A woman is suing the J. C. Penny Co. following a clash with a legless store mannequin that allegedly left her with a cracked tooth, bleeding scalp and recurring shoulder pain. The lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court seeks unspecified damages. Diana Newton, 51, of Westminster in her lawsuit has claimed the incident happened nearly a year ago when she was shopping for a blouse in women's department at company's Westminster Mall store. The only one in her size was on the mannequin, and as a salesclerk was removing the garment, the dummy's arm eventually flew off hitting her head.

The "senior citizen bandit" has pleaded guilty to at least 10 counts of armed robbery. He also pleaded guilty to one firearms count after robbing banks in three Western states,. According to Assistant U. S. Attorney, Ivy Wang Charles Manrow, a 70-year-old robber from Pennsylvania, will be sentenced early next year after entering a plea on August 10. Manrow is linked to robberies in Southern California, Fresno, Utah and Arizona.

Snakes are frequent flyers on airplanes; they are crisscrossing the skies as part of an emerging market in pet reptiles. However, they travel in cargo confined to fortified cages. Mike Osborn, a wildlife inspector with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) at the Los Angeles International Airport told NationalGeographic. com, "In my 20-odd years, I've never heard of an incident where a snake escaped into the passenger area. "

A three-day course called "Charm School Boot Camp" is offering lessons to men who have trouble picking up women. The weekend-long course is being offered in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London and Sydney and anybody willing to fork over the $1,600 fee is eligible to enroll. Charm School is run by a Michigan-based company called Charisma Arts. Men begin with lessons in attraction and are then taken on a field trip of sorts to a bar or club so instructors can assess how well they've assimilated the information. The next day, the instructors critique their students' performances and give them pointers on how they can improve. The men are then unleashed into the world again to see if they can get it right this time.

A group in Los Angeles wants to buy billboard space on Sunset Boulevard so they can put up a sign of Mel Gibson's face with the international sign for "no" over it in red, according to MSNBC's The Scoop. But the group's leader, publicist Andy Behrman, says billboard companies keep turning them down. Behrman told The Scoop, "We wanted to make a statement that anti-Semitism is not okay in Hollywood - or anywhere else. They tell us it will be fine, and then when they learn we want to protest Mel Gibson, there's suddenly some problem. "