Two-year sentence for couple who caged kids
A judge sentenced an Ohio couple to two years in prison for endangering and abusing some of their 11 foster children by locking them in caged bunk beds.
“I thought the sentence should have been harsher,” said Huron County Prosecutor Russ Leffler, who had asked for 12-year for Michael and Sharen Gravelle. “Bumps and bruises can heal, but the psychological damage can last for a very long time, Leffler said, adding the couple had been ordered to pay $11,000 for the children’s counseling.” The Gravelles were freed by Common Pleas Judge Earl McGimpsey pending an appeal of their convictions for child endangering and abuse involving the 11 special-needs children under their care. The children were removed from the Gravelles’ home in 2005.

Cross-dressing lawyer hangs up his dress
A male lawyer who appeared in court dressed in women’s clothes as a protest against what he said was New Zealand’s overly-masculine judiciary was suspended Wednesday after being found to be in contempt of court.

The High Court found Rob Moodie, a 68-year-old, balding man who appeared in court in dresses and toting a handbag, was in contempt for circulating suppressed documents outside the court in one of his cases. Moodie officially changed his name to “Miss Alice” as part of his protest against the “old boys network” that he said runs the nation’s judiciary, and was granted an award for the most bizarre conduct by a lawyer in 2006 by London’s The Times newspaper. The protest began after a coroner’s inquest largely blamed a farming couple for the collapse of a bridge on their property built by the army. Moodie obtained documents apportioning much of the blame for the collapse to faulty wood used by New Zealand Defense Force engineers, and posted the report on the Internet despite a judge’s order it not be distributed. The High Court on Wednesday found Moodie guilty of contempt of court, suspended him for three months, fined him and ordered him to pay costs. Moodie announced after the ruling he would quit the law altogether, and end his cross-dressing protest because he no longer needed to appear “in a 19th-century Alice in Wonderland environment that allows pomp, self-importance and deference to the court to eclipse the truth.”

Man gets death for ant-breeding scam
A Chinese man has been sentenced to death for conning people out of 3 billion yuan ($387 million) in a giant scam to breed ants, local media said on Thursday.
Wang Zhendong, from the northeastern province of Liaoning, fabricated a business purported to be making wine, tea and medical elixirs using mature ants, the Beijing News said. In parts of China, black ants are sold by the bagful to be steeped in tea or soaked in liquor as a natural remedy for ailments such as arthritis. Wang sold packages of ants to the investors for up to as much as 10,000 yuan ($1,290) when they were only worth 200 yuan, China Central Television reported. More than 10,000 people, lured by the promise of returns of up to 60 percent, signed 100,000 contracts with Wang’s bogus company before the case came under investigation in June 2005. Investigators could only recover 10 million yuan of the money raised by Wang, the Beijing News said. One investor was so distraught at losing his money he killed himself, the newspaper said.

Man allegedly fakes kidnap to hide crash
A man who allegedly faked his own kidnapping to keep his wife from finding out he crashed her new car could face criminal charges, police said.
Jorge Alberto Mejia, 35, told police two kidnappers held him up at gunpoint at a San Rafael bar Saturday and ordered him to drive to Santa Rosa, California, where he purposely crashed the car into a wall to escape. Under questioning Monday, Mejia admitted to investigators he made the story up, including detailed descriptions of the nonexistent kidnappers. “As far as we can tell, he was alone in the car,” police spokeswoman Margo Rohrbacher said. Mejia was actually heading to a casino in Sonoma County, California, when he accidentally crashed his wife’s 2007 Ford Focus and was worried about how she would react, Rohrbacher said. Police were still considering whether to file charges against Mejia for making a false report.

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Bello the clown’s mini-bike returned
Bello Nock, the daredevil clown, was all smiles on Sunday when he was reunited with his lost little bike.


Circus performer bello nock examines his "bitty bike.
The star of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus thanked Ricky Robinson, who found Bello’s shiny foot-high, 6-inch-wide contraption Friday night outside a restaurant on Manhattan’s West Side. “Give me a hug. I need my bike. That is my bike. Thank you, buddy,” Bello said, outside Madison Square Garden, where the circus was performing. In exchange for returning the bike, Robinson, 54, will receive a $1,000 reward, a new bicycle donated by Toys R Us, and free tickets to Knicks games and the circus show named for Bello, “Bellobration.” The bitty bike was taken from a Manhattan street Friday. Bello and two fellow clowns had put on an impromptu show for a passing camera crew, when Bello rested his bike against a street sign and forgetfully walked away.

Google Fools: Web service through toilet
Presiding over a company with a market value of $143 billion apparently gives Silicon Valley’s most famous billionaires a good sense of humor -- and a case of corporate potty mouth.

Senior executives at Google Inc. launched their annual April Fools’ Day prank on Sunday, posting a link on the company’s home page to a site offering consumers free high-speed wireless Internet through their home plumbing systems. Code-named “Dark Porcelain,” Google said its “Toilet Internet Service Provider” (TiSP) works with Microsoft Corp.’s new Windows Vista operating system. But sorry - septic tanks are incompatible with the system’s requirements. The gag included a mock press release quoting Google co-founder and president Larry Page, a step-by-step online installation manual, and a scatological selection of Frequently Asked Questions. On some Google sites, the company’s official logo -- a multicolored “Google” that changes according to the season and on holidays -- substituted a commode for the second “g.” There’s actually a thriving little underground community that’s been studying this exact solution for a long time,” Page said in the facetious statement.