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Va. Woman Gets Stuck in Bathtub for 5 Days
 Sun Apr 17,10:54 PM ET HAMPTON, Va. - A 75-year-old woman who lay trapped in her bathtub for five days toasted her rescue with a cola and a cigarette. Jane Fromal suffered slight dehydration even though she said she ran tap water to drink during the ordeal.
Doctors said they would keep her at the hospital for a few days to make sure her muscles were working right.
Fromal drew a bath Saturday afternoon to nurse a sore tailbone.
"I thought I'd get in the tub and soak," she said Thursday as she rested at Riverside Regional Medical Center. "I didn't know I was going to soak for five days."
She tried to lift herself up a number of times but was unable to do so. Her elbows and forearms were left raw and sore.
Fromal didn't sleep much during the five days. "How can you sleep in a bathtub?"
She finally got help when a neighbor's grandson noticed newspapers piling up in her driveway and insisted his grandmother call Fromal's family.
Shaun Foley, 21, tried banging on her doors and windows and noticed that her mailbox was stuffed.
James Mountjoy, Fromal's grandson-in-law, burst through a locked storm door. Family members found her in the bathroom off her upstairs bedroom on Wednesday evening.
After donning a warm robe, being lifted to safety and drinking a little water, Fromal didn't ask for food. She wanted one of her Parliament 100s and a Coke.
It wasn't the first time Fromal, who has a little trouble with her legs, has been stuck in the bathtub. A few weeks ago she lay in the tub all day.
Fromal's family plans to add railings and a tub chair in her bathroom.

Man Saves Chicken With Mouth-to-Beak
Sun Apr 17,10:54 PM ET

COLLBRAN, Colo. - First there was Mike the Headless Chicken, a rooster that survived for 18 months after having its head lopped off with an ax. Now, western Colorado has a new chicken survival story, this one involving a man who claims he saved his fowl by giving it mouth-to-beak resuscitation.
Uegene Safken says one of the chickens in his young flock had gotten into a tub of water in the yard last week and appeared to have died.
Safken said he first swung the chicken by the feet to revive it. When that failed, he continued swinging and blowing into its beak.
"Then one eye opened. I thought it was an involuntary response," Safken said. The chicken's beak opened a little wider, and Safken started yelling at it: "You're too young to die!
"Every time I'd yell at him, he'd chirp," Safken said.
Mike the Headless Chicken survived a beheading in 1945 in Fruita, Colo. Afterward, Mike could go through the motions of pecking for food, and when he tried to crow, a gurgle came out. His owner put feed and water directly into Mike's gullet with an eyedropper.
Scientists examined the chicken and theorized Mike had enough of a brain stem left to live headless. He was a popular attraction until he choked to death on a corn kernel.

Outlaw Laid Low by Short Fuse
 Mon Apr 11, 8:13 AM ET

TIRANA (Reuters) - Albania's most wanted man fought off special police and eluded capture for years only to blow himself up while fishing with dynamite, police and newspapers said Friday.
Dubbed the "Last Cowboy" in northern Albania because of his gunfights with the law, Riza Malaj, 34, failed to accurately gauge the length of the fuse as he tried to blow up trout.
Doctors at the Bajram Curri hospital said he had lost both hands, badly hurt his eyes and suffered serious wounds all over his body. His family rejected offers to have him flown to a Tirana hospital where he would have been arrested immediately.
Malaj was taken to a hospital in nearby U.N.-governed Kosovo.
He was sentenced in absentia to five years in jail on charges of leading an attack on the Bajram Curri police station last year. Since 2000, warrants have been issued for Malaj's arrest on charges of willful murder, armed robbery, armed assault and battery of the education directress of the town.

