■UNITED STATES
Dog kicked out of Aspen
A Pomeranian has been kicked out of a Colorado resort town after getting in trouble for biting and other bad behavior. Municipal Judge Brooke Peterson on Wednesday told the dog’s owner, Melinda Goldrich, that if the dog is seen again in Aspen, it will be rounded up by animal control officers and put to death. An Aspen fitness club employee told the Aspen Times that the Pomeranian, named Gizmo, bit her last month while it was tied to a fence. The dog served 10 days in an animal shelter. Goldrich had been under a court order to not leave Gizmo unattended after the dog bit another person in February. She also was cited in 2006 for the dog’s bad behavior.
■UNITED STATES
Siblings find another sister
Two Maine men and a woman who reunited after discovering they were separated as youngsters have found another long-lost sibling. Kathleen Cooper showed up on the Today television show on Wednesday for a surprise reunion. Randy Joubert and Gary Nisbet discovered they are brothers this summer while working together as furniture movers in Waldoboro. They had been given up for adoption as babies about 35 years ago. After their story was publicized, half-sister Joanne Campbell showed up. While appearing with her brothers on Tuesday on the Today show, Campbell said a long-lost sister was still unaccounted for. Cooper called NBC after watching the show from her home in Sarasota, Florida. The four siblings ended up in foster care, then were placed with adoptive families.
■CANADA
Bardot protests seal hunt
French film legend Brigitte Bardot on Thursday renewed her protest at Canada’s commercial seal hunt by calling for a boycott of Canadian maple syrup. “Massive ethical reactions from consumers can sometimes convince a government or a corporation to change the way that it does business,” Bardot wrote on the Web site of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). “That is why I am supporting PETA’s boycott of Canadian maple syrup until the Canadian government agrees to ban the slaughter of seals on the ice floes, the largest massacre of marine mammals on Earth, forever,” she said. Canada’s maple syrup industry produces an estimated 70 percent to 85 percent of the world’s supply. Bardot, who will celebrate her 75th birthday on Monday, last came to Ottawa in 2006 in poor health to try to lobby Prime Minister Stephen Harper to halt the killing of some 325,000 seals that year, but was turned away. In her latest online posting, Bardot accused Canadian officials of being “accomplices to these massacres,” which are “a stain on their reputation in the eyes of the world.”
■UNITED STATES
Men try to pick teen ‘bride’
Two men are accused of trying to pick up a 14-year-old girl from her Kentucky school and take her to North Dakota to marry the 14-year-old son of one of the men. Bowling Green, Kentucky, police spokesman Barry Pruitt said the teens had been communicating over the Internet and decided they wanted to get married. Pruitt said the boy, his father and another man drove 15 hours to Kentucky. School officials called police when they tried to check the girl out of class on Monday. Pruitt said the girl had not reached the age of consent. The men, 42-year-old Dragan Jovanovic and 18-year-old Elvis Tahirovic, were arraigned on Tuesday on one charge each of attempted kidnapping. Their attorney did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Wednesday.
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