Customs officials seize $2.6 million worth of bongs

The Los Angeles Times brings us this story that seems appropriate on Black Friday…

Customs officials at the Los Angeles Harbor received a shipment from China listed as Christmas ornaments.

But when they opened the “presents” Tuesday, they found 316,000 bongs and pipes.

“They’re very colorful and big,” said Cristina Gamez, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “Some of them are like 2 feet tall.”

Gamez said glass bongs and pipes, contained in nearly 860 boxes of cargo, are worth about $2.6 million.

The package arrived a month ago but was seized Tuesday at the Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex. The manifest listing the cargo’s contents said Christmas ornaments were inside. They were addressed to someone in L.A. County.

Gamez said no arrests have been made, and an investigation is pending. She said that it is illegal to import, export or sell drug paraphernalia in the United States and that all the items would be destroyed.

You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!

Holiday cheer from Reuters…

OSLO (Reuters) – The people of Bergen rolled out the cookie dough Monday as local police tried to sniff out vandals who destroyed the Norwegian city’s traditional Christmas decoration — a town of gingerbread houses.

Saturday vandals entered a massive tent in central Bergen and crushed most of the 650-cookie-house town, topping off the ruins with paint and fire extinguisher foam.

Police in Norway’s second largest city asked the public to offer information that could lead to the perpetrators.

“The people who did this must be full of gingerbread dust, They will smell a long way,” police inspector Erik Sveaas told news agency NTB.

Local media reported that the destruction had shocked the residents of Bergen, a picturesque city on the North Sea coast where children decorate hundreds of gingerbread houses every year before Christmas.

Steinar Kristoffersen, who runs the Bergen Sentrum foundation behind “the worlds largest and greatest gingerbread town,” said the opening of the exhibit will be postponed well into next week due to the vandalism.

“We are rebuilding the whole landscape and are receiving a lot of gingerbread houses. Many want to lend a hand,” Kristoffersen told Reuters.

In an Internet campaign, some petitioners suggested the perpetrators be pilloried, but local Bishop Halvor Nordhaug cooled the atmosphere and told local paper Bergens Tidende: “We must not lynch anyone over a few gingerbread houses.”

It was a field test, Officer

This comes to us from My SA News…

An on-duty San Antonio police officer was arrested Friday morning and charged with driving while intoxicated after wrecking an undercover police vehicle, according to internal police documents that the San Antonio Express-News obtained.

Officer Winder Morales, an officer with the Police Department’s Tactical Response Unit, was driving a green Honda Civic on U.S. 90 West, near South General McMullen Drive, in heavy rain when the car skidded into a sand barrel and flipped over onto its roof around 5 a.m., according to the documents.

Morales told an officer who witnessed the accident that he was not hurt and was on his way to a police substation to drop off the car after working a “drug buy” at a local bar.

Questioned later by other officers, Morales became evasive and appeared intoxicated, the documents say. He then refused to submit to any tests for intoxication and began complaining of back pain.

Morales refused to tell officers if he was on duty and was taken to University Hospital for the back pain, according to the documents.

Morales was charged with driving while intoxicated at 12:42 p.m. and released from the city detention center at 1:20 p.m. on $1,000 bond, according to authorities. He could not immediately be reached for comment.

Sgt. Chris Benavides, a Police Department spokesman, said he was unaware of the incident and couldn’t immediately comment on it.

A Bexar County grand jury last year no-billed a charge of manslaughter against Morales in connection with a 2006 crash that killed a 25-year-old man.

On May 5, 2006, Morales, responding to an emergency call, went through a red light and struck Rodney Brandenberger’s pickup. The city later paid a $250,000 settlement to Brandenberger’s family as a result of a wrongful death lawsuit, according to a previous Express-News report.

In Houston this is considered the norm

Traffic brought to you by Reuters…

SOFIA (Reuters) – Bulgarian prosecutors are investigating a new gambling game in which drivers defy death by speeding through red lights for bets of up to 5,000 euros ($7,400), the chief prosecutor’s office said Thursday.

Known as ‘Russian road roulette‘, the driver must jump red lights at busy intersections at high speed and not crash into any other cars or pedestrians, according to local media reports. Onlookers also gamble on the result.

Prosecutors launched their investigation after media reported the new game had been held at night at busy crossroads in Sofia since the summer.

In June, two people died after a motorcyclist crashed into an onlooker at a similar rally on Sofia’s ring road.

“Every time we receive a signal for such an unregulated race, we send patrols,” Commissioner Vanio Stoevski, head of the Sofia Road Police, told Reuters. Since the deaths in June, police have monitored roads where such races are typically held.