Politician Urges Golf with Cane Toads
 Mon Apr 11, 8:32 AM ET

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australians in the country's Northern Territory should start smashing cane toads to death with golf clubs and cricket bats in a bid to stop the spread of the toxic creatures, a government politician urged Monday.
David Tollner, the member for the Northern Territory seat of Solomon, said the cane toads -- which have highly poisonous sacs behind their head that quickly kill native animals that prey on them -- should be eradicated by "any means possible."
Australia has for decades fought unsuccessfully to stop the spread of cane toads, imported from Hawaii in 1935 in a failed attempt to combat greyback beetles which were threatening the country's tropical northern sugar cane fields.
"(When I was a child) we hit them with cricket bats, golf clubs and the like. Things were a bit different, most kids had a slug gun or an air rifle and we would get stuck into them with that sort of thing as well," Tollner told Australian radio.
"If people could be encouraged to do it rather than discouraged the better the chance will be of stopping the cane toads arriving in Darwin and other parts of northern Australia."
Cane toads, which now number in their millions, are so toxic that crocodiles, death adder snakes and wild dingo dogs can die of cardiac arrest within 15 minutes of eating a toad.
Australia's cane toad population now spreads west from the northeast coastal sugar cane fields into the fragile wetlands of Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory and are steadily marching toward the territory's tropical capital city of Darwin.
Animal welfare groups discouraged people from taking up Tollner's call to arms, saying freezing the animals to death was more humane.
"We don't want children picking up their golf club or their cricket bat in the backyard and having a go at any animal," a spokeswoman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) told Australian radio.
Female cane toads can lay 8,000 to 35,000 eggs at a time and may produce two clutches a year. The toads reach maturity within a year and have a life span of at least five years.

Police Seize a Ton of Ecstasy in Tiles
 Fri Apr 15, 8:40 AM ET

MELBOURNE, Australia (Reuters) - Australian authorities recovered more than 2,240 pounds of ecstasy tablets hidden in a shipment of ceramic tiles in one of the world's largest seizures of street-ready drugs, police said Friday.
The shipment of five million ecstasy tablets, known chemically as MDMA, arrived in the southern Australian city of Melbourne from Italy earlier in the week, said police, who valued the drugs at $192 million.
"Clearly, this was a major shipment involving a well organized syndicate that was aiming to put a massive amount of tablets onto Australian streets," Victoria state customs official Jaclyne Fisher said in a statement.
Customs said an X-ray of the shipment revealed anomalies inside eight pallets of tiles and an inspection found dozens of packets containing millions of tablets, weighing just over a ton.
The previous largest Australian ecstasy haul occurred in November 2004 in Sydney, when some 1,800 pounds of ecstasy tablets and powder were seized, said Australian Federal Police (AFP).
"Over the past two years the AFP has seen a dramatic increase in the importation of ecstasy into Australia," AFP agent Mike Phelan said in a statement.
Four people have been charged in connection with the shipment and will appear before the Melbourne Magistrate's Court Friday.

Porn Flick Profits Offered to Hospital
 Fri Apr 15, 8:34 AM ET

TORONTO (Reuters) - A porn star's first, and last, film about lesbian sex could end up boosting the coffers of Canada's best known children's hospital, if the agent for dead actress Natel King has his way.
Agent Stephan Sirard said he had approached Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children about accepting the proceeds from King's last movie, "Lesbian Lover," in memory of the 23-year-old Canadian star, who was stabbed to death last year in the United States.
"It's her first original solo... All the proceeds would go to Sick Kids' Hospital," Sirard told Reuters.
Sirard said lawyers for his FCF agency in California had asked the hospital if they could highlight the promised gift on the cover of their video, using wording like "all proceeds from the sale of this video go to Sick Kid's Hospital in Toronto."
But hospital spokeswoman Carol Duncan said she has not heard anything about the issue, and she declined to say how the hospital might react to a donation of this kind.
"We have to send the issue to the ethics committee and the board of directors for consideration," she said.
Sirard said King, whose stage name was Taylor Sumers, had helped raise money for the hospital before she was murdered. He described her as a "porn star with principles" who had refused to perform sexual acts with others on screen until this film.
He admitted it might be hard to persuade Sick Kids to accept the offer.
"A lot of big corporations are involved in the adult industry and most people don't know," he said. "So, it's like a gray area. I think people don't want to be directly linked to it."
King was stabbed to death in February 2004 after a photography shoot near Philadelphia. The photographer has pleaded guilty to murder and could face 25 years in jail.

