UPI NewsTrack Quirks in the News

Marines brave snow for New York wedding

NEW YORK, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- The Marines who won an on-camera wedding in New York's Times Square during New Year's celebrations said weather forced them to take a 19-hour drive.

Geoffrey Dubie, 23, and Bethany Phillips, 25, who met at the Al Asad Air Base in Iraq in 2009, said their Sunday flight from Atlanta to New York was canceled due to snowstorms in the northeastern United States, leaving them with driving as their only transport option, the New York Daily News reported Thursday.

Get Married Media, the wedding planning company behind the contest won by the couple, provided Dubie and Phillips with a Ford Expedition and a driver. The couple said the drive took 19 hours, about five hours more than they had expected.

Stacie Francombe, founder and editor in chief of Get Married Media, said planners are scrambling to prepare for the ceremony as the intended florist, photographer and makeup artist were stranded out of town by the snowstorm.

Jeweler gives refunds after snow bet

WILMINGTON, N.C., Dec. 30 (UPI) -- A North Carolina jeweler said he is following through on his promise to refund purchases if a town received more than 3 inches of Christmas snow.

Alan Perry, who promised to refund purchases made from Perry's Emporium in Wilmington between Nov. 26 and Dec. 11 if Christmas saw more than 3 inches of snowfall in Asheville, said his insurance company will take about 45 days to write checks for the affected customers, the Asheville Citizen-Times reported Thursday.

The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network Web site said a total 8.5 inches of snow fell in Asheville during Christmas.

"The customers are coming in like crazy, bringing their receipts," Perry said.

He said he heard about the snow while enjoying his Christmas vacation in Jamaica.

"One woman I know, a real estate agent in Wilmington, was in Asheville visiting her mother, and she was sending photos (of the snow) to my iPad," Perry said. "She said, 'You'd better get out your checkbook.'"

Perry said his insurance company expects to pay nearly $400,000 total for the policy.

Dropped phone leads to snatching suspect

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla., Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Police in Florida said they arrested a suspected purse snatcher after an officer recognized him in photos found on a phone he allegedly dropped at the scene.

Daytona Beach police said a man matching the description of Bobby Lane, 24, was recorded by a security camera while snatching a woman's purse at about 11:50 a.m. Tuesday at a JCPenney store, the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel reported Thursday.

The purse's owner told police it contained about $2,000 in cash, a $5,000 check and a $211 money order.

The suspect dropped a phone at the scene and a Daytona Beach officer recognized Lane in photos found on the phone.

Lane was arrested and charged with robbery by sudden snatching. Police said he returned $1,900 of the money from the purse.

Kinsey 'stag' films under lock and key

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Dec. 30 (UPI) -- The new $15 million Indiana University Cinema has an unexpected problem -- what to do with pioneer sex researcher Alfred Kinsey's sex films.

The biologist and groundbreaking U.S. sex researcher amassed a huge archive of about 14,000 films and videos beginning in 1947 known as the "Kinsey Collection," the Los Angeles Times reports.

The collection includes everything from art house erotica and sex-education titles to about 2,000 crudely made stag party films from the 1920s through the 1960s that pre-date adult movie theaters, X-rated DVDs and online porn Web sites.

The racy stuff was kept locked away in a converted bowling alley near the Bloomington, Ind., campus for decades until the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction moved it to a more modern facility.

The pornographic materials were not acquired at taxpayer expense, Kinsey Institute employees said. Kinsey, author of "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female," died in 1956.

"Kinsey had relations with police departments all over the country," IU film archivist Rachael Stoeltje told the Times. They would send him copies whenever they confiscated (such films). They're all amateur, all illegally made, all with bad lighting, but real gems. They're unique because this doesn't exist anymore."