Local media report that participants in the ‘Russian road roulette’ are informed via text messages of the venue for that particular night — depending on the presence of police.

Active senior living?

Financial news brought to you by the AP…

SAN DIEGO — FBI officials say an elderly, thin, gray-haired man nicknamed the “Geezer Bandit” is responsible for holding up five San Diego-area banks since summer.

Investigators say the man appears to be in his 70s. Officials say that in the most recent robbery Monday, he approached a Bank of America teller in La Jolla, displayed a handgun and asked for cash. He fled on foot.

FBI spokesman Darrell Foxworth says investigators believe the man is also responsible for robbing four other San Diego County banks since Aug. 28.

Law enforcement officials are offering $16,000 in rewards for information that leads to his arrest and conviction.

Portugese police rescue thief stuck in window

This comes to us from Reuters…

LISBON (Reuters) – He wiggled, jiggled and even dropped his trousers, but a thief trying to break into a supermarket in Portugal stayed stuck fast in a tiny window until he was rescued by police and the fire brigade.

“Apparently he dropped his trousers as he was trying to free himself by wiggling,” Capt. Santos, local police chief in Loule in southern Portugal, told Reuters Monday.

He said the slim 22-year-old Romanian man had spent about 11 hours stuck in the window, including the two hours it took police and the fire brigade to get him out Sunday morning.

“Once he got his upper body inside, there was nothing there to find support on, so he was stuck at his waist … It’s not uncommon for thieves to get inside and then not be able to get out after a burglary, but this was quite unusual,” Santos said.

It’s all fun and games until someone gets eaten

Food news brought to you by Reuters…

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian police have arrested three homeless people suspected of eating a 25-year-old man they had butchered and selling other bits of the corpse to a local kebab house.

Suspicions were raised when dismembered parts of a human body were found near a bus stop in the outskirts of the Russian city of Perm, 1,150 km (720 miles) east of Moscow.

Three homeless men with previous criminal records have been arrested on suspicion of setting upon a foe with knives and a hammer before chopping up his corpse to eat, local investigators said in a statement on their www.susk.perm.ru Web site.

“After carrying out the crime, the corpse was divided up: part was eaten and part was also sold to a kiosk selling kebabs and pies,” the Prosecutor-General’s main investigative unit for the Perm region said in a statement issued Friday.

It was not immediately clear from the statement if any of the corpse had been sold to customers.

Think twice before sleeping around in Brunei

Here’s a piece on foreign affairs from Reuters…

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN (Reuters) – Most Bruneians want husbands who cheat on their wives to be whipped, according to a recent survey in the Muslim-majority country.

The survey, conducted by website brudirect (www.brudirect.com), found 76 percent of 272 respondents said men should be whipped for having affairs while only 55 percent said unfaithful wives should receive the same punishment.

“The result of the survey is an indication of the pent-up feelings that women harbor against irresponsible men,” an unnamed social worker from Brunei was quoted as saying on the website.

The oil-rich state of Brunei, located on Borneo Island, has a population of almost 400,000 of which 66 percent are Muslim.

Pot delivered to prison in shipment of bananas

This comes to us via the AP and the Houston Chronicle…

EDINBURG — A police department’s gift of fruit to a Texas prison turned out to contain 25 pounds of marijuana.

The illegal harvest that was missed in an earlier search was discovered by inmates at the Segovia Unit unpacking the crate.

Edinburg police Chief Ruirino Munoz says the fruit originally came from a produce truck that also had about 1,000 pounds of pot that was confiscated.

Loads of legitimate produce that are found to have yielded drugs are often barred from being sent on to the intended location.

Munoz says the Segovia Unit near Edinburg accepts such food donations, which are inspected by police before being sent to the prison. Munoz says this time the additional marijuana apparently was missed by officers and drug-sniffing dogs.

Prison spokesman Jason Clark says inmates who reported finding the drug on Friday were strip-searched to make sure nobody kept any of the marijuana.

Here’s one of my good side

Thanks, Reuters…

LONDON (Reuters) – A British man on the run from police sent a picture of himself to his local paper because he disliked the mugshot they had printed of him as part of a public appeal to track him down.

South Wales Police had issued media with the photo of Matthew Maynard, wanted by officers investigating a house burglary, as part of a crackdown on crime in Swansea.

When it appeared in the South Wales Evening Post, the 23-year-old sent the newspaper a replacement photo of himself standing in front of a police van. They obligingly printed it on the front page.

The police thanked him for helping them in their appeal, saying: “Everyone in Swansea will know what he looks like now.”