ARCADIA, Fla. (AP) — A 44-year-old Florida woman brought her infant grandchild along with a stash of cocaine and heroin to a recent prison visit, officials said.
But guards searching visitors at the DeSoto Correctional Institution on Sunday found nearly 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of drugs during the jail’s check-in process, sheriff’s officials said in a Facebook post.
DeSoto County Sheriff’s deputies arrested the woman. Then, a K-9 named Liberty conducted a “free air sniff” of her car, where an additional 687 grams (24 ounces) of cocaine and heroin were located, alongside a baby’s car seat and other essentials.
The baby was turned over to the Florida Department of Children and Families.
The woman was charged with trafficking in heroin and cocaine, introduction of contraband into a correctional facility, child abuse/neglect and possession of drug paraphernalia.
—————————————————————————————————-
(Sport Bible) There was a spectacular plan to replace the ball boys and girls at Wimbledon with dogs.
However, as brilliant as the idea was, it has hilarious failed after the four-legged fetchers refused to give the tennis balls back to players.
Insurance provider ManyPets had previously urged tennis chiefs to consider the furry friends as an alternative to teen volunteers.
A trial was conducted at the UK’s Wilton Tennis Club where a number of dogs underwent a series of tests looking at speed, agility, retrieval, and leaping over the net.
The dogs excelled on all fronts except the one that counts: actually returning the balls to players.
Club coordinator Martin Schiller told the Daily Star that the dogs required a bit of convincing to actually give up the tennis balls.
“Our players did find themselves in a game of tug-of-war,” he told the Daily Star.
“We had a stash of treats on the sidelines to offer up as a bit of encouragement which certainly did the trick.”
The fail comes shortly after ManyPets UK CEO Oke Eleazu called on Wimbledon organisers to consider their ‘ball dogs’ program for the 2023 tournament.
“We’re calling on Wimbledon to get our ‘Ball Dogs’ to centre-court next year,” Eleazu said, as per the London Post.
“Our four-legged friends have always been highly regarded for their dedication and skill when it comes to chasing after tennis balls.”
He added: “We hope that the nation will get behind our plea, and that Wimbledon grants our Ball Dog ambitions for 2023.”
ManyPets is still waiting on a formal response to their idea.
The move would mean the roughly 1,000 teens who apply to work at the Wimbledon tournament would be out of a job.
Only a quarter of teens are chosen to actually retrieve balls for some of the world’s best tennis players in the all-star tournament.
Ball boys have been used at Wimbledon since the 1920s, with ball girls introduced decades later in 1977.
As for the fuzzy fetchers, they still have plenty of time to practice for the 2023 competition.
But they’ll need to to step up their game by learning to drop the balls without a treat or pat.
Wimbledon 2022 kicked off on Monday (June 27) and has already been the subject of upset and controversy.
Serena Williams was knocked out in the first round, with some fans calling for her to retire.
Additionally, Novak Djokovic was cleared in April to defend his grand slam title after the tournament confirmed players will not have to provide Covid-19 vaccine accreditation to compete in this year’s showdown.
He was blocked from competing at the Australian Open over the same issue.
—————————————————————————————————-
Two teens were arrested Tuesday for allegedly shoplifting underwear and pulling a gun on a security guard, according to local media.
The underwear theft happened shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday at South Hill Mall in Puyallup, Washington.
Captain Ryan Portmann told the Tacoma News Tribune one of the 16-year-old suspects pointed a gun at a security officer before fleeing the store.
Customers pointed officers in the direction of the underwear bandits. An officer in an unmarked police car located the duo near a Red Robin on 9 St SW.
The two teens were arrested and booked into Remann Hall on robbery charges. The loaded gun was found on one of the suspects, Portmann said.
—————————————————————————————————-
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin shot back at Western leaders who mocked his athletic exploits, saying they would look “disgusting” if they tried to emulate his bare-torso appearances.
Putin made the comment during a visit to Turkmenistan early Thursday when asked about Western leaders joking about him at the G7 summit.
As they sat down for talks, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson jested that G7 leaders could take their clothes off to “show that we’re tougher than Putin” amid Russia-West tensions over Moscow’s military action in Ukraine.
Canadian premier Justin Trudeau joked that Western leaders could try to match Putin’s naked torso pictures with a “bare-chested horseback riding display,” one of his widely publicized athletic adventures.
