A Texas man is facing charges for selling liquor without a license after he was found peddling bottles of vodka containing dead baby rattlesnakes.

Bob Popplewell, who runs "Bayou Bob's Brazos River Rattlesnake Ranch" tourist attraction west of Fort Worth, was believed to be selling the vodka in the Asian community, where snakes are seen having aphrodisiac properties, state authorities said.

Popplewell faces misdemeanor charges for not having a liquor license but will not be charged over the 10-inch (25-cm) baby snakes in the bottles.

"I've been with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission for 20 years," Sergeant Charlie Cloud said. "This is the most bizarre thing I've been involved in."

In some of East Asia, parts of snakes and other animals are thought to have medicinal qualities and are used to make soups, powders and other preparations. In Vietnam, for example, the serpents are added to bottles of rice whisky and wine.



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A war on gophers waged by two Canadian men went awry this weekend when a device used to blast the rodents in their holes sparked a massive grass fire in a rural area near Calgary, Alberta, causing more than C$200,000 ($197,000) in damages.

Despite a ban on fires in the tinder-dry area of Springbank, just northeast of Calgary's city limits, two men went into a field to kill gophers using a device called a Rodenator, fire officials said on Monday.

The device pumps a mixture of propane and oxygen into gopher holes, which is then ignited, and, according to the manufacturer's Web site, the resulting blast creates a shock wave that kills the gopher and collapses its tunnel system.

"We had a couple of acreage owners out taking care of their rodent problem with this device," said Captain Joe Garssi of the municipal district of Rocky View's fire department.

"They did a few holes successfully and then hit a hole that didn't go in very far. When they filled it with propane it over-filled the hole...and when they ignited it (fire) flashed
out of the hole into the grass beside them."

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A British cash machine became a big hit this week after it started paying out twice as much money as it should.

The ATM, outside a supermarket in they city of Hull in  northern England, began spewing out double the money Tuesday afternoon and continued doing so for several hours, drawing a crowd of hundreds eager to cash in on the mistake.

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A shoplifter looking to make a quick getaway from a Dutch supermarket after stealing a packet of meat left police a crucial piece of evidence, his 12-year-old son.

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Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the call girl at the center of the Elliot Spitzer sex scandal, watched the potential earnings from her new-found fame drop by $1 million on Tuesday as old nude videos of her emerged.

Adult DVD distributor "Girls Gone Wild" discovered videos of a semi-nude Dupre, now 22, in its archives and plans to sell them on its Web site, a company spokesman said.

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A painful breakup with his wife has prompted a man to put his entire life _ his house, his car, his job, even his friends _ up for sale online in an effort to start over.

Ian Usher, a British immigrant to Australia, said Tuesday he would auction everything he owns and more on e-Bay starting June 22.

“On the day it's all sold and settled, I intend to walk out of my front door with my wallet in one pocket and my passport in the other, nothing else at all,” Usher says on his Web site.

Up for bid is Usher's three bedroom house in the western city of Perth and everything inside it, his car, motorcycle, jet ski and parachuting gear.

Usher says he is also selling a one-time introduction to his friends and a trial run at his job _ a plan endorsed by his friends and his employer.

In media interviews on Tuesday, Usher said he wants a fresh start after realizing that most things in his current life remind him of the relationship he had with the wife of five years whom he broke up with more than a year ago.

“Everything that I have _ the furniture in the house _ all has memories attached to it,” Usher, 44, told Seven Network television. “It's time to shed the old, and in with the new.”

Usher said his life will be sold in one lot, and that bidders should expect to pay more than 420,000 Australian dollars (US$390,000; $250,000), which is the upper end of a realtor's valuation of his house that he has posted online.

Joy Jones, who co-owns the rug store in Perth where Usher worked as a shop assistant, said she liked the auction idea and wanted to help out. Joy Jones Rugs is offering the successful bidder a two-week trial, which could be extended for three months and then become permanent if it works out.

“When Ian came with this idea _ because we had seen him go through a breakup of marriage and pain and bits and pieces _ I thought it was really exciting,” Jones told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “We thought, why not give it a go?”

Usher said his friends in Perth had also proved willing to be introduced to the highest bidder _ allowing him to advertise his auction as offering a complete lifestyle.

Usher, who was born in Darlington, England, plans to open the auction at noon Perth time (0300 GMT) on June 22 and accept the last bid exactly one week later.

He said he hopes to set off traveling, including a visit to his mother in England, as soon as the auction is over.

“My current thoughts are to then head to the airport, and ask at the flight desk where the next flight with an available seat goes to, and to get on that and see where life takes me from there,” he wrote online.