Zoo Wants Chimpanzee to Stop Smoking
 Fri Apr 15, 8:39 AM ET

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A South African zoo is trying to persuade its star chimpanzee to kick a bad smoking habit.
Charlie, a grown male chimp and the Bloemfontein Zoo, has been picking up cigarettes thrown to him by visitors and smoking them -- a habit he probably picked up by observing humans, zoo officials told the SAPA news agency on Thursday.
"Baby chimps pick up habits by mimicking adults and we think he started mimicking smokers at his enclosure which probably led to smokers throwing him cigarettes," spokesman Daryl Barnes told SAPA.
Barnes said Charlie was already showing the signs of a true nicotine addict.
"He even acts like a naughty schoolboy by hiding the cigarette when staff approach the area," Barnes said, adding that the zoo was determined to help him quit.
Barnes said the most important thing was that people stop providing Charlie with cigarettes or any other treats, noting the chimp already had three bad teeth because of all the cans of sweet soft drinks that people throw at him.
Charlie is not the only smoking chimpanzee. A zoo in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou reported last year that one of its chimps had taken up smoking and was desperately bumming cigarette butts off visitors.

Scientific Conference Falls for Gibberish Prank
 Fri Apr 15, 8:32 AM ET

By Greg Frost
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Reuters) - A bunch of computer-generated gibberish masquerading as an academic paper has been accepted at a scientific conference in a victory for pranksters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Jeremy Stribling said on Thursday that he and two fellow MIT graduate students questioned the standards of some academic conferences, so they wrote a computer program to generate research papers complete with nonsensical text, charts and diagrams.
The trio submitted two of the randomly assembled papers to the World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), scheduled to be held July 10-13 in Orlando, Florida.
To their surprise, one of the papers -- "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy" -- was accepted for presentation.
The prank recalled a 1996 hoax in which New York University physicist Alan Sokal succeeded in getting an entire paper with a mix of truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs and otherwise meaningless mumbo-jumbo published in the journal Social Text.
Stribling said he and his colleagues only learned about the Social Text affair after submitting their paper.
"Rooter" features such mind-bending gems as: "the model for our heuristic consists of four independent components: simulated annealing, active networks, flexible modalities, and the study of reinforcement learning" and "We implemented our scatter/gather I/O server in Simula-67, augmented with opportunistically pipelined extensions."
Stribling said the trio targeted WMSCI because it is notorious within the field of computer science for sending copious e-mails that solicit admissions to the conference.
"We were tired of the spam," Stribling told Reuters in a telephone interview, adding that his team wanted to challenge the standards of the conference's peer review process.
Nagib Callaos, a conference organizer, said the paper was one of a small number accepted on a "non-reviewed" basis -- meaning that reviewers had not yet given their feedback by the acceptance deadline.
"We thought that it might be unfair to refuse a paper that was not refused by any of its three selected reviewers," Callaos wrote in an e-mail. "The author of a non-reviewed paper has complete responsibility of the content of their paper."
However, Callaos said conference organizers were reviewing their acceptance procedures in light of the hoax. Asked whether he would disinvite the MIT students, he replied: "Bogus papers should not be included in the conference program."
Stribling said conference organizers had not yet formally rescinded their invitation to present the paper.
The students were soliciting cash donations so they could attend the conference and give what Stribling billed as a "randomly generated talk." So far, they have raised more than $2,000 over the Internet.

You Probably Don't Want to Drive Behind This Guy
 Sun Apr 17,11:08 AM ET

SEOUL (Reuters) - The motto for one would-be South Korean driver likely is "if at first you don't succeed, then try, try again another 271 times."
Seo Sang-moon passed the academic part of his driver's license examination on his 272nd attempt earlier this week.
The repairman, from a small town in the southeastern part of the county who will soon turn 70, said he was illiterate and used the test process to teach himself the rules of the road because he could not read them in a manual.
Since the oral exam was launched, Seo took the test as often as he could, paying about $1,000 in fees along the way. Each failure taught him a little more, and after 271 attempts, he was able to get the minimum score needed to pass the academic test.
Test officials were thrilled to see Seo pass.
"He has been coming here for more than five years and we regard him almost as being one of the family," an official from the exam office said by telephone.
Seo said he was preparing for his road test, and was discussing with his wife what kind of car to buy once he get his license. "Driving seems a bit hard. But after trying 271 times to pass the oral exam, what do I have to be afraid of?," Seo said.

