Thai coup leader, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, urged troops to smile to improve the image of the new military leadership. Soldiers were photographed grinning for the cameras with raised hands held in mock surrender and showing weaponry to curious citizens. News reports say that troops even gave over their berets and guns to locals. Schoolchildren were also allowed to peer into tanks.

Police in Cyprus are wondering why thieves would steal a tombstone instead of flowers, which is what normally goes missing from graveyards. A heavy marble slab was taken from a family tomb. A relative noticed it was gone when he went to visit the grave. Chrysoulla Neophytou, 63, told the Greek-Cypriot daily, "I came to light a candle, the place was a mess. I thought I had stumbled on another grave and made a mistake. "

A couple from a historic neighborhood near downtown Des Moines is trying to be positive about the theft of flowers from his 1880s-era home. The reason - a note left by a courteous thief thanking the owner of the flowers. Jason Jasnos told the to Des Moines Register that he found the note in his garden Sunday, a day after he caught two women clutching a bunch of posies picked from his garden.

A Swiss Bank offered an 85-year-old woman a bouquet of flowers after she was left in the vault as the bank closed. According to a statement released by the Zuercher Kantonalbank on Wednesday the woman was so caught in her thoughts that she initially failed to activate the sensors and employees at the bank apparently forgot about her.

An 85-year-old woman was trapped in the vault of a Swiss bank for four hours. Employees at the Zuercher Kantonalbank apparently forgot the woman was in the vault perusing her documents and locked it at 4:30 p. m. local time. The woman was initially so still inside the vault that she didn't activate either the motion director or the attached camera, the bank said in confirming a report that appeared in the Zurich-based daily "Tages-Anzeiger. "