Authorities said they’ve arrested a suspect in the rash of so-called “Butt Bandit” vandalism cases. County Attorney Eric Scott said a 35-year-old man was arrested early Wednesday morning. Formal charges have not yet been filed. Some vandal had been skipping from one building to another at night, pressing his naked buttocks, groin or both on windows.

Store owners, church workers and school janitors have had to wash lotion and petroleum jelly off the windows he selects.

Local residents found some humor in the strange brand of graffiti and had dubbed the vandal the “Butt Bandit.”

Valentine Police Chief Ben McBride called it “the weirdest case I’ve ever seen.”

The New Jersey councilman who allegedly urinated on a crowd of concertgoers from the balcony of a Washington, D.C. nightclub swore off booze on Sunday — two days after he was busted for the embarrassing stunt.

Jersey City councilman Steven Lipski has reportedly been arrested for urinating on a crowd of concertgoers from the balcony of a Washington D.C. nightclub.

“I’ve resolved not to touch alcohol again,” two-term Jersey City councilman Steve Lipski told the Fox 5 New York.

He went on to say that the incident was “deeply humiliating, very embarrassing” and troubling,” the Daily News reported.

The 44-year-old Democratic councilman refused to admit to the lewd stunt.

“I can’t comment on that,” he told Fox5 News. “I’m going to continue to do all the good things, and I’m not going to let this overshadow me.”

Lipski was in D.C. to see a Grateful Dead tribute band and was spotted relieving himself by one of the club’s staffers around 9:50 p.m., club sources told the Daily News. He was charged with simple assault.

Messages left at Lipski’s council office, and a Jersey City listing under his name were not immediately returned.

Lipski is now denying the whole incident claiming that he simply spilled a drink. Granted the crowd was partying and perhaps a little lit, but have you ever been so drunk that you couldn’t tell the difference between liqueur and piss?

I couldn’t resist making this.

Canada’s farm minister has apologized for making tasteless jokes about a fatal listeriosis outbreak and saying he hoped it had killed off his main political rival.

The outbreak at a Maple Leaf Foods deli meat plant has been linked to at least 16 deaths and prompted one of Canada’s biggest food recalls.

The Canadian Press reported that during a conference call between officials to discuss the crisis last month, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz had quipped, “This is like a death by a thousand cuts. Or should I say cold cuts.”

On hearing about a new death in the Atlantic province of Prince Edward Island, Ritz said: “Please tell me it’s Wayne Easter.” Easter is the farm spokesman for the opposition Liberal party and comes from the island.

“I want to offer my most humble and heartfelt regrets to the families of those affected by this tragedy. I did not intend to add to their suffering and I very deeply apologize for that,” Ritz said in a statement on Wednesday night.

He also apologized to Easter, who has called for Ritz to quit over the Conservative government’s handling of the outbreak.

“This is no joking matter,” Easter told CTV television late on Wednesday, slamming what he called Ritz’s “total insensitivity.”

Ritz’s comments were the latest in a series of gaffes to hit the Conservatives, who are campaigning to retain power ahead of an Oct 14 election.

Classy.

Can you guess what he is thinking?

A Spanish politician’s public description of how he lost his virginity in a brothel has angered his female counterparts, who accused him of encouraging prostitution.

Miguel Angel Revilla, head of the government of the northern region of Cantabria, told a television interviewer earlier this week that he had paid the first time he had sex at the age of 18.

Female members of the regional parliament from the opposition conservative Popular Party were outraged. “As the head of the regional government, he should be an example for the young people of Cantabria,” they said in a communique.

“Instead he encourages them to pay for their first sexual experience.”

Thursday, Revilla, a member of a regional party, accused his critics of hypocrisy and said they were unable to find matters of substance on which to attack him.

“There are major problems which need to be addressed now, not what a poor 18-year-old did,” said Revilla, who is now 65, adding: ” Ninety-nine percent of Spanish men did it back then.”

Ah, the good ‘ol days.

Police say a 20-year-old woman faces an aggravated assault charge after she bit her boyfriend, broke a picture frame across his face and swung at him with a sword during an argument about him not doing the dishes.

The woman was arrested Thursday afternoon at the couple’s apartment, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported on its Web site.

The 21-year-old man told police that he became involved in an argument because the woman was upset that the dishes were not clean. Police Lt. Paul Henderson said the woman told the man to leave the apartment, but he refused.

Henderson said the woman then tried to physically remove the man. During the ensuing struggle, the woman bit the man’s right shoulder and broke a picture frame across his face, causing visible cuts, Henderson said.

The woman then grabbed an approximately 2-foot sword and swung it at him, but missed, police said.

