The nation that gave the world counterfeit toys, fake toothpaste and poisoned pet food also gave 3 billion television viewers a bogus fireworks show of Olympic proportions Friday night, according to media reports Monday. The spectacular fireworks telecast to billions of viewers around the world at the end of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics Friday night were largely faked using computer animation and the audience wasn't told, the Beijing Times newspaper revealed.

Motorists traveling at 65-miles-per-hour stopped on a busy 12-lane freeway east of Los Angeles on Sunday to scoop up money that fluttered out of a bag full of cash a motorcyclist had dropped. California Highway Patrol officers said that traffic was briefly halted on the eastbound San Bernardino Freeway as motorists stopped to grab cash that was blowing across the highway then got back into their cars with the money and left.

An Olympics more to some men's tastes is brewing this weekend in this small Finnish town. The winner receives his wife's weight in beer. More than 50 couples from countries around Europe are registered for Saturday's 16th annual Wife Carrying World Championships. The rules are simple, even if the contest isn't necessarily easy. The wife-even a borrowed one- is carried by the man-piggyback, on his shoulders, or however he can manage-around a quarter-kilometer (. 15 miles) course made up of sand, asphalt and grass over logs and through three feet of water.

Three people are in U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on charges they stole ATM PIN numbers enabling them to grab at least $2 million from Citibank checking and savings accounts. Although the extent of the breach is unknown, the alleged crooks pilfered the PINs between October 2007 and March when bank customers used ATMS inside an unknown number of 7-Eleven stores. Around 5,700 Citibank ATMs are located in U. S. 7-Elevens. However, the bank neither owns or operates the automatic tellers.

A 12-year-old girl took her dad to court after he grounded her for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet. And she won. The father banned his daughter from going on a school trip after she used a friend's computer to chat on websites he had blocked at home, and then posted pictures of herself online that her dad considered inappropriate.