... some candidates for the Darwin awards.

A telephone company fired their president after nine months, saying he lacked "intellectual leadership". He received a $26 million severance package. Perhaps it's not the president who's lacking intelligence...

Police in Oakland, California spent two hours attempting to subdue a gunman who had barricaded himself inside his home. After firing ten tear gas canisters, officers discovered that the man was standing beside them, shouting to please come out and give himself up...

An Illinois man pretending to have a gun kidnapped a motorist and forced him to drive to two different automated teller machines. The kidnapper then proceeded to withdraw money from his own bank accounts...

A 9-year-old boy in Manassas, Virginia received a one-day suspension under his elementary school's drug policy last week - for a mint! The boy allegedly told a classmate that the mints would make him "jump higher." Also, a student in Belle, West Virginia was suspended for three days for giving a classmate a cough drop. The school principal reiterated the school's "zero-tolerance" policy...not to be confused with the intelligence" policy...

[jtr comment on that one: I don't understand why the rest of us put up with, in positions of responsibility, idiots like those school officials. I thought they were supposed to be teaching our kids to THINK.]

A man in Taormina, Italy was hospitalized after swallowing 46 teaspoons, 2 cigarette lighters, and a pair of salad tongs.

A man walked in to a Topeka, Kansas convenience store and asked for all the money in the cash drawer. Apparently, the take was too small, so he tied up the store clerk and worked the counter himself for three hours until police showed up and grabbed him.

----- jim o\-S