Speaking to reporters, Putin retorted that, unlike him, Western leaders abuse alcohol and don’t do sports.
“I don’t know how they wanted to get undressed, above or below the waist,” he said. “”But I think it would be a disgusting sight in any case.”
He noted that to look good “it’s necessary to stop abusing alcohol and other bad habits, do physical exercise and take part in sports.”
—————————————————————————————————-
June 30 (UPI) — Police in Louisiana said they safely captured a kangaroo spotted hopping loose next to an East Baton Rouge Parish road.
The kangaroo was caught on video hopping loose next to a road in Zachary and a photo posted to social media Wednesday showed the marsupial standing near a group of mailboxes.
The Zachary Police Department said the kangaroo was successfully captured Thursday morning.
Police did not say where the animal came from. Kangaroos are considered exotic animals by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and are not legal to be kept as pets.
—————————————————————————————————-
June 30 (UPI) — Officials at a Delaware mall said they were “blown away” when a wall at the shopping center turned out to be hiding something unexpected — a completely intact Burger King restaurant with vintage decor.
Tom Dahlke, general manager of the Concord Mall in Wilmington, said he was unaware of the eatery until a photo recently snapped by mall vendor Jonathon Pruitt went viral on Twitter.
“It’s kind of cool. When I first saw it, I was blown away myself,” Dahlke told WPVI-TV.
Dahlke said he does not know how long the Burger King has been abandoned and concealed behind a wall, because the current management company took over in January 2020.
Twitter user @loserskwaddd responded to the viral post with her own video of the Burger King, saying the facility was used as a storage room for a seasonal job she had at the mall in 2019, indicating that the previous management team was aware of the defunct business.
Dahlke took New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer on a tour of the Burger King, and a video of the visit was shared on the New Castle County Government’s Facebook page.
Dahlke said the former Burger King will soon be available for rent.
“It is kind of cool to have something that nostalgic here in the building. We’re hopeful to rent it and have it occupied soon,” he said.
—————————————————————————————————-
(The Guardian) Early on Wednesday morning, someone at a pop and soft rock station in Vancouver, Canada, began playing the song Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine.
Then they played it again.
And again.
By Thursday morning, the song had played hundreds of times on Kiss Radio 104.9 FM, prompting online speculation that the singular choice was a protest against layoffs by parent company Rogers Sports and Media.
The song’s lyrics include the repeated line: “F*** you, I won’t do what you tell me!”. The station, however, played the sanitised radio edit.
A first attempt to call to the radio studio did not yield clarity.
The man who answered the phone would not explain why they were playing the song on repeat, nor provide his real name.
“I’m not allowed to say. I’m just a guy in a booth, just letting the Rage play over and over,” he said. “What do you think? Do you like it?”
The incident came a day after the co-hosts of the station’s morning show posted on Facebook that they had suddenly been fired.
“Our five years on Kiss Radio has come to an end. Kiss is changing and unfortunately we were informed that we won’t be part of this new chapter. Although this comes with mixed emotions, we want to express one overwhelming feeling: gratitude,” wrote ex-hosts Kevin Lim and Sonia Sidhu.
Callers’ attempts to request anything besides Killing in the Name were denied, and between calls, the song looped several times with no discernible beginning or end. Rather, it was just one long version of Killing in the Name.
After a Twitter thread on the phenomenon went viral, listeners tuned in to the station from across Canada, the US, Europe, New Zealand and Australia.
Disappointingly for some, the apparent insurrection was on Thursday revealed to be the oldest radio trick in the book: a format change.
In radio, “stunting” has been used for decades to signal a change in programming. In the Washington state city of Spokane in 1991, a station played Louie Louie for days.
Christian Hall, the content director at the radio station, said the stunt signalled a change from the soft-rock and pop stylings of the former Kiss Radio to a new alternative music station called Sonic Radio.
“In keeping with radio’s reputation of being fun, and the format’s reputation as being a tad disruptive, we couldn’t think of a better way to capture our local listeners’ attention than by playing the iconic anthem Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine non-stop for 30 hours, and, well … it wound up catching the world’s attention,” said Hall in an email.
But why Killing in the Name, of all songs? Was it a tribute to their fired colleagues or a way to mark the death of the old station?