The woman was released from a Mansfield jail after posting a $10,000 bond, jail officials said.

What’s with all these people carrying (and using!) swords this year? And did she actually think swordplay would persuade him into doing housework?

Police closed down a Berlin sweet shop after discovering the owner was selling chocolates and lollipops laced with hallucinogenic mushrooms and marijuana.

The 23-year old owner of the shop in the trendy east Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg, an area known for its vibrant night life, was taken into custody on suspicion of drug-dealing.

“In the shop we found 120 pieces of magic mushroom chocolate and countless cannabis lollipops,” said police, who confiscated around 70 sachets containing various drugs, about 20 marijuana joints, a range of pills and some jars of drug-laced honey.

Police said one customer, who appeared intoxicated, was arrested after trying to buy a bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms from an officer in the shop.

Considering the abandoned crack dens and street corners that serve as “drug stores” today, I think this guy was on to something with his trendy lollipop shop idea.

A French court sentenced a doctor on Monday to three years in jail for posing as a plastic surgeon and endangering patients by operating on them illegally in a derelict Marseille clinic.

Michel Maure went on trial in June accused of luring hundreds of patients to the dirty premises under false pretences between 2002 and 2004 and carrying out painful, unhygienic operations on them.

Maure was also sentenced to pay a 75,000 euro ($107,600) fine and to compensate his victims, about 100 of whom had complained of disfigurement and permanent damage to their health.

He went on the run while the court prepared its ruling and was arrested in Spain on August 19 after being spotted on a luxury yacht. Spain is expected to hand him over to France within days.

Maure was a qualified doctor but not a trained plastic surgeon. He was struck off the list of recognized French doctors in 2007 over his activities at the Marseille clinic.

French media have reported that the disgraced doctor had proclaimed himself “one of the greatest surgeons in the world.”

How well do you research your doctors?

Prosecutors in Russia want to ban the award-winning satirical U.S. cartoon South Park, calling the series “extremist” after receiving viewer complaints, a spokeswoman said Monday.

South Park, a cartoon aimed at adults and featuring a group of nine-year olds in a Colorado ski town, has courted controversy from its 1997 debut, parodying celebrities, politicians, religion, gay marriage and Saddam Hussein.

Basmanny regional prosecutors office spokeswoman Valentina Titova said investigators filed a motion after deciding an episode broadcast on Moscow television station 2×2 in January “bore signs of extremist activity.”

The Russian Union of Christians of Evangelical Faith had asked prosecutors to ban South Park after it said 20 experts had studied the show for its effect on young viewers.

The group’s leader, Konstantin Bendas, said “South Park is just one of many cartoons that need to be banned from open broadcast…as it insults the feelings of religious believers and incites religious and national hatred.”

“Our complaint is against a lot of cartoons, but this one was from South Park season three, episode 15,” he said.

The episode, called “Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics” on the cartoon’s website www.southparkstudios.com, first aired in December, 1999, and features the cast singing Christmas carols.

Let me get this straight… Russia, Russia, is scared of Mr. Hankey?! You would think with the recent history of religious conflict in the former Soviet Union, South Park would look rather, well, cartoonish to those folks.

A JetBlue flight from Boston, Massachusetts, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was diverted Saturday when a fight broke out after someone was smoking in the bathroom, federal officials said.

One passenger aboard JetBlue Flight 455 was taken into custody at Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina after the plane landed about 5:45 p.m.

A federal Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman said one person was injured in the face by what may have been a punch. She said the fight involved three people who are thought to be related.

According to the airline, there were 88 people and four crew members aboard the jet. The flight had been scheduled to leave Boston at 1 p.m. but did not take off until 3:11 p.m., spokeswoman Alison Eshelman said.

Eyewitnesses said the scuffle was between two brothers, one of whom was angry that his brother had smoked on a plane.

Something tells me drinking was involved here. Just a hunch.

A 33-year-old man who tried cutting off his arm inside a busy Denny’s restaurant because he believed it would save his life was arrested Friday night, according to Modesto police.

According to Sgt. Brian Findlen, Michael Lasiter of Modesto had been injecting cocaine in a nearby motel when he thought he had injected air into his vein, which can lead to death.

Findlen said the man believed that if he cut off his arm, he could save himself from dying.

Lasiter entered the restaurant at 1525 McHenry Ave. about 10:15 p.m. and grabbed a butter knife off a customer’s table and began stabbing himself in the right arm near the biceps. When that didn’t work, he ran into the kitchen and got a butcher knife and started “digging the knife into his arm,” Findlen said.

Police arrived almost immediately and isolated the man. A few minutes later, they used a Taser to subdue him.