Indians 'Marry' Sacred Trees to Ward Off Evil Eye
 Mon Apr 18, 9:04 AM ET

CALCUTTA, India (Reuters) - Residents in the Indian city of Calcutta have "married" two colorfully decorated trees in an elaborate ceremony to ward off an evil spell.
The marriage between the sacred trees -- whose trunks were decorated with red cloth, streaks of vermilion and marigold garlands -- was followed by a banquet attended by nearly 1,000 people.
"There is an evil eye that has been cast on us. So we decided to take recourse to spiritual means to ward it off," Gouri Shankar Sengupta, one of the organizers of the wedding between a banyan tree and a peepul, a kind of fig tree, said on Monday.
A spate of burglaries had hit the area recently, as well as a murder and two suicides, which many residents felt came from an evil spell. The "marriage" took place Saturday but wedding celebrations will end late Monday.
During the ceremony, a Hindu priest chanted hymns and lit a holy fire near the trees, which stand side by side.

Police advise against lying in the road
 Mon Apr 18, 1:33 PM ET

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Police in a Vancouver suburb issued an unusual warning to drivers on Monday: If you run out fuel, do not lay down on the road to get assistance.
Police were alerted to a man's body laying along the Trans Canada Highway in the predawn darkness only to discover he was "quite alive", but that his car had run out of gas and he "wanted to attract someone's attention".
"Guess it worked, but police don't really recommend this method," the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Burnaby, British Columbia, said in a press release.
The man's car was towed, but no charges were filed.

Cocaine turns to sugar in police custody
 Mon Apr 18, 7:01 AM ET

WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish prosecutors are investigating the disappearance of 20 kg (44 lbs) of cocaine from a police warehouse, where it had been replaced by an identical quantity of sugar, police said on Monday.
Zbigniew Matwiej, spokesman for Poland's organised crime fighting unit, the Central Investigative Bureau, said the switch was discovered when officers were disposing of evidence that had been seized several years ago and used in trials.
"The officers noticed that something suspicious was happening with the drugs and immediately stopped the destruction process. Their suspicions that the material was not in fact cocaine proved to be well founded," Matwiej said.
The lost cocaine had a street value of about $1 million (530 million pounds), according to Polish private television TVN24.

Man Catches Fire During Surgery
 Mon Apr 18, 9:09 AM ET

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Seattle police launched an investigation on Friday to determine how a patient undergoing emergency heart surgery caught on fire at a local hospital in 2003.
The male patient, who was not identified, went up in flames after alcohol poured on his skin was ignited by a surgical instrument.
The patient died after the surgery but that was due to heart failure and not the fire, said Dr. Robert Caplan, medical quality director of Virginia Mason.
Caplan said fires are known to occur in operating rooms although they were extremely rare.
The two-year-old incident became publicly known after an anonymous letter sent to the media mentioned it as a sign of unsafe health care at the hospital, and said the patient burned to death.
Caplan strongly disputed its contents. "That letter is factually incorrect," he said.