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It is the one moment every man wants to get right -- and which London floor-fitter Lefkos Hajji could hardly have got more wrong.

The luckless 28 year-old's dreams of giving his sweetheart, Leanne, 26, the ultimate proposal have literally vanished into thin air.

Hajji, of Hackney, east London, had concealed a $12,000 engagement ring inside a helium balloon. The idea was that she would pop the balloon as he popped the question.

But as he left the shop, a gust of wind pulled the balloon from his hand and he watched the ring -- and quite possibly the affections of his girlfriend -- sailing away over the rooftops. "I couldn't believe it," he told The Sun newspaper.

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A Nicolas Cage impersonator was treated like a star as he watched Real Madrid play AS Roma last week in Champions League match.

Paolo Calabresi, an Italian TV presenter, watched the match with Madrid  president Ramon Calderon from his box at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium. “The truth is I was a little scared they would find me out, but from the first moment everyone was friendly with me”, Calabresi told Marca newspaper on Wednesday. “We knew there would be many repercussions. My phone won't stop ringing”.

Videos posted on Spanish media Web sites showed Calabresi, who's English  has an accent, being presented with a personalized Nicolas Cage team jersey from Calderon.

Calabresi also met and posed for photographs with Madrid forward Robinho.

The 43-year-old Rome native bears a resemblance to the actor, who won the  best actor Oscar for "Leaving Las Vegas'' in 1996. He gained access by using the name of the same U.S. agency that had arranged a similar meeting for actor Sylvester Stallone at the Bernabeu last year.

Calabresi said the plan was originally initiated three years ago, when the two clubs last met.

Madrid lost the match 2-1 and was eliminated from the Champions League 4-2 on aggregate.

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A Finnish library-goer apparently thought 'better late than never' and quietly returned a book on loan for more than 100 years to a library in Vantaa, in southern Finland.

The library had long since lost track of the loan but welcomed back to its collections the bound copy of a 1902 volume of Vartija, an active religious monthly periodical at the time.

"We are unclear when exactly it was borrowed and who returned it. There weren't any documents with it," librarian Minna Saastamoinen told Reuters. "There is an old note attached to the book which says there is a fine of 10 pennies a week for late returns," she added.

The library sticker inside the cover, and the old-fashioned handwriting on it, showed the book was last officially loaned out at the beginning of the last century, she said.

Finland is known for a comprehensive library network with more than 900 libraries for its 5.3 million inhabitants.

In 2006, each Finn on average visited a library 11 times and borrowed nearly 20 books.

The periodical was borrowed such a long time ago that the Korso branch of the Vantaa library, where the tome was finally handed in, did not even exist when the book was borrowed.

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One hundred and fifty young women thundered down Amsterdam's most famed fashion street in stiletto heels on Thursday, racing for a 10-thousand euro (15-thousand US dollar) prize.

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The biblical Israelites may have been high on a hallucinogenic plant when Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, according to a new study by an Israeli psychology professor.

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"Forbidden to die". This is the decree imposed by the Mayor in Sarpourenx, a town situated between Bayonne and Pau, in Bearn, to be precise.

Mayor Gérard Lalanne has decided, through a municipal decree, to forbid “all persons who do not have a family grave in the cemetery and want to be buried in Sarpourenx, die at this town”.

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It is billed as the best pop culture collection ever assembled, ranging from the gun used to kill the assassin of President John F. Kennedy to the Wicked Witch of the West's hat from "The Wizard of Oz”.

Collected over the past 25 years by South Florida property developer Anthony Pugliese, the collection, which also includes a whip and the holy grail from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, will be put up for auction next month in Las Vegas.

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Patients who cannot make it to a GP surgery during the day will be able to visit an out-of-hours doctor in Sainsbury's under a new pilot project.

The supermarket giant opened a surgery at one of its Manchester stores on Monday, allowing local residents to combine a shopping trip with a late doctor's appointment.

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An actress-turned-lawmaker in southern Mexico is on the defensive after a racy clip of her performing a striptease in a chestnut wig and lacy red lingerie made its way to the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube.

Before winning a seat in Veracruz state's legislature in September, Dalia Perez worked as a local television show presenter and she co-starred in the 2006 movie "Xalapeno Chiles," playing a table dancer named Ana having an affair with a powerful politician.

 

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Italians are used to buying bogus Gucci bags or Rolex watches to look stylish but police found a new height of craftsmanship and cunning when they broke up a ring selling fake Ferrari cars for a fraction of the real price.

Police accused 15 people of building the blood red sports cars and selling them to car fanatics on a budget, most of whom knew they were buying a counterfeit classic.

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