“I think that the spirit of the song definitely served that narrative, but ultimately it was more of a set-up to kick off something new,” host Angela Valiant later told the Guardian.
“There’s something really poetic about Killing in the Name,” she said. “Not only is it an iconic song, it’s super memorable. It also just feels like something that encapsulates the alternative spirit. It’s a song that’s unafraid to be political and to have a voice.”
—————————————————————————————————-
(ABC) LONDON — Two women have been arrested in Thailand for allegedly attempting to smuggle at least 109 live animals in their luggage — including porcupines, armadillos, turtles, chameleons and snakes — as they tried to board a flight to India.
The incident occurred on Monday at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport as two Indian women tried to make their way through airport security when officials spotted a couple of suspicious items in their suitcases following a routine x-ray inspection, according to a statement released by Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation.
Upon further investigation, authorities discovered a total of at least 109 animals including “two white porcupines, two armadillos, 35 turtles, 50 chameleons and 20 snakes,” read the statement.
The two women were arrested, taken into custody and charged under Thailand’s Wildlife Preservation and Protection Act, The Animal Epidemic Act of 2015, and the Customs Act.
In March 2022, TRAFFIC — a wildlife and plant trafficking watchdog group — released a report on wildlife trafficking through India’s airports and said the issue is the “fourth largest illegal trade worldwide after arms, drugs and human trafficking, and frequently links with other forms of serious crime such as fraud, money laundering, and corruption.”
In fact, from 2011 to 2020, the report says that there were 141 wildlife seizure incidents involving 146 different wildlife species at 18 of India’s major airports.
“Over 70,000 wild animals including their body parts or derivatives, were found during the study period,” the report says. “Wildlife derivatives weighing over 4000 kg (approximately four-and-a-half tons) were also seized at airports in India.”
India passed the Wildlife (Protection) Act 50 years ago in 1972 but, according to TRAFFIC, wildlife trafficking is still a big issue in India.
“Despite the restrictions, wildlife trafficking continues. TRAFFIC’s study highlights the increasing misuse of airports for smuggling wildlife and its contrabands within India and across the regions,” the report continued. “The study’s findings reflect the ongoing trafficking and not an actual representation as most of the illegal wildlife trade goes unchecked and unreported.”
An earlier statement from Thailand’s Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation said that the surviving animals would be sent to wildlife rescue centers or breeding stations around the country.
—————————————————————————————————-
(New York Post) The competition at the Virginia-Kentucky District Fair began innocently enough when a woman named Linda Skeens entered her many baked treats, canned goods and other items for the judged contest.
Then she won — and she won huge. The fair posted a list of winners on Facebook showing that Skeens dominated the June 13 competition, winning more than 25 of 80 contest categories. That’s when things took on a life of their own. Her online fans wanted to find her.
Skeens swept the cake, pie, cookie, bread (both sweet and savory), brownie and candy categories. In addition to baked goods, Skeens’s corn won best overall canned vegetable, and her peppers prevailed as the overall best non-cucumber pickled item.
Skeens won best spaghetti sauce, best applesauce and best sauerkraut. Not only did she win best jelly with her grape jelly, but her peach-raspberry jam won best jam, too — among several other undefeated dishes she cooked up for the competition.
Thousands of people responded on the Facebook post, most in awe of Skeens’s culinary skills. But the questions were persistent online: Where is Linda Skeens? And who is she? Her rapidly growing fan base wanted to know, and as the days went on, it became a mystery intensifying with each meme posted on the page, as people asked, “Seriously, Linda?? Do you sleep?”
“She showed up, showed everyone what a winner looks like, and left without a trace,” posted a commenter. Some comments got 10,000 likes, and the hashtag #whereislindaskeens began circulating.
Endless jokes rolled in: “Did you hear about the time there was a kitten stuck in a tree? Linda Skeens baked a French Baguette Ladder right there on the spot and rescued it.”
Some people invited Skeens to Thanksgiving dinner, while others asked for her hand in marriage.
“We have found the lady who can take down Bobby Flay,” said a commenter.
Except they couldn’t find her. Aside from her name, the Virginia-Kentucky District Fair — which has hosted the annual event in Wise, Va., by the Kentucky border, since 1913 — revealed no information about the woman who seemingly won it all.
