Man accused of urinating on arresting officer

SHEBOYGAN, Wis. – A 35-year-old man faces charges after allegedly driving drunk and then urinating in the back of a squad car and on the arresting officer. A criminal complaint said the man was pulled over early Wednesday after an officer saw him driving erratically and striking a pole at a gas station.

The complaint said the man failed field sobriety tests and when he was being taken to the police station, urinated in the back of the squad car and sprayed the officer, hitting him in the back of the head.

The man is facing four felony charges and two misdemeanors. He faces a maximum of 15 years in prison if convicted.

The misdemeanors include a fourth-offense operating while intoxicated.

Boy allegedly hits mom with saw, offers her $5

FORT PIERCE, Fla. – Authorities say an 11-year-old boy hit his mother in the head with a saw and then offered her $5 not to call police. The St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office reported that the boy and his 41-year-old mother got into an argument Wednesday when she was trying to get him to take his medication.

The boy left and went to another home, where he began hitting a tree with a saw. When the mother finally caught up with the boy, authorities say he hit her in the head with the saw, causing a minor laceration. A sheriff's report said that's when the boy began pleading with his mother not to call police and offered her a $5 bill.

The boy is facing an aggravated battery charge.

Russian Orthodox church stolen — brick by brick

MOSCOW – Wanted: One missing Russian church. Last seen in July. Reward for its return. Orthodox officials in a central Russian region say an abandoned church building that was to be put back into use has been stolen by local villagers.

Lucky man survives after being run over by train

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – Talk about being lucky — a north Alabama man is alive after being run over by a train on Thursday afternoon. Huntsville Fire and Rescue officials said a train engineer spotted 61-year-old Arnold Romine lying across railroad ties. Witnesses said the conductor sounded the horn and tried to stop the train.

Firefighters said by the time the coal train was stopped, 8 rail cars had passed over Romine's body.

Miraculously, he suffered what appeared to be minor injuries. He was later treated and released at Huntsville Hospital.

Its unclear why Romine was lying on the tracks.

Canadian prisoner, too fat for cell, released early

OTTAWA – Canadian prison authorities were forced to release a 450-pound (205 kg) drug gang member this week because he was too large for his cell, the Journal de Montreal newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Michel Lapointe -- known as Big Mike -- was arrested in September 2006 and received a five-year sentence in May this year. The paper said he could not fit on the chair in his Montreal prison cell and when he went to bed, his body protruded six inches on either side.

A letter from the authorities to Lapointe said: "You have been detained for more than 25 months and your prison conditions are difficult because of your health".

The authorities also cited the refusal of two other facilities to accept the 37-year-old. He was freed late on Tuesday.

"I'm going to have a proper bed and finally have a chair I can sit in," he told the paper outside the prison.

"I want a normal life. I've done some stupid things and I've paid for them," he said.

Hoax NY Times newspaper declares end of Iraq war

NEW YORK – A group of pranksters handed out more than 1.2 million fake New York Times newspapers mainly in New York City and Los Angeles on Wednesday with a front page story declaring "Iraq War Ends."

The elaborate 14-page edition, dated July 4, 2009, is said to be the work of a group called the Yes Men, whose previous hoaxes include masquerading as World Trade Organisation officials announcing they were disbanding the body.

"It is fake and we are looking into it," said New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis.

A statement sent from a Web site set up for the fake edition, www.nytimes-se.com, said creating the newspaper took six months and that it was printed at six different presses and then given to thousands of volunteers to distribute.

"We've got to make sure Obama and all the other Democrats do what we elected them to do," Bertha Suttner, identified as one of the newspaper's writers, said in the statement. "After eight, or maybe twenty-eight years of hell, we need to start imagining heaven."

President-elect Barack Obama takes office on January 20 after eight years of the Bush administration and 28 years after the inauguration of Ronald Reagan.

The newspaper includes a front page story saying that "Ex-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reassured soldiers that the Bush administration had known well before the invasion that Saddam Hussein lacked weapons of mass destruction."

The Bush administration has said it believed at the time of the March 2003 invasion that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was trying to develop a nuclear bomb.

Other headlines declared that the "Maximum Wage Law Succeeds," "Nationalized Oil to Fund Climate Change Efforts" and "Nation Sets Its Sights On Building Sane Economy."

There is also a full page fake advertisement on page three from the world's largest publicly traded oil company Exxon Mobil saying the company applauded the end of the Iraq war and that peace is "an idea the world can profit from."

In a pamphlet handed out to volunteers when they picked up copies of the newspaper to distribute there was a "Frequently Asked Questions" section. In response to "who made this?" it said: "Who knows? Rumours are it's a group of writers from several mainstream dailies -- including The New York Times."

The Yes Men, who were the subject of a book and documentary in 2004, have pulled off pranks including posing as Exxon Mobil and National Petroleum Council representatives to deliver a speech at a Canadian oil conference.

They have also posed as federal housing officials at a New Orleans event with the city's mayor and the governor of Louisiana and promised to throw open closed public housing to thousands of poor former city residents.

But they are not the first to fake The New York Times.

According to the paper's "City Room" blog, the best-known spoof was during the 1978 newspaper strike and the prank included journalist Carl Bernstein, author Christopher Cerf, humorist Tony Hendra and Paris Review editor George Plimpton.

A fake copy of the New York Times (bottom), declaring "Iraq War Ends", is seen here with a real copy of the New York Times November 12, 2008.

Robber threatens to complain after finding no cash