Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Manhattan is most expensive U.S. hometown NEW YORK, Sept. 1 (UPI) -- A new look at the cost of living came to the perhaps unsurprising conclusion that Manhattan is the most-expensive place in the United States to live. Advertisement The Council for Community and Economic Research said the New York City borough rates a 233.5 on its Cost of Living Index -- roughly twice the national average. Three of the city's boroughs were in the top six. Brooklyn came in a distant second at 183.4 and Queens placed sixth with 151.4, compared to the national average of 100 points. The New York Post said the index established its rankings by analyzing the prices of 60 consumer goods and services. Housing prices pushed Manhattan and Brooklyn atop the leader board, and the cost of food, utilities and healthcare added to the cost of calling Queens home. Advertisement Honolulu was the third-priciest U.S. city, followed by San Francisco at one end of Silicon Valley and San Jose at the other. The least-expensive places to call home were Harlingen, Texas, Memphis and Fayetteville, Ark. KFC razzes U.S. grads living with folks NEW YORK, Sept. 1 (UPI) -- Recent U.S. college graduates still living with their parents are getting the needle from KFC, a major purveyor of take-out comfort food. As if those jaundiced looks from the parents weren't enough, jobless grads are now hearing it from their pals at KFC through an ad campaign making light of their having to move back home after four years -- or more -- of campus living. Forbes said campaign -- with the tagline "Bite Size Chicken is all Grown Up" -- includes five "mini-shows" in which typical twenty-somethings confront changes that have occurred in their family dynamic and often their old bedrooms. Forbes noted the subject matter could be a little touchy to members of their key demographic who may be having difficulty getting their adult lives on track. At the same time, it points viewers to a Web site that could solve their problem by offering a contest in which the top prize is a year's free rent and a yearlong supply of KFC. Advertisement Canada judge: Pot confession not enough SASKATOON, Saskatchewan, Sept. 1 (UPI) -- A pot-smoking Canadian motorist was acquitted of impaired driving by a judge who said there wasn't enough evidence she actually couldn't drive. The woman, whose name was not reported, was busted at a traffic checkpoint in Saskatoon last year even though she had been driving appropriately. She was undone by the smell of marijuana rolling out the window. The woman flunked the roadside sobriety test administered by the arresting officer by failing to touch her nose five times, but she was said to be cooperative, coherent and able to walk without weaving. "I would have appreciated some evidence as to how these observations related to the accused's ability to drive a motor vehicle," sad Provincial Court Judge D.E. Labach. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. said prosecutors were considering an appeal. No hands, no foul in Italy phone-sex case ROME, Sept. 1 (UPI) -- Phone sex is all talk and doesn't constitute an act of prostitution, an Italian court has ruled. The Italian supreme court Friday overturned a lower court conviction of a Milan man who had paid a woman to talk dirty to him over the telephone. Advertisement The man had been convicted of sexual exploitation, but the high court ruled no crime had been committed since the man and the woman had no physical contact. "Verbally servicing an interlocutor for the purpose of sexual excitement does not constitute a sexual service, if it does not involve the bodily erogenous zones of the person who is getting paid for such a service," the criminal court ruled. Italy's ANSA news service said the court reminded the parties there is a fine line in the case and Italian law says prostitution "may well be carried out via telephone or Internet Web chats" if the customer requests the vendor to perform a specific sex act.
