weekly news of the weird

[FH]

Firefighters Rescue Naked Man From Minneapolis Bookstore Chimney Early Christmas Morning

The Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS Dec. 26 — A naked man got stuck in the chimney of a bookstore early Christmas morning. Don't worry, it wasn't Santa Claus.

The 34-year-old man was treated Thursday for bruises and abrasions at Hennepin County Medical Center after being found naked and lodged in the furnace flue at Uncle Hugo's Bookstore. He was expected to be charged with attempted burglary on Friday.

"He was lucky," said police Lt. Mike Sauro. "He was only stuck in that chimney for a few hours. It's kind of a happy ending, because if he had been in there until that store opened Friday morning, it's my judgment he would have died.

"He doesn't appear to be a hard-core criminal, just stupid."

Police suspect that the man was drunk when he climbed atop the one-story building and removed all his clothes to help squeeze into the chimney. He then started to slide down the 12-by-12-inch chimney shaft, Sauro said.

"He's not Santa Claus," Sauro said. "He's a really skinny guy. And he's lucky he didn't get cooked."

The man told police that he entered the chimney about 1 a.m. Thursday to retrieve keys he accidentally dropped down the shaft.

A passer-by called police around 9 a.m. Thursday, after hearing screams for help coming from inside the store. Firefighters broke into the chimney with sledgehammers and freed the man.

"The store is pretty well torn up," said owner Don Blyly, who came in Thursday to hang up signs for a sale to begin Friday. "This is not what I came in here for today, but that's what I have to deal with."


__________________

[Raven]

So did they ever find the guy's supposed lost keys, I wonder?

[Sunnie]

He was retrieving them for someone. Pretty stupid, when it makes more sense to call a locksmith. Makes you wonder what these people think. Thats a stupid move.

[FH]

Michael Jackson loses his chief spokesman. A day after 18 million watched Jacko's ''60 Minutes'' chat, rep Stuart Backerman either quit or was fired by Gary Susman

Was Michael Jackson's appearance on Sunday's ''60 Minutes'' a public relations coup or public relations disaster? The interview, in which the singer refuted the child molestation charges filed against him, may prove to be the most-watched show of the week (it drew more than 18 million viewers according to early Nielsen estimates), and it led CBS to announce an air date (this Friday) for the delayed musical special touting Jackson's new album. But it may also have confirmed viewers queasiest opinions of Jackson, since he said he still doesn't think it's inappropriate for him to share a bed with a child. What's more, the interview may have exacerbated the behind-the-scenes turmoil in Jackson's camp, which led to the departure on Monday of his longtime spokesman Stuart Backerman.


''I resigned today over strategic differences with the way things are going," Backerman told Reuters. He didn't specify those differences, though he added, "The one thing I will say is that I love Michael Jackson and his fans.'' Jackson's lawyer, Mark Geragos, however, tells a different story, saying he fired Backerman for talking to the media at a Dec. 20 rally held at Jackson's Neverland ranch. ''He was terminated by me personally for talking when I told him not to,'' Geragos told the Associated Press. ''I was not fired,'' Backerman told AP, saying he left reluctantly.


A Backerman colleague told the New York Times that the reason for Backerman's departure was the increasing presence of members of the Nation of Islam, the controversial Muslim sect headed by Louis Farrakhan, in Jackson's camp. ''The Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan's son-in-law have taken over completely and are in full and total charge," a senior Jackson employee told the Times, referring to Leonard Muhammad, who is Farrakhan's chief of staff as well as his son-in-law. ''They are working out of Geragos' office; in essence they're telling him what to do." Another Jackson employee said, ''They're negotiating business deals with him. They're negotiating media deals, who can talk, how much. You've got a lawyer who's scared to throw them out. Michael doesn't know what to do with them.''


Geragos, however, told the Times, ''Nobody has told me what to do and what not to do. Leonard, I believe, is someone Michael consults with, just like in excess of 25 people." Still, Geragos acknowledged to AP that Muhammad stood behind him at a Dec. 18 press conference regarding Jackson's case. Jackson associates told the Times that Muhammad is, in fact, working in Geragos' office, where he participates in phone calls involving Jackson's media and legal strategy, and that Muhammad teamed with Geragos to negotiate the deal with CBS for the ''60 Minutes'' interview and the ''Number Ones'' entertainment special. The associates also said that Muhammad has moved into Neverland, and that NOI members are serving as Jackson's security detail.


Jackson business manager Charles Koppelman and accountant Alan Whitman denied to AP that they'd ceded control of Jackson's finances to the NOI, and the group issued a statement Monday saying it had ''no official business or professional relationship with Mr. Michael Jackson'' but wished him well.

(Posted:12/30/03)

[FH]

Man Accidentally Killed When Posing As Piņata For Kids

POSTED: 8:27 a.m. EST December 19, 2003

MEXICO CITY -- A 24-year-old Mexican man is dead after reportedly playing a human piņata for some children.

