■ UNITED STATES
Woman whistles up a storm
A woman from Japan was one of the winners at the International Whistlers Convention in Louisburg, North Carolina. Kimiko Wakiyama, 34, of Sakuragaoka, Japan, performed Fruhlingslieder. The other grand champion award winner was American Terry Rappold, 55, who performed Concerto in C-Minor Allegro by Vivaldi. There was also a Japanese winner in the grand champion teen category. Takuma Gima, 19, of Osaka, performed Turkish March. More than 40 adults participated in the contest at Louisburg College, said Allen de Hart, who founded the convention in 1970. Phyllis Heil and Tom Bryant of the US were named whistling entertainers of the year.
■ UNITED STATES
Man mistakenly freed
Officials mistakenly released a prisoner from a Kentucky facility after receiving a phony fax that ordered him freed, and it took them nearly two weeks to realize it. The fax contained grammatical errors, was not typed on letterhead and was sent from a local grocery store. The fax falsely claimed that the Kentucky Supreme Court "demanded" Timothy Rouse be released. Rouse, 19, is charged with beating an elderly man and was at the Kentucky Correctional & Psychiatric Center in La Grange for a mental evaluation. Lexington police arrested Rouse at his mother's home on Thursday evening.
■ UNITED STATES
Man drowns in moat
A man fleeing security guards drowned on Saturday after he leaped over a railing into a moat surrounding a casino, authorities said. Police said Anthony Swopes, 21, of Kansas City, fled while being questioned about his identification at the Isle of Capri casino in Kansas City, Missouri. Authorities were called around 12:30am, and firefighters recovered Swopes about 45 minutes later. He was pronounced dead at a hospital. Moats are common fixtures at Missouri casinos. Casino gambling in the state initially was restricted to floating riverboats, but the state's constitution was amended to allow riverboat casinos to float within manmade moats.
■ BRAZIL
Traffic control slammed
ExcelAire said faulty air traffic control was to blame for a middair collision between one of the US company's executive jets and a commercial airliner that killed 154 people in the country's deadliest air disaster. The Gol airlines Boeing 737 and an ExcelAire Legacy 600 jet clipped each other on Sept. 29 over the Amazon jungle. The Gol airlines jet crashed, killing all aboard, and the Legacy jet landed safely. In a report to federal police this month, ExcelAire said air traffic control transmissions "confirmed that both planes were freed by Air Traffic Control to fly at the same altitude and the same path, in opposite directions."
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