Strange but True

BOISE, Idaho — The Idaho Potato Commission’s president says there’s no way a heart-shaped potato should have made it through the state’s inspection system.

Yet it did — during Potato Lover’s Month.

"I would guarantee someone saw it and thought, ‘This is cool, we’ll let this go through,”’ commission president Frank Muir said. Normally, odd-shaped spuds are turned into french fries, he said.

In this case, the spud ended up in Linda Greene’s kitchen in Moon Township, Pa. She discovered the potato in February but only recently alerted the commission to the Valentine-shaped tuber.

"I love hearts,” she said. "My engagement ring is actually a heart shape. Anything heart-shaped I go crazy for.”

Greene is storing the potato in a cupboard in her basement.

"I don’t have the heart to cut it,” she said.

Money gone with trash

SOMERVILLE, Mass. — The $31,535 in drug money came into police headquarters as evidence but left with the trash.

The money is now buried forever under tons of garbage in a New Hampshire landfill.

The drug money went missing after a technician, who had been cleaning out evidence rooms, put it in the broken desk, authorities said.

On Monday, while the technician was out of the office, two other officers doing spring cleaning threw out the desk, along with broken chairs and furniture.

Officers went to the landfill Wednesday to try to dig up the cash, but found only hundreds of tons of super-dense, hydraulically compacted waste.

"A very bad mistake,” said acting police Chief Robert Bradley.

New Zealand not for sale

SYDNEY, Australia — New Zealand is not for sale, despite somebody in neighboring Australia trying to offload the nation of 4 million to the highest online bidder.

With a starting offer of just one cent, brisk bidding for the prime chunk of South Pacific real estate quickly boosted the price to $2,330 before eBay pulled the plug on the auction this week.

"Clearly New Zealand is not for sale,” eBay Australia spokesman Daniel Feiler told the New Zealand Press Association, adding that 22 bids had been made before the company acted.

The trader has not been named but apparently was unimpressed with New Zealand.

The rivalry between the two countries is intense and in his advertisement the man said New Zealand had "very ordinary weather.”

Tastes great

ST. LOUIS — Maybe those beer commercials are true. Some people, apparently, will do just about anything for a Bud Light.

Norvelle Hicks, 48, of Jerseyville, Ill., was sentenced Friday to more than three years in prison for stealing a semi-trailer loaded with the Anheuser-Busch product.

U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway said Hicks masterminded a scheme in January to steal the trailer and sell the beer to merchants and club owners in East St. Louis, Ill.

Hicks told an undercover informant that he had stolen several semi-trailers, authorities said. The informant advised the FBI, which worked with Anheuser-Busch to find a trailer containing 2,352 cases of the world’s top-selling light beer on a truck lot in suburban St. Louis.

Hicks was arrested when he opened the trailer. He pleaded guilty in February to one felony count of conspiracy to transport stolen goods of more than $5,000 in interstate commerce.

Radio station for dogs

BANGKOK, Thailand — A Thai entrepreneur has launched an Internet radio station to put dogs in a better mood.

Anupan Boonchuen, director of a dog grooming school, said he launched Dog Radio Thailand this week because he has seen music improve the mood of dogs he grooms.

During classes, he turns on music for the dogs because "the music puts the dogs in a good mood and they’re more willing to let the groomers handle them,” he said.

The programming on dogradiothailand.com mainly comprises Thai pop music, but Boonchuen plans to expand offerings in which the disc jockey will "talk to the dogs in Thai,” and the canine listener will be encouraged to respond.

"At 9 a.m., we may have a dog greeting show, in which we’ll repeat ‘sawasdee’ (‘hello’) over and over... If we say ‘sawasdee,’ in some houses, the dog may lift both paws in response. In some houses, the dog may lift only one paw. It depends on how the dog was trained,” Anupan said.

He said, "If we play a slow song, we may have the DJ howl... because dogs howl, too, when they hear sad sounds.”

Restroom bandits

HONOLULU — Thieves have stolen $10,000 worth of brass toilet flush valves from restrooms at more than two dozen parks in the past three weeks.

Police are asking for the public’s help in finding more than 100 valves, which they say could end up on the black market for construction parts or melted and sold for metal.

In addition to the valves, which cost $100 each, thieves also stole toilets, sinks and other items from 28 city parks on the North Shore and in central Oahu.

"It’s very upsetting, in a sense, to have to deal with this — to have taxpayers to repair something like this that we could use for so much better purposes,” said Les Chang, director of the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation.

Chang suspects they were committed by people familiar with installing and removing the fixtures. He said the repairs will be an inconvenience to park users.

Win or lose

CADILLAC, Mich. — Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

Wexford County Commissioner Jay Thiebaut could do both — on the same day.

Critics have circulated petitions seeking an Aug. 8 vote to recall Thiebaut. That’s also the day of the primary election, and Thiebaut is the only one on the ballot seeking the Republican nomination for re-election to the county board in the heavily GOP county.

The filing deadline to enter the race is Tuesday.

If Thiebaut is removed from office but wins the nomination, he’ll miss the final four months of his term but would be eligible to seek another in November, county clerk Elaine Richardson said.

"I can’t find anything in election law that would contradict that,” Richardson said.

The petition targets Thiebaut for voting not to renew the county administrator’s contract.

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