show promoter, dubbed a "grinch" by prosecutors for selling thousands of children tickets to a nonexistent Christmas pageant, is sentenced to more that seven years in prison Wednesday. David Lee Ellisor was convicted in February of eight counts of mail fraud for a December 2003 scam where he sold $10 tickets to over 2,700 Miami-Dade County schoolchildren and parents for a "Christmas Around The World" show he claimed would be attended by ambassadors and feature live reindeer.

An Arizona man is sentenced to seven years in prison for sexually assaulting a woman sleeping next to him on a plane. During a Delta Airlines Flight from Dallas to Boston on April 5, Deepak Jahagirdar, 55, lays a blanket on a 22-year-old woman, unfastens her seatbelt, unbuttons her pants and touches her genitals.

According to the U. S. Border Patrol, a group of stranded illegal immigrants facing death in the parched Arizona desert saved themselves by using a cell phone, left by their deserted guide, to call rescue services. The group got lost in the desert near Arivaca, south of Tucson, Arizona, Wednesday after their guide abandoned them during a four-day trek across the border from Mexico.

A tabloid is making good on an offensive article that labeled a police officer who suffered disfiguring burns in a crash while on duty as "ugly. "American Media Inc. , owner of the Weekly World News, ran a list of the ''top 10 ugliest people'' in its Feb. 7 issue featuring a post-surgery photo of the disfigured officer and his wife.

An Arizona police department seeks capuchin monkey for SWAT team operations. A Special Weapons and Tactics veteran from Mesa, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, has researched the possibility of landing a $100,000 federal grant to fund a pilot program to train one monkey. Sean Truelove, the man behind the monkey proposal, told a local newspaper that the idea for the SWAT monkey came to him in a dream 18 months ago. Paramilitary SWAT teams are used by major police departments in the U. S. in hostage situations and others involving heavily armed criminals. According to Truelove, the monkey could be trained to unlock doors and search buildings for police on command. The capuchin monkey is considered one of the smartest primates, known by many for its decades-long association with organ grinders. The monkeys weigh three to eight pounds and live for 15 to 20 years. Capuchin monkeys, native to southern central America, have been used to help disabled people, and are able to perform such tasks as retrieving items, serving food and opening and closing doors. The Mesa, Arizona police department issued a statement saying: "We have always encouraged our department members to seek creative and innovative ways to improve public safety in our community. " But the department also said the idea of training a capuchin SWAT monkey had not been cleared by the department's executive ranks.