying inside the apartment, said the children had been living on frozen meals, Bagel Bites and cold cereal. Chen told investigators that she had a falling out with the man but slept in her rental car for the next week rather than come home because she didn't want to pay for a new airline ticket.

Are We There Yet?

Glen and Eleanor Milligan, both 78, left their home in Stark County, Ohio, for a one-hour drive to a relative's home. When they didn't arrive, their family reported them missing. Twenty-eight hours later, Cleveland police investigating reports of a suspicious car on the city's southeast side discovered it was the missing Milligans. "They kept driving around the same neighborhood over and over again," Stark County Sheriff's Sgt. Mark Maskaluk said. "He thought he was still in Canton, Ohio."

Dorothy Woodman, 80, headed out Monday evening for a shopping trip to Washington, D.C., about 15 minutes from her home in McLean, Va. While driving home, she made a wrong turn, drove all night and wound up 250 miles away in Baden, Pa. A man at a gas station directed Woodman to a motel, where several employees offered to drive her home. She declined and decided to drive herself home. She got lost again. Tuesday afternoon, she found herself in Edgeworth, Pa. She flagged down Edgeworth resident Nancy Merrill, who noticed she seemed exhausted and drove her to the police station. She spent the night at a motel, then made the five-hour trip home Wednesday afternoon in a limousine hired by her son.