“He wouldn’t obey a substantial number of commands and continued to stab himself,” Findlen said. “There were some tense moments, but a lot of patrons didn’t know what was going on.”

Lasiter was arrested and taken to a Modesto hospital to treat severe cuts to his arm.

Findlen said he had “never seen anything like that before” in his 11 years in law enforcement.

He said the restaurant closed for the evening to clean up.

Unbelievable.

Like the ritual? Get the footwear.

No kidding – these are actual Nike brand Santa Muerte sneakers.

Investigators said the heads of 11 decapitated bodies discovered in southern Mexico may have been burned in a ritual.

The Public Safety Department said police found an altar to the skeletal figure of the “Santa Muerte” in the home of two men arrested in connection with the slayings. They also found several scorched spots in a nearby clearing.

A statement sent late Sunday said police suspected the heads were burned in the clearing, though it did not say why.

The Santa Muerte is one of several unofficial folk saints worshipped in Mexico.

The beheaded corpses were found Thursday outside the city of Merida in the Yucatan Peninsula. The next day, police arrested three suspects with a bloody axe after a highway chase.

Anyone keeping track of the number of decapitations this year? It’s adding up.

The Zodiac Killer attacked at least eight people, terrorizing the Bay Area and taunting police in the 60’s and 70’s. Thursday, the FBI confirmed to CBS13 they are now running laboratory tests on some items that may link a suspect to the killer.

The evidence was given to the FBI by a Pollock Pines man who also claims he recently found the disguise worn by the Zodiac Killer during one of his attacks.

“The identity of the Zodiac Killer is Jack Tarrance. He’s my stepfather,” says Dennis Kaufman.

Eight years of Dennis Kaufman’s life has been consumed with attempting to prove the only father he’s known since he was five-years-old is none other than the Zodiac Killer.

Only in San Francisco could you walk around dressed like this and not get caught.

“This a handwriting comparison I did,” says Kaufman, showing handwriting samples claiming to be his father’s and the Zodiac Killer’s, which bear a striking similarity. Similarities Dennis says are no coincidence.

“The composite is a dead ringer,” says Kaufman, showing composite sketch of the killer next to his stepfather’s — a resemblance that is undeniable between pictures of Jack Tarrance and descriptions of the zodiac.

Dennis also claims his stepfather, in a taped phone conversation, indirectly admitted being the zodiac killer.

“If I wrote a book and said I think my stepfather is the Zodiac Killer they wouldn’t believe me,” says Kaufman.

Eight years of his life? Sheesh. The movie rights better be worth it.

Dennis claims that while going through Tarrance’s belongings, there were disturbing findings including a knife still covered with what could possibly be dried blood.

“It could be a knife he barbecued with or a knife he murdered someone with,” says Kaufman.

Oh brother.

A Wisconsin man who broke into a number of women’s homes to steal their bras and underwear was charged Tuesday with five counts of felony burglary. According to an affidavit filed in Winnebago Circuit Court, Christopher Sullivan illegally entered the residences and took undergarments and photographs from at least five women. Later he would superimpose the women’s images onto pictures taken from pornographic magazines and mail them to the women along with other creepy pictures that used Barbie dolls as props. Sullivan, 43, told officers from the Oshkosh Police Department that the mailings were “intended to scare his victims.” One of his alleged victims received an envelope with two Polaroids, one with “three Barbie dolls upside down, naked with their heads cut off” and the other with the woman’s head next to a decapitated Barbie and the message “your head will be cut off, skinned, boiled, baked, we will have your skull on our table of sacrifice” written next to the picture.

Wow – pick what’s most perverted here: stealing panties? headless Barbies? threats to boil and bake the victim’s head (why both?)?

During questioning, Sullivan told police he chose one of his victims, an upstairs neighbor, because “she and her boyfriend were having very loud sex” and that angered him.
He admitted choosing another victim because she “caught his attention” while riding a lawnmower in a bikini.

He also told police he would classify himself as a “sexual predator,”

Brilliant.

New York City’s rate of HIV infection is about three times the national rate, according to estimates released Wednesday by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

The agency estimates that 72 of every 100,000 New Yorkers — a total of 4,800 individuals — contracted HIV in 2006, more than triple the national rate of 23 per 100,000.

HIV, or the human immunodeficiency virus, is the virus that causes AIDS.

In June, the city launched a three-year initiative to administer HIV tests to the 250,000 Bronx adults who have never been tested. The program was announced just days after release of a study finding a high rate of “unsafe sexual behavior” in the city.

Freidan said the study showed that 36 percent of gay and bisexual New York men who had five or more partners in the previous year did not use condoms consistently.

“This is a core group which is at high risk for getting and spreading HIV,” Freidan said.