■UNITED STATES
Body delivered to pet store
Employees of a Pennsylvania pet store expecting a shipment of tropical fish and salt water got a dead body instead. Mark Arabia owns the Pets Plus store in northeast Philadelphia, where the mix-up was discovered on Tuesday. He says he learned the body was that of a 65-year-old San Diego-area man who died of early onset Alzheimer’s disease. The body was supposed to go to a research laboratory in Allentown, a 113km drive away. US Airways Inc released a statement saying the air cargo problem was caused by a “verbal miscommunication between a delivery driver and the cargo representative.”
■PERU
90-year-old burglar arrested
A 90-year-old woman was arrested in Lima for taking part in a burglary, police said on Tuesday. The woman, who looked like a sweet grandmother, arrived with two other women at a house that was for sale in the neighborhood of Los Olivos in the Peruvian capital. The elderly woman distracted the owner of the house with a pretend negotiation, while the other two stole valuable objects. When they were found out, the three women fled for a taxi that was waiting for them. The elderly woman, however, did not make it fast enough and had to run off. She was arrested just two blocks away.
■UNITED STATES
Crate trip was a hoax
A magician who posted videos online detailing a “trip” he made in a crate aboard a cargo plane from upstate New York to Las Vegas admitted on Tuesday that it was an elaborate hoax. “It was a publicity stunt right from the start,” Wade Whitcomb of North Syracuse said after federal officials declared the event a hoax. “The FBI spoke to Whitcomb. He did not ship himself anywhere. We have no further interest in this,” FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said on Tuesday. Whitcomb had claimed he folded himself into a cramped wooden crate for the 26-hour trip on a United Parcel Service truck and plane. He posted a series of videos online of the purported trip shot with tiny cameras pointed out of the crate and one inside focused on him.
■UNITED STATES
‘Cheers’ barman laid off
Eddie Doyle was the guy who really did know everybody’s name. But after tending bar for 35 years at the Boston tavern that inspired the television show Cheers, Doyle has been laid off, the Boston Globe and Boston Herald newspapers reported. The bar’s owner said the economy was to blame. Doyle was a fixture at the Bull and Finch pub long before his TV counterpart, Sam Malone, entered the mainstream. After the NBC show hit the airwaves in 1982, he started serving 5,000 people a day. Doyle used the bar’s fame to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity. The 66-year-old Doyle told the Globe he’s not bitter and may write a book about his experiences.
■UNITED STATES
Child star Boyd dies at 70
Jimmy Boyd, the child vocalist and actor best known for singing the original rendition of the Christmas novelty hit I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus in 1952, has died. He was 70. Boyd died of cancer on Saturday at a Santa Monica convalescent hospital, longtime friend Eleanor Pillsbury told the Los Angeles Times. I Saw Mommy shot to the top of the charts three weeks after it was released. Boyd, who was 13 when he recorded the song, told Time magazine soon after its release that he was surprised by its success. “I like it personally, but I didn’t think anyone would buy it,” he said.
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