Wendy's Trying to Solve Mystery of Finger
Mon Apr 18, 8:19 AM ET

By KIM CURTIS, Associated Press Writer
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Somewhere out there is a woman, dead or alive, who is missing a well-manicured finger about 1 1/2 inches long. Authorities know where the finger ended up — in a bowl of Wendy's chili — but just who it belongs to is a mystery.
Anna Ayala's claim that she bit down on the finger in a mouthful of her steamy stew on March 22 initially drew sympathy. But when police and health officials failed to find any missing digits among the workers involved in the restaurant's supply chain, suspicion fell on Ayala, and her story has become a late-night punch line.
"She went back there for lunch today — she's trying to collect all five," quipped David Letterman.
Jay Leno joked: "Instead of a spoon, they serve it with nail clippers."
For executives at Dublin, Ohio-based Wendy's International Inc., it is anything but funny.
Sales have dropped at franchises in Northern California, forcing layoffs and reduced hours, the company said. Wendy's also has hired private investigators, set up a hot line for tips and doubled its reward Friday to $100,000 for information leading to the finger's original owner.
"Our brand reputation has been affected nationally. We are determined to find out what really happened," said president and chief executive Tom Mueller. He said Wendy's employees have passed polygraph tests, and "there is no credible evidence that Wendy's is the source of the foreign object."
DNA tests are being done on the finger. A partial fingerprint failed to turn up a match in a national database.
Tips are coming in from across the country, from "folks who either have lost a finger, or know somebody who lost a finger," said San Jose police Sgt. Nick Muyo.
"Our goal is to find where that finger came from and who it came from. Is this an industrial accident, is this a homicide? Once you determine that, then we can start working backward."
Health officials said it is apparently a woman's finger, because of the long, manicured nail. But investigators will not say which finger on the hand it was.
The most curious turn yet led to a dead end this week, after the owner of a Texas animal refuge called Wendy's hot line to say she remembered seeing a leopard being kept as a pet bite the fingertip off a Nevada woman. The victim, Sandy Allman, lost the part of a middle finger in February when she was bitten by a spotted leopard, one of several exotic pets she kept around her trailer in Pahrump, Nev., 60 miles from Las Vegas.
But police soon determined that there was no connection.
Ayala hired a lawyer and filed a claim against the Wendy's franchise owner, Fresno-based JEM Management. But after police searched her home in Las Vegas and continued to question her family, she dropped the lawsuit threat, saying the whole situation was just too stressful.
"Lies, lies, lies, that's all I am hearing," Ayala said after police started questioning her. "They should look at Wendy's. What are they hiding? Why are we being victimized again and again?"
As it turns out, Ayala has a litigious history. She has filed claims against several corporations, including a former employer and General Motors, though it is unclear from court records whether she received any money. She said she got $30,000 from El Pollo Loco after her 13-year-old daughter got sick at one of the chain's Las Vegas-area restaurants. El Pollo Loco officials say she did not get a dime.
The San Jose Police fraud unit joined Las Vegas police in the search of her home there, and officers have questioned her relatives. A family friend, Ken Bono, 24, said the warrant indicated police were looking for a cooler, a blue bag and "any family documents about anybody dead."
Ayala's sister Mary, who lives in San Jose but missed the fateful meal at Wendy's, has been outspoken in defense of her sister.
The police "wanted to know if I ever asked her, even jokingly, `Hey, did you do it?'" Mary Ayala said. "I said, `No, my sister wouldn't do that.'" She added: "It's just a mess right now. Things are out of hand."
If police do obtain evidence that Ayala planted the finger, she could face charges of fraud, extortion or making false statements, legal experts said.
Back at the Wendy's where the chili was served, customers seem convinced the tale of the finger was a scam.
"There's too much in this country today with people trying to get things by conning them out of it. Wendy's has been good for years," said longtime customer 81-year-old Ralph Woodman. "How the hell would you get a finger into the pot without seeing it in there when you're stirring it? It had to be some sort of screwball ruse."

Man Barred from Making Slavery Tax Claims
 Mon Apr 18, 9:11 AM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York man was temporarily barred on Friday from preparing income tax returns for others because he has been including bogus tax credits such as reparations for African-American slavery and segregation.
The Manhattan U.S. attorney's office said it obtained a restraining order against Kevin Hardy of Mount Vernon that immediately barred him from working as a tax preparer until a full hearing can be held.
Prosecutors said that the Internal Revenue Code does not provide any such slavery reparations tax credit and that Hardy repeatedly prepared returns for others making such claims.

Dog Rejected As Cash Drawing Winner
Mon Apr 18,11:04 AM ET

ABBOTSFORD, B.C. - A gasoline station owner is trying to smooth some ruffled fur over the winner of a cash drawing.
The name on the winning entry, "Mr. Jengels," turned out to be that of a dog owned by Kevin Strybos, who said he used the name of his miniature dachsund-pinscher cross to avoid telemarketers.
Gas station owner Mike Paz said the dog couldn't cash a check and refused to give the $410 to Strybos, who had claimed the winnings.
On Friday, Paz said he would give the money to the local animal shelter run by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and offered to hang a portrait of Mr. Jengels on a wall with other cash winners.
Strybos said he appreciated the donation but added, "I don't know if it really changes too much the way I feel about the whole situation."

