UPI NewsTrack Quirks in the News

Woman, 88, fights attacker with squeeze

TROUTDALE , Ore., Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Authorities in Oregon said a nude man who attacked an elderly woman in her home fled after the victim squeezed his crotch.

The Multnomah County Sheriff's Office said police in Troutdale arrested Michael Dick, 46, after he allegedly entered the 88-year-old woman's home through an unlocked sliding door at about 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, The (Portland) Oregonian reported Wednesday.

The victim told police that an attacker backed her into her living room and shoved her face-down into a chair. She said the attacker fled after she grabbed his crotch and squeezed.

Dick was charged with burglary, harassment and private indecency.

Election judge's absentee ballot tossed

DULUTH, Minn., Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Election judge Shirley Graham said she was surprised to learn her absentee ballot was blocked from being added to the U.S. Senate recount in Minnesota.

A lawyer from incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman blocked her ballot because the date next to her signature didn't match the date next to the signature of her witness, the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune reported.

"I'm an election judge," said Graham, of Duluth. "I expected to be the last person whose ballot wouldn't be counted."

What's flustering, she said, is that her witness "actually said, 'Shirley, this date has to be the same.' I don't understand how it could be different."

Graham said she votes absentee since she works every Election Day in a nearby precinct.

"I want to see my ballot," Graham said when she learned her ballot was rejected, reconsidered and re-rejected. She said she may consider going to court to get her vote counted in the race between Coleman and Democrat Al Franken.

There's an irony about Coleman's camp rejecting her ballot, the newspaper said.

Party shuttle founder faces own DUI

OCONOMOWOC, Wis., Dec. 31 (UPI) -- A Wisconsin man who helped establish a shuttle program to keep drunken drivers off the road is facing charges of driving while intoxicated, documents show.

A criminal complaint indicates Robert John Manders, of Oconomowoc, Wis., a used car dealer who donated a vehicle for the shuttle service, was picked up Dec. 13 while heading home from a Christmas party, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported Wednesday.

In the complaint, the Waukesha County, Wis., district attorney's office alleges Manders failed a sobriety test after he was stopped while driving a vehicle bearing the shuttle service's logo. Oconomowoc tavern owners have banded together to offer the service for tipsy county motorists the past two years.

Manders has drunken driving convictions from 1990 and 1999, the newspaper said.

"I realize I made a mistake," the 47-year-old business owner told the Journal Sentinel, saying that he had thought about calling the service for a ride home that night, but said he did not think he was too intoxicated to drive.

France seeks return of royal automobile

SEATTLE, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- A car connoisseur from Seattle learned too late that a 1919 Turcat-Mery he purchased in France is considered a national treasure.

The car, Charles Morse told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was built for the duc de Montpensier, a pretender to the French throne.

"It is a very special car," said Morse. "It's a one-off automobile with a wonderful history to it."

The car arrived in Seattle in 2005, but the French government is seeking its return. Morse said he has no problems with that but wants to be reimbursed the $927,518 he paid for it.

The duke, a descendant of the Bourbon dynasty, died in 1924 without children. His widow remarried, leaving his estate to her new husband, Alberto de Huarte, when she died in 1958.

De Huarte agreed in 1991 when the government classified the entire Montpensier estate as national treasures in 1991. But the Turcat changed hands at least twice and ended up in the Netherlands, where Morse bought it.

The U.S. government is backing the French claim, arguing that the Turcat was accompanied by paperwork that gave misleading information on its country of origin when it was imported.