A newspaper, Reforma, said the man was standing on a beam with a rope loosely tied around his neck and ropes tied around his hands and feet.

He was letting his younger brother and sister swing at him with sticks but lost his balance while trying to avoid being hit. He strangled when the rope tightened around his neck.

[FH]

A New Mexico funeral home owner received the surprise of his career when a man pronounced dead at a hospital came back to life just before he was to be embalmed.
Russell Muffley, the owner of Muffley Funeral Home in Clovis, New Mexico, said he noticed Felipe Padilla breathing when the man pronounced dead at a hospital was being transferred to his facility on Wednesday. Padilla, 94, was rushed back to the same hospital, but did not recover. He was declared dead for a second time.

"When we were getting ready to move him from the stretcher to the embalming table, we noticed signs of life," Muffley said.

Padilla was breathing on his own but not speaking when paramedics took him from the funeral home back to Plains Regional Medical Center. He died a few hours later and was taken back to the funeral home, where arrangements had already been made.

Padilla will be buried next week.

"I have been doing this for 39 years and this has never happened before," Muffley said.

[FH]

UPS driver has unwelcome rider on route

By The Associated Press - 1/5/4

MISSOULA (AP) — Missoula County authorities are investigating a report that a gunman intimidated a United Parcel Service driver into letting him ride along on a delivery route.

The unidentified delivery driver said a man climbed into his truck Dec. 23 as he dropped off a package in Missoula, the Missoula County sheriff's office said. The man took out a revolver and put it on his lap, the driver said, after the driver told him he couldn't take passengers.

The driver then allowed the man to ride in the truck for about an hour as more deliveries were made. The driver said the man left the truck just across the Idaho state line, about 35 miles from where he boarded the vehicle.

[FH]

Man jailed for passing off doughnuts as low-fat

BY SHIRLEY LEUNG

Robert Ligon, a 68-year-old health-food executive, is scheduled to begin serving 15 months in a federal prison today. His crime: willfully mislabeling doughnuts as low-fat.

Exhibit A: The label on his company's ''carob coated'' doughnut said it had three grams of fat and 135 calories. But an analysis by the federal Food and Drug Administration showed that the doughnut, glazed with chocolate, contained a sinfully indulgent 18 grams of fat and 530 calories.

In 2001, a federal grand jury in Chicago indicted Ligon on mail fraud charges. In September, he pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud. At the time of sentencing, the government calculated he tried to sell several hundred thousand dollars' worth of mislabeled doughnuts and cinnamon rolls.

''Ligon abused the trust people put on these labels,'' says Stuart Fullerton, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case. ''It's kind of cruel on his part to do this.''

Reached on his mobile phone, Ligon said he didn't intentionally break the law and never heard a single complaint. ''Everybody wanted the product and were very upset they couldn't get the product,'' he says. Asked if he felt the punishment fit the crime, he says: ''I feel like I've been singled out.''

Ligon's three-year nationwide doughnut caper began to crumble when customers contacted the FDA about how tasty his products were, which launched an investigation in 1997.

''If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,'' says Jim Dahl, assistant director of criminal investigations for the FDA.

No one has come up with a marketable doughnut that dips below the federal low-fat threshold of three grams per serving. Doughnuts typically range from eight grams of fat for a glazed French cruller to more than double that for a cakelike doughnut.

The low-fat doughnut, declares Len Heflich, an industry executive at the American Bakers Association, is ''not possible.''

In the late 1980s, Dunkin' Donuts briefly offered a cholesterol-free doughnut that contained no eggs and no milk. It went nowhere. During the 1990s, Entenmann's Bakery offered a doughnut with 25 percent less fat, but poor sales forced the company to shelve it. Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc. has explored low-fat or low-calorie options but has yet to roll one out.

Ligon was not the first doughnut derelict. In 2000, Vernon Patterson, president of Genesis II Foods Inc., an Illinois bakery, pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud for passing off three varieties of doughnuts as low-fat.

Ligon's doughnut ring began in 1995, the FDA says, when he started a company to sell protein shakes, nutritional bars and baked goods to diet centers. The food was sold under the names First Health Foods and First Health Products, the indictment said. Some products went to an Evanston store owned by Whole Foods, prosecutors said.

According to FDA agent Rudy Hejny, Ligon bought full-fat doughnuts from Cloverhill Bakery, a Chicago firm, and repackaged them as diet doughnuts. It was a lucrative operation: Ligon would buy doughnuts for 25 cents to 33 cents each and then resell the mislabeled versions for a dollar each.

For all his troubles, Ligon says he doesn't even eat doughnuts. That works out fine. Most federal prisons, says a spokeswoman, don't serve them.

Wall Street Journal, with Bloomberg contributing