Sarasota, Florida, police said a man came home to find a drunk burglar asleep on the living room floor. The arrest report said a 36-year-old man broke into the apartment Wednesday and rummaged through the bedroom and cabinets before passing out.
Police said when he woke up, the man was apparently so intoxicated he thought he was in his own apartment.
Police charged him with burglary and criminal mischief.
Up to 120 people - those who could get off work and were over 21 - will be treated to swanky hotels, fancy restaurants and glitzy shows when they arrive Dec. 13, 2008.
It's all free with a catch: They'll be followed around by video cameras for tourism commercials to air early next year.
"It couldn't have come at a better time," said Tanya Davidson, 33. She plans to marry her fiance in a drive-through wedding chapel in Las Vegas.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority is spending $2.5 million for the trip and marketing campaign. Officials looked at 125 small communities around the nation before settling on the farming and ranching town that has one gas station, one bank, a bar and grill, and few other businesses.
"It really is the quintessential American town," said Doug Finelli, from an advertising agency working on the campaign. "The people are really welcoming, and everyone works really hard. Most people work multiple jobs."
Cranfills Gap, with two stop signs and no traffic lights about 75 miles southwest of Fort Worth, is more than ready for the getaway.
"It'll give people an opportunity to go somewhere they wouldn't have had a chance to go to normally," Mayor David Witte said.
Four days before coming to Charlotte for a Monday night mega-game, Tampa Bay coach Jon Gruden used some choice words to describe a certain Carolina receiver.
“That guy Steve Smith, he's a nightmare, man,” Gruden said on a conference call with reporters Thursday. “He's like Freddy Krueger to me. He scares the (heck) out of me.”
“Every film I pick up, he's brilliant,” said Gruden. “He makes some of the darndest catches.
“I don't like to see Steve.”
Even before speaking with reporters who cover the Panthers, Gruden used the “Freddy” moniker to describe Smith when addressing his Tampa players during a Bucs' team meeting Thursday morning.
Considering the source, it's a particularly impressive comparison. For years, Gruden has been dubbed “Chucky” after another horror film character because of his intense facial expressions on the sidelines during games.
Smith was flattered.
“I think that's a good compliment,” Smith said when told about Gruden's comments. “A lot of coaches don't always compliment the opposing team in the media. I don't think he said it to throw me off or to get me to relax.
“I appreciate it. I'll just kind of go home and smile and check that off and say, ‘Hey, that's pretty cool.'”
*****
It will be a 'Nightmare On Graham Street' for Tampa Bay, Monday night
Ancient, deep-sea coral reefs off the southeastern coast from North Carolina to Florida should be protected, a federal fisheries board says.
The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, meeting this week in Wilmington, scheduled public hearings on designating the pristine reefs as “habitat areas of particular concern.” The 23,000-square-mile area is believed to be world's largest contiguous deep-water coral ecosystem.
Fishing for deep-water shrimp and golden crabs would be allowed within some of the protected areas.
Public hearings will be held in Charleston, S.C., on Jan. 26, in New Bern on Jan. 27 and in Georgia and Florida in early February. The council is expected to give final approval to the designation at its March meeting in Jekyll Island, Ga.
Found in dark, cold waters 1,200 feet or more deep, the fragile coral mounds have been explored only in the past decade. Fishing trawlers have damaged similar reefs around the world.
Saltwater-loving plants could open up half a million square miles of previously unusable territory for energy crops, helping settle the heated food-versus-fuel debate, which nearly derailed biofuel progress last year.By increasing the world’s irrigated acreage by 50 percent, saltwater crops could provide a no-guilt source of biomass for alt fuel makers and tone down the rhetoric of U.N. officials worried about food prices, one of whom called the conversion of arable land to biofuel crops “a crime against humanity.”
While growing crops in saltwater has been on the fringes of horticulture for decades, the new demand for alternative energy has pushed the idea onto the pages of the nation’s most prestigious scientific journal and drawn the attention of NASA scientists.
Citing the work of Robert Glenn, a plant biologist at the University of Arizona, two biologists argue in this week’s Science that “the increasing demand for agricultural products and the spread of salinity now make this concept worth serious consideration and investment.”
“The study of H. M. by Brenda Milner stands as one of the great milestones in the history of modern neuroscience,” said Dr. Eric Kandel, a neuroscientist at Columbia University. “It opened the way for the study of the two memory systems in the brain, explicit and implicit, and provided the basis for everything that came later — the study of human memory and its disorders.”
Living at his parents’ house, and later with a relative through the 1970s, Mr. Molaison helped with the shopping, mowed the lawn, raked leaves and relaxed in front of the television. He could navigate through a day attending to mundane details — fixing a lunch, making his bed — by drawing on what he could remember from his first 27 years.
Staff believe that the octopus called Otto had been annoyed by the bright light shining into his aquarium and had discovered he could extinguish it by climbing onto the rim of his tank and squirting a jet of water in its direction.
The short-circuit had baffled electricians as well as staff at the Sea Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany, who decided to take shifts sleeping on the floor to find out what caused the mysterious blackouts.
Read the rest in the Telegraph.