Man Drives Into DMV's Wall, Renews License
 Fri Apr 8, 1:02 PM ET

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A man drove his car into a wall at the Division of Motor Vehicles building, then walked in and renewed his driver's license, police say. Police believe the man was driving while impaired on medication and charged him with driving under the influence.
No one was injured.
The man's car went up over a sidewalk Thursday, denting the building's metal siding, cracking the inside of the wall and startling workers sitting nearby in the DMV's accounting department.
"I saw the guy back up, get out of his car and walk into the DMV like nothing happened," said DMV employee Michelle Steinman.
No one in the public area of the DMV noticed the accident. Workers in accounting notified higher-ups and pointed out the driver, who had taken a number, apologizing to a clerk that he had "tapped" the building.
By the time police arrived, the man had paid $20 and renewed his license.

Woman Charged in Road-Rage Apartment Ramming
 Fri Apr 8, 8:39 AM ET

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - A woman has been arrested after she rammed a car into her neighbor's apartment in an apparent fight over a loud television, Canadian police said on Thursday.
The Penticton, British Columbia, woman got into her 1985 BMW after becoming upset with her neighbor and drove the car across the lawn and through some patio furniture before the vehicle hit the side of the building, police said.
There were no injuries in the incident that took place late on Wednesday, although the neighbor and a friend were inside the building watching television at the time of the crash. The vehicle received only minor damage.
The 36-year-old woman, whose name was not released, was being held in jail pending a court appearance.

Psychopaths at the Wheel!
 Thu Apr 7, 9:14 AM ET

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Anyone climbing aboard a bus or taxi in Peru should think twice because many drivers have psychopathic tendencies, a university study said on Wednesday.
Some 40 percent of the 640 taxi and bus drivers surveyed by Lima's San Marcos University suffered from psychological problems and showed psychopathic tendencies, such as aggressive, anxious and antisocial behavior, the study said.
"Drivers showed they would not feel any guilt in injuring or running over a pedestrian," the study added.
Peru's capital, Lima, is crowded with aging, pollution-pumping taxis and buses, many of which do not obey traffic rules or stop lights.
Hundreds of people die each year in bus and taxi crashes in Peru because of bad roads, poorly maintained vehicles and recklessness by drivers. In just the last three months of last year at least 85 people were killed in crashes, according to police figures. Prosecution is rare.

Teacher Allegedly Smokes Pot With Students
 Fri Apr 8, 4:16 PM ET

VENICE, Fla. - A 34-year-old high school math teacher was arrested after two female students said he served them vodka drinks and smoked marijuana with them at his house, officials said.
Michael B. Ziemian also showed the girls how he was growing marijuana in his garage, a Sarasota County sheriff's report said.
He was arrested Wednesday and charged with possession of more than 20 grams of marijuana, cultivation of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, delivery of a controlled substance to a person under 18 years old and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
The school district put Ziemian and his wife, an elementary school teacher in the district, on administrative leave. His wife has not been charged.
The Venice High School students told investigators they went to Ziemian's home in March to make up some school work. He gave them vodka-and-tonic drinks and smoked marijuana with them from a glass pipe, the report said.
He also took the girls into the garage and showed them a cabinet that containing marijuana plants, telling them he got his seeds via the Internet from another country, the report said.
Ziemian admitted giving the girls vodka and marijuana, the report said.
He was released from jail Wednesday after posting $40,000 bail. It was unknown whether he has an attorney, and a phone message left at his home Thursday was not immediately returned.

Home of Woman in Finger Claim Searched
 Fri Apr 8,12:48 PM ET

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Investigators searched the Las Vegas home of a woman who claimed she scooped up a mouthful of finger along with her chili at a Wendy's restaurant last month.
City police, working with their counterparts in Las Vegas, served the warrant Wednesday as they investigated how a finger ended up in Anna Ayala's bowl of chili.
"We are looking into every aspect in this case," San Jose police spokeswoman Gina Tepoorten said. "We are talking to people she knows as well as the finder of the finger. ... We want to determine who this finger belongs to and how it ended up in a bowl of chili."
Police would not say what was listed in the warrant.
Ayala, 39, was at the San Jose restaurant March 22 when she claimed she scooped up the 1 1/2-long fingertip. She later filed a claim with the franchise owner, Fresno, Calif.-based JEM Management Corp.
"Just knowing that there was a human remain in my mouth ... it is disgusting. It is tearing me apart inside," Ayala told ABC's "Good Morning America" on March 28.
Wendy's spokesman Bob Bertini would not comment on the police investigation.
There was no answer at a home phone number listed for an Anna Ayala in Las Vegas. However, she told the San Jose Mercury News she would like to know what police were looking for in her home.
"I've been dragged through the mud," she said. "We've been treated like animals. I've been through too much."
On Thursday, Wendy's announced it would give a $50,000 reward to the first person providing verifiable information leading to the positive identification of the origin of the finger.
"It's very important to our company to find out the truth in this incident," said Tom Mueller, Wendy's president and chief operating officer.
Wendy's maintains the finger did not enter the food chain in its ingredients. All the employees at the San Jose store were found to have all their fingers, and no suppliers of Wendy's ingredients have reported any hand or finger injuries, the company said.
The Santa Clara County coroner's office, using a partial fingerprint to attempt to find a match in an electronic database, came up empty. DNA testing is still being conducted.

Bloodsucking leech spends month up Hong Kong hiker's nose
 Fri Apr 8, 7:31 AM ET

HONG KONG (AFP) - A Hong Kong woman hiker who washed her face in a freshwater stream unwittingly returned home with a leech embedded in her left nostril.
The woman did not realise anything was wrong until two weeks later when she felt there was something in her nose, the Hong Kong Medical Journal reported in its April edition.
A first attempt by the family doctor to remove it failed due to profuse nosebleed while a second attempt in hospital was also unsuccessful as the leech retracted into her nose, the journal said in its report on the rare complaint.
Doctors finally managed to remove it using a nasal spray to anaesthetise the five-centimetre-long (two-inch) bloodsucker a month after it had invaded her nostril.
"After two minutes, the leech slowly moved out of the antrum (sinus) and was retrieved with forceps," it said.
"This form of leech infestation has not been previously reported," it added.
The woman could have suffocated if the leech had attached itself to her larynx, the journal said.
"I did not notice any leeches in the water," the 55-year-old housewife told the South China Morning Post.
"I am used to seeing all these worms in the water while hiking."
Another member of her hiking group had also suffered a similar leech infestation and was also treated, the journal said.

Pothead granny spared jail
 Fri Apr 8, 3:23 PM ET

By Lydia Bell
LONDON (Reuters) - A 66-year-old grandmother with a taste for marijuana casserole has been spared jail despite admitting she had shared cannabis-laced cookies with fellow pensioners.
Patricia Tabram from East Lea in Northumberland, who said she uses cannabis to alleviate pains in her neck and back, pleaded guilty to possession of the drug with intent to supply.
But Judge David Hodson said he would not make a "martyr" of her when she returned to Newcastle Crown Court for sentencing on Friday. Instead, she received a six-month suspended prison sentence.
The white-haired, bespectacled granny was unrepentant, and said she would keep cooking with pot.
"I had it this morning in my scrambled eggs and I'll have it again for lunch. I'm not giving it up," she told Channel 4 News.
Tabram has become a symbol for the legalise marijuana campaign. On her website, www.grandma-eats-cannabis.com, she promises soon to provide free recipes, as well as tea towels and mugs for sale.
Last year, the government downgraded cannabis from the same class as cocaine and ecstasy to a lower class of illegal drug, which means police are not expected to arrest people for possessing small amounts but can jail them for supplying it to others.
Police said they raided Tabram's home after a tip-off in May last year and found 31 cannabis plants along with hydroponic cultivation equipment. In a later raid they found 47 bags of "skunk", a particularly strong form of the drug.
The set-up at Tabram's home "bore all the hallmarks of any sophisticated drug dealer", police said in a statement.

