LIVERPOOL, England, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- The widow and son of an old canal boatman say they have been ordered to move his ashes from the commodore's garden at a boat club.

Mary and Chris Turner told the Liverpool Echo the commodore of the Runcorn club in Bridgewater handed them an empty ice cream tub and a spoon and told them to get busy.

Frank Turner, who died recently of cancer, was not a member of the club, but his son said he had been planning to join when he became sick. He liked the idea of being at a place dedicated to the narrowboats that used to carry cargo on English canals and now carry recreational boaters.

"My dad was a working man on the canals, one of the last people to take a boat through the top locks," Chris Taylor said. "Now we have nowhere to visit him. I am very upset."

S. Carolina dumps mini-bottles

CHARLESTON, S.C., Dec. 30 (UPI) -- South Carolina, the last state in the country to allow liquor to be sold in bars and restaurants only in mini-bottles, is giving up the practice.

The mini-bottle law, adopted in 1973, was an odd relic of prohibition, USA Today reports. Before 1973, the state banned sales of liquor by the drink and patrons instead would bring their own bottles and buy ice and mixers.

The change in 1973 was seen as a move towards sobriety, and so is the latest shift in the law. The little bottles hold 1.7 ounces of booze, about half an ounce more than the standard shot in free-pour bars.

Restaurants and bars have been offering training in the use of jiggers and shot glasses. Gene's Haufbrau in Charleston has brought in bartenders from Atlanta to educate its staff.

"I think it'll be very entertaining to watch a lot of bartenders who've never tended bar anywhere except Charleston figure it out, including myself," Cat Hollen, a Haufbrau employee, told USA Today.

U.S. planned Canada invasion -- in 1930

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Jokes aside, the United States does indeed have a bold war plan for attacking Canada -- only thing is, it's almost 76 years old.

The Washington Post (NYSE:WPO) says the plan is a 94-page document that was approved by the War Department in 1930, a blueprint for battle that includes a step-by-step plan to invade, seize and annex The United States' neighbor to the north.

First, according to the plan, the U.S. military sends a joint Army-Navy overseas force to capture Halifax, cutting the Canadians off from their British allies. Then forces would seize Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls, so the Canadians would "freeze in the dark," as the Post's version said.

Then the Army invades on three fronts -- from Vermont, North Dakota and the Midwest -- while the Navy seizes the Great Lakes and blockades Canada's Atlantic and Pacific ports.

The invasion plan was declassified in 1974, the word "SECRET" crossed out with a heavy pencil and now sits in a little gray box in the National Archives the Post said.

Fla. teen goes to Iraq to see democracy

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Farris Hassan just wanted to see Iraq's struggle for democracy firsthand, so the Florida teenager hopped a plane and went.

Hassan, 16, was headed back to the United States Friday following his foray to his parents' native country, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.

Hassan's father, Dr. Redha Hassan, said he had been planning to take his son to Iraq during the summer, but the youth didn't want to wait. He used his own money to buy a plane ticket to Kuwait and headed over two weeks ago, leaving behind only an e-mail message saying, "Don't worry about me, I will be safe."

"I said to myself, 'You have no idea what you're getting yourself into.' For $100, they kidnap people," Redha Hassan told the newspaper. "The suicide bombers, they look for foreigners. He's young, with an American passport and doesn't speak a word of Arabic."

Hassan's mother told "CBS Morning News" she would be confiscating her son's passport.