Strange but True

Keepers say Charlie the chimpanzee picked up the habit from visitors at the Bloemfontein Zoo who sometimes toss him lit cigarettes.

"It looks funny to see a chimp smoking," a zoo spokesman said, but Charlie's trick could cost him his health.

The zoo is asking people to stop tossing cigarettes and contributing to the chimp's habit.

A zoo official says Charlie "acts like a naughty schoolboy" and hides his cigarettes when workers are around.

Easy arrest

STATESBORO, Ga. - Sgt. Jason Kearney hopes all his arrests will be this easy.

As Kearney was sitting in his marked patrol car Thursday, waiting for his colleagues to join him for lunch, a man named Ron Stone asked him for a ride.

The Bulloch County deputy agreed to take Stone to his car, but first he insisted on searching Stone for weapons, said Sheriff Lynn Anderson.

"Stone told Sergeant Kearney to go ahead," Anderson said.

Kearney didn't find a gun - but he said he did find two small bags of pot.

Stone, 30, told the uniformed officer he had spent the night at a friend's house and the marijuana was not his, police said.

Instead of a ride to his car, Stone got a ride to the Bulloch County Jail, where police later learned he was wanted in another county on an outstanding warrant for marijuana possession with intent to distribute.

Senior prom

MARION, Ind. - This was a senior prom really for seniors.

The 15th annual Senior Citizen's Prom, sponsored by Marion High School's student senate, brought elderly residents from across Grant County together Friday night for bingo, music, dancing and food.

"I just think it's great that the kids put this on. It's a night to be with your friends," Mildred Hullinger said.

The regular high school junior-senior prom is on Saturday night, but many students took part in the senior festivities.

Toni Zubowski, 18, helped organize the event and was part of a group of students who helped teach seniors some new dance steps.

Email error

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Even for his fellow lawyers, a Dutch law school graduate may have a gone a bit too far in expressing a desire to strike it rich.

Reinder Eekhof, a freshly minted lawyer, recently wrote in an e-mail that he had "finally finished this stupid education," and was "now looking for someone crazy enough to dump a suitcase full of money in my lap every month."

The e-mail was meant for a friend at the Houthoff Buruma law firm. But Eekhof mistyped the address and his missive landed in the inbox of someone in the communications department instead.

That person forwarded it, and soon the e-mail was being read at law firms across the Netherlands.

"Good luck with your career," wrote one lawyer who saw the e-mail. Another noted that "the advantage is that now everyone in the legal profession in Holland knows your name."