Newsquirks | Eight-Time Loser 

Curses, Foiled Again
nAfter receiving a call from the manager of the Sunset Inn Motel in San Antonio, Texas, police found 15 newspaper vending machines inside a guest room. “All the newspapers are gone,” Officer Raul Gonzaba said. “All the change is gone.” The thief was gone, too, but Gonzaba foresaw a quick arrest because the suspect had reserved the room using his real name.

Eight-Time Loser
nBarack Obama failed to win local elections in Brazil, despite eight candidates having adopted that name. Six candidates named Bin Laden also lost. Candidates are allowed to register under assumed names, which many use to attract attention, such as those this year named after animals, vehicles, kitchen utensils, U.S. presidents and infamous world leaders. London’s Daily Telegraph reported more than 200 hopefuls renamed themselves after the country’s popular president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, among them President Lula, Ambulance Lula, Radio Lula, Singer Lula, Hairdresser Lula and Here Comes Lula.

Running under his own name, 73-year-old mayoral candidate Jair Vieira claimed victory in Dom Cavalcanti, even though he received the same number of votes as the incumbent mayor. Under Brazil’s election laws, a tie goes to the oldest candidate—bad news for Vieira’s 42-year-old opponent.

Help for Hard Times
nFour builders in Corrales, N.M., formed a company to sell homes to poor factory workers in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, made from corrugated metal shipping containers. A 320-square-foot prototype developed by PFNC Global Communities, which operates out of a back room in a Corrales real-estate firm, features a kitchen, bath with toilet, sleeping areas, windows and a bright blue door. PFNC founder Brian McCarthy, 30, said the company intends to keep the price to about $8,000.

Cute But Dangerous
nRetired Army Sgt. Frank Garren reported he was walking with his girlfriend through a park in Springfield, Ill., when he spotted an “enormous” male fox squirrel on a tree branch. Hoping to impress his companion, he made a squirrel call to get the animal’s attention. “Whatever I said in squirrel language must have made him mad,” Garren said, adding the squirrel pounced on his head and clawed his face before running off. After receiving medical treatment for multiple scratches, Garren, who was awarded a Purple Heart after surviving a roadside bomb in Iraq, told the State Journal-Register, “I never thought a squirrel could kick my ass.”

• While driving home from his job in Dover, Tenn., a man who ran over a fox stopped to retrieve the fox so he could cut off the bushy tail for a souvenir. State wildlife officer Dale Grandstaff said the man put the animal in the back seat, thinking it was dead, but it regained consciousness. As the driver tried desperately to stop the fox from climbing into the front seat and biting him, the vehicle crossed the centerline, rolled over and landed upside down in a ditch. Grandstaff noted that the driver, who suffered minor injuries, was named Tommy Fox.

• A 176-pound male pig held an Australian woman hostage for 10 days with its aggressive demands to be fed, even head-butting her bedroom door at night and biting her leg when she tried to use the outside toilet. “I picked up a broom and poked him out with it,” Caroline Hayes, 63, told reporters, “and he snapped it in half with his mouth.”

Hayes, who described herself as “a major animal lover and a vegetarian,” said she took in the pig after it wandered onto her farm in New South Wales, but it turned on her after she started feeding it. Authorities who finally rescued the woman removed the pig and took it to a piggery, where, according to pest animal ranger Len Hing, it was to be placed on stud duty.

Unclear on the Concept
nTrick-or-treaters who stopped at the home of Quentin Patrick, 22, in Sumter, S.C., were greeted with 30 rounds from an assault rifle fired from inside the house. The shots killed a 12-year-old boy and wounded his father and 9-year-old brother. After his arrest, Patrick, a convicted felon, told police he opened fire because he feared a robbery.

Seek, But Ye Shall Not Find
nA Nebraska judge dismissed a state senator’s lawsuit against God because the omnipresent deity couldn’t be found to serve with a legal notice. Trying to make the point that everyone should have access to the courts, Sen. Ernie Chambers sought a permanent injunction against God for inspiring fear and causing “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.” Under state law, however, a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a suit to move forward. “Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant,” Douglas County District Court Judge Marlon Polk ruled, “this action will be dismissed with prejudice.”

Overprotective Mother
nSheriff’s investigators in San Bernadino County, Calif., arrested a 31-year-old woman who drove her 12-year-old daughter to a park to fight another 12-year-old girl and then intervened when her daughter appeared to be losing. Witnesses said the woman grabbed the other girl by the hair and slapped her face.

Abundantly Renewable Resource
nOfficials announced plans to make San Antonio the first U.S. city to convert human waste to energy. Steve Clouse, chief operating officer of the Texas city’s water system, said that a private vendor would reprocess the 140,000 tons of solid waste flushed down the city’s toilets each year into natural gas, at a rate of about 1.5 million cubic feet per day, for area utilities to burn.

Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Submit items, citing date and source, to P.O. Box 8130, Alexandria VA 22306.
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