Belgian town blasts music to drive Roma away

A group of Roma camped by a Belgian town faced a rude awakening on Wednesday: the mayor ordered that they be blasted with music to drive them away. The Roma had arrived on Sunday in Landen, some 50 kilometers east of the Belgian capital of Brussels. They agreed with a landowner to park 14 caravans there until Tuesday, according to Landen mayor Gino Debroux.

Man accused of stabbing watermelon as threat to wife

A Connecticut man faces charges of threatening his wife after stabbing a large butcher's knife through a watermelon and leaving it on the kitchen table for her to see, authorities said on Tuesday. Carmine Cervellino, 49, was arraigned on Monday on misdemeanor counts of threatening and disorderly conduct, Thomaston Police Department Chief James Campbell said. Cervellino was arrested on Saturday and released after posting $500 bond.

Three-carat diamond ring found in Virginia thrift shop

Employees at the national thrift store chain Goodwill discovered a 3-carat diamond ring among piles of donated secondhand clothes and shoes, and it was auctioned on Tuesday for more than $11,000. An anonymous person made the donation last month at the Annandale, Virginia, store, stashing the ring in a Ziploc bag along with other jewelry.

Japanese artist jailed for 'vagina boat' vows legal fight

A Japanese artist who made figures of Lady Gaga and a kayak modeled on her vagina said on Wednesday from jail she was "outraged" by her arrest and vowed a court fight against obscenity charges. Megumi Igarashi (pictured above), 42, says she was challenging a culture of "discrimination" against discussion of the vagina in Japanese society.

US jury: Brothers must split $1 million lottery loot

A Pennsylvania jury decided on Wednesday that two estranged half brothers must equally divide the winnings from a $1 million lottery ticket after one of them claimed he deserved all the money and the other insisted he was due half of it. Ira Sharp, 52, and Charles Meehan, 45, both of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, had been fighting over the ticket since it was purchased at a local bar on May 21, 2013. Sharp maintained that he had given a $20 bill to Meehan to buy the ticket with the understanding that they would split the money if they won.

Man seeking Katy Perry charged with trespass

Police charged a man with breaking into the Kennedy family compound in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, claiming that he was looking for pop singer Katy Perry. Officers went to the house in Hyannis Port after Ted Kennedy Jr, the son of late Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, called police late Tuesday saying he was worried an intruder was in the compound with his teenage son.

Kerry confers 'knighthood' on departing Hague

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday heaped praise on William Hague after his resignation as British foreign secretary and even went as far as conferring on him a premature knighthood via Twitter. "Will miss working so closely with my friend Sir William - when @WilliamJHague spoke, we all listened," Kerry said in a tweet on his page on the social media site, to which a photograph of the two men was attached.

Billionaire's plan would chop California into six states

A long-shot effort to break California into six separate states got a boost on Monday, when the billionaire venture capitalist behind the proposal said he had gathered enough signatures to place it on the ballot in two years. Timothy Draper, a founder of a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that has invested in Twitter and Skype, among other companies, has been agitating for months for a ballot initiative to chop the most populous US state into smaller entities.

Kentucky man charged with pizza prank at police station

A Kentucky man already charged with shoplifting beer added to his troubles when he made a prank call from the police station to order five pizzas, police said on Thursday. Michael Harp, 29, had been arrested on Tuesday night after shoplifting $36 worth of beer from a convenience store, said Corbin Police Major Rob Jones.

Reuters

(China Daily 07/20/2014 page4)