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A team of researchers led by a University of Connecticut professor, writing recently in the ornithology journal The Auk, declared the local saltmarsh sparrow to be America’s most promiscuous bird, in that 95 percent of the females hook up with more than one male during a mating season. The likelihood that any two chicks in […]

Two partners in crime were sentenced to four years in jail between them by England’s Manchester Crown Court in December. Ali Abdullah, 28, and Muqtar Nuren, 22, had offered to take driver’s license tests for people (both driving test and written test), but on contingency payment only for passing. Between them, they had 35 clients, […]

A seven-point buck was found dead in Viroqua, Wis., in November, apparently after losing a head-butting contest with a cement-statue buck. Ramming contests are common during mating season, and the cement buck was about the same size as the dead one (but weighs about three times as much).

Economic Recovery in Denver: As of early January, at least 390 new Denver businesses had applied for sales-tax licenses as dispensaries for legal (medicinal) marijuana. By comparison, Starbucks coffee shops number 208 in the entire state of Colorado. Among the first cannabis-centered businesses to open, in December, was the Ganja Gourmet on South Broadway, featuring […]

In January, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers confiscated a live, jeweled beetle that a woman was wearing as an “accessory” on her sweater as she crossed into Brownsville, Texas, from Mexico. Blue jewels were glued onto the beetle’s back, which had been painted gold, and the mobile brooch was tethered by a gold chain […]

The huge, $27 million statue (“African Renaissance”) being built in Dakar, Senegal, was conceived to boost tourism and be a point of African pride, acting as a magnet for visitors and museum-goers. Problems have arisen (the statue was built by North Korean labor, has no distinct African theme, and features a female who reveals perhaps […]

Being the first licensed male prostitute in Nevada (and thus the U.S.), explained “Markus” in a January interview for Details magazine, is to him “a civil rights thing.” “It’s just the same as when Rosa Parks decided to sit at the front (of the bus) instead of the back.” Lame: Ex-convict John Stephens told a […]

Russell Vanderwerf, 44, an agent of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was arrested in Metairie, La., in December and charged with damaging property while staying at the Residence Inn hotel. According to police, Vanderwerf had removed the bedroom door to his suite and in its place installed a plywood plank which […]

In Morehead, Ky., in December, two men, ages 44 and 18, were charged with theft for allegedly swiping an 18-inch-long bearded dragon lizard from the Eagles Landing Pet Hospital and trying, in two beverage stores, to exchange it for liquor. Daniel Gable, 61, was arrested for breaking and entering a neighbor’s apartment in Fargo, N.D., […]

Copenhagen, one of the “greenest” cities in the world, endured an added 41,000 extra tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent in December during the 11-day “climate summit.” The 15,000 delegates required 2,000 limousines (only five of which were electric or hybrid) to get around town, and the world leaders arrived and departed in 140 private jets, some of […]