Strange but True

Turns out, Hintz just got lucky, an investigation has concluded.

Investigators with Wisconsin's Department of Revenue found no signs of fraud in his five-week winning streak in March and April.

Hintz and his wife, Lisa, have won almost $73,000 in cash prizes from the state lottery since 1999. More than $65,000 came from drawings.

But the couple's good fortune in the lottery's weekly second-chance drawing raised suspicions of fraud and prompted Rep. David Cullen to request the investigation.

Given how many tickets they were sending in for the drawing, the odds of their winning five times in a row were 1 in 14,397, auditors said.

Jeffrey Hintz told auditors he spent thousands of dollars on lottery tickets every week and countless hours stamping envelopes with the lottery's address so he could enter losing tickets in the weekly drawings. He submitted entries in his wife's name, too.

People are allowed to enter the drawings as often as they want, but each entry must include at least $5 worth of tickets. That means Hintz was sending in at least $2,500 in tickets a week, and postage alone would have cost $185 a week.

"It doesn't necessarily surprise me that that someone would be that lucky," Cullen said. "It surprises me that someone would (enter that often). They're spending a lot of time and resources on the lottery."

Betty boop

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - Her ebony hair perfectly parted and saucer-like eyes perpetually staring, the life-size Betty Boop statue became a local landmark on the city's Shore Drive.

Alas, she has now lost her head.

Last weekend, a patron discovered the $1,600 figure a block away from its home in front of Cool & Eclectic Furniture and Fashion - missing its crowning glory.

"Without it, she's nothing," said store owner Larry Estes, who filed a police report Friday.

Estes collected Boop's body and placed it in a storeroom. Then he began searching up and down Shore Drive. He is offering a free store item to anyone who comes forward with Boop's head.

"She's made a lot of people smile," he said of the mascot. "Who would do this?"

Betty has had run-ins before. Two years ago, Hurricane Isabel's winds tossed the statue down Shore Drive, severing limbs and crushing her head.

"From heel to head, I had to reconstruct her," Estes said.

Gifts for the brain

BANGKOK, Thailand - The government will soon present Thai couples having their first baby with gifts designed to boost the youngster's brainpower, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said.

"The brain is like the CPU in a computer ... the practice of thinking will develop different parts of the brain to work together and to boost the power of thinking," he said Saturday in his weekly radio address.

The gift sets, to be distributed by the Health Ministry, will include a parenting handbook, children's story books, and items to help develop child's cognitive and artistic abilities, Thaksin said.

An earlier version of the gift bag caused consternation among some parents who complained its contents were unsafe for children. The bag contained toys with small bells that babies could swallow and books with sharp corners, it said.

Distribution of the new bags will begin on Thursday to mark the 53rd birthday of Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn. The prince's wife, Her Royal Highness Srirasmi, gave birth to a son in April.