More Fun With The AP

Wasn't this a South Park episode?

For nearly 20 years -- ever since Pete Costello was 8 -- his mother has collected disability benefits on his behalf. In meetings with Social Security officials and psychologists, he appeared mentally retarded and unable to communicate. His mother insisted he couldn't read or write, shower, take care of himself or drive a car.

But now prosecutors say it was all a huge fraud, and they have video of Costello contesting a traffic ticket to prove it.

"He's like any other person trying to get out of a traffic ticket," Assistant U.S. Attorney Norman Barbosa said Tuesday.

(...)

The benefits cited in the indictment totaled $111,000.

Barbosa said the government does not know whether Costello is retarded to some degree, but he clearly has been "exaggerating whatever he may have, if any."

This sounds a bit like overkill...

A fed-up mother had her 12-year-old son arrested for allegedly rummaging through his great-grandmother's things and playing with his Christmas present early.

The mother called police Sunday after learning her son had disobeyed orders and repeatedly taken a Game Boy from its hiding place at his grandmother's house next door and played it. He was arrested on petty larceny charges, taken to the local police station in handcuffs and held until his mother picked him up after church.

I can't improve on the AP's headline: Flatulence Forces Plane to Land (hell, even the URL is kinda amusing - in a vulgar, unsophisticated way, of course):

It is considered polite to light a match after passing gas. [It is?] Not while on a plane.

An American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Monday morning after a passenger lit a match to disguise the scent of flatulence, authorities said.

The Dallas-bound flight was diverted to Nashville after several passengers reported smelling burning sulfur from the matches, said Lynne Lowrance, spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority. All 99 passengers and five crew members were taken off and screened while the plane was searched and luggage was screened.

The FBI questioned a passenger who admitted she struck the matches in an attempt to conceal a ''body odor,'' Lowrance said....

(...)

The flight took off again, but the woman was not allowed back on the plane. The woman, who was not identified, was not charged in the incident.

We're all doomed.