■ UNITED STATES
Boiling skulls not a crime
A Chicago man could not understand why anyone would call the police to report he was boiling a human skull in a pot of water on the stove. And now, after checking out what sure seemed like a promising lead -- a human head in bubbling water -- police say what Brian Sloan was doing was about as illegal as boiling hot dogs. "As weird as it is, it doesn't seem like anything is wrong," police Lieutenant Perry Nigro said. It turns out, Sloan, who had not one but four human skulls in his apartment, buys and sells human bones for medical research on eBay. The skulls were bought overseas, police said, but they may not be sold. They were still at the medical examiner's office on Thursday.
■ UNITED STATES
Tough to be a governor
A high school student got an idea of what it is like to be the governor of a US state -- and did not find it appealing. A cellphone number Katie Kamar received about five months ago once belonged to Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm. The 18-year-old said she started getting about six calls a day for Granholm. She told the Detroit Free Press newspaper her phone would ring at all hours. "It would be an honor to be governor, but people want to talk to you 24-7," she said. "This experience hasn't given me any political aspirations." Kamar now gets just one or two calls for the governor and says she will likely keep the number.
■ UNITED STATES
Ring found in ocean
When Jessica Spinks last saw her Alton High School class ring, she had been swimming off the South Pacific island of Saipan. The 2000 graduate figured when she lost the ring in the ocean that it was lost forever. Until Thursday, when Spinks, who now lives in England, got a long-distance call from her mother, Helen. Greg Moretti found the ring, engraved with Spinks' name, while scuba diving a month ago off the coast of the northern Mariana Islands. Moretti struck out trying to find Spinks over the Internet and contacted the Alton School District by e-mail and sent it the ring, which ended up in the possession of Chris Norman, the school district's financial services director. Norman contacted the media for help and Helen Spinks saw the story on the Telegraph.
■ UNITED STATES
Convict executed
A man convicted of killing a 77-year-old man during a 1984 burglary was executed by lethal injection early yesterday. David Leon Woods, 42, was pronounced dead at 12:35am, officials at the Indiana State Prison said. The US Supreme Court rejected requests that Woods' execution be stayed on Thursday, as did the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels also denied clemency for Woods on Thursday.
RSS