NEWSQUIRKS

Curses, foiled again
Police responding to a break-in at a convenience store in Athens, Tenn., identified their suspect when he returned to the scene two hours later. Officer Chandler Rollo told the Daily Post-Athenian he was at the store waiting for a manager to arrive with the key after someone shattered a glass door and entered the store. A blood-covered Roger Scott Buckner Jr., 21, approached Rollo to ask for help. Buckner required dozens of stitches in his hand and ankle for wounds from the shattered glass.

Stand up for freedom
CIA agents began supplying Viagra to win support from Afghan warlords in the war against Taliban insurgents. “Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people, whether it’s building a school or handing out Viagra,” a CIA operative told the Washington Post. The paper reported the erectile dysfunction drug has proved more welcome than customary bribes, such as guns and money. Aging chieftains often have up to four wives, for example, and see the Viagra pill as a way to “put them back in an authoritative position.”

One official told the Post that four Viagra pills transformed the attitude of one 60year-old warlord, who had been wary of the United States. “He came up to us beaming,” the official said. “And after that, we could do whatever we wanted in his area.”

Twenty miles to the pound
Dr. Alan Bittner declared he is saving the planet by running his Ford Explorer and his girlfriend’s Lincoln Navigators on fat removed from at least 7,000 liposuction patients. “The vast majority of my patients request that I use their fat for fuel,” the Beverly Hills cosmetic surgeon said on the website lipodiesel.com, “and I have more fat than I can use.”

Making sure no one wins Hoping to win $1,000 in travel vouchers, photographer Duane Kerzic was taking pictures of trains from the passenger platform at New York City’s Penn Station for Amtrak’s annual Picture Our Trains contest when Amtrak police arrested him. He said the officers who handcuffed him to the wall of a holding cell told him “it was illegal to take photos of the trains.”

The meter’s running
A Scottish court heard that Perth taxi driver James Hendry, 58, repeatedly groped a 22-year-old female passenger while driving her home and then charged her the full fare.

Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Submit items, citing date and source, to P.O. Box 8130, Alexandria VA 22306.