He died alone in his apartment. Then his artwork went viral.
One woman named Linda Skeens, who lives in Blacksburg, Va., was bombarded with messages on Facebook, to the point where she felt compelled to make a public declaration, explaining that she is not, in fact, the Linda Skeens.
Skeens, 68, said her mistaken identity has actually been delightful, as she has had the unexpected opportunity to connect with kind strangers from around around the world in recent days.
“I’ve heard from people from Indonesia, Australia, the U.K., Norway, all kinds of places,” she said in a phone interview with The Washington Post.
“I have honestly had the time of my life,” she said. “I really hope and pray the real Linda Skeens has been made aware of all the appreciation she has received online for her baking skills, because she certainly deserves it.”
Skeens’s loyal legion continued to look for their baking and canning hero on social media, or anywhere on the internet, for that matter. Several people made TikToks about her, including a man who performed “The Ballad of Linda Skeens.”
Radio personality Mason Moussette, who hosts a morning show in Dallas, was in on the quest. She is always looking for entertaining stories to share with her audience, she said, and when she stumbled upon the search for Skeens, she was intrigued.
“I just found it fascinating,” said Moussette, who also made a TikTok inquiring about Skeens’s whereabouts, which has nearly 400,000 views. “I wanted to know the story of this woman. How did she do so well in so many categories?”
“The entire internet is looking for this woman,” Moussette said in her TikTok.
As it turns out, the real Linda Skeens’s granddaughter came across Moussette’s video and got in touch.
As her grandmother’s name flew across social media, “my phone just started blowing up,” said Franki Skeens, 33.
While she and her family were stunned by Linda Skeens’s sudden stardom, they weren’t surprised by her many victories at the Virginia-Kentucky District Fair.
“To us, it’s nothing new because Mamaw has done it for years,” said Franki Skeens.
She has fond childhood memories of baking cookies and other treats with her grandmother to enter into the fair.
“It’s a big family tradition,” said Franki Skeens, adding that her grandmother has participated as a contestant for several decades, and has taken home many blue ribbons, but perhaps none as many as this year.
According to Franki Skeens, Linda Skeens lives in Russel County, Va., with her husband. She is in her late 60s, and she does not have any social media, an email address or even a cellphone.
Her granddaughter said she is a doting mother and grandparent to three children, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. She is also an avid churchgoer, with a knack for arts and crafts — including embroidery, cross-stich and painting — and of course, cooking and baking. Within her family, she is most famous for her potato casserole, her strawberry fudge (which won best overall baked good at the fair) and homemade blackberry ice cream.
The district fair judges awarded her top honors this year for her peach turnovers, chocolate cake, peanut butter cookies and buttermilk breakfast biscuits, among many other items.
“If it can be made, she can make it,” Franki Skeens said, adding that her grandmother declined a request for comment from The Washington Post, saying she is overwhelmed by the attention. “I don’t know how she does it. There are never any leftovers.”
Aside from her clear culinary aptitude, “she is an exceptional woman,” said Franki Skeens. “She’s kind, she’s sweet. She would either give you the shirt off her back, or she would make you a shirt, depending on what you wanted.”
Although her grandmother prefers to keep to herself, Linda Skeens is apparently thrilled about the public reaction to her triumph at the fair.
While her family reads her comments that have come in from strangers on social media, “she just grins from ear to ear,” Franki Skeens said. “She loves it.”
According to Jennifer Mullins, a member of the fair committee, Skeens was one of 40 contestants this year who entered the 80 contest categories at the fair, which ran from June 14 to 18. The food is judged by an anonymous four-person panel the day before the rest of the fair events begin.
In addition to various exhibits, the fair also hosts other events, such as bull-riding, demolition derby and talent shows. Mullins confirmed that Linda Skeens has participated in the fair for many years, and she has clinched countless contests.
“Linda has always won big,” said Mullins. “She has always been very successful at the exhibits, but this year, she took on newfound success on social media as well.”
“How this story unfolded was a surprise, I think to everyone,” she continued. “This is bringing joy right now when we need that.”
Next year’s fair is scheduled for June 13-17, and the committee is anticipating a bigger crowd than ever, thanks to the legendary Linda Skeens.
“If people are interested to meet Linda, they just need to go to the next local county fair,” Franki Skeens said.