California legislators are on an amendment and enactment mode, targeting principally the state's various driving laws. Among the measures under consideration are a prohibition on drivers carrying live animals on their laps while behind the wheel. Another proposal seeks to ban truants and high school dropouts from driving, while one bill urges a study on the danger silent electric cars hold for blind pedestrians.

Police in Jacksonville, Florida were called when a restaurant worker spotted a burglar who was trapped in an air vent while apparently trying to climb down. The suspect was found with his leg dangling from a slot directly above the restaurant's grill, which was smothered with hot oil. Upon seeing the hanging limb, Mandarin restaurant manager Richard Angers alerted the owner, Rana Escamilla, who called the authorities.

A teenager from South Africa has developed an unusual yet strong bond with a 10-foot long Burmese long python, a bond that has been sustained for two years. The teenager, 11th-grader Simone Naidoo, got the python named Theo after falling in love with snakes at 10 years old. She saw the slithery creatures displayed at a window during a grade school fair.

More than half a dozen artworks made by a notorious cult killer at the Dorchester Penitentiary in New Brunswick have been added to the collection of "murderabilia" offered for auction by a U. S. website. MurderAuction. com, is a novelty site that rounds up and sells personal effects, artworks, paintings, letters, and other knick knacks owned by, or associated with infamous criminals in recent history to a niche market of crime memorabilia collectors.

A sculptor in England has been so humiliated after his latest opus intended to depict Saddam Hussein's wife had been mistaken for trash. Graham Hudson contemporary sculpture, a collage of oil drum, cable wheels, cardboard boxes, paint and adhesive tape is fast becoming a subject of ridicule among passers-by in Holland Park who have mistaken the work of art for rubbish.