The Maui Examiner

He Sees Dead People

DES MOINES, Iowa– A former security guard who was fired for seeing ghosts was found by the courts to still be eligible for unemployment benefits.
According to a court ruling released last week, the former guard's allegation of being able to see apparitions does not constitute misconduct.
Wade Gallegos, a security guard with Neighborhood Patrol of Urbandale, alerted his supervisor on Sept. 11 at that ghosts were haunting a neighborhood he was patrolling.
According to the Des Moines Register, the supervisor arrived at the scene, where Gallegos showed him where the ghosts were still apparently standing.
Gallegos was fired five hours later.
The security company found no evidence that Gallegos was using drugs or alcohol.
Neighborhood Patrol challenged Gallegos' application for unemployment benefits, arguing he was guilty of misconduct.
Judge G. Ken Renegar ruled that “such beliefs do render the claimant unfit to act as a security guard."
Though Judge Renegar agreed that Neighborhood Patrol having a security guard who sees ghosts and apparitions would be an inappropriate, especially when the guard reports the apparitions to the employer and the company sends out patrol cars, he did rule that seeing ghosts is not the type of misconduct that could disqualify Gallegos from receiving benefits.

DENVER, Col.– A man who was the victim of a prank at Home Depot and is now suing the hardware behemoth has passed a lie detector test that included questions regarding allegations that he made in a previous similar claim in a different town.
Bob Dougherty, who claims he was glued to a toilet seat in a Home Depot store, answered 20 questions in a polygraph test including four related to a former Nederland town official's allegation that Dougherty made similar claims there.
The Rocky Mountain News reported that Dougherty, 57, had offered to take the test to dispel doubts about his story. The test, administered last Wednesday, was paid for by Denver television station KDVR.
Ron Trzepacz, former director of operations in Nederland, where Dougherty lives, had said that Dougherty claimed in 2004 that he was glued to a toilet seat in the town's visitor center, but pulled himself free.
Dougherty's lawsuit, filed Oct. 28, claims that officials at the Home Depot in Louisville called for an ambulance after he had been stuck for about 15 minutes. Paramedics unbolted the toilet seat, which separated from his skin, leaving abrasions, according to the suit.
Dougherty is seeking $3 million in damages.

Bob Dougherty, right, seems to be getting stuck in all the wrong places.

LONDON, England– A family went through a harrowing ordeal after a crazed badger followed some boys to their London home.
The badger refused to be scared off, and even began intimidating the family. The family was so freaked out that that they called the RSPCA.
Luke Youngs, 12, and several friends were walking home from school when they noticed the distinctive black and white creature trotting towards them from nearby undergrowth. The beast followed them all the way home, and then sat on the front lawn, just waiting to attack at the people in the house.
Luke told his stepfather Michael that a badger was staking out their home. Michael, 43, went outside and scooped up the family cat, which had hidden from the beast under a car. The badger just sat on the front lawn glaring at him.
Michael ran inside with the cat as quickly as he could, but no sooner had he slammed the kitchen door shut, the creature attempted to squeeze its way through the cat flap.
Michael shooed it away then locked the cat flap.
“This badger was spooky,” Michael told the London Associated Metro. “It was like it was possessed. Although it never made an attempt to attack me, it was the stare that really gave me the creeps.”
Michael phoned his wife Rosalind, 43, and told her to be careful when she came home from a shopping trip with 14-year-old daughter Emily.
As the women bolted from the car to the front door, Michael, armed with a spade, kept the creature at bay.
Emily managed to photograph the animal as it peered in through the back patio doors.
The RSPCA sent expert Mike Weaver, chairman of the Worcestershire Badger Society, who managed to coax the badger into a cage with jam sandwiches.
Michael told the Metro that the badger “kept trundling around the house, watching us through the window.”
Veterinarians performed several tests on the badger, thought to be a two-year-old female, including a scan of the animal’s brain. It has been determined that its behavior may have been due to a brain tumor.

World’s Most Expensive Property

SPENCER, Ind.– You think Hawai‘i is expensive? Then check out southwest Indiana, where one tiny parcel of dirt is some of the priciest real estate in the world.
Officials in Indiana’s Owen County have actually been trying to sell a 1-square-inch plot of land for $1,500. At that rate, an acre of land would cost nearly $7 billion.
A recent tax sale yielded no buyers for the postage-stamp-sized plot.
"It's too small to plant a flower on," Peter Dorsey, an employee with the county's mapping department, told the Associated Press.
The one-inch parcel was originally part of a 1.12-acre tract under a separate deed. Officials think the tiny piece of land west of Bloomington was deeded to someone in the 1960s, when people had to own property to use a nearby lake. An effective solution to get around local requirements has created a small hassle now.
First National Bank foreclosed on the property owner's mortgage, which covered the entire 1.12-acre tract, including the separate one-inch parcel, and the land was up for bid at the tax sale. There is a minimum bid of $1,500 for tax sale parcels.
County attorney Richard Lorenz said he wants to find a way for the county to get rid of the land and the responsibility of selling it, perhaps by giving it away.
"Maybe we could donate that 1-inch plot to Owen County Preservations as the smallest land donation in history," Lorenz said.

TORONTO, Canada– A very clever bank robber who’s M.O. is to politely present a hold-up note on a recipe card, has robbed 29 banks in four months.
Dubbed the “Recipe Card Bandit," the unidentified man is the main suspect behind two bank heists in Toronto on Nov. 9 and 27 other robberies in the Toronto area since August.
The suspect waits his turn in line and, once at the teller, quietly makes his intentions known on a recipe card, reported Reuters. The robber has never brandished a weapon.
The robber appears to be about 30-years-old, clean-shaven, and usually wears a baseball cap and sometimes sunglasses.
Toronto Police feel confident that there will be a break in the case soon, as there better views of the suspect on surveillance tapes of his latest robberies.
Officials will not say how much money the bandit has gotten away with.
The Canadian Bankers Association is offering a $10,000 (Canadian) reward for information leading to the arrest of the Recipe Card Bandit.

WAINFLEET, Ireland– After a drug awareness lesson, a ten-year-old schoolgirl discovered a packet of speed inadvertently left by a drug squad officer in her school bag.
The schoolgirl, Kia Butterfield, did not find the speed until she got to her home in Wainfleet, near Skegness.
Allegedly the officer had put three packets of the drug in the girl’s bag, but accidentally only took only two back out.
"I still can't get my head around this – an officer gave my daughter a bag of hard drugs,” Kia’s mother, Amanda, told The Mirror. “If your kids aren't safe from drugs on a day out with police, when are they safe?”
The officer put the drugs in Kia's bag to demonstrate how drug-sniffing dogs worked during a seminar for primary school students.
"It was a training exercise for the dog and education for the children,” said Dave Wheeler, chief superintendent with the Lincolnshire Police. “But what happened shouldn't have happened."

NEUWEID, Germany– Delays were caused delays on a German rail line after a train conductor mistook a giant toy penguin laying on the tracks for a dead man in a tuxedo.
Passengers were left stranded in Neuwied after conductor Udo Vergens pulled the emergency stop when he saw what he thought was a man lying face down wearing a black and white tuxedo.
Officials who came to investigate found only a man-size soft toy penguin lying on the tracks.
"We are at a loss to explain the presence of this very large penguin,” said a Neuwied police spokesman. "We would think you would notice if you lost something like this."