A jury on Wednesday sentenced a Virginia woman to one year in jail for trying to extort money from the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain by putting a dead mouse in a bowl of soup. She has also been fined a $2,500. Carla Patterson, 38, and her accomplice, also her son, Ricky Patterson, 22, sought $500,000 from the chain after claiming they found the rodent in the vegetable soup the woman ordered at a Newport News restaurant on Mother's Day weekend in 2004.

A Japanese monkey escaped the Roanoke city zoo and fled to a nearby forest on Sunday. Officials shut down the park on Monday and embarked on a search in the neighboring forest where they heard her up the trees. Dubbed Oops, the 20-pound Japanese macaque and her siblings were transferred from their cells for cleaning before she vanished early Sunday.

Highlighting the importance of animals, the newly seated Mayor of Montana city has come up with an innovative idea, "The Goat Experiment. " The experiment aimed at removing undesirable native weeds is seen as an alternative to chemicals. Allyson Adams has deployed nearly 200 goats which had been brought from Conrad to eat weeds that threaten Virginia City's native plants.

A teen in Virginia has set the North American record for reciting the digits of pi. Gaurav Raja, 15, recited 10,980 digits from memory, breaking the previous record of 10,625.

New Jersey once again needs a new slogan. State tourism officials have scrapped the state's new slogan, "Come See for Yourself," because West Virginia and other states previously used it. "Come See For Yourself," was New Jersey's second try at a new tagline in less than year. It was the product of a statewide contest, after then-acting Governor Richard Codey rejected a consultant's offering of: "We'll Win You Over. "