Hoodwinkery 

Curses, Foiled Again
When police pulled over Walter Upshaw, 32, for failing to come to a complete stop before entering a roadway in Orlando, Fla., Upshaw apologized to Officer Shawn Overfield and explained, “My gun is digging in my hip.” Overfield found the loaded .380-caliber pistol, which Upshaw, as a convicted felon on probation, is prohibited from carrying. (Orlando Sentinel)

• A gunman, identified as Mostafa Kamel Hendi, 25, demanded cash at the We Buy Gold store in Hendersonville, N.C., but when he stepped behind the counter to get the money, clerk Derek Mothershead knocked him unconscious with a left hook and grabbed the weapon, which turned out to be a pellet gun. Mothershead called the police and, when Hendi came to, handed him a roll of paper towels, sprayed the floor with cleaner and made him clean up his own blood. (Greenville, S.C.’s WYFF-TV)

Brits Got Rhythm?
Facing a shortage of male applicants to perform at the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2012 London Olympics, the organizing committee announced it’s urgently seeking “more men—particularly if you have rhythm. This means those of you who can dance but also drum, or do any sport, job or hobby that involves keeping to time.” (Britain’s The Telegraph)

Slightest Provocation
Police in Palm Bay, Fla., said Earl Persell, 56, attacked his live-in girlfriend during a heated argument over musical performers Ike and Tina Turner. (Melbourne’s Florida Today)

• Authorities charged Marvin Potter, 60, with murdering a couple in Mountain City, Tenn., because they deleted his adult daughter as a friend on Facebook. (Associated Press)

Toujours Egalité
The Montreal school board will require all students to speak only French, not just in classrooms, but also in hallways, in cafeterias and on playgrounds. The rule, which takes effect in September, is aimed at the influx of immigrants, whose children are required to attend French-language schools. Fifty-three percent of the city’s 110,000 students have a mother tongue other than French. “There will be no language police,” Diane De Courcy, who chairs the city’s school board, declared, explaining that monitors who overhear children speaking another language will gently tap them on the shoulder—not on the head—to tell them, ‘Remember, we speak French. It’s good for you.’” (Ottawa Citizen)

Budget-Cut Follies
After the Scottish Borders Council announced that budget cuts would require closing four registry offices where marriage notices, known as banns, are posted, councilor Kenneth Gunn warned of an outbreak of incest. “In these days of broken marriages and extended families,” children may grow up “ignorant of their own relations” and marry, Gunn said. “It isn’t going to be too long before we have a union which could produce offspring if we do not play by the well-founded rules.” (Glasgow’s The Daily Record)

Reasonable Explanation
Police who arrested Evelyn Marie Fuller, 49, for robbing a bank in Waynesburg, Pa., reported she confessed to the crime and “stated she wanted to use the money to pay for dentures she was unable to get through welfare until next year.” (Associated Press)

Hoodwinkery
Accused of stabbing a bartender in LaCrosse, Wis., Anquin St. Junious, 32, later suffered a beating that hospitalized him. While St. Junious sat motionless in a wheelchair, his attorney asked Circuit Judge Scott Horne to release his client from jail because he can’t move his arms, can’t walk for more than 15 seconds and has a hole in his throat that is susceptible to infection if he remains in custody. Contradicting the claim was surveillance video showing St. Junious doing pushups in his jail cell. The judge refused to release St. Junious and promptly doubled his bond. (LaCrosse Tribune)

• Police investigating a cross burning in the driveway of a mixed-race couple in Panama City, Fla., assumed it was a hate crime. Two days later, the wife, Donna Williams, who is white, said she found handwritten notes taped to the front and side doors, warning her “that I better not leave that nigger.” It was signed “KKK.” Wondering, “When did the KKK start supporting black and white interracial marriages?” she noticed the handwriting was similar to her husband’s. When police questioned LB Williams, 50, he admitted setting the fire and writing the note, hoping to frighten her so she wouldn’t divorce him. (Panama City’s News-Herald)

• After prison psychologist Laurie Ann Martinez, 36, reported that a stranger beat, robbed and raped her at home in Sacramento, Calif., police investigators spent hundreds of hours on the case before concluding that Martinez faked the crime. Authorities said she split her own lip with a pin, scraped her knuckles with sandpaper, had a friend punch her in the face and even wet her pants to make it appear that she’d been knocked unconscious. Martinez, her friend and two co-workers eventually admitted the whole episode was a setup aimed at convincing Martinez’s husband that the couple needed to move to a safer neighborhood. Instead, they filed for divorce six weeks after the incident. “If all you wanted to do is move,” police Sgt. Andrew Pettit said, “there’s other ways than staging a burglary and rape.” (Associated Press)

Lawmakers of the Week
Oklahoma State Sen. Ralph Shortey introduced a bill that would prohibit the manufacture or sale of any food in which aborted fetuses were used to develop any of the ingredients. Shortey admitted that he knows of no company that uses human fetuses in food research but said he drafted his measure based on “suggestions” he read on the Internet. (Associated Press)

• Protesting a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell attached an amendment requiring men to have a rectal exam before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication. The Republican-controlled senate passed the mandatory ultrasound measure but rejected Howell’s amendment by a vote of 21 to 19. (The Huffington Post)

Support the Troops
When the family history website Ancestry.com filed a Freedom of Information Act request for information about deceased veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs responded. After Ancestry.com posted the information, the VA learned it had included data about 2,200 not-yet-dead vets. “Fortunately,” Jerry L. Davis, the VA’s chief information security officer, said, “no personal health information was included in this data release.” Social Security numbers were provided, however. As a result, the VA offered every affected veteran free credit monitoring for one year at no charge. (Department of Veterans Affairs)