New woolly wonder in New Zealand as Shrek2 is shorn
 Sun Apr 3, 6:00 PM ET

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AFP) - Shrek, a New Zealand sheep who won international fame a year ago with his substantial 27.5 kilogram (60.5 pounds) fleece, has been left bleating in the background with the emergence of an even bigger woolly wonder.
Fleece from Shrek2 weighed 31 kilograms and measured three metres (9.9 feet) in length when shorn over the weekend.
David Wightman, Shrek 2's owner, said he believes the 11-year-old sheep avoided muster for the past seven years in the remote hills above his Winterslow Station near here.
The original Shrek became a national celebrity. He was flown to Wellington for an audience with Prime Minister Helen Clark and featured in a fundraising campaign for a cancer charity.

Body Suspension Convention
 Tue Apr 5, 9:04 AM ET

By Ellen Wulfhorst
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Reuters) - Tony Troiano grimaced as he was lifted off the floor by giant fishhooks pierced through the skin on his shoulders.
Within minutes, he started to spin, swing his feet and declare the painful experience "the greatest thing" ever.
"I was on Cloud Nine," the Wethersfield, Connecticut teenager said as he joined fellow body suspension practitioners at an annual convention over the weekend. "It was euphoric. It was spiritual. I'd do it again today if I wasn't so sore."
From tentative first-timers to the well practiced, more than a hundred aficionados celebrated their passion for body suspension at the three-day gathering, held in an old textile mill in Providence, Rhode Island.
To hang cost $100; just to watch cost $15 at what many say is the best such gathering for the hundreds, if not thousands, of people they estimate practice suspension across America.
"Ever stand up too fast and feel like you're about to pass out?" said Dave Post, of Albany, New York explaining why he liked hanging from hooks. "It's like you're stuck at that point."
The practice requires three-inch (7.6-cm) steel deep sea fishing hooks freshly inserted under the skin for each suspension.
A basic "suicide" hang uses hooks in the back, a chest suspension requires hooks in front, a knee suspension puts the body upside down, and the "Superman" pose requires hooks along the back and upper thighs. The hooks are attached to ropes, and pulleys slowly lift the body off the floor.
Some people spin like acrobats, some play like children on a swing and others hang solemnly. Some giggle, some cry.
"Some people have a spiritual experience, some people just have fun and some people don't like it and come right down," said Mike Giossi, a local mechanic and fan of the practice.
Jess Robins, a student from Canada, hung almost motionless from hooks inserted through the tops of her breasts. Blood poured down her belly, and her legs trembled.
Nearby, two men played a game of tug-of-war, pulling at each other with wire cables attached through their elbows.
"When I first got off the ground, I never felt pain like that in my life. But afterward, I was just filled with empowerment," said Giossi. "I've never been happier than when I came down."
Practitioners may seek the power and intensity suspension offers, said Karen Conterio, co-author of "Bodily Harm," a book about self-mutilation. Suspension also could be a rite of passage.
"It's a conquest of some sort. People are pushing the envelope more and more to attain some kind of separation and identification from society, and this is one way of doing it," she said. "Most people who probably are pretty healthy are not going to go to that extreme."
Many practitioners say suspension is somehow therapeutic.
"Look at his face. He's so serene," said Rosemary Curtis, watching her boyfriend swing slowly in the "Superman" pose. "We've had some really rough times this year, and he needed this really bad."
Not everyone was convinced. Colin Vanalstine watched but was not about to try it. "I'm afraid of needles," he said.
For such an off-beat practice, the convention is remarkably well-run, with sanitary precautions, surgical tools and almost military efficiency in preparing people for their suspension.
Some hang for a few minutes, others for an hour or more.
The biggest danger is cross-contamination, organizers said, due to so much open flesh and blood. Other dangers involve people passing out or suffering seizures, they said.
"The first couple of times, I didn't enjoy it," said Canadian Warren Hiller. "The first time I blacked out, and one time I was convulsing. But the third time I got better. I wasn't blacking out anymore."
It's not masochism, said Allen Falkner of Dallas, who has practiced suspension for 13 years. "Suspension is not about pain, it's about getting past the pain."
Advocates say suspension has been practiced since ancient times in many societies.
"It's searching for answers, trying new things," Hiller said. "You can only get pierced and tattooed so many times."

 

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