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A Minnesota high school teacher has lasted 20 hours on a carnival ride to win the Ride the Tide Challenge at the Mall of America.
State police say they arrested a man early Tuesday whose blood alcohol level was 0.491 percent — the highest ever recorded in Rhode Island for someone who wasn't dead.
A New York state report says a maintenance man who earned $100,000 last year working at a psychiatric center has been living for free in a paint shed on company grounds and even had his mail delivered there.
A man is having trouble sleeping since he found a python snake about 9 feet long under the engine of his pickup truck. Harley Burgess's shocking discovery Saturday is the second of its kind in less than a week in Maine.
A woman accidentally stabbed herself in the foot with a 3-foot-long sword while performing a Wiccan good luck ritual at a central Indiana cemetery.

China continues to prepare for the Olympics: Officials have issued a standard chanting routine that all Chinese spectators should employ during competitions (translated as "Olympics! Add fuel!" with two claps and then both thumbs up, then "China! Add fuel!" with two more claps and raised fists, according to a June Reuters dispatch). ("Add fuel" is apparently a traditional motivational chant in China.) Also preparing was Wei Sheng, the Chinese man who holds the Guinness Book record of sticking 1,790 needles in his head at one time. In June he stuck himself with 2,008 pins in the Olympic design and colors.