This Is a Stick-Up! Fry Me Some Eggs!
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Reuters) - A hungry Argentine thief forced his way into a home on Friday to steal clothes and appliances -- before sitting at the dinner table to demand the captive family cook him a proper meal.
"He ordered a steak and fried eggs. Afterward, he pulled the telephone out and tied the family up," said the porter from the building in a posh neighborhood of Buenos Aires.
The thief then escaped.
Finders Keepers? Man Sued After $50,000 Find
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (Reuters) - A jobless Argentine who found $50,000 buried in trash and promptly bought a house, two cars and a corner shop is now being sued by a woman claiming her maid mistakenly had thrown out the cash.
"All I can say is that I am no criminal," Paulo Altamirano, a 46-year-old man who ekes out a living by collecting street garbage in the central city of Cordoba, was quoted as saying on Thursday by local DyN news agency.
Emilia Mascoy, a 70-year-old store owner, brought a lawsuit for fraud and demanded her money be returned. She says a maid mistakenly threw out the box of cash during a spring cleaning at her home, DyN reported.
A massive economic crisis in 2002 forced thousands of Argentines known as "cartoneros" to earn their living by collecting and then selling street garbage such as cardboard.
Indiana Boy Wins Spelling Bee, Runner-Up Faints
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a new definition of a fainting spell, the runner-up in the National Spelling Bee apparently fainted on Thursday when asked to spell "alopecoid" in the contest eventually won by a 14-year-old Indiana boy.
Akshay Buddiga, 13, from Colorado Springs, Colorado, recovered enough to spell the word correctly and continued into the championship round, but he stood out from the crowd by spelling from a seated position, unlike the other competitors, who remained standing as they spelled.
Buddiga lost on the word "schwarmerei," a German term that means adulation.
He got plenty of that and a standing ovation from the hundreds of defeated spellers, their families, friends and teachers who watched the three-day competition.
The champion was David Tidmarsh, whose final winning word was "autochthonous," meaning indigenous.
Tidmarsh, from South Bend, Indiana, also triumphed over such spelling nightmares as "sumpsimus," "sophrosyne" and "serpiginous."
That feat won Tidmarsh a $12,000 cash prize and a huge loving cup he seemed barely able to grasp after the strain of spelling. As soon as he realized he had spelled the final word correctly, he covered his face with his identifying placard and acknowledged later he was crying tears of joy.
"I was so nervous, I couldn't even begin to explain," Tidmarsh said after it was all over. "I was just hoping I got a word I had studied."
He said his favorite movie was "Spellbound," a documentary about the National Spelling Bee, an annual rite of nerves for children under the age of 16 administered by E. W. Scripps Co. and some 250 other sponsors.
Tidmarsh and Buddiga were among 265 spellers who gathered in Washington from across the United States.
Asked if the experience was as good as Hollywood could make it, Tidmarsh replied, "It's even better."
He'd Better Hope He Doesn't Get Sick
LONDON (Reuters) - A British man with a fetish for medical items has become the first person to be banned from every hospital in England and Wales, the government said on Wednesday.
Unemployed Norman Hutchins, 53, has harassed and abused medical staff more than 40 times since January in his quest for surgical masks and gowns, a court in the northern city of York was told.
The court banned him from all private and state-run National Health Service hospitals and doctors' and dentists' offices.
Hutchins tried to obtain medical items by feigning illness, or claiming to need them for a fancy dress run or an amateur play, the Times newspaper reported.
"(He has) caused harassment, alarm and distress to NHS staff when attempting to obtain gowns and surgical masks in person or on the phone," an NHS spokesman said in a statement.
More than 30 local health organizations banned him with civil injunctions, but Hutchins kept moving to new areas.
Hutchins' lawyer Harry Bayman said his client "was not a well man," but accepted the court's decision.
If he needs medical treatment, Hutchins will be allowed to visit hospitals or doctors under strictly controlled conditions or with prior written consent.
