In the News

$7,500 Mistakenly Left in Shoes Donated to Goodwill
It took some fancy footwork, but a Goodwill store in Glen Carbon Illinois has found the owner of $7,500 in cash mistakenly donated with old shoes.
A newcomer to the United States from Bulgaria found the money this month on her first day at the Goodwill store in Glen Carbon. Teodora Petrova turned over the money to management.
The cash was found in a shoebox, bundled in large denominations.
Goodwill found the family through hints on scraps of paper left in the box. The donor apparently also called the Goodwill office, figuring he was the source of the cash.
The shoes belonged to the man's recently deceased parents. The store said he didn't want to be identified. The family has offered Petrova a gift for turning over the money.
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UPDATE: Goodwill worker gets $500 for honesty
Goodwill announced a Glen Carbon, Ill., employee will receive $500 after she discovered $7,500 in cash stuffed in a shoebox and turned it in.
Teodora Petrova, who had just arrived in the United States from her native Bulgaria two months earlier, discovered the shoebox full of money while sifting through donated merchandise at the store during her first day on the job Nov. 7, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Tuesday.
Goodwill said 12 people called the store to say the money might be theirs after news reports of the find, but slips of paper found in the box matched the story of three Glen Carbon-area brothers who had donated items from their parents' home after the death of their mother three months ago. The brothers asked not to be identified, the Post-Dispatch said.
"One of the brothers was watching the story over the weekend and thought to himself: 'I just donated shoes on Thursday,'" said Phyllis Weiss, a spokesperson for Goodwill.
Lewis Chartock, president and chief executive of Goodwill, said Petrova will receive a $500 reward for her honesty in turning the money in to managers.
"We want everyone in our system to know how proud of her we are," he said.
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La. town finally gets a ZIP code
The U.S. Postal Service announced the 7,000-person town of Larose, La., has been given its own ZIP code, meaning residents will finally receive mail at home.
Residents previously had to visit post offices in the neighboring towns of Cut Off and Lockport to pick up their mail, but the issuing of ZIP code 70373 to the community means that as of Monday, mail was to be delivered to boxes at the homes of Larose residents, The (Lafourche Parish, La.) Daily Comet reported.
Daisy Comeaux, spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service, said the move comes after a June 16 community survey found most respondents supported the idea of bringing mail carriers to Larose.
"It was a very lengthy process, but for the Postal Service to make any type of change like that we have to go through that type of process," Comeaux said.
"We're really pleased we were able to give that service to the customers. It will add convenience, community service and identity for residents of Larose."
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Spam sales up as economy heads down

One factory in the United States has been busy for months as the rest of the economy slows down -- the Hormel Foods in Austin Minn. that makes Spam.
The factory in Austin, Minn., has been operating two shifts a day seven days a week producing the canned lunch meat, Workers, with all the overtime they can handle, have been told the long hours are likely to continue indefinitely.
Dan Bartel, a business agent for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 9, said that Spam "seems to do well when hard times hit." The lunch meat is reasonably priced protein, if not gourmet food.
Other budget food items are doing well. A spokeswoman for Safeway said sales of rice and beans are up and surveys found that pancake mix and beer sold well in October.
"We'll probably see Spam lines instead of soup lines," Bartel said.

In the News

Prank NY Times: 'All the news we hope to print'
Commuters nationwide found out during Wednesday's morning rush hour that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had ended. Global warming, health care spending and the economy's problems were on their way to solutions too.
Some 1.2 million copies of a spoof of The New York Times, dated July 4, 2009, were handed out by the liberal pranksters the "Yes Men."
The 14-page parody announces the abolition of corporate lobbying, a maximum wage for CEOs and a recall notice for all cars that run on gasoline.

You don’t want to be in a confine space

4 yr old Girl calls 911 for help with her math homework

Stone Age Temple May Be Birthplace of Civilization

It's more than twice as old as the Pyramids, or even the written word. When it was built, saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths still roamed, and the Ice Age had just ended.
The elaborate temple at Gobelki Tepe in southeastern Turkey, near the Syrian border, is staggeringly ancient: 11,500 years old, from a time just before humans learned to farm grains and domesticate animals.
According to the German archaeologist in charge of excavations at the site, it might be the birthplace of agriculture, of organized religion — of civilization itself.
"This is the first human-built holy place," Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute says in the November issue of Smithsonian magazine.

Record litter boosts population of rare Komondor dogs by 25%

One of the world's rarest dogs has seen its UK population boosted by a quarter after a record litter of nine pups.
Kyra gave birth to Britain's biggest-ever litter of Komondors, which are worth £1,000 each. The breed is known as the world's hairiest dog because their fur grows in long dreadlocks which resemble a 'mop' reaching the floor.
There were only 40 Komondors in Britain but the breed's population has gone up by a quarter thanks to the unprecedented litter. Each fluffy pup is identical and so they have been daubed with a different colour on their tails so that their owners can keep track of them. The method has also helped name them with the litter known as Red, Blue, Purple, Green, Silver, Brown, Pink, White and Tiny - named because he was slightly smaller than the others.

Longest beard in the world

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A Surrey, B.C., man is hoping he may soon be recognized as having the world's longest beard on a living male. Three judges measured Sarwan Singh's beard at 2.33 meters, or seven feet 7.75 inches, on Tuesday at a special ceremony at the Akal Academy where Singh is a music teacher.