UPI NewsTrack Quirks in the News

$50K art project tossed by city workers

ALBUQUERQUE, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- Albuquerque officials said a $50,000 work of art believed to have been stolen was actually thrown out by city employees.

Mayor Richard Berry's office said Monday the fiberglass sculpted cactus, created by an artist and students participating in a Working Classroom Inc. program funded by the city, had been stolen, but a pair of Parks and Recreation employees came forward Tuesday to say it had been thrown out after being vandalized, KRQE-TV, Albuquerque, reported Thursday.

"There are just layers of tragedy here," said Nan Elsasser, executive director of Working Classroom. "First of all, who would vandalize it and for what purpose. And then who would make this decision to cart off a piece of art and throw it in the dump. That's just unfathomable to me."

City spokesman Chris Ramirez said the employees did not know the item was a public art project when they made the decision to have it taken to a landfill. He said city employees will receive a memo about the more than 650 public art projects installed around the city.

Emanuel promises cash for tweeter's name

CHICAGO, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel said he will donate money to charity if the person behind the @MayorEmanuel Twitter reveals his or her identity.

Emanuel announced on Roe Conn and Richard Roeper's WLS-AM, Chicago, show Tuesday he will donate "$2,500 or $5,000" to the charity of the Twitter user's choice "if they will make public who they are" after the mayoral election, the Chicago Tribune reported Thursday.

The candidate said he is a fan of the user's profanity-laced tongue-in-cheek tweets.

@MayorEmanuel has not officially responded to the offer, but made a post Tuesday night about a broken car radio that appeared to reference Emanuel's pledge.

"I swear to ... god, I will donate $2500 to the charity of your choice if you can come and fix this ... radio," the expletive-laced post read.

Drunk driver came to pick up drunk driver

MALMO, Sweden, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- Police in Sweden said a man who drove to the police station to pick up a friend who was arrested for drunk driving also was arrested for the same crime.

Malmo police said the 28-year-old man, who was charged Tuesday with aggravated drunken driving, drove to the police station late at night to pick up his friend, who was arrested earlier in the day on a drunken driving charge, and a guard inside the facility suspected he had been drinking, The Local reported Thursday.

The guard alerted a nearby police officer, who administered a breath test and determined the man's blood alcohol content was well over the legal limit for driving.

"I didn't feel drunk, but I had been drinking, so it was unnecessary and poorly thought out," the Skanska Dagbladet newspaper quoted the man as saying after the September 2010 incident.

Police said the man had driven the same car his friend was driving at the time of his arrest.

Sniffer dogs lose track of missing cat

BURNABY, British Columbia, Feb. 17 (UPI) -- A U.S. missing pet tracker and his sniffer dogs have had their trail turn cold in southern British Columbia in the search for a missing cat, its owners said.

Tracker Harry Oakes of Longview, Wash., traveled north to the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby with his dogs to hunt down Luna, a 1-year-old gray tabby cat who disappeared from the home of clothier Robin Hoare and his wife, Burnaby Now reported.

Hoare paid Oakes $1,000 to conduct the search, saying the pet detective claims on his Web site to have a 95 percent success rate in hunting down missing pets.

"We brought him in maybe five days after she went missing as … a last resort," Hoare said.

This week, the dogs abruptly lost Luna's scent in a park, but Hoare said he's not giving up and would post signs in the area offering a small reward.

"We were originally fearing that coyotes or something had got her, but from what (Oakes) tracked, it looks like maybe a transient or someone picked her up and put her in his cart," he said. "We're hoping whoever has